Confronting Potential Injustice with Preemptive Suppression

 Vermont state prosecutors have asked the Vermont Supreme Court to enda state trial judge’s practice of attaching ten restrictions  to all computer search warrants he signs.  According to Professor Paul Ohm of the University Colorado Law School, the Vermont trial judge is not alone. Professor Ohm sees a “trend emerging†among federal magistrate judges who are attempting to regulate how officers execute computer warrants. This article focuses on Vermont conditions 1-4. I argue that the Vermont Supreme Court should reject these conditions. They are gratuitously damaging to Vermont law enforcement and ultimately ineffective in limiting the intrusiveness of computer searches.  In sum, these conditions: (1)  Are based on an unwarranted judicial presumption that Vermont police officers who obtain warrants to search computers will deliberately choose to violate the Fourth Amendment when they execute these warrants; (2)  Require police officers[who seek a warrant to search computers to agree, as condition to obtaining the warrant, that they will ignore, and never use, any evidence of a crime that has been legally obtained  under the “plain view doctrine†during the execution of the warrant; and (3)  Require police officers who seek a warrant to search computers to agree, as a condition to obtaining the warrant, that they (as investigating officers) will not be involved in the execution of the warrant, thereby increasing the likelihood of delay, and lost evidence as well as the likelihood that the search will be broader than necessary.