Hey, guess what? It turns out the police are not allowed to seize a photojournalist’s camera, which we all knew but, still, sometimes these things have to go to a higher court so we can double-check. On Friday, a judge ruled that a search warrant used to review David Morse’s photos from a December 2009 UC Berkeley protest was invalid.

While covering the protest for IndyBay, Morse was arrested, along with seven others, and charged with assaulting a police officer and vandalism among other things. A few days later, all the charges were dropped and Morse’s camera was returned, but his storage devices never were. The university was also ordered to return all of Morse’s photos on Friday.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Morse was covering the demonstration outside Chancellor Robert Birgeneau’s campus residence for the San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center, also known as Indybay. Morse repeatedly identified himself as a journalist before he was arrested by campus police, which obtained a search warrant to look at his photos before he was released on bail, according to the First Amendment Project.

Score one for the constitution (and the First Amendment Project).

Article from San Francisco Chronicle and IndyBay