1 week Ago By Olivia Estright
ROCHESTER — An Olmsted County district judge said evidence obtained in search warrants did not violate the scrupulous exactitude standard or medical privilege in the case against Connor Bowman, the Rochester man accused of poisoning his wife, Betty Bowman. Olmsted County District Judge Kathy Wallace filed a second order on Friday, April 25, addressing admissible evidence argued during an omnibus hearing in February . ADVERTISEMENT Wallace determined that the “scrupulous exactitude” standard, which requires search warrants to be precisely worded so the search is narrowed, is not applicable to the search warrants.
The warrants in question obtained information from Bowman’s home, vehicles, person and devices. The defense has argued that the evidence seized in the warrants should not be admissible in court because the warrants granted law enforcement “unbridled discretion” when gathering evidence. “The items were sought to be seized not as evidence of a crime, but based on the criminality of the contents of the items,” Wallace wrote.
“Here, however, the information being sought by the warrants is not being seized for its content.” Wallace said additional Supreme Court rulings determined that the scrupulous exactitude standard is not applicable to all cases, specifically those without “prior restraints” on First Amendment rights. The defense failed to argue that the warrants involved a prior restraint on Bowman’s First Amendment rights, the judge wrote.
In the order, Wallace also determined that Bowman’s claims of medical privilege were not valid. The defense previously argued that evidence seized relating to Bowman and Betty Bowman’s medical information violated their medical privilege. However, Wallace wrote, the search warrants at issue did not “directly seek medical records or other protected medical information.
” Wallace then determined that the defense did not prove that records obtained from two online pharmacies were protected by medical privilege. ADVERTISEMENT The judge’s ruling comes just over a week after the first order was filed. Wallace determined that some evidence in Bowman’s case was taken unconstitutionally, noting that two of the exhibits permitted exploratory rummaging from law enforcement .
Bowman is facing first- and second-degree murder in the death of Betty Bowman, who died on Aug. 20, 2023. Days before Betty Bowman died, she went to an emergency room complaining of diarrhea and dehydration.
She told a friend that she had been drinking with her husband the night before she went to the hospital and that a smoothie he gave her made her sick. Connor Bowman is accused of using colchicine, a drug used to treat gout, to poison her. The couple lived in Rochester, where Betty worked as a hospital pharmacist, while Connor worked as an internal medicine resident.
The next hearing has not been scheduled as of Friday afternoon, April 25..
