Federal search-warrant defense

The federal search-warrant framework — Rule 41, § 3103, and the Fourth Amendment

Federal search warrants flow from the Fourth Amendment, codified procedurally in Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41 and substantively in 18 U.S.C. §§ 3103-3105. Suppression under Fed. R. Crim. P. 12(b)(3)(C) is the principal defense remedy when a warrant fails the constitutional or procedural test.

Probable cause — Fourth Amendment + Illinois v. Gates

The Fourth Amendment requires that no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation. Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213 (1983), establishes the totality-of-the-circumstances test — the magistrate must determine, based on a practical, common-sense review of all information in the affidavit, whether there is a fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime will be found in a particular place. Gates rejected the prior Aguilar-Spinelli two-prong rigid framework for evaluating informant tips but did not eliminate veracity, reliability, and basis-of-knowledge as relevant factors. The reviewing court gives substantial deference to the issuing magistrate's probable cause determination but does not abdicate independent review.

Particularity — Maryland v. Garrison + Groh v. Ramirez

The warrant must "particularly describe the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." Maryland v. Garrison, 480 U.S. 79 (1987), governs ambiguous-premises cases — a third-floor apartment described in the warrant as a single unit, when in fact two units existed on that floor, was evaluated for objective reasonableness in light of information available to officers. Groh v. Ramirez, 540 U.S. 551 (2004), held that a warrant's particularity defect cannot be cured by reference to a supporting affidavit unless the affidavit is incorporated by reference in the warrant and attached. A facially deficient warrant — one that fails to describe the place or things with particularity — does not authorize a constitutional search.

Neutral magistrate — Coolidge v. New Hampshire

Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443 (1971), and Shadwick v. City of Tampa, 407 U.S. 345 (1972), establish that the warrant-issuing officer must be a neutral and detached magistrate — not the prosecutor, the lead investigator, or someone whose role compromises independent judgment. Federal magistrate judges, designated by district courts under 28 U.S.C. § 636, serve this role in federal practice. A magistrate who functions as a rubber stamp — failing to read affidavits, applying no independent judgment, or having a personal interest in the investigation — has abandoned the neutral role, and warrants issued under those conditions lose the protection of the Leon good-faith exception.

Suppression remedy — Fed. R. Crim. P. 12(b)(3)(C)

Fed. R. Crim. P. 12(b)(3)(C) requires motions to suppress evidence to be raised before trial, on penalty of waiver absent good cause. The exclusionary rule, articulated in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961), and its progeny, bars the government's use at trial of evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The rule extends to fruits of the unlawful search under Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471 (1963) — derivative evidence, statements, and identifications obtained as a consequence of an illegal search may also be suppressed, subject to attenuation, independent-source, and inevitable-discovery doctrines that the government may invoke as exceptions.

Federal search-warrant law sits at the intersection of constitutional doctrine, statutory procedure, and rule-based practice. The Fourth Amendment supplies the constitutional floor — the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, and the requirement that warrants issue only upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41 implements that constitutional standard in federal practice — defining who may issue federal warrants, what showings the affiant must make, how warrants are executed, when daytime restrictions apply, and what return and inventory obligations follow execution. The statutory provisions at 18 U.S.C. §§ 3103-3105 codify Fourth Amendment requirements for federal officers.

Each of those layers gives the defense a different lever. A warrant that fails probable cause under Gates may be challenged on the four corners of the affidavit. A warrant that fails particularity under Garrison or Groh may be challenged on its face. A warrant whose affidavit contains false statements or material omissions may be challenged under Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154 (1978). A warrant that survives those facial attacks but flows from objectively unreasonable execution may be challenged on conduct grounds. A warrant whose violations meet the Leon test for non-application of good-faith may produce full suppression of seized evidence under the exclusionary rule. The framework gives a methodical defense lawyer multiple structurally independent attack paths.

Standing is a threshold issue. Only a defendant whose own Fourth Amendment rights were violated may seek suppression of evidence seized pursuant to an invalid warrant. Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128 (1978), abandoned the older "legitimately on the premises" standing rule and replaced it with a reasonable-expectation-of-privacy inquiry under Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967). A defendant with no expectation of privacy in the place searched or the property seized — for example, a passenger in a vehicle owned by another, or a guest in a third party's home who has no possessory interest in the premises — typically lacks standing. The defense must establish standing as part of the suppression-motion record, which often requires a Fourth Amendment hearing and may require the defendant's own testimony under Simmons v. United States, 390 U.S. 377 (1968).

Affidavit particularity under Maryland v. Garrison

A federal warrant must particularly describe the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. Garrison evaluates ambiguous-premises errors for objective reasonableness; Groh v. Ramirez bars curing facial defects by reference to an unattached affidavit.

The particularity requirement is the structural heart of the Fourth Amendment warrant. A warrant that lists no places or items with specificity — a "general warrant" — invites the exploratory search that the Framers wrote the Fourth Amendment to prohibit. Maryland v. Garrison, 480 U.S. 79 (1987), evaluated a Baltimore officer's mistake describing a third-floor apartment as the location to be searched when the third floor in fact contained two separate apartments. The Court held that the warrant was valid as issued because the officers reasonably believed there was only one third-floor unit, but that the execution should have stopped once the officers discovered the multi-unit reality. Garrison is therefore both a particularity decision and an execution-reasonableness decision — the Court treats the mistake-of-fact tolerantly at the issuance stage but expects officers to recognize and correct factual errors during execution.

Multi-unit residential buildings, commercial properties with multiple tenants, and electronically networked premises (apartment complexes with shared digital systems, for example) produce recurring particularity disputes in modern federal practice. The defense develops the suppression record by gathering pre-warrant photographs of the premises, building permits and property records, prior law-enforcement contacts at the address, and any evidence that officers should have known about the multi-unit configuration before applying for the warrant. Where the record shows that officers had information establishing the multi-unit nature of the building and failed to communicate that to the magistrate, the warrant's validity collapses regardless of the affidavit's probable cause.

Groh v. Ramirez, 540 U.S. 551 (2004), addresses a different and more catastrophic particularity error. A warrant that fails on its face to describe the things to be seized — listing instead "see attached affidavit" without actually attaching the affidavit to the warrant or incorporating it by reference — is facially deficient. The Supreme Court held that no reasonable officer could rely on such a warrant; suppression follows and the Leon good-faith exception does not save the search. The defense routinely audits the four corners of the warrant document itself — not the application, not the affidavit, the warrant — to verify whether the things-to-be-seized clause contains genuine specificity or relies impermissibly on cross-references to materials not actually attached.

Particularity in the digital-evidence context is a contested frontier. A warrant authorizing the seizure of "all electronic devices" or "all computers and digital storage media" from a residence is broad enough to invite a particularity challenge if the affidavit does not connect those devices to a specific subject matter or temporal window. Courts increasingly require warrants for digital evidence to specify the categories of files to be searched, the time periods covered, and the substantive crimes under investigation — recognizing that a modern smartphone or laptop contains the digital equivalent of an entire household's papers and effects. The defense argues for the more restrictive particularity standard; the government argues for breadth. The case law is in flux and varies by circuit, with the Ninth, Fourth, and First Circuits taking divergent positions on the proper scope of digital warrants.

The Franks false-statement challenge

A defendant who makes a substantial preliminary showing that a search-warrant affidavit contains false statements made knowingly or with reckless disregard for the truth is entitled to a Franks hearing. If the falsehoods are necessary to probable cause, the warrant fails and the evidence is suppressed.

Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154 (1978), supplies the framework for challenging the truthfulness of statements in a search-warrant affidavit. The Court held that a defendant is entitled to an evidentiary hearing — now called a Franks hearing — if he makes a substantial preliminary showing that (1) the affiant included a false statement in the affidavit, (2) the false statement was made knowingly and intentionally or with reckless disregard for the truth, and (3) the false statement was necessary to the finding of probable cause. At the hearing, if the defendant proves those elements by a preponderance, the court sets the false material aside, examines the affidavit's remaining content, and asks whether the residual content establishes probable cause. If not, the warrant fails and the evidence is suppressed.

The Franks doctrine extends to material omissions, although the analytical framework varies by circuit. The Fifth Circuit's leading articulation is United States v. Mueller, 902 F.2d 336 (5th Cir. 1990), which holds that an omission may support a Franks challenge if (1) the omitted information was material to probable cause, (2) the omission was made knowingly and intentionally or with reckless disregard, and (3) adding the omitted information to the affidavit would defeat probable cause. The defense develops the omission case by identifying information the affiant clearly knew (interview notes, prior reports, dispatch records, criminal-history records) that was not included in the affidavit and that would have undermined the probable-cause showing.

The "substantial preliminary showing" threshold is significant. A defendant cannot simply allege that the affidavit contains falsehoods or omissions; he must point to specific evidence — preferably documentary or independently corroborated — supporting the falsity claim and the affiant's state of mind. Conclusory allegations are insufficient. The defense builds the Franks record through Brady/Giglio discovery, interviews with witnesses who interacted with the affiant before the warrant was sworn, examination of contemporaneous police reports, and review of the affiant's training and prior testimony. Where the record supports the substantial preliminary showing, the district court grants the hearing; where the record falls short, the motion is denied without a hearing.

Successful Franks challenges in federal practice are uncommon but not rare. The doctrine produces dispositive outcomes most often in narcotics cases involving confidential informants — where the affiant's representation of the informant's reliability, history, or veracity is contradicted by documentary evidence — and in white-collar investigations where the affiant's synthesis of complex financial records is shown to mischaracterize or omit critical exculpatory information. The defense documents the entire sequence of the affidavit's preparation, the affiant's training and experience, the source materials the affiant relied upon, and the discrepancies between those source materials and the sworn statements in the affidavit. Where the discrepancies are substantial and the affiant's explanations are unconvincing, suppression follows.

The Leon good-faith exception and its limits

United States v. Leon (1984) holds that evidence seized in objectively reasonable reliance on a warrant later found invalid is not suppressed. The exception has four named limits — affiant misconduct, magistrate abandonment, bare-bones affidavit, and facially deficient warrant — each of which is a defense lever.

United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897 (1984), and its companion Massachusetts v. Sheppard, 468 U.S. 981 (1984), established that the exclusionary rule does not apply to evidence seized in objectively reasonable reliance on a search warrant subsequently found invalid. The doctrinal rationale is that the exclusionary rule's deterrent purpose is not served by suppressing evidence where the officer behaved reasonably; the cost of suppression — letting guilty defendants escape — outweighs the benefit when the officer did not personally engage in misconduct. The Leon framework reorients federal suppression practice around a two-step inquiry: first, was the warrant valid? Second, if not, did the officer's reliance on the warrant fall within or outside the good-faith exception?

Four circumstances negate good-faith reliance and permit suppression even of evidence seized under a facially regular warrant. First, the affiant misled the magistrate with information he knew was false or would have known was false but for reckless disregard — overlapping with the Franks doctrine. Second, the magistrate wholly abandoned the neutral-and-detached role required by Coolidge and Shadwick — typically demonstrated by evidence that the magistrate functioned as a rubber stamp, failed to read the affidavit, or had a personal interest in the investigation. Third, the warrant is based on an affidavit so lacking in indicia of probable cause that official reliance was entirely unreasonable — the "bare-bones affidavit" exception. Fourth, the warrant is so facially deficient — failing to particularize the place to be searched or the things to be seized — that the executing officer could not reasonably presume it valid; this is the Groh v. Ramirez overlap.

The bare-bones affidavit exception is the most fact-intensive of the four. United States v. Carpenter, 360 F.3d 591 (6th Cir. 2004) (en banc), and Fifth Circuit equivalents articulate the standard: an affidavit is bare-bones when it contains conclusory statements without underlying facts, recites suspicions without specific corroboration, or relies on confidential-informant information whose reliability is not established within the affidavit itself. A defense lawyer moving to suppress on bare-bones grounds parses the affidavit paragraph-by-paragraph, identifying the facts it actually asserts (as opposed to the conclusions it states), the corroboration it provides for informant claims, and the connection it draws between the alleged criminal activity and the specific place to be searched.

The Leon framework changed federal suppression litigation. Pre-Leon, a finding of probable-cause failure produced suppression as a matter of course. Post-Leon, the defense has to win twice: first on the probable-cause merits, then on the good-faith inquiry. The architecture also benefits the defense in two ways. First, the four Leon limits are themselves substantive defense theories — the bare-bones affidavit exception and the facial-deficiency exception, in particular, provide independent suppression pathways. Second, the existence of the good-faith framework makes the Franks doctrine more important because Franks violations (knowingly or recklessly false affidavit statements) automatically defeat good-faith protection. A well-resourced suppression motion in federal practice typically argues all available theories together — probable-cause failure, particularity failure, Franks falsity, and good-faith inapplicability — rather than relying on any one theory in isolation.

Defense strategies in federal search-warrant litigation

Federal search-warrant defense layers seven analytical attacks — particularity, Franks, Leon good-faith rebuttal, staleness, insufficient PC under Gates, scope overreach during execution, and digital-evidence suppression under Riley/Carpenter.

A federal suppression motion at its strongest develops every available theory in parallel rather than choosing among them. The particularity attack works on the four corners of the warrant; the Franks attack works on the four corners of the affidavit; the Gates probable-cause attack works on the totality of the circumstances within the affidavit; the Leon attack works on the objective reasonableness of officer reliance; the staleness attack works on the temporal gap between observation and warrant; the scope-overreach attack works on the execution; and the digital-evidence attack adds the Riley/Carpenter overlay where applicable. Each theory has its own evidentiary burden, its own legal standard, and its own potential remedy — and they can layer in ways that strengthen the overall suppression posture.

Staleness deserves particular attention in federal practice. Probable cause must be supported by information that is not stale — by the time the warrant issues, the basis for believing evidence will be found at the place to be searched must still be reasonably current. United States v. Gilbert, 942 F.2d 1537 (11th Cir. 1991), and circuit equivalents address the standards. Drugs and stolen goods that move quickly produce shorter staleness windows; documents, financial records, and digital evidence that tend to persist produce longer windows. Long investigations that culminate in warrants months or years after the initial information was developed face heightened staleness scrutiny — the defense develops the record on what the affiant knew when, what the gap was, and whether the gap exceeded the type of evidence's normal lifespan at the location.

Scope overreach during execution is a distinct attack. Even a valid warrant — properly issued on probable cause with particularity — does not authorize the seizure of items outside its scope. Officers who exceed the warrant's authorized scope by, for example, opening a container too small to hold the items listed or seizing items not described in the warrant, may have committed an independent Fourth Amendment violation. United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798 (1982), addresses the principle that warrant scope is dictated by the place where things to be seized might reasonably be found. The plain-view doctrine under Horton v. California, 496 U.S. 128 (1990), permits seizure of evidence not listed in the warrant if the officer is lawfully positioned, the incriminating character is immediately apparent, and the officer has a lawful right of access. The defense scrutinizes execution to identify scope-overreach seizures that fall outside the warrant and outside the plain-view safety valve.

Pre-execution challenges — challenges before the warrant is executed — are exceptionally rare in federal practice. The standard remedy is post-execution suppression. But pre-execution challenges may be available in limited circumstances — for example, where the warrant authorizes searches of attorney-client materials and the privilege holder has notice and opportunity to challenge the seizure framework before any privileged material is reviewed. Filter-team and taint-team protocols are negotiated mechanisms designed to manage the seizure of arguably privileged materials; the defense participates in the design of those protocols where pre-execution intervention is possible and challenges any failure of the protocol to protect the privilege after the fact.

Digital warrants — Riley, Carpenter, and the cell-phone era

Riley v. California (2014) requires a warrant to search a cell phone seized incident to arrest. Carpenter v. United States (2018) requires a warrant for historical cell-site location data. Both decisions reshape federal warrant practice for digital evidence.

Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373 (2014), held unanimously that the search-incident-to-arrest exception does not apply to cell phones. Officers who lawfully arrest a defendant may not, without a warrant, search the contents of the defendant's cell phone — including text messages, call history, photos, contact lists, internet history, application data, or any other category of stored information. The Court reasoned that modern cell phones are different in kind from the wallets, pockets, and physical possessions that historically supported the search-incident-to-arrest doctrine; the breadth and depth of personal information stored on a cell phone gives the search a fundamentally different character. Riley does not bar cell-phone searches; it requires that they proceed on a warrant supported by probable cause.

The defense applies Riley aggressively in federal cases involving cell-phone evidence. Where officers searched a cell phone seized during arrest without obtaining a warrant — for example, scrolling through photos at the scene to identify additional suspects or evidence — the search violates Riley and the evidence is suppressed. Where officers obtained a warrant but the warrant's particularity is suspect (authorizing search of "all content" rather than specific categories tied to the investigation), the defense argues for the more restrictive standard. Where the warrant authorized a forensic extraction broader than the investigation required, the defense argues that the actual scope of the extraction violated the warrant's authorized scope.

Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296 (2018), addresses a related but distinct question — historical cell-site location data (CSLI) held by wireless carriers. The Court held 5-4 that the government must obtain a warrant supported by probable cause before acquiring at least seven days of historical CSLI from a wireless carrier. The decision rejected the application of the third-party doctrine (from Miller and Smith) to CSLI because of the comprehensive, retroactive, and inescapable nature of cell-phone location tracking. Carpenter is contested in lower courts on important questions — does the rule apply to less than seven days of CSLI, to real-time CSLI, to tower dumps, to bank records that incidentally include location data, to other categories of digital trace? The Fifth Circuit has addressed several of these questions in United States v. Beverly, 943 F.3d 225 (5th Cir. 2019), and successor cases.

Stored Communications Act warrants under 18 U.S.C. § 2703 layer atop both Riley and Carpenter for stored email content, social-media communications, and cloud-storage data. United States v. Warshak, 631 F.3d 266 (6th Cir. 2010), held that the Fourth Amendment requires a warrant for the content of stored email regardless of the SCA's statutory text, which permits some categories of stored content to be obtained on less than a warrant. Federal magistrate judges in the Northern and Eastern Districts of Texas routinely issue warrants under § 2703(a) for stored email, cloud-stored documents, and social-media private messages. The defense audits these warrants for the same constitutional defects that would defeat any other federal search warrant — probable cause, particularity, staleness, Franks falsity — with the additional overlay of Riley/Carpenter/Warshak digital-privacy doctrine.

Wiretap warrants under 18 U.S.C. §§ 2510-2522 stand apart from ordinary search warrants. Wiretaps are governed by the so-called "super warrant" standard — a heightened showing that includes necessity (other investigative techniques have been tried and failed, or reasonably appear unlikely to succeed, or would be too dangerous), minimization (the interception must be conducted to minimize the interception of communications not subject to the order), particular descriptions of the offenses and facilities, and a 30-day duration limit absent extension. Wiretap suppression is a specialized practice requiring detailed analysis of the wiretap affidavit, the minimization compliance, the necessity showing, and the chain of authorization within the Department of Justice.

Local DFW practice — Northern and Eastern Districts of Texas

Federal search-warrant practice in the Northern and Eastern Districts of Texas runs through magistrate judges in Dallas (Sherman, Plano), Fort Worth, Tyler, Sherman, Texarkana, and Lufkin divisions. Suppression motions follow the standard federal framework with circuit-specific Fifth Circuit gloss.

The Northern District of Texas covers most of North Texas including Dallas, Tarrant, Collin, and Denton counties — the four counties served by our DFW practice. Federal search warrants in the Northern District are typically issued by magistrate judges in the Dallas, Fort Worth, Plano, and Sherman divisions. Suppression motions filed in the Northern District follow Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 12(b)(3)(C) timing and are heard in the same district court that will try the case. The Eastern District of Texas covers a band of counties to the east — Sherman, Marshall, Texarkana, Tyler, and Lufkin divisions are the main population centers — and federal search warrants in the Eastern District follow analogous procedures with the local rule overlay.

Fifth Circuit precedent shapes federal search-warrant practice in both districts. The Fifth Circuit's leading Franks decision is United States v. Mueller, 902 F.2d 336 (5th Cir. 1990); its Carpenter implementation comes through United States v. Beverly, 943 F.3d 225 (5th Cir. 2019); its Leon good-faith doctrine has been refined through dozens of post-Leon decisions over four decades. Federal defenders in the Fifth Circuit have to know the Fifth Circuit's specific Leon, Franks, and Gates gloss — not just the Supreme Court framework — because the Fifth Circuit applies the doctrine with its own emphases on bare-bones affidavit analysis, staleness windows, and particularity in digital-warrant context. The defense lawyer working through a Fifth Circuit suppression motion researches the latest Fifth Circuit decisions on every issue raised, not just the Supreme Court precedent.

Practical practice considerations matter. Federal magistrate judges in Dallas issue search warrants daily — the volume produces some pattern of practice that the defense bar can use diagnostically. Some magistrates apply more rigorous probable-cause review than others; some pay closer attention to particularity; some are more willing to grant Franks hearings. The defense lawyer who has practiced for years in the Northern District knows which magistrates issued the warrant in question and what that magistrate's pattern of review tends to be. Suppression-motion strategy can be calibrated accordingly — emphasizing the issues that the assigned trial judge has historically taken seriously, downplaying issues the judge has rejected as outside the suppression framework.

L and L Law Group represents defendants in both the Northern and Eastern Districts of Texas. We work in Frisco (Collin County), throughout the DFW Metroplex, and across the federal court system in Texas. Our federal search-warrant defense pairs a four-counties primary footprint (Collin, Dallas, Denton, Tarrant) with federal court appearances in Dallas, Plano, Sherman, Fort Worth, Tyler, and Lufkin. Where the case requires it, we coordinate with Texas state-court practice — federal investigations frequently produce parallel state prosecutions, and the suppression issues in the federal case may interact with state-court search-warrant practice on adjacent or overlapping facts.

When to retain counsel

Federal search-warrant defense begins before suppression motions — the response to execution shapes the suppression record. Retain experienced federal criminal-defense counsel the moment a federal search is executed at your home, business, or vehicle, or stored content is seized from a third-party provider.

A federal search executed at a private residence, business, or vehicle is the most consequential moment in many federal criminal cases. The defendant's response in the next few hours shapes the suppression record for the rest of the litigation. Cooperative statements made at the scene, consent grants that exceed the warrant's authorization, identifications of property by the homeowner, and admissions about ownership or possession of items the officers ask about — all of these are recorded and later become evidence. The single most important post-execution instruction is to assert the right to remain silent and to demand a lawyer; the second is to not give consent to any search beyond what the warrant explicitly authorizes; the third is to make detailed contemporaneous notes about every officer present, every place searched, every item taken, and every statement made.

Federal target letters, subpoena recipients, and witnesses interviewed by federal agents in connection with searches conducted at their residences or businesses face an analytical layer that does not apply to ordinary criminal defendants. A target letter from a U.S. Attorney's Office signals that the recipient is the subject of a federal grand jury investigation. The arrival of federal agents at a residence or office with a search warrant in hand strongly suggests that an investigation has progressed past the early stages. The window between search execution and grand jury indictment is the time when defense counsel can most effectively shape the outcome — by participating in proffer negotiations, by preparing the client for any agent interview, by identifying and asserting privilege issues over seized materials, and by laying the groundwork for the suppression motions that will be filed after indictment.

Defense counsel's involvement in a federal search-warrant case typically proceeds through three phases. First, immediate-response phase: protect the client's rights during and immediately after execution, identify and assert privilege over any attorney-client material seized, demand inventory and return procedures, and document the entire execution event with witness statements and contemporaneous notes. Second, pre-indictment phase: engage with the U.S. Attorney's Office and the investigating agency about the scope of the investigation, the role of the client (target, subject, or witness), and any possible pre-indictment resolution. Third, post-indictment phase: file suppression motions under Fed. R. Crim. P. 12(b)(3)(C) attacking every available constitutional defect in the warrant and the execution, develop the Franks record where applicable, prepare for suppression hearings, and integrate suppression strategy with the broader plea-or-trial framework.

L and L Law Group represents federal defendants in the Northern and Eastern Districts of Texas. Our practice covers search-warrant suppression motions, Franks hearings, wiretap and electronic-surveillance challenges, Carpenter and Riley digital-evidence litigation, particularity and scope-overreach challenges, and all related federal criminal-defense practice. If federal agents have executed a search warrant at your residence, business, or vehicle, or you have received a federal target letter, contact our office for a free consultation about your case.