Hi Jacustomer,

Unfortunatey, yes. The whole purpose of a warrant is to allow the police to enter your premises and apprehend you. Now, if once inside the police exceeded the scope of their authority that could present Constitutional problems. If it's only an arrest warrant, for example, they can find you, but without your consent, they can only take what they see in plain view or within your reachable area as they apprehend you.

If they went beyond that, this does not make the case dismissable. There is nothing ever 100% certain about a 4th amendment issue. The Supreme Court has said that what is or isn't Constutional must be litigated at pre-trial suppression heariings, on a case-by case basis. The Supreme Court also set the standard judges must use, which is what a reasonable police officer would do under all of the circumstances.

So what would happen at the hearing is that the prosecutor would call the police officer to the stand and will question him as to what he did in your case. He will ask him to explain the basis for the warrant, the search, the arrest, the recovery of any contraband, any post-arrest questioning, and so on. All of the DA's questions will be geared to try to show that everything the police said and did when they entered your house was reasonable under all of the circumstances.

When the prosecutor is finished, your lawyer would be able to cross-examine the police officer to try to show just how the police abused their authority by pointing up the facts that you have mentioned and anything else that he thinks would show evidence that the police were overreaching their authority. After both sides have finished getting all the evidence out there, the prosecutor and the defense attorney will each get an opportunity to argue their point of view before the judge, drawing support from the testimony that came out at the hearing and from relevant case law. After that, the judge makes his ruling.

If the judge rules that police actions were reasonable under the circumstances, any evidence taken from the home would be allowed to be used against you at trial. If, on the other hand, the judge rules that the police violated some or all of your rights, evidence seized as a result of those violations should be suppressed. Sometimes, depending upon what gets suppressed, that would spell out the end of the case.