Opinion ID: 1566486
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Necessity for the Search

Text: Agent Baird, as a part of his investigation, discovered that on February 9, 1978, the date of the murder in Greene County, gasoline was purchased at a Magnolia Avenue Exxon Service Station in Knoxville, through the use of a credit card, issued to and outstanding in the name of Raymond Kenneth Berry, defendant's father. Baird knew that Raymond Kenneth Berry died in 1976. He discovered through Exxon that the purchaser was driving an automobile bearing the license number of defendant's Mercury Monarch. Baird also discovered that this card continued to be active with purchases made on it from time to time, with billings being mailed to defendant's address. He knew that the address on it coincided with the defendant's Wallace Avenue address in Nashville. He learned the account number from Exxon. The special agent from Exxon had given him a photostatic copy of the purchase slip or invoice. Additionally, he had subpoenaed the records of Exxon and the State was in a position to prove all the foregoing. From this Knoxville purchase, Baird logically surmised that the defendant had been in the Knoxville area on the date of the murder. [1] This fact would demolish defendant's alibi featuring activities in Nashville during the entire day of the murder. Baird's suspicions were further fuelled by testimony that a clean, black Ford Granada, with a CB antenna on it, was seen on the road in the vicinity of the Shanks' residence on the day of the murder. The Shanks' residence is located on a dirt road; it was muddy and slushy during February and a clean car in the neighborhood was a strange car. Defendant's car was a black Mercury with a CB antenna. Proof in the record shows that there is little visual difference  particularly from the sides  between the Ford Granada and the Fordmade Mercury. For reasons which do not appear in the record, and which do not occur to me, Baird concluded that the prosecution needed the credit card and the original copy of the charge slip. To accomplish this he appeared before a Nashville General Sessions Judge and procured a search warrant authorizing a search of defendant's residence and vehicle, for the Exxon credit card and the original charge receipt. It is evident that these documents were not necessary to a prosecution of this action. All the facts specified above were susceptible of proof, specifically including the two documents listed in the search warrant, copies of which he already had in his possession. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, made applicable to the states through the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961), provides: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the person or things to be seized. Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution of Tennessee provides: That the people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers and possessions, from unreasonable searches and seizures; and that general warrants, whereby an officer may be commanded to search suspected places, without evidence of the fact committed, or to seize any person or persons not named, whose offenses are not particularly described and supported by evidence, are dangerous to liberty and ought not to be granted. While this Court has held that our state constitutional provision is identical in intent and purpose with the Fourth Amendment and that we should not limit it more stringently than federal cases limit the Fourth Amendment, Sneed v. State, 221 Tenn. 6, 423 S.W.2d 857, 860 (1978), the fact remains that there are pronounced linguistic differences in the two provisions. Our provision specifically denounces general warrants permitting searches without evidence of the fact committed and personal seizures where offences are not particularly described and supported by evidence. Our Constitution obviously contemplates evidentiary support for the issuance of search warrants. This, however, does not invalidate the assertion of Sneed , because federal decisions uniformly require a clear showing of probable cause. It does mean, that from the beginning of our statehood our basic charter [2] has denounced general warrants and required evidentiary support for their issuance. The significance of this lies in the fact that where a search warrant authorizes a quest for unneeded and unnecessary documents, not per se criminal, and during its execution other objects, in plain view, are seized  with or without any nexus  the result is a search pursuant to a general warrant. These objectives of the search warrant requirement and the constitutional protection it serves are made clear in Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971): First, the magistrate's scrutiny is intended to eliminate altogether searches not made on probable cause. The premise here is that any intrusion in the way of search or seizure is an evil, so that no intrusion at all is justified without a careful prior determination of necessity. (citations omitted) The second, distinct objective is that those searches deemed necessary should be as limited as possible. Here, the specific evil is the general warrant abhorred by the colonists, and the problem is not that of intrusion per se, but of a general, exploratory rummaging in a person's belongings. (All except first emphasis supplied). 403 U.S. at 467, 91 S.Ct. at 2038, 29 L.Ed.2d at 583. This is precisely what occurred in this case. A search warrant was issued for two wholly unnecessary items, and was executed by a wholesale search of defendant's home and auto, resulting in the confiscation of numerous items not named in the warrant, including a ball-peen hammer identified positively as the murder weapon. While the mere evidence rule no longer has any vitality and there is no distinction between the seizure of items of evidentiary value only and seizures of instrumentalities, fruits, or contraband, Warden, Maryland Penitentiary v. Hayden, 387 U.S. 294, 87 S.Ct. 1642, 18 L.Ed.2d 782 (1967), conditions precedent to the issuance of a valid search warrant must exist. Chief among these conditions is probable cause, which is deeply rooted in necessity. If the law were otherwise, law enforcement officers, through the simple expedient of listing any insignificant object, could legitimate an indiscriminate search of the castle of a citizen. Overly zealous officers could  and many would  utterly nullify the historic constitutional requirement of probable cause. This view, of course, does not trench upon the plain view doctrine of Coolidge v. New Hampshire, supra .