562
Opinion of the Court
of a warrant by officers conducting an arrest or search greatly reduces the perception of unlawful or intrusive police conduct").5
Petitioner argues that even if the goals of the particularity requirement are broader than he acknowledges, those goals nevertheless were served because he orally described to respondents the items for which he was searching. Thus, he submits, respondents had all of the notice that a proper warrant would have accorded. But this case presents no occasion even to reach this argument, since respondents, as noted above, dispute petitioner's account. According to Mrs. Ramirez, petitioner stated only that he was looking for an " 'explosive device in a box.' " 298 F. 3d, at 1026. Because this dispute is before us on petitioner's motion for summary judgment, App. to Pet. for Cert. 13a, "[t]he evidence of the nonmovant is to be believed, and all justifiable inferences are to be drawn in [her] favor," Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U. S. 242, 255 (1986) (citation omitted). The posture of the case therefore obliges us to credit Mrs. Ramirez's account, and we find that petitioner's description of " 'an explo-5 It is true, as petitioner points out, that neither the Fourth Amendment nor Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure requires the executing officer to serve the warrant on the owner before commencing the search. Rule 41(f)(3) provides that "[t]he officer executing the warrant must: (A) give a copy of the warrant and a receipt for the property taken to the person from whom, or from whose premises, the property was taken; or (B) leave a copy of the warrant and receipt at the place where the officer took the property." Quite obviously, in some circumstances— a surreptitious search by means of a wiretap, for example, or the search of empty or abandoned premises—it will be impracticable or imprudent for the officers to show the warrant in advance. See Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, 355, n. 16 (1967); Ker v. California, 374 U. S. 23, 37-41 (1963). Whether it would be unreasonable to refuse a request to furnish the warrant at the outset of the search when, as in this case, an occupant of the premises is present and poses no threat to the officers' safe and effective performance of their mission, is a question that this case does not present.
Page: Index Previous 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007