New Oklahoma Search Warrant Law Targets Felons Hiding in Third-Party Homes

Tulsa, Okla. — A new statute will soon go into effect addressing what local police have called a loophole in state law.

The law will allow Oklahoma officers with probable cause to get search warrants to search for wanted felons who hide in other peoples’ homes.

Representative Collin Duel says this law was needed so that people could be listed on search warrants and not just property and locations.

This new Oklahoma law goes into effect in November. It clarifies that search warrants do not have to be issued for property, but can also be issued to search for wanted felons.

“Currently, you list property on your search warrant and the location that you’re going to go search for it. So now we’ve codified that holding in that Supreme Court case, saying that you can also list individuals,” said Representative Collin Duel.

A search warrant is different from an arrest warrant which authorizes law enforcement to arrest and detain a person accused of a crime.

Representative Duel, the House Author of this law says that in 1981, the US Supreme Court ruled that if there is a person with an outstanding arrest warrant, who is not in custody and if that person is hiding in a house that doesn’t belong to them, law enforcement is required to get a search warrant for whoever owns the house so they can go in and arrest the wanted person. Still, he says that before this statute was changed in Oklahoma, local police didn’t have that option.

“Some magistrate courts were saying, hey, there’s no mechanism for us to issue these search warrants for property searching for people with arrest warrants,” said Duel.

Duel says these search warrants for wanted felons weren’t being issued and law enforcement had to go undercover and stake out the property until the suspect came out.

“Whenever we have a felony arrest warrant out for somebody and this pertains to violent felonies domestic violence charges and some bench warrants, We had kind of a loophole where if the address of the person that had the felony warrant was not listed on the warrant, then it’s not considered first party it’s considered a third party, so we had no recourse to Detain that suspect in that residence make efforts to get them out of the residence, because there was no law, allowing us to do that,” said Lieutenant Justin Ritter with the Tulsa Police Department.

Ritter says that after this loophole was identified and addressed by one of their fugitive warrants guys, they got with their legal advisor to type up a bill which they presented to Senator Weaver, who was the primary author of this law.