happy friday i get asked all the time for an update on the creepy cop search case at putnam county west virginia where plainclothed police officers from the sheriff's department's special enforcement unit were caught on hidden camera literally breaking into my client's home sneaking in through the window searching the inside of his house for non-existent drugs to see footage of police officers secretly inside someone's home where there's no criminal investigation much less criminal charges it's just scary especially where there's no legal justification for them to be there so this was actually my first youtube video uploaded january 15 2020 and the footage shows drug task force officers searching dustin elswick's house including examining the ashes of his deceased friend brilliantly believing them to be drugs they also ran those ashes through field drug test kits disabled an exterior surveillance camera pulled dustin's guns out of storage for photographs and generally ransacked and searched the place take a look at the footage until i uploaded the video two and a half years ago they had no idea that they had been caught on video i first provided the video to federal prosecutors who in turn provided it to the fbi to investigate i didn't know this at the time but the fbi agent tasked with the investigation didn't investigate but rather just tipped off the officers that i had a video showing them in dustin's house i only found this out much later after the lawsuit was filed and discovery was exchanged federal lawsuit was filed in this case on august 20 2021 against the individual officers as well as against the county for the pattern and practice claim the federal court did deny the county's motion to dismiss that claim issuing a memorandum opinion explaining the basis of liability against the county here so right now this case is set for jury trial federal court in huntington west virginia on february 22nd 2023 there were also two companion cases filed on behalf of other plaintiffs the johnson family as well as the mason as mason dillon those are currently pending also and set for trial however this is the only case out of those three that was actually caught on video the dillon case is set for trial on january 18th 2023 the johnson case is set for trial on january 31st 2023 as of right now these cases have not been consolidated with the elsewhere case they are proceeding separately so discovery has been exchanged in this case so we know a lot more now however depositions have not yet occurred having been delayed several times due to the defendant's concerns over a renewed fbi investigation following the the disclosure that the initial fbi investigation really was more of a locker room pat on the butt than an investigation i suspect that the current investigation could actually be an investigation of the first investigation but i really have no idea as as of uh right now what i do know is that finally we're set to take the depositions under oath of these police officers at the end of this month it will be interesting to find out whether or not they will plead the fifth amendment i honestly hope that they don't either way i already have their statements from the still confidential internal investigation that occurred after the video was released this is the county's investigation so if they don't want to answer questions at this point there are mechanisms in place for me to utilize their prior statements what i can tell you is that really there is no good explanation here at all there are some excuses and some finger-pointing but there's no good defense here i believe that it will be determined that some of these officers are probably more culpable than others which is why i hope that at least some of those officers are willing to tell the story so it's interesting what happened and that it resulted in the end of the special enforcement unit but it didn't result in the end of these officers employment with this agency there is more to the story that's not out yet now remember generally speaking on the law your home is your castle it's the most protected place that there is under the fourth amendment any search procedure by the government that takes place in the home is automatically unconstitutional by default unless the government can prove otherwise in the form of a valid warrant or a valid exception to the warrant requirement and there are only two exceptions recognized by the u.s supreme court consent and exigent circumstances consent must be voluntary exigent circumstances require something akin to an emergency situation and again that's on the government to prove also when it comes to consent as i've explained previously in context with this case a landlord cannot authorize the government to search a residence of a tenant as per the u.s supreme court in the 1961 case of chapman versus united states so this extends to apartments rented rooms within a house and hotel rooms so that a landlord may not give consent to police to perform a warrantless search of a rented apartment or room lastly these cases tend to speed up towards the very end of litigation which is where we are now so there will likely be a big update or updates very soon we have a mediation schedule next month in august which is an opportunity for both sides to sit down with a mediator and discuss potential settlement resolutions in this case this is a civil lawsuit a civil rights civil lawsuit so the pit the potential remedy available to us is money so that that's always the case in in these situation uh in these cases is um the we can't get people fired we can't put them in prison the remedy available to us by congress is an award of money damages so that's where money will be discussed for the most part and if that falls through we'll just sort it out at trial [Music]