Page "Material witness" Paragraph 7

This caused controversy for several reasons.

Primarily, critics saw the government's use of the material witness statute to detain suspects as an evasion of the Fourth Amendment which provides some protections to criminal suspects that were seemingly ignored in the arrests of the post-September 11 material witness detainees.

Secondarily, legal critics took issue anew with the application of the material witness statute to grand jury proceedings.

However, statistics on Federal material witness warrant hearings showed a steady decline in their use, from 3603 material witness hearings in FY2000, to 3344 in FY2001 and 2961 in FY2002, and during and after that period the overwhelming majority of material witness warrant hearings took place in judicial districts bordering Mexico and involved illegal alien traffic.

Seemingly in response to this controversy, and with the intent of alleviating the concerns over such use of the material witness statute, Senator Patrick Leahy proposed A Bill to Amend the Material Witness Statute to Strengthen Procedural Safeguards, and for Other Purposes, § 1.