Warrants

A New Zealand judge has ruled that investigators obtained evidence unlawfully in a search of Megaupload.com founder Kim Dotcom's home, dealing a huge blow to the U.S. case against the online file-sharing company.  High Court Chief Justice Helen Winkelmann said in the ruling Thursday that warrants used by New Zealand authorities to conduct the search at the FBI's behest were too broadly defined and “did not adequately describe the offenses...

WASHINGTON - The FBI obtained a sealed search warrant to read a Fox News reporter's personal emails from two days in 2010 after arguing there was probable cause he had violated espionage laws by soliciting classified information from a government official, court papers show. In an affidavit, an FBI agent told a federal magistrate that the reporter had committed a crime when he asked a State Department security contractor, Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, to share secret material about North Korea in June 2009.

Early one morning in February 2012, thieves crept into the Siskiyou County Courthouse, made off with more than $1.25 million in gold and other items from the lobby's display case and disappeared. Now, more than a year later, police say they know who did it. In a news release this week, the Siskiyou County Sheriff's Department said it had issued felony arrest warrants for 49-year-old David Dean Johnson of El Cerrito and 51-year-old Scott Wayne Bailey of El Sobrante. The pair are the primary suspects in the heist, authorities said.

The federal government has the authority to detain and deport immigrants who violate the law. But it also has the responsibility to ensure that those it holds while they fight their deportation cases aren't locked up for months, or years, without an opportunity to appear before an immigration judge who can determine whether their prolonged detention is warranted. This week the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the Obama administration's obligation to provide such hearings to immigrants detained for more than six months, at least in Southern California.

Prosecutors lifted an arrest warrant for controversial tycoon Boris A. Berezovsky because he promised to return to Russia to face inquiries on money-laundering charges, the Interfax news agency reported in Moscow. Berezovsky said he plans to fight charges that he was behind the illegal transfer of $250 million from Russia's Aeroflot airline to the Swiss company Andava. The tycoon was in France on business when the warrant was issued for his arrest as a result of an investigation.

Prosecutors sought to arrest Hyundai Motor Co. Chairman Chung Mong-koo in a bribery and slush fund scandal engulfing South Korea's largest automaker. The company's shares fell 3% and it delayed its first-quarter earnings announcement. The request for an arrest warrant for the 68-year-old Chung is subject to court approval. The Seoul District Court said a hearing was scheduled for today.

The younger brother of Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards is wanted on a Colorado warrant issued a decade ago in a drunk driving case. Wesley Blake Edwards, 39, an electrician who lives in Fuquay-Varina, N.C., was arrested Nov. 4, 1993, for allegedly driving under the influence, careless driving and driving without insurance, said Drew Grant, spokesman for the 18th Judicial District attorney's office.

FBI and IRS agents executed nine federal search warrants Thursday that appeared to be related to an ongoing public corruption investigation of a Rancho Cucamonga development and its handling by the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors. Among the offices searched were those of Jeffrey Burum, a managing partner at Colonies Partners of Rancho Cucamonga, and of O'Reilly Public Relations in Riverside. One of the properties is associated with GOP operative and former state Sen. James L. Brulte.

An Italian judge issued arrest warrants for 140 Latin Americans suspected of involvement in a coordinated persecution of leftists and dissidents by Latin America's military rulers in the 1970s, Italian news agencies reported. Almost all of those on the list are living in Latin America and a number are already in custody there. One man, Nestor Jorge Fernandez Troccoli, a former member of the Uruguayan secret services, was arrested in southern Italy, the Ansa and Agi news agencies reported.

The FBI served search warrants at the Silicon Valley offices of Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc., seeking explicit videos and electronic records involving the Illinois man accused of illegally recording ESPN reporter Erin Andrews through hotel peepholes. Michael David Barrett, 48, of Westmont, Ill., who is accused of trying to sell nude videos of Andrews, pleaded not guilty last month in federal court in Los Angeles to a charge of interstate stalking. The warrants were served in Northern California on Wednesday.

WASHINGTON - Police officers usually must have a search warrant before requiring a suspected drunk driver to have his blood drawn, the Supreme Court said Wednesday. In an 8-1 decision, the justices rejected Missouri prosecutors' contention that police should have the freedom to act quickly and dispense with a warrant because alcohol dissipates in the blood. Instead, the court said it would hold fast to its view that the 4th Amendment's ban on "unreasonable searches" means the police usually need a warrant from a magistrate before invading a person's privacy.

Authorities have served multiple search warrants and seized computers and cellphones during their investigation into 15-year-old Audrie Pott 's alleged sexual assault and suicide, but are still trying to figure out exactly what happened, a sheriff's official said. Deputy Kurtis Stenderup, spokesman for the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department, told The Times on Monday that officials "really are hampered" because "getting kids to cooperate is difficult. " "Audrie committed suicide, and then we were told of a possible sexual assault that occurred," Stenderup said.

A governor's warrant has been signed to extradite the man suspected in a fatal shooting and subsequent crash on the Las Vegas Strip, officials said. Los Angeles County district attorney spokeswoman Jane Robison confirmed the governor's warrant had been received, clearing the way for Ammar Harris to be returned to Nevada authorities. Harris, 27, was arrested in a Studio City apartment complex a week after the Feb. 21 shooting. His public defender requested the governor's warrant when Harris refused to waive his extradition rights at a March hearing.

The increase in fugitive sex offenders in California since the state changed key prison policies is more than double that previously believed, according to data released Wednesday by corrections officials. The data show a 65% rise from October 2011 to Jan. 1 of this year in warrants issued for paroled sex offenders who were tracked by GPS units and went missing. Previous state reports showed about a 30% climb for that period. Almost 5,000 warrants were issued during that time, according to the new figures, far more than the 3,251 the department reported in March.

SACRAMENTO -- A San Francisco lawmaker wants to protect your emails from random scrutiny by law enforcement. State Sen. Mark Leno has introduced legislation to require courts to issue search warrants before companies such as Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Facebook turn them over. “No law enforcement agency could obtain someone's mail or letters that were delivered to their home without first securing a search warrant, but that same protection is surprisingly not extended to our digital life,” said the San Francisco Democrat.

Early one morning in February 2012, thieves crept into the Siskiyou County Courthouse, made off with more than $1.25 million in gold and other items from the lobby's display case and disappeared. Now, more than a year later, police say they know who did it. In a news release this week, the Siskiyou County Sheriff's Department said it had issued felony arrest warrants for 49-year-old David Dean Johnson of El Cerrito and 51-year-old Scott Wayne Bailey of El Sobrante. The pair are the primary suspects in the heist, authorities said.

The California Supreme Court was asked Monday to consider last month's state appellate court ruling upholding the validity of arrest warrants issued by court clerks against traffic offenders who fail to show up for hearings. The case is being appealed by Kurt Albert Stapf, a Laguna Niguel resident who had paid nearly $2,000 in fines for failing to appear five times in court and for motorcycle speeding tickets.

Police have issued an arrest warrant for a convicted sex offender who they say has sexually assaulted women in Santa Ana and nearby cities. Alvaro Flores, 27, has been identified by two Santa Ana women as the man who attacked them at a MacArthur Boulevard apartment complex, said Lt. Baltazar De La Riva. Flores is also suspected of similar assaults at the apartments and in nearby cities, De La Riva said.

NEW YORK - There were three samurai swords, with blades 13 inches, 21 inches and 28 inches long. There were hundreds of rounds of ammunition. There were targets, a bayonet, knives, pictures of a bloodied body wrapped in plastic, and guns. Lots of guns. And there were plans to buy more. Among the items discovered by police after Adam Lanza shot dead 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., was a holiday card from his mother, Nancy, with a check inside for her son to buy another gun, according to search warrants made public Thursday.

Adam Lanza, the gunman who attacked a Connecticut elementary school, killing 20 children and six adults, had an arsenal of guns, more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition and even samurai swords, knives and a bayonet, according to search warrants released on Thursday. The warrants outlined what police found in Lanza's home and car during official searches of the Newton, Conn., home Lanza shared with his mother, who he killed before the Dec. 14 attack on Sandy Hook Elementary School.