Cite as: 540 U. S. 551 (2004)
Thomas, J., dissenting
Sheppard, the Court should actually analyze the arguably dispositive issue in this case.
The Court also rejects the argument that the details of the warrant application and affidavit save the warrant, because " '[t]he presence of a search warrant serves a high function.' " Ante, at 557 (quoting McDonald v. United States, 335 U. S. 451, 455 (1948)). But it is not only the physical existence of the warrant and its typewritten contents that serve this high function. The Warrant Clause's principal protection lies in the fact that the " 'Fourth Amendment has interposed a magistrate between the citizen and the police . . . so that an objective mind might weigh the need to invade [the searchee's] privacy in order to enforce the law.' " Ante, at 560. The Court has further explained:
"The point of the Fourth Amendment . . . is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime. Any assumption that evidence sufficient to support a magistrate's disinterested determination to issue a search warrant will justify the officers in making a search without a warrant would reduce the Amendment to a nullity and leave the people's homes secure only in the discretion of police officers. . . . When the right of privacy must reasonably yield to the right of search is, as a rule, to be decided by a judicial officer, not by a policeman or government enforcement agent." Johnson v. United States, 333 U. S. 10, 13-14 (1948) (footnotes omitted).
But the actual contents of the warrant are simply manifestations of this protection. Hence, in contrast to the case of a truly warrantless search, where a warrant (due to a mistake) does not specify on its face the particular items to be seized
575
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