From [HERE] No-knock warrants remain under fire as they continue to needlessly increase the death toll of residents who often have no idea who’s violently entering their home and, therefore, respond in unpredictable ways. Supposedly obtained to increase officer safety, these warrants often seem like a handy way to put officers in “fear for your safety” mode, thus justifying the violence that follows.

But how often are they obtained? That’s tough to tell. Very few law enforcement agencies are willing to speak openly about their use/abuse of these warrants. Fortunately, public records and court proceedings will often provide the information cop shops and prosecutors won’t share freely.

Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. Warrants and affidavits are part of the court record in criminal proceedings. Warrants and their accompanying paperwork are often sealed by court orders, preventing the public from seeing them until the government (judge, law enforcement agency, etc.) feels comfortable sharing them.

In Mississippi, however, the status quo is even worse than the hit-and-miss warrant access available elsewhere in the country. This ProPublica report shines a light on the seemingly concerted effort to keep warrant documents out of the public’s hands across the state. (via FourthAmendment.com)

The opening details the struggles of public defender Merrill Nordstrom, who was simply trying to challenge the warrant (which happened to be no-knock) that had led to her client’s arrest. Police had violently entered her client’s home searching for drugs — an assault predicated by the alleged sale of less than a gram of marijuana to an informant. No drugs were found but cops came across a gun her client wasn’t allowed to own. 

Hoping to find warrants showing a pattern of violent no-knock raids predicated on alleged criminal acts that seemingly would not require this show of force, she went to the Greenville courthouse to read through other warrants. That’s when she discovered the court did not keep these records. Perversely, the local justice system was lending itself to injustice.

Though she had the search warrant for Bryant’s home, she couldn’t find records for most other raids in the city. The search warrants and supporting documents weren’t at the courthouse, even though the state Supreme Court’s rules require law enforcement to return warrants to the court.

Instead they were at the Greenville Police Department, hidden from view because law enforcement agencies, unlike the courts, can claim a broad public records exemption over records in their possession.

Wow. It’s as if no one in the Greenville courthouse is aware files can be copied, either physically or digitally. The police have no right to stash away the sole copies of search warrants in their own files, especially when it appears the sole purpose is to invert the presumption of openness that guides court proceedings.

It’s a statewide problem.

An investigation by the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal and ProPublica has found that almost two-thirds of Mississippi’s county-level justice courts prevent access to some or all search warrants and related documents. So do municipal courts in at least five of the state’s 10 largest cities, including Jackson, the capital.

The court-enabled opacity takes multiple forms. Some courts violate state law by not requiring law enforcement to turn in search warrants and other documents once the warrants have been served. In some cases, courts don’t even bother having cops do the dirty work. They simply refuse to give the public access to these documents.

It’s this opacity that encourages abuse of no-knock warrants. The public defender discussed above discovered a majority of warrants issued in Greenville were no-knock. And most were likely approved by Municipal Judge Michael Prewitt, the only circuit judge in the area for the last two decades. Judge Prewitt admitted as much when questioned by the defender, stating that he’d issue a no-knock warrant to “search for a sweater.” His excuse? There’s a lot of drug crime in Greenville.

This information came from the judge himself. The court claimed it had no records of any searches authorized by Judge Prewitt, despite his two decades of service. And it didn’t. The only person with access to the documents was the person who rubber-stamped them to send cops searching for sweaters.

Prewitt said in an email to the Daily Journal and ProPublica that he personally keeps copies of all search warrants that are returned to him.

The courts in Mississippi are serving law enforcement, rather than the public. Multiple court clerks were questioned by ProPublica. Far too many admitted they weren’t in the business of assuring public records were accessible by the public.

“We don’t keep those,” said Lamar County Justice Court Clerk Sandra Owen.

“Usually the return goes back to the sheriff’s offices,” said Jones County Justice Court Clerk Stacy Walls.

“I hardly ever see search warrants — before, during or after,” said Marion County Justice Court Clerk Wynette Parkman.

Once again, government employees are conveniently pretending it’s impossible to make a copy of a court document before giving it back to a law enforcement agency. In other cases, they’re simply pretending the rule ordering law enforcement to provide these documents to the court following a search doesn’t apply to them or the cops.

There is some justifiable ignorance tucked into all the law enforcement subservience. In many cases, clerks aren’t made aware that warrants have been signed by judges. As such, there’s no way they would know documents cops are mandated to return to the court have not been returned. 

But there’s also a lot of seemingly willful ignorance. Clerks seem to be aware of law enforcement’s obligations. However, they claim that, despite the clear wording, they’ve never been explicitly told these documents must remain in the hands of the court when (or, more likely, if) they’re returned by law enforcement officers. 

The entire report is an infuriating read. The general tone that comes across is that both involved government parties — law enforcement and courts — believe the general public has no right to access these documents, despite them clearly being part of the public record, in terms of court proceedings. [MORE]