| POLICE — Search warrant — Validity — Conditions of application for warrant — Requirements for execution of warrant — Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, ss 8(1)(e), 8(3), 16(5)
Redknapp v Commissioner of the City of London Police and another [2008] EWHC 1177 (Admin); [2008] WLR (D) 179
DC: Latham LJ and Underhill J: 23 May 2008
A warrant authorising the entry and search of premises issued under s 8 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 was unlawful if the application did not identify which of the four conditions specified in s 8(3) of the Act was being relied on. Further, the execution of such a warrant was invalidated by a failure to satisfy the requirements of s 16(5) of the Act, which provided that when premises were occupied, the officer executing the warrant must not only produce the warrant to the person in occupation, but also supply him or her with a copy of it.
The Divisional Court of the Queen’s Bench Division so held when granting the claim of the claimants, Harry James Redknapp and Sandra Redknapp, for judicial review of the issue and execution of a warrant to enter and search their home, issued by a justice of the peace at the City of London Magistrates’ Court on 19 November 2007, and quashing the warrant as being unlawful.
The City of London Police had applied for the warrant in connection with their inquiries into suspected offences related to the transfer of professional football players at the club of which the first claimant was manager, and elsewhere. The warrant was executed at 6 am on 29 November 2007 to coincide with the execution of warrants at other addresses and the arrest of a number of persons. The police intended to arrest the first claimant at the same time as making the search but he was abroad and only the second claimant, his wife, was present.
LATHAM LJ said that the obtaining of a search warrant was never to be treated as a formality since it authorised the invasion of a person’s home, and that all the material necessary to justify the grant of a warrant should be contained in the information provided on the relevant application form. The pro forma document identified the four conditions in s 8(3) of the 1984 Act and directed the applicant to delete any not applicable. In this case, none of the four alternatives had been deleted. If the magistrate, or judge in the case of an application under s 9 of the Act, required any further information in order to satisfy himself that the warrant was justified, a note should be made of the additional evidence so that there was a proper record of the full basis upon which the warrant had been granted. In this case, there was nothing in the accompanying statement written by a police officer to make good the defect in the completion of the form or to provide the court with sufficient grounds to infer that there was material before the magistrate which could have justified him in concluding that at least one of the conditions was met. The warrant was unlawfully issued and, accordingly, should be quashed. There was also substance in one of the claimants’ complaints in relation to the entry and search of the premises, which was that the copy of the warrant provided to the second claimant failed to specify the address of her home and she was not shown the schedule to the warrant, where her address appeared. The second claimant was entitled to be shown the warrant, and to a copy of the warrant, which should have included the schedule. If there was a need to ensure that the addresses of other premises were obscured, then suitable arrangements should have been made. The requirements of s 16(5) of the 1984 Act had not been satisfied and, accordingly, the execution of the warrant had not been valid.
UNDERHILL J, concurring, said that he wished to add that, in the light of the authorities put before the court in the present case, his obiter remark in R (C) v Chief Constable of A Police [2006] EWHC 2352 (Admin) at [17], to the effect that even in a case where a justice was misled, in bad faith, by the officer seeking the warrant, the warrant would not be invalidated, was wrong. The authorities clearly established that a failure by the police to disclose material facts known to them might invalidate the warrant. |
