West Covina v. Perkins, 525 U.S. 234, 10 (1999)

Page:   Index   Previous  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  14  15  Next

Cite as: 525 U. S. 234 (1999)

Opinion of the Court

ment nor any State requires officers to provide individualized notice of the procedures for seeking return of seized property. See Appendix, infra, p. 244.

Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41(d), for example, requires federal agents seizing property pursuant to a warrant to "give to the person from whom or from whose premises the property was taken a copy of the warrant and a receipt for the property taken or [to] leave the copy and receipt at the place from which the property was taken." The Rule makes no provision for notifying property owners of the procedures for seeking return of their property. The Court of Appeals' analysis would render the notice required by this Federal Rule—and by every analogous state statute—inadequate as a constitutional matter. In the shadow of this unwavering state and federal tradition, the Court of Appeals' holding is all the more untenable; to sustain it, we would be required to find that due process requires notice that not one State or the Federal Government has seen fit to require, in the context of law enforcement practices that have existed for centuries.

Respondents urge that if we cannot uphold the Court of Appeals' broad notice requirement, we should, at least, affirm the Court of Appeals' judgment on the narrower ground that the notice provided respondents was inadequate because it did not provide them with the factual information—specifically, the search warrant number—they needed to invoke their judicial remedies. The District Court, however, made an explicit factual finding that respondents failed to establish that they needed the search warrant number to file a court motion seeking return of their property:

"Perkins argues that this [court] procedure was not available to him because he did not know the number of the warrant pursuant to which his property was seized. Unfortunately for Perkins, there is no evidence either way about whether one must have the warrant number in order to obtain a court order releasing seized prop-

243

Page:   Index   Previous  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  14  15  Next

Last modified: October 4, 2007