The Supreme Court said Wednesday that California police officers cannot be sued because they used a warrant that may have been defective to search a woman's house.
The high court threw out the lawsuit against Los Angeles County Sheriff's Detective Curt Messerschmidt and other police officials, who were being sued personally by Augusta Millender for the search on her house and confiscation of her shotgun.
The court on a 6-3 vote overturned [the Ninth US Circuit Court] decision.
"The officers' judgment that the scope of the warrant was supported by probable cause may have been mistaken, but it was not 'plainly incompetent," said Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the court's majority opinion. "On top of all this, the fact that the officers sought and obtained approval of the warrant application from a superior and a deputy district attorney before submitting it to a magistrate provides further support for the conclusion that an officer could reasonably have believed that the scope of the warrant was supported by probable cause."
USSC Protects Officers
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