If a search warrant has the wrong address, is it still legal and can it be upheld in court?

A warrant probably won't be invalidated by a wrong address as long as law enforcement was acting in 'good faith'. The warrant has a section where your house is described, it should say something about what your house looks like from the outside, where its located, etc. As long as those things are reasonably similar to your house and just a number in the address is wrong that portion of the warrant is probably valid. However, there may be other problems with the warrant. I doubt the Alturas police/Modoc County Sheriff write a ton of warrants so they are more likely to make more significant mistakes than other agencies.

A key factor you need to include is where is the erroneous address in relationship to the house searched. The Supreme Court in a landmark case regarding the suppression of searches based upon police error (U.S. v. Leon) held basically that a mistake by the police does not always call for the total suppression of evidence. This is so in warrantless searches as well as searches with a warrant. The police are only prohibited from executing unreasonable searches. Courts have found that innocently and mistakenly searching the wrong house is not necessarily unreasonable. To give you another example, California courts have allowed the admission of evidence from the search of a house physically next to the one listed on the search warrant. The idea is that the police, and by extension, the people should not be punished for innocent mistakes. You need to contact a lawyer who can file a 1538.5 based upon the unreasonable mistaken execution of the warrant by the police. This is a very complicated area of law. Good luck.

The answer to both questions is, "maybe". There are fctors to consider other than those mentioned. If youare anot being charged with anything, frget about it. If you arfe, contact an attorney.