4th Am: Seizures & Warrants — NextGen Bar practice question

Police obtain a valid warrant to search a suspect’s house for a stolen 60-inch flat-screen television. While searching, an officer opens a small jewelry box on the dresser, finds a plastic baggie of pills, and seizes it. The prosecution concedes the warrant described only the television. The defendant moves to suppress the pills, arguing the officer exceeded the warrant’s lawful scope by looking inside a container far too small to hold a television.

Should the pills be suppressed as beyond the scope of the warrant?

Option A. Incorrect answer. No, because a warrant to search a home permits officers to open every container inside it.
Option B. Incorrect answer. No, because the officer found the pills while lawfully executing a valid search warrant.
Option C. Correct answer. Yes, because a television could not fit inside the small jewelry box the officer opened.Correct
Option D. Incorrect answer. Yes, because pills are not contraband unless the officer first confirms they are actually illegal.

Why

A warrant licenses officers to look only where the described item could reasonably be. A 60-inch television cannot fit inside a small jewelry box, so opening that box exceeded the warrant’s scope, and evidence found only through that overreach is suppressed (C). A is wrong because the power to search containers is bounded by size and location — officers may open containers large enough to hold the target, not every container regardless of dimensions. B assumes the search was lawful, but executing a valid warrant in an unreasonable way — searching where the object cannot be — is itself unlawful. D misstates plain view: contraband seen from a lawful vantage may be seized when its incriminating nature is immediately apparent, but the officer had no lawful right to be inside the jewelry box at all, so nothing found there is saved.

Why