Plumber in an apartment sees guns, calls cops, cops raid. Ooops… guns are legal in Texas! Who knew!  Of course, the guns were legal, the child pornography wasn’t.
I’m guessing the police considered the grenades their probable cause to get the warrant. Certainly they will argue that when Mr. Kiddy Porn’s attorney argues that the search was unlawful, and the evidence should be suppressed.
I always lock up my guns (except for the one on my hip) and close doors to rooms any maintenance person doesn’t need to be in. I also make sure I am there while they are working and watch them like a hawk the entire time. If they get annoyed by,tough.
As for this guy, gotta love karma.
i gotta wonder, did the warrant cover searching for “other illegal items” cus unless the stuff was just laying out in the open, im not sure that it will be admissable… of course, the cops should have just shot the bastard and spared the tax payers the need to pay for the trial…
ahh well it was an apartment… which if the tenant didn’t own the property… the building owner has the right to allow a search without a warrant…
Chris: You sure about that?
A landlord can’t consent for you, to have your premises searched, even if he owns them (any more than your mortgage holder can give police consent to search your home, despite technically owning it until you’re done paying down the mortgage).
The whole edifice of fourth amendment privacy claims depends on reasonable expectations of privacy, and one’s apartment is, for legal purposes, one’s home. Nobody but a resident can give consent (in general terms).
(See US vs. Impink, the Appeals court holding that a landlord with less access rights than the leaseholder can’t give consent to a search – and that means almost all landlords, since they don’t have the right to just roam through your rooms at will in any normal lease.
Also here; “a landlord is not considered to be in possession of an apartment leased to a tenant, and therefore lacks authority to consent to a search of leased premises”.
All a landlord can give blanket permission to search is “public” (that is, not leased to a specific person) areas of the building. Though if he sees something illegal in the course of normal, permissible presence in your apartment, he can notify the police, and that might be upheld as probable cause for a search or basis for a warrant.)