[rebuilder]

If you go to the court to get a ruling on a specific claim and the court rules on that claim, I don't think you can call that a technicality.

Now, why the lawyer recommended this line of action is an interesting question. My uneducated guess would be that there was precedent in favour of the police, and framing it as a constitutional issue was seen to be the best possibility.

As a whole, this entire thing sounds insane, of course. But the court did what they were supposed to do, it's the rest of this whole story that is messed up.