Failure to Include Known Facts in a Search Warrant Application Can Undermine Probable Cause

When a search warrant application fails to establish probable cause, the problem isn’t normally that the applicant didn’t have probable cause. It’s that the applicant failed to include important facts that he or she knew. An example of the phenomenon is State v. Lewis, decided this week by the court of appeals. Hoke County deputies were investigating a string of armed robberies of dollar stores when Smithfield police contacted them about a similar robbery that had just taken place in Smithfield. The Smithfield officers stated that they had seen a man they knew as Robert Lewis fleeing the scene. A Hoke County officer then “drove to Lewis’s address, 7085 Laurinburg Road in Hoke County,” and saw a Kia Optima and a Nissan Titan parked there. That was significant because witnesses had reported that the robber had used a Kia Optima and a Nissan Titan in the robberies. The officer parked and watched the house until he saw “a man matching Lewis’s description walk from the house out to the mailbox and take mail out.” The officer approached the man, who identified himself as Robert Lewis. The officer arrested Lewis on a warrant the Smithfield officers had obtained. After he arrested Lewis, the officer then spoke to an occupant of the residence, who said that he was Lewis’s stepfather and confirmed that Lewis lived there. He also said that Lewis owned the Kia and sometimes used the Nissan. The officer looked in the window of the Kia and saw a “BB&T money [...]