Patterson v. Texas (original by presiding judge keller)
Annotate this CaseIn the early morning hours of August 20, 2016, police and medics responded to multiple emergency calls regarding a drug overdose at the Texas A&M Sigma Nu fraternity house. Callers said that they saw drugs and that fraternity members did not want police to get involved. Upon arrival, law enforcement discovered a fraternity brother deceased from an apparent overdose, so they began treating the fraternity house as a murder scene. Police made three warrantless protective sweeps of the house to make sure that the members were out of their rooms and in common areas, as well as to determine if anyone else had overdosed or needed medical attention. During each sweep, police saw narcotics and paraphernalia in plain view inside certain rooms and common areas. Officers informed Investigator Garrett about their findings, and during the third warrantless protective sweep, he saw contraband in Appellant Samuel Patterson's room. Instead of seizing the illegal contraband, Investigator Garrett drafted a search warrant. The issue this case presented for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals was whether the particularity requirement of the Fourth Amendment was satisfied if a warrant described the place to be searched as a fraternity house as a whole without specifying a suspect’s actual room in the house, but an incorporated affidavit provided both descriptions. The Court held the particularity requirement was satisfied if an affidavit that was incorporated into the warrant included, somewhere, a specific description of the place that was searched.
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