Opinion ID: 590903
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Plain View Seizure in This Case

Text: 31 That severance may be appropriate in theory does not mean it is appropriate in a particular case. The doctrine is not available where no part of the warrant is sufficiently particularized, see Cardwell, 680 F.2d at 78; cf. United States v. Gardner, 537 F.2d 861, 862 (6th Cir.1976) (per curiam), where no portion of the warrant may be meaningfully severed, see Christine, 687 F.2d at 754, or where the sufficiently particularized portions make up only an insignificant or tangential part of the warrant. See Spilotro, 800 F.2d at 967-68; Freeman, 685 F.2d at 952. The district court granted suppression concluding that the warrant was a general warrant and that the Leon good faith exception did not save it. For that reason, it did not reach or decide the plain view argument or make a determination as to whether the subject warrant may be severed. Hence, the case must be remanded to enable the district court to rule on these issues. 32 We emphasize most strongly the circumscribed availability of the plain view doctrine in the case of a redacted warrant. Plain view only justifies the warrantless seizure of evidence because by hypothesis the seizure of an [incriminating] object in plain view does not involve an intrusion on privacy. Horton, 496 U.S. at 141, 110 S.Ct. at 2310. The doctrine may not be used to extend a general exploratory search from one object to another until an incriminating item turns up. See Coolidge, 403 U.S. at 466, 91 S.Ct. at 2038; Leon, 468 U.S. at 918 n. 19, 104 S.Ct. at 3418 n. 19; Brown, 460 U.S. at 748-49, 103 S.Ct. at 1546-47. See also, e.g., United States v. Medlin, 842 F.2d 1194, 1199 (10th Cir.1988) (when officers grossly exceed scope of warrant the particularity requirement is undermined and suppression of all evidence is required). 33 In determining whether that doctrine applies in the case of a redacted warrant the trial court must therefore ask if, when the officers came upon the item found in plain view, they were in a place where the redacted warrant--or a provision of the original warrant as to which the good faith exception applies--authorized them to be. See Fitzgerald, 724 F.2d at 637; Freeman, 685 F.2d at 953. And because the scope of a search is limited to the lawful authority granted by the warrant, see Bivens v. Six Unknown Federal Narcotics Agents, 403 U.S. 388, 394 n. 7, 91 S.Ct. 1999, 2003 n. 7, 29 L.Ed.2d 619 (1971); Matias, 836 F.2d at 747, the item seized must have been discovered before the authority of the officers' to be on the premises has expired. See Horton, 496 U.S. at 140-41, 110 S.Ct. at 2310; United States v. LeBron, 729 F.2d 533, 537-38 & n. 3 (8th Cir.1984); Freeman, 685 F.2d at 953 n. 6. See also Hicks, 480 U.S. at 325 (taking action unrelated to the objectives of the authorized intrusion produces a new invasion of privacy).