∞ D.A. withdraws search warrant for Gizmodo editor's house

Written by

San Mateo Superior Court Judge Clifford Cretan on Friday granted a motion by the San Mateo County D.A. to withdraw a search warrant issued for Gizmodo’s Jason Chen’s home.

Without the warrant, the police have no right to hold any of the information and equipment seized. The court said “[a]ll items seized [from Chen's home] shall be returned forthwith to Gizmodo.com and Jason Chen.”

While this may be a significant win for Gizmodo, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) points out that this may not be the end of the matter.

“As we pointed out, the police could (for example) attempt to subpoena the same material without running afoul of section 1524(g) and still proceed with their case,” wrote the EFF.


  • diesel

    Nice. He gets his stuff back. But what about the property damages? I did ‘hear’ he got a new front door compliments of a company close to the matter.

  • Chanson de Roland

    This is most certainly not a win for either Gizmodo or Mr. Chen.

    The D.A. withdrew the search warrant, afte Mr. Chen, through his attorney, agreed to let the D.A. catalog t and retain verifying copies or records of his property seized. After the D.A. has conducted a thorough search of Mr. Chen’s property it will be returned to his attorney. Since Mr. Chen is volunteering to let his property be searched, any incriminating evidence discovery during that search may be used again him in a court of law.

    See this quote from MacWorld:

    ““We did request and the court granted our request to withdraw the search warrant,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe told Macworld. “The reason we’ve done this is that we arrived at an agreement with Tom Nolan, the attorney for Mr. Chen, that if we would agree to withdraw the warrant, they would agree to voluntarily have all information from the computer—which is in the hands of the special master now—provided to the REACT [Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team] detectives so it could be viewed.

    The two-page document ordering the withdrawal, a copy of which was obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says that seized items will be returned to Chen through his attorney after the authorities verify the copies of the information that the Gizmodo editor is providing.”

    The D.A. and Mr. Chen agreed to allow the police to inspect, record, and catalog his property, which the D.A. can then seek through a subpoena. But since the D.A. will have a complete catalog, and, I think, copies or least faithful and accurate records of the property seized pursuant to the search warrant, Mr. Chen will not have the opportunity to engage in spoliation of the subpoenaed property, which will almost certainly be everything that the police initially seized pursuant to the warrant, for it is a trivial matter to draft a subpoena that comprehends the same property that was seized under the warrant. Mr. Chen will have to produce the subpoenaed property in complete and good order or risk being convicted for obstruction of justice.

    Once again, the D.A. will get everything that he wanted and will have eliminated the possibility of any First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, and/or statutory challenges to any incriminating evidence obtained from the property that he subpoenas.

  • Lucas

    The EFF is 100% wrong in their contentions. Because they are trying to claim this as a journalism issue (shield laws) when it is NOT. No law protects anyone from punishment for a Criminal Act. Period.

    The DA withdrew the warrant for a simply reason. They don’t need it. Between Chen’s online bragging about what he did (including his very clear bragging that he bought the phone and how the buyer got it), statements from Powell and the bar staff and the info from the buyer Hogan and his roommates (one of whom narc’d on him and that he was trying to destroy evidence), they probably feel they have enough to go on. It’s very possible that Hogan kept copies of all emails received and sent so they wouldn’t need Chen’s copies after all.

    So by self declaring that they won’t use anything that came from Chen’s computer and giving all the equipment back, they just cut off any catch that Chen would try to appeal using the whole ‘journalist’ game, thus they avoid having to deal with it which would still be time consuming and annoying.

  • http://www.degree.com degree

    He is very lucky that the DA stopped the search, he was not guilty and has had to go through so much hassle dealing with this case.