two thousand and seventeen with particularly with regard to the st search warrant april nd search warrant at that time my client was not under investigation for at least not active investigation for any kind of illegal drug activity the investigation related to shawn del burke and a gentleman by the name of choi up lee who had been encountered and that evening by investigator grotz and through conversations with mr utley the investigator determined that at least with selling methamphetamine from burke and burke was being supplied by somebody by the name of rod and then at that point the bell rang with the investigator in the name rod triggered a recollection that back in july of two thousand and fifteen about a year and a half ago or over a year ago prior to that he had had an encounter with rodney missoula related to illegal drug activity garage and it was a garage not a residence that the search warrant was for and then throw something on the ground and it was a small amount of methamphetamine but he did not say he he obtained that at the garage and in fact said that he didn't know how much methamphetamine was in the garage our position is that the affidavit was insufficient because it didn't establish a nexus or a connection between illegal drug activity or the existence of contraband in that garage the best that could be said was that there was someone mr moon who over a year prior had been involved in illegal drug activity who was living there and that apparently mr utley who was an informant of unknown reliability he was not stated to be a reliable informant that he had said that this was where my source the source for my source lives with burke so basically the i think the question is if someone is thought to be a drug dealer and law enforcement knows where this person lives is that enough information then to go and get a warrant and search the person's residence well  leaving that garage slash residence and had meth right correct and did he say he got it from that location no  he was asked the question how much methamphetamine was in the garage and the affidavit basically the responses given at state's scope said that he didn't know how much methamphetamine was in the garage i think any investigator worth his salt under those circumstances and if i'm the reviewing magistrate i expect this question would have been asked but you know the logical question is did you get this methamphetamine from the garage or from rod either the question wasn't asked or it was asked and he said no and that wasn't put into the affidavit which would be a whole nother issue as to you know leaving things out important information that was not included so yes go no there's no dispute over that he was seen to have dropped something on the ground that later was determined to be a small amount of methamphetamine but i don't think it would be out of the ordinary for methamphetamine users to walk around going in and out of places houses and businesses whatever with a small amount of methamphetamine in their pocket addresses this issue it's us versus brown that i i cite a lot of it in my brief and basically they conclude that look just because somebody is a drug dealer that doesn't in you know where they of you need to have some sort of information presented to the magistrate to establish the drugs are there some either an informant was in the residence and bought drugs or saw drugs or we've been under taking extensive surveillance and we see a lot of in and out activity that seems abnormal you know so that's sort of thing i'm not sure frankly this circuit what the  said we have not established a per se rule that a person being a drug dealer therefore creates probable cause to search their residen know where they live so there is no per se rule and there are some circuits in state courts that are on both sides of the issue and currently there's a case out of the th circuit where on a petition for writ of believe the six circuits analysis of that to be true to the th amendment and reasonable and logical the court basically says look if you're going to get a search warrant to search your residence we're not going to was contacted at lee said yes i'm delivering methamphetamine for burke and burke source is rod who lives in a garage and so that was how rod came on the radar screen of the officer although all of this happened within about a two or three hour time period on april nd well isn't that pretty good information about rod being a drug dealer and that he lives in the trailer you saying there's no evidence that even selling it out of there is at the point well what i'm saying i'm saying not shown to be a reliable informant so that's a that's a significant part of the what did at least let's putting aside his real whether he's reliable or not what he  said that a magistrate judge can't infer that drug dealers typically keep drugs at their residences no you haven't said that but i don't think you should say that and even  dealers do i know where they keep their drugs and they stick typically keep them in their residence this affidavit doesn't even say that so it's a very vague generalize and it's basically making the point that hey we found out that this guy's the supplier he lives in a garage somebody left the garage and dropped what was later determined to be a small amount of methamphetamine w combined with the other information from otley that tends to support an inference that the drugs are in the garage because the affidavit of directly states that he said that he didn't know anything about methamphetamine in the garage who said that sco well you didn't say that he said i don't know how much which is a different story than saying as far as i know there may or may not be a method that raj i don't know well what does that mean that it doesn't mean yes or no either way well but you don't we don't know the context we don't know how the questions came up and that's a problem that you see that but the kind of a you know i don't know how much is a different answer did he say and did the officer ask him did you get these drugs in this garage i'm sure i would assume that was asked we don't have the answer in the affidavit but again used in the language of what the search warrant was for it was the word garage and yet in yet the describe for the magistrate was that the garage was used as a residence he was living there right and i think that a reasonable person would have different ideas as to what level of privacy expectation there would be for someone living in a garage compared to somebody living within a motorhome within a garage because a garage is a garage it's a space where you're parked vehicles you store things a motor home has kitchen bathroom bedroom stor much more privacy involved it's more it is a residence in a way it's a residence on wheels but many people immobilized them as was the case here and they use it for a real residence  so that's the distinction beyond that i mean the best at analogy i can give is the in my town anyway we have a lot of old houses that when they get run down rather than people moving into them and living in them some investor buys it and breaks it down into three or four apartments but it still looks like a house from the outside if an officer got a warrant to search the house and they got inside and saw that there are multiple apartments with a be able there was a there was more in that affidavit than just a statement that somebody was a drug dealer investigator gratz knew from prior experience with the defendant that the defendant had admitted a couple of year and a half a couple of years prior to being a drug dealer and he was selling to people that worked at his tree service business in fact he had contacted him initially as a roost  with respect to the tree service business so he was aware that mr missoula ran this business in addition to that he had the information from mr outlay which was that he was removing where burke lived was it wasn't that the controversy in the motion whether or not the officer had given simultaneous address on south th street and so when he did the nd warrant apparently he kind of cut and pasted the information from the st affidavit with regard to the information he had prior to the april nd warrant but then he added to that and he included in that affidavit the fact that burke was actually living on south th he was not claiming in that april nd affidavit that burke was living in that garage at that time and if that helps i just thought there was concern about two different statements about where she was living and whether that was deliberately false and that the district court was not going to consider that that information in analyzing the warrant but maybe that was for the nd warrant that would have been for the nd warners because there wasn't any there wasn't any reference to south th or anything at the time of the april nd warrant because that  he located her there she had methamphetamine she told him she had gone out for a ride and that ride she had been to the shop earlier that day and had seen a large quantity of methamphetamine in his sho so it's the nd warrant where you have those two different references to where she was living he included the information he had up to the point where the april nd or it was issued and then he added information that he question at any rate with respect to the april nd one he had information that there were that we source burke was living at this garage along with her source ride told gratz that burke was driving a red lincoln surveillance was done on the garage they saw a red lincoln or something that matched a general description of the car that we had given parked outside and then richard sco of leaves that garage on a bicycle and he's found with a quantity of methamphetamine so under all those circumstances there's sufficient probable cause to believe that there's a quality about them found i mean in that building and there's more evidence there than just the fact that somebody has said that ride is a drug dealer but they're really with the exception of the fellow driving away on his riding away on his bicycle with methamphetamine there's no one who has seen the drugs there or who has  they purchased from there is that correct correct that's correct but there's no requirement that that that be the case for probable cause there's no requirement to get probable cause to to search a residence or any sort of property that somebody has said they bought from their right i guess and get trying to get at the nexus and sort of figuring out if you don't have someone seeing it and you don't have a purchase and what you have is someone just saying that these two folks sell methamphetamine and they live there and then you've got the bicycle list it what what else have you got for nexus to that location as to where they would have been storing or there would have been stored but i think it's implicit that a person who is in the business of distributing methamphetamine is probably going to keep that somewhere close to them that's not always true but i think it's certainly a reasonable assumption and i don't know of any requirement that says you have to have somebody say they actually bought from a place in order to establish the next gen because i think we have somebody who says these people are dealing methamphetamine they're living in this garage and then you see said when he's asked how much methamphetamine is in there he doesn't say i don't know he doesn't say i didn't see any he says he's i don't know he doesn't say that i don't know if there's any methamphetamine in there he says i don't know how much he doesn't say i didn't see any he doesn't say i didn't buy it there he doesn't say any of those things he simply says i don't know when asked how much is there so relatively large quantities of methamphetamines my experience is that people who deal in large quantities of methamphetamines try to keep the drugs and the cash and the guns close to him and you know most often commonly found in close proximity to the dealer because a dealer needs ready access to all three in order to transact business and we see those all the time that's here does that make any difference i don't believe so because i think quite frankly any judge who sees that sort of language  that is boilerplate that appears in as you said lots of similar search warrant affidavits i don't think you ever see in an office or put in there they're boilerplate that i don't know where people keep their mouth them found i mean i have no opinion on that it always says essentially the same thing and i suspect that an issue a magistrate who sees these on a daily basis really doesn't pay a whole lot of attention to that language would it have been better if it had been there sure does it make any difference to this court's determination as to whether there was a probable cause i don't think so because that particular language in and of itself i don't think would have made any difference to the issue in that was this a search warrant for a garage or a residence well it was a search warrant for a garage which had report was reportedly being used as a residence and when the officers went in to that particular garage and i don't know if the court has seen the photos but the garage had this camper trailer was in it along with a number of other items and it was a living type area in the garage the main part of the garage itself which had couch some chairs table there was a stove area with pots and pans on it there was a t v and one area there radio and the camper itself when the officers went in it was basically cluttered up with stuff i mean it was not  apparent to the opposite or state somebody was specifically living in that camper anymore than they were living in the whole garage you know i think that's right i mean i've got the pictures right here and i'm looking at it but here's my question is that if that's the case why in a world where we dance around in the world of the automobile exception right rather than saying this is a residence they knew it was a residence he said search the garage ward said you could search the garage and it was clear the garage was in fact being used as residents residents of the affidavit but instead there seems to be a huge emphasis on trying to say well could that thing be rendered in a very short order and we're going to get to the automobile exception because we don't want to deal with does a search of the garage cover a vehicle inside the garage when it's struck me that that if you look at the pictures that's not really the dance that that that that we were brung to well and i think that's kind of a rabbit hole that we all ran down in terms of if you for the transcript of the motion to suppress hearing was the defendant spent a great deal of time talking about how he would go about hooking up or on hooking up the trailer and so we kind of went down that rabbit hole along with the fact that there frankly just wasn't a whole lot of case law out there that was the didn't say you can search the vehicles inside the garage you have the debate well does the automobile exception apply but in this case it looked like you were looking at a residence and this whole thing is just trash will stuff is flying all over the place it acts like it's all tied together and it strikes me that i'd like i said i would the boy looked at the photographs read the briefs i could figure out why we were talking about the automobile exception i looked at the transcript and i saw it was in there but i kept thinking why you know but was there was there any  any evidence to counter the idea that he was living in the garage as a building like you described sort of there's the r v in the middle and i think if the if i remember the pictures correctly there furniture and other household type items around it was there did did the defendant contest that he was living in the garage portion i think he tried to say he and his girlfriend were living just in the camper  but that was the only came from the defendant what would have appeared to the officers in terms of whether or not they would have thought which what i think is important is whether the officers in looking at this situation would have thought that  separate residence that they needed to get a separate search warrant for there is absolutely nothing in those photos that would suggest that they were were wrong in assuming that people were living in that whole garage so other than what the defendant said no there wasn't any evidence  and if there are no other questions i'll sit down very well thank you for argument the case is submitted and the court of file an opinion in due course counsel are excused