The Fourth Circuit recently handed down a ruling, United States v. Ordonez-Zometa, that raised a really interesting question: Does the Fourth Amendment require officers to exercise diligence in executing an arrest warrant? That is, if there's an arrest warrant out for a person, are officers required to make the arrest when they can, or soon after that? And if they can delay making the arrest, how long a delay is allowed?
What makes this particularly interesting to me is that I went in thinking there was no such diligence requirement; the Fourth Circuit said there is such a requirement; but when I looked back into the history of the caselaw, I tended to think the Fourth Circuit's diligence requirement may just be a vestige of long-overturned caselaw that no one realized is now obsolete.
Here are the details, for the law nerds interested in the puzzle to be solved here.
