Search Warrant.

Cooper89 wrote: »

If someone lives independently in a mobile home next to a house (in the same land) and the garda get a warrant for the house, does that allow them to search the mobile home?

Tia

Let's hope so.

Depends on the wording of the warrant but, generally, yes. The warrant will authorise the search of the entire premises, not just of building on the premises.

You could perhaps challenge the validity of the warrant on the grounds of the constitutional inviolabiity of the home. Suppose A lives in the house, and the guards have reasonable grounds for suspecting that he is involved in, say, gun-running, so they apply for a warrant. B lives in the mobile home and, let's say, is unconnected to A except tht he pays rent to be allowed to live in the mobile home on A's premises. If the warrant is wide enough to extend to searching B's home despite the fact that there are no grounds for suspecting B of involvement, and no grounds for suspecting that A is hiding guns in B's home, you could argue that it has been improperly granted.

None of this would prevent the search of the mobile home taking place. But you might succeed in getting any evidence found in that search excluded on the grounds that it was obtained illegally or unconstitutionally.

Peregrinus wrote: »

Depends on the wording of the warrant but, generally, yes. The warrant will authorise the search of the entire premises, not just of building on the premises.

You could perhaps challenge the validity of the warrant on the grounds of the constitutional inviolabiity of the home. Suppose A lives in the house, and the guards have reasonable grounds for suspecting that he is involved in, say, gun-running, so they apply for a warrant. B lives in the mobile home and, let's say, is unconnected to A except tht he pays rent to be allowed to live in the mobile home on A's premises. If the warrant is wide enough to extend to searching B's home despite the fact that there are no grounds for suspecting B of involvement, and no grounds for suspecting that A is hiding guns in B's home, you could argue that it has been improperly granted.

None of this would prevent the search of the mobile home taking place. But you might succeed in getting any evidence found in that search excluded on the grounds that it was obtained illegally or unconstitutionally.

Do you think there would be any argument here in terms of the "validity" of the mobile home being on the land?

That is, one needs to obtain planning permission in order to have a mobile home on their land on permanent or indefinite basis.

If it could be shown that such permission was not obtained, could that affect the resident's ability to argue that it is a home, as constitutionally defined? That is, since it is not a legal dwelling.

I suspect not, but just wondering what bar has to be met to make it a "home".

For example, if you replace "mobile home" with "shed", and a guy has been living in the shed (lets say there's a toilet and an electric cooker in it), then I don't believe he would be able to avail of constitutional protections - that is, a building does not become a constitutional "home" just because someone lives in it.

So, there was an apartment in Grand Canal Dock that had the kitchen removed so that it was no longer a 'home'. I presume the owner officially lived abroad for tax purposes and removed the kitchen so they wouldn't have a home in the state.

Would such an apartment have the constitutional protections of a home?

Cooper89 wrote:

If someone lives independently in a mobile home next to a house (in the same land) and the garda get a warrant for the house, does that allow them to search the mobile home?

Yes if owner description us on or part of his property officially

Lmklad wrote: »

It’s depends on the warrant and what law is being used. Usually the warrant is issued for a “place” which includes a dwelling and outhouses etc. I would argue that if the mobile home is a dwelling in its own right separate too the house which is the dwelling named on the warrant then that warrant would not suffice for entry into the mobile home.

I don't think I would agree. If the description of the place on the warrant on the face of it encompasses the dwelling, then entry into the dwelling will be authorised by the warrant.

I think they way to attack this would be to argue not that the warrant did not cover the dwelling, but that a warrant covering the dwelling should not have been issued. And this of course depend on other facts, like the dwelling being a dwelling of somebody not connected with the person under suspicion, there being no grounds for reasonable belief that there was evidence to be found in the dwelling, etc, etc.

Victor wrote: »

Is this all moot, if the mobile home contains 500 AK-47s and the court decides that the probative(?) value outweighs the violation of the dwelling?

Illegally or unconstitutionally obtained evidence is generally inadmissible. There are exceptions to this, but they're pretty tightly drawn.

So the crucial question would be, was the warrant issued illegally or unconstitutionally? The simple fact that it relates to a dwelling isn't very relevant in itself; lots of warrants relate to dwellings and they're perfectly valid. The constitutional guarantee is that the dwelling is inviolable "save in accordance with law", but of course a search of a dwelling on foot of a valid warrant is in accordance with law.

So the question is, is the warrant valid? Warrants are generally issued on foot of a guard's sworn opinion that evidence of, or relating to, a particular offence is at the location for which a warrant is sought. (The precise basis for issuing a warrant depens on the exact Act under which the warrant is applied for, but something like this is pretty standard.) The guard needs to have reasonable grounds for this opinion. The fact that the location includes a dwelling is only relevant if the fact that it's a dwelling makes it unreasonable to think that there might be evidence to be found there.

And if in fact a large amount of evidence was found there, you'll be on the hind foot when arguing that there were no reasonable grounds for thinking that it might be found there.