I'm just wondering... Hubby and I were watch a 'real' crime show last night called 'The First 48' about a homicide that happened in Miami. Kinda like 'COPS' but with murder investigations.

We live in Australia so we didn't understand this rule/law.

In this case, police received a phone call from these parents to say that they were at their sons house and that they found him dead on the floor, he'd been murdered.

(The parents went to visit their son at his house, this house IS NOT the parents house)

So the police show up and take the parents down the station for quesitoning. Meanwhile the main detective HAS TO ring and get a search warrant so they can enter the sons house.

WHY do they need a warrant? If the son is in there apparently dead on the floor why can't they just go in?

Does anyone know why?

My guess is because in the US , nobody can search you or your property without a plausible cause. If a cop stops you and he smells marijuana on your car he can search the car. If he suspects something though he has to ask you for permission first. I dont understand why they need a search warrant either if the person who lives there is dead though :\

I believe the way this works is. The police can enter the home if the owners all agree, or they have a search warrant, unless it's an obvious emergency. A dead body is no longer an emergency. Perhaps one of the owners wasn't available to give permission to search.

Thats just so bizarra though, and wrong... What if the guy wasn't actually dead yet, but they thought he was, what if he was just laying there almost dead, and if they had gone straight in they could have saved him, but he's dead because they had to wait?!?!?!

It's stupid!!

You need "plausible cause"? If murder isn't soo I don't know what is.
But I guess they have to go by the book because if they find some really good evidence sometimes it gets thrown out of court on "technicality" reasons, right? It's all too confusing.

Maybe he wasnt the only one living at the house.

That just sounds crazy to me. I know that they need search warrants for certain cases, but if the PARENTS tell you that thei son is lying dead in his house, I don't see why they would need a warrant for that. That's just nuts, but whatever...

And by the way... it's "probable" cause...

Well these laws vary from state to state so to be 100% accurate with an answer we'd have to know what state this happened in.

If there was any chance that this guy was alive there would be no reason that paramedics or police wouldn't be allowed in. With him being dead already it sounds like that the detective just wanted to get the ball rolling because there has to be a warrant to search any house even if a crime has been committed there. It wouldn't stop the coroner from coming in or the paramedics, but w/o a warrant it would stop an investigation in some states. That is my understanding anyway. Like I said the laws vary from state to state. Sounds like one of those wacky California things to me.

I'm no legal expert, but I am sure that police, coroner, medical personel would be able to come into the house to get the dead body, etc. The warrent would be needed to perhaps search other parts of the house for evidence of a crime, and to collect said evidence for court purposes. If the guy is dead in the kitchen, you can't go poking around in the upstairs closet without a warrent.

If the police have reasonable suspicion that a crime has been or is being committed...then no search warrant is necessary. Probably that was for TV purposes or some other detail omitted. If it's a crime scene, obviously no warrant is required.

If he was not the only one living there, the police would need a warrant to search the rest of the house and find anything to "bag" for evidence.

If he WAS the only one living there they might have been covering their bases. They don't need a warrant, however, to get the dead body from the house.

Also, from county to county. Once again, depending on the state. Some states may have a blanket law that covers all their counties, others do not.
Where I live, in Georgia, and in my county, this is kind of how it works. If there is a prospect of a criminal investigation, any evidence uncovered by a search of the home would be thrown out by a court if there was no warrant. Imagine that the cops just waltzed right on in and at some point saw something that indicated that it was a murder. They would play hell getting a warrrant at that time because they had no legal authority to be in the house in the first place. Now, let's say that a judge gives that cop a warrant based on his belief that it was a murder. When it gets to court, a savy lawyer could get the whole case thrown out because the warrant was acquired only after evidence has been found therefore, the warrant was acquired based on evidence gathered without a warrant, hence, none of the evidence is admissable in a court.

O.K., let's say that somebody else lived ther but, was out of country for the week. During the time the cops were in the house they saw a bloody knife in a closet. Without a warrant they can not arrest the other guy when he gets home. They had no search warrant. It makes little sence but, that's law for you. Police cannot get a warrant based on evidence that they should have had a warrant to look for.

Another good one though, not 100% on topic is this, if the cops come to your house with a warrant for someones arrest and find an illegal weapon in your underwear drawer, they cannot charge you with possession of an illegal firearm. They can confiscate it and that's about it. Legally, they had no right to look in your underwear drawer for a person. Now, if during a search through your house for that persons arrest, they happen across that illegal firearm laying in plain site, they can arrest you, confiscate the weapon, and then get a warrant to search for other illegal firearms.

Check with the local laws where you live before you go about playing lawyer in your own defence.