Search And Seizure

Investigators searched several properties owned by a client of accused kidnapper Phillip Garrido on Wednesday, seizing a computer and other items, a Contra Costa County sheriff's spokesman said. Garrido, 58, and wife Nancy, 54, were arrested Aug. 26 and remain jailed in El Dorado County on kidnapping and rape charges in connection with the 1991 kidnapping of 11-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard, with whom Garrido allegedly had two daughters. Investigators searched three properties in Pittsburg, Bay Point and Pleasant Hill near the city of Antioch, Calif.

Did a sheriff's deputy violate the constitutional rights -- and derail the professional golf career -- of a Rancho Palos Verdes man when she raided his home in search of evidence to convict his parents of pimping and prostitution? A U.S. District Court jury thought so two years ago when it ordered Los Angeles County Sheriff's Sgt. Angela Walton to pay $80,000 in damages to Kim L. Johnson and $100 to his aunt, Sun Min Lee, who was subjected to what the court then deemed an unreasonable intrusion.

Local police were relieved of duty Tuesday in the border cities of Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros and Reynosa as army troops disarmed the officers and searched for evidence that might link them to drug traffickers. In Nuevo Laredo, soldiers surrounded police headquarters at 8 a.m. and ordered officers to remain inside. Federal troops conducted a similar operation in Tijuana last January, at the beginning of an offensive against Mexico's drug cartels and their allies in the police.

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to rule on whether police officers are free to search a parked vehicle whenever they arrest a driver or a passenger. Prosecutors, including Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, asked the high court to set "a clear, bright-line rule" that permits officers to search a vehicle whenever an arrest is made, even if the handcuffed person has been taken away.

Los Angeles police officers face significant restrictions on how they search and detain people under a settlement announced Thursday in a long-running case involving the rights of the homeless on skid row. The agreement comes 18 months after a federal judge found that the Los Angeles Police Department was unconstitutionally searching homeless people in the skid row area as part of Chief William J. Bratton's crackdown on downtown crime.

A signing statement attached to postal legislation by President Bush last month may have opened the way for the government to open mail without a warrant. The White House denies any change in policy. The law requires government agents to get warrants to open first-class letters.

A Texas teenager has a bullet in the middle of his forehead -- and some prosecutors would love to have a look at it. But the lawyer for the teen -- who could face life in prison if convicted of attempted capital murder for his alleged role in a burglary and shootout last year -- is refusing to allow surgeons to remove the potential evidence in the case, which is lodged 2 inches above his client's eyes.

Federal agents Wednesday raided 11 medical marijuana outlets in Los Angeles County, seizing several thousand pounds of processed drug, hundreds of marijuana plants, an array of guns and bagfuls of cash. The simultaneous raids, part of an ongoing investigation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, were the largest such operation in the county in recent memory. Five dispensaries in West Hollywood were raided with the other six in Venice, Hollywood, Sherman Oaks and Woodland Hills.

The American Civil Liberties Union asked a federal court Friday to unseal secret documents filed by the Bush administration in support of its warrantless domestic surveillance program. The administration announced last week that it was suspending the electronic surveillance program and says the ACLU case challenging its constitutionality should therefore be dismissed. It has filed some of its arguments under seal, preventing the ACLU from seeing them.

In a move that could deal a serious blow to Italy's prosecution of its former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, a federal judge in Los Angeles has ruled that authorities cannot use evidence recently seized from the home and office of a longtime Hollywood producer and co-defendant. The extraordinary action by U.S. District Judge Dean D. Pregerson was requested by attorneys for producer Frank Agrama and agreed to by the U.S.