Are Searches in Civil Cases Also Violating Rights?
by Adam S. Bauman At 6:30 on the morning of July 26, a contingent of off-duty U.S. marshals and officials from software maker Novell Inc. rang the doorbell at Joseph and Miki Casalino’s home outside Salt Lake City. Thinking her husband had forgotten something when he left for work, Miki padded to the door in her robe and was shocked to find a marshal flashing his badge. They were there, they told her, to search and seize any and all computer bulletin board (bbs) equipment that her then-18-year-old son, Joseph III, was operating under the name “Planet Gallifrey BBS.” Had this been a criminal case, and had the search been conducted with a traditional criminal search warrant, there would have been nothing especially unusual about it. But the Casalino family was not the subject of a criminal-case search. Instead, it was the target of a little-known but increasingly common civil court procedure known as “ex parte search and seizure with expedited discovery.” Authorized by Congress in 1984,
Related Questions
- Are records of conviction destroyed in cases where a pardon is granted with a restoration of civil and political rights?
- Why might trickery, innuendo or even falsehoods asserted by police during questioning not be Fifth Amendment violations?
- What are the civil and criminal penalties for violating the Security Standards?
