How have the courts interpreted a search warrant?

Appellant next attacks the form of the warrant. The form used was a form for an arrest warrant rather than for a search warrant: it directed the executing officer "To search the following location(s): ________________ For the following person: ________________ and to seize and arrest him/her if found." Appellant notes that in filling out the warrant form, the police did not refer to any person to be arrested, and argues that the warrant therefore lacks the particularity required by the Fourth Amendment. Appellant relies heavily on Massachusetts v. Sheppard, 468 U.S. 981 (1984), a case in which all parties conceded that a warrant form for the seizure of controlled substances could not validly be used to authorize a search for evidence of a murder when the references to controlled substances in the body of the warrant had not been deleted.