There are a lot of misconceptions about the process of doing a Texas warrant search out in the world. There is a great deal of things to blame for this. Holywood, the internet, armchair legal experts, the list goes on. It’s hard to throw a rock without hitting some misinformation about this process.
These things happen, and it only makes sense that there would be so many misunderstandings. For example, Holywood would have a hard time making something entertaining out of how the law really works, and the law is written in confusing language which makes things hard for regular people to understand.
If you’re here, you’re probably curious about how this actually works in the real world. We were there once, too, and that’s why we decided to do a bunch of research so we could find out if a warrant search would allow you to see search warrants on top of arrest warrants.
This should, at the very least, be an interesting topic to learn more about it. With even a small amount of luck, by the time we’re done reading this article, we’ll all be more well informed about one of the most important functions of our criminal justice system here in the United States.
The Function of a Warrant in the United States Criminal Justice System
Warrants are incredibly important to nearly every facet of our criminal justice system here in the United States. Without warrants, police would either have unchecked power or they wouldn’t be able to do anything unless they caught people in the process of doing a crime.
While that would allow a lot of novice criminals to be arrested, most smart criminals have plans to circumvent being caught in the act so they can try to avoid being sent to jail or prison for their crimes. That means without warrants, the smarter and more dangerous criminals would roam free without fear of prosecution.
The reason why that’s the case is actually an amendment in the constitution. The amendment that deals with this is specifically the 4th amendment. It protects U.S. citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures of themselves and their property.
Just to make sure we’re all on the same page, an arrest is legally considered a seizure of your person. Warrants have to have a few things in order for them to be considered valid. Every state has its own criteria for this, but in the state of Texas, every warrant must have:
- The name of the suspect.
- Description of the suspect. If the name isn’t available, it will only be the description.
- Crimes believed to have been committed by the subject.
- Counties where the warrant is executable.
- Date of issuance.
- Signature of a judge or magistrate.
- The name of the office that the issuing judge or magistrate works out of.
Without these things, a warrant can be considered invalid. If that happens, the whole case can be thrown out of court. That being said, sometimes the judge is allowed to amend the warrant, depending on what the mistake was.
Can You Find Search Warrants?
Here comes the tricky part of this article. Is it possible for someone to find information pertaining to search warrants while they’re looking for arrest warrants? Information on this subject can be pretty hard to find because of the way that search engines work, which would explain why you’re here.
Search warrant information can be useful. It can allow you a chance to see if you or a loved one is being suspected of committing crimes. Law enforcement can’t just search people all willy-nilly. Because of the 4th amendment, there are only a few ways that law enforcement is allowed to search you:
- If you give consent for a search.
- This would involve the police officer asking if they can search you and you indicating that it’s ok.
- If the police officer has probable cause.
- This can include a lot of things, the most popular being that your car smells like marijuana so they want to search it to see if you have any contraband on you.
- If you’re arrested or your vehicle is impounded.
- This is called an arrest-related search.
- If something illegal is in plain view.
- Let’s say you have a big bag of contraband on your passenger seat. If the cop sees it, they can search your car without your consent.
- If someone with you is on parole.
- Parolees don’t get the same kind of broad protection provided by the fourth amendment as non-parolees do.
- If a warrant has been issued by a valid issuing party.
The thing about search warrants is that the vast majority of them are issued if you refuse to be searched, so in most cases, you’ll know right then and there if a warrant is being issued to search you, your home, or your vehicle.
This, however, isn’t true in all cases. It is entirely possible for the police to surprise you with a visit and a warrant. So can you find out if they have a search warrant before they show up at your home or business?
Well, the short answer here is “not really.” You can easily find arrest warrant information in a lot of counties, but those can take days, weeks, or even months to be executed. Search warrants are typically executed as soon as they’re issued, making them a little harder to track down.
Because every county handles its own warrant rules, that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to find search warrant information. It’s just one of the more rare things to find because of the nature of search warrants. A lot of counties have a hard enough time keeping up with regular warrant databases.
Search warrants move a lot more quickly than arrest warrants, which means that staying on top of a database for them is going to be tricky by definition. There can be hundreds of these warrants open and closed within a single day, so it would be hard for anyone to keep up with.
That being said, if you want to find them, you’re going to need a pretty effective way to hunt them down. Some methods won’t work very well because of how quickly these things move. You could search through three of the wrong counties and by the time you get to the right one, the warrant could have been executed.
How to Search for Texas Warrants
If you’re new to the world of warrant searches, you may be more than a little confused as to how you could get this task done as quickly and easily as possible. This is especially true if you’re looking to get search warrant information.
There are a few ways that you can go about this. Not each way is going to get you the results that you want as quickly as you want them, but they can be good for different people that have different needs.
The first way that you can try to get this information is to go directly to the sheriff’s department’s website for your county. This can work if you’re lucky and you only want to check in one or two counties. This method can provide some issues if you’re not lucky or need to check a lot of counties.
That’s because not every county makes this information easily available to the public, so you could run into some major obstacles pretty quickly this way. It’s hit or miss at best, which is why we usually recommend this next method.
Using something like a warrant search service or personal background check service can make your whole search a lot faster. These services specialize in collecting public background information on people, making it a lot easier for you to do this quickly.
Both of these kinds of services will be able to pull up information from the entire state of Texas or even the entire country, depending on your preferences and the service that you decide to go with. It’s entirely up to you how large of a search area you want to use.
These services can typically provide you with your search results instantly, making them incredibly powerful tools, especially if you want to find a lot of information in a very limited amount of time. These services are ideal for finding search warrant information because time is of the essence. That being said, don’t get your hopes up because search warrant information can be pretty hard to come by, even for the experts.
Getting the Information You Need
Information is pretty valuable, no matter what time in history you look or what country you happen to live in. The entire internet was created so we could share information more easily, which just goes to show how important information is.
Knowing how to find the information that you’re looking for in the easiest way possible can make everything a lot easier for you. Whether you’re looking for warrants or recipes, it never hurts to know the right place to start looking.