Sears

I. Background

On January 4, 2001, San Francisco Police Department (“SFPD”) Officer Jon Kasper sought and received a warrant to search Sears’s person, vehicles, residences, and related storage spaces for evidence of cocaine trafficking. The war- rant referred to an attachment, Exhibit A, specifying the items the officers were authorized to seize.

In the version of the warrant approved by San Francisco Superior Court Judge Leonard Louie, Exhibit A follows Offi- cer Kasper’s statement of probable cause and begins at the bottom of page 6 of the search warrant and affidavit. Officer Kasper testified that he created Exhibit A by clicking on a file named “cocaine exhibit” and merging it with the file contain- ing the rest of the search warrant. Officer Kasper further testi- fied that, unbeknownst to him at the time he prepared the warrant for Judge Louie’s approval, the police department computer contained multiple versions of Exhibit A. Judge Louie approved the warrant containing the December 1998 version of Exhibit A.

In the course of litigating Sears’s March 6, 2002 motion to suppress cocaine seized in the subsequent search,1 it was dis- 1 Sears had filed an earlier motion to…