I became acquainted with a new state law this morning that’ll make it a bit more of a challenge to get you valuable information.

It revolves around search warrants in each city and county’s circuit court.

Search warrants are where a police officer gets a magistrate to sign off on entering a suspected criminal’s home, vehicle, or property in order to confiscate any clues or fruits of a crime.

Each officer must swear to the magistrate that his/her testimony is accurate and true in order to obtain the search warrant.

If an officer lies, it not only might cost him his career, it might also mean he gets charged with the crime of perjury.

Search warrants are filed in each jurisdiction’s circuit court clerk’s office.

As I’ve often written using this platform, I check search warrants in Roanoke Circuit Court daily.  I manage to get over to Roanoke County about once or twice a week.  Whenever I’m doing a story in say… Lexington… and if I have time, I’ll drop by the Rockbridge County courthouse for example to check its search warrants.

Search warrants are often how I break stories and further stories that are already out there.

The new law, which went into effect last Friday (July 1st), essentially seals each “affidavit” on the search warrant for a minimum of three days, and a maximum of 15 days.

What this means is I now will have to wait 72 hours in order to look at the most important part of each search warrant—- the “probable cause,” or the reason the officer feels he has the legal right to search the suspected criminal’s property.

The first page of each search warrant I can still see.

It gives some detail—- such as the name or location of the police search, and what police will be looking for during the search—- but, in most cases, I’ll have to wait three days to view the second page, which contains the probable cause.

This in turn means you’ll have to wait three days for me to report pertinent new information on cases which peak your interest.

It’s not a devastating blow to news gathering, but it will make for more of a challenge.

Keep in mind—- commonwealth’s attorneys in each jurisdiction have the legal right to ask a judge to “seal,” or hide search warrants from public view for a given period of time.

Such is the case right now in the Jeff Easley investigation—- Easley is charged with the capital murder of Tina Smith late last year and the kidnapping of her daughter Brittany.

There is at least one sealed search warrant involving that case (maybe more?) in Roanoke County circuit court.

There’s may be a legitimate reason why the General Assembly voted to do this.

From my research, the primary backer of the legislation was a Delegate from Chesterfield named Manoli Loupassi.

I called Loupassi’s office seeking more information and I’m sure someone will call me back.

I’ve heard stories of the bad guys actually sending representatives into circuit court clerk’s offices to look up search warrants—- see what the police are doing—- if they or their associates are at risk of prosecution—- or if police are focusing on their rivals.

I’ve never heard of that happening around here.

The bottom line is—- it’ll be more of a challenge to bring you important information—- but it’s a challenge we’ll all try to meet.