Failure to Allege, in an Application for a Search Warrant, that the Premises to Be Searched Is the Suspect's Home

Sometimes officers have probable cause to believe that a person committed a crime, have probable cause that evidence of the crime will be found in the person’s residence, and seek a search warrant for the address at which the residence is located, but fail to include in the application a statement that the address in question is, in fact, the suspect’s home. What happens then? The best thing that can happen is that the judicial official to whom the application is presented notices the problem and asks the officer to fix it. But sometimes the judicial official doesn’t notice this type of failure to connect the dots. Then problems may ensue. The leading case in this area may be United States v. Laughton, 409 F.3d 744 (6th Cir. 2005), where the Sixth Circuit found that a search warrant should not have issued. Although the application recited that an informant had made controlled purchases; that the suspect had “various stashes around the home”; and that the informant had seen “more controlled substances located at or in the residence or located on the person [of the defendant],” the application did not explicitly “make any connection between the premises to be searched and the facts of criminal activity that the officer set out in his affidavit,” nor did it directly “indicate any connection between the defendant and the address given.” See also United States v. Rice, 704 F.Supp.2d 667 (E.D. Ky. 2010) (an officer obtained a search warrant for a specific address based on [...]