The legal doctrine surrounding search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment has been extensively examined by judges and legal scholars. The process associated with warrant reviews, on the other hand, has gotten far less attention. In the last 45 years, there have been just four empirical studies on how the Fourth Amendment regulates searches and how the approval of search warrant applications plays out in practice.

But a recent study by UConn Law Professor Miguel de Figueiredo – the largest quantitative analysis of warrants to date – is pulling back the curtain on the inner workings of the process, exposing systemic failures and the need for reforms. Published in the Harvard Law Review in June and the focus of a panel discussion at UConn Law School on Thursday, Feb. 19, the study is based on a three-year analysis of more than 33,000 warrant applications which rendered some surprising findings about the speed and thoroughness with which warrants are reviewed, approved, and even opened by judges.

“We found the time judges are spending in analyzing warrants is relatively short,” says de Figueiredo, Professor and Terry Tondro Research Scholar at UConn Law. “More than 3,000 of them were approved in less than one minute.”

de Figueiredo and his co-PIs – Brigham Young University Law Professor Dane Thorley, and BYU Associate Professor of Linguistics Brett Hashimoto – looked at warrant applications filed through Utah’s eWarrants system over a three-year period from March 2017 to January 2020.  The study examined the full texts of affidavits submitted by law enforcement officers, warrants approved by magistrates and judges, and filed returns cataloguing items found after a search is conducted. Researchers also used digital timestamp data, which allowed them to determine how long judges spent reviewing the affidavits.

The dataset of the study included the affidavits of every electronic warrant submission during the nearly three-year period, totaling 33,465 warrant applications filed by more than 3,200 law enforcement officers and reviewed by nearly 120 judges and magistrates. The metadata captured by the e-Warrants system recorded the timing of every important stage of the warrant review process, including when the officer submitted the warrant affidavit; when the reviewing judge first opened the submission; the moment the judge made their legal determination; and when the warrant was served.

Study findings showed that 98% of the warrants reviewed by judges eventually result in approval. Researchers also determined that 93% of the warrants were approved on the first submission, with the median time for review lasting only three minutes. One out of every 10 warrants was opened, reviewed, written, and approved in 60 seconds or less. And when the complexity of the warrant or its length was considered, the analyses suggested that many of the approved warrants had not been read carefully, in full, or both.

“You’d expect to see a positive correlation between word count or length of the affidavit and the time spent reading it,” notes de Figueiredo. “But that correlation is extremely weak, which suggests they are only doing a perfunctory reading.”

Researchers looked at approval rates relative to the ideology and background of the judges, concluding that both were a factor in approvals. The analysis also revealed numerous errors ranging from grammatical errors and “incoherent language” to questionable justifications for probable cause.

“That was a quite surprising and disturbing result,” de Figueiredo said of the probable cause finding. “We would have a higher expectation these errors would be corrected.”

de Figueiredo stressed the study is not meant to be a hit piece on judges. Rather, it is meant to explore the political, economic, and logistical constraints that judges face when reviewing warrants and lay the groundwork to consider reforms that work toward improving the search warrant process.

“We do think this is hugely important, especially in marginalized communities,” says de Figueiredo.

The 2020 killing of Breonna Taylor by police in her Louisville home, and of Amir Locke by SWAT officers in Minneapolis two years later, illustrate the dire repercussions of systemic failures in the warrant review process and the urgent need for reforms. The factual background and legal basis for each of those fatal entries were preceded by a formal judicial review that could have – and arguably should have – identified errors that served as the basis for the initial warrants, according to the study.

“These stories also urge review and reconsideration of search warrants more broadly” the authors note. “Between 2010 and 2016, at least 81 civilians and 13 officers died in ‘dynamic entry’ raids including no-knock raids.” Not included in the statistics are the serious injuries and property damage that more commonly result from searches and that cost police departments millions in litigation expenses and payouts.

And even if no death, injury or property damage results from the warrant, nearly all warrant-based searches impose substantial privacy costs, as officers enter homes or other areas, and even obtain warrants for blood draws. When searches involve detaining individuals and examining digital items such as smart phones and computers that contain troves of personal information, the privacy invasion can be substantial.

Taken together, the findings of the study “have critical implications for the warrant review process that force us to reconsider the constitutional nature of probable cause and the role that judicial review plays as a ‘check’ on police searches,” says de Figueiredo.

He praised the transparency of the warrant process in Utah and the ability it gave the research team to analyze the process, “which I hope will make the system better.” The more recent debate surrounding the constitutionality of the search and seizure tactics being employed by federal agents has only heightened the need for reforms.

“In this political moment, whether you are on the right or left, we hope that everybody would have respect for the Constitution,” says de Figueiredo. “The other thing we need to think about is how do we conceive of privacy in the era of digital communications. We want to think about what are the right guardrails to have to preserve the investigatory capability of the state and public safety, while also preserving citizen privacy. We need to think about the balance in a rigorous way.”

The study by will be the focus of a panel discussion at 5 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 19, at UConn School of Law. The event – Unwarranted Warrants? A Conversation about Search and Seizure – will feature de Figueiredo; Dane R. Thorley, Professor of Law, Brigham Young University Law School; Aleandra Natapoff, the Lee S. Kreindler Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, and Thomas J. Miles, Richard A. Posner Distinguished Service Professor of Law in the Wallman Society of Fellows, University of Chicago Law School.