Opinion ID: 2054614
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Relevant Issue

Text: The questions raised by the parties focus, for the most part, on the validity of the initial intrusion into the house, because it was from that intrusion that the police discovered the safe. The evidence actually challenged by petitioner was uncovered during the search conducted pursuant to the warrant, however, and not as a result of the protective sweep that accompanied the initial entry. The alleged illegality of the initial entry is significant only because the existence of the safe was noted in the application for the warrant and was presumably considered by the judge in finding probable cause, and thus, in petitioner's view, tainted the warrant itself. Whether there was consent to the first intrusion or whether there were, or needed to be, exigent circumstances to justify it are important only in that context. We dealt with a similar kind of issue in Klingenstein v. State, 330 Md. 402, 624 A.2d 532, cert. denied, 510 U.S. 918, 114 S.Ct. 312, 126 L.Ed.2d 259 (1993). As part of an investigation into whether Klingenstein, a pharmacist, was violating the controlled dangerous substance laws by filling forged prescriptions for two particular drugs, two search warrants were issued, one for his pharmacy and one for his home. The warrant for the pharmacy was held to be valid on its face, but limited in scope. The attack on it arose from the fact that, in executing the warrant, the police seized a number of items that allegedly were not included within the scope of the warrant. [2] Treating that warrant as a general one, Klingenstein moved to suppress everything seized, and the trial court granted that motion. The second warrant, for the home, was challenged on the basis that the application for it made several references to items seized pursuant to the first warrant and, indeed, incorporated the inventory of items seized. Because the judge had held the first warrant invalid and had suppressed everything seized pursuant to it, he concluded that the second warrant was fatally tainted, and therefore Constitutionally deficient. On appeal directly from the suppression hearing, we agreed with the holding of the Court of Special Appeals that the suppression judge erred in suppressing everything taken pursuant to the first warrant-that the proper remedy for a scope violation was the suppression of only those items that were outside the scope of the warrant. We therefore directed a remand for the trial court to sort through the items taken, determine which were within the scope and which were not, and suppress only those that exceeded the scope of the warrant. Klingenstein, supra, 330 Md. at 414-15, 624 A.2d at 538-39. With respect to the second warrant, we concluded, based on Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154, 98 S.Ct. 2674, 57 L.Ed.2d 667 (1978), United States v. Karo, 468 U.S. 705, 104 S.Ct. 3296, 82 L.Ed.2d 530 (1984), and United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149 (1967), that tainted information in the warrant application does not necessarily render the warrant unconstitutional. Klingenstein, supra, 330 Md. at 414, 624 A.2d at 538. See also State v. Mazzone, 336 Md. 379, 399, 648 A.2d 978, 987 (1994). The Court of Special Appeals, which had reached the same conclusion, had gone further and found that the reference in the application to the Schedule II drugs seized under the first warrant was not an indispensable component of probable cause, and that the remaining untainted information established probable cause for the warrant. See State v. Klingenstein, 92 Md.App. 325, 362, 608 A.2d 792, 810 (1992). We noted, however, that, when a motion to suppress evidence seized under a warrant is based on the lack of probable cause for issuance of the warrant, the matter is initially for the hearing judge, and that it therefore followed that the culling of tainted information and the determination of whether the remaining untainted information is adequate to show probable cause is also a matter for the hearing judge in the first instance. Klingenstein, supra, 330 Md. at 414-15, 624 A.2d at 538. We continued: The further proceedings on remand to the circuit court should be to that end, not strictured by a culling by the appellate court and a holding by it that the remaining untainted information was adequate. If the hearing judge concludes, after factoring out the tainted information, that the information remaining established probable cause for the issuance of the warrant, he should, of course, uphold it and deny the motion to suppress insofar as it is founded on the unconstitutionality of the issuance of the warrant. The appellate court will then be in a position to perform its function of making an independent constitutional appraisal of the propriety of the hearing court's rulings. Id. at 415, 624 A.2d at 538-39. This approach, of remanding a case to the trial court to make the initial determination of whether, after excising the unusable information, the remaining assertions in the application suffice to establish probable cause, appears, at least on its face, to be inconsistent with the approach taken by the Supreme Court in analogous circumstances. In Karo, supra, 468 U.S. 705, 104 S.Ct. 3296, 82 L.Ed.2d 530a case cited by us in Klingenstein Federal agents, alerted that certain persons had ordered several cans of ether for use in extracting cocaine from clothing shipped into the country, installed a beeper into one of the cans that was eventually sold to the defendants. In part through monitoring the beeper and in part through visual surveillance, the agents kept track of the ether cans as they were moved from one place to another, eventually ending up in a private house. Based on this surveillance and observations they made from outside the house, the agents obtained a warrant to search the house. The defendants moved to suppress the evidence seized pursuant to the warrant on the ground that the warrant was fatally tainted by the unconstitutional use of the beeper. The Supreme Court found no Fourth Amendment violation in the initial installation of the beeper, but did find one in the monitoring of the beeper while it remained in private homes which, the Court held, was tantamount to a warrantless search of the homes. That information, it concluded, would invalidate the warrant for the house if it proved critical to establishing probable cause for the issuance of the warrant. Id. at 719, 104 S.Ct. at 3305, 82 L.Ed.2d at 544. Citing Franks, supra, 438 U.S. 154, 98 S.Ct. 2674, 57 L.Ed.2d 667, however, the Court also noted that if sufficient untainted evidence was presented in the warrant affidavit to establish probable cause, the warrant was nevertheless valid. Karo, supra, 468 U.S. at 719, 104 S.Ct. at 3305, 82 L.Ed.2d at 544. Significantly, the Supreme Court did not remand the matter for the trial court to make that determination but undertook the task itself, holding that [i]t requires only a casual examination of the warrant affidavit, which in relevant respects consists of undisputed factual assertions, to conclude that the officers could have secured the warrant without relying on the beeper to locate the ether in the house sought to be searched. Id. See also U.S. v. Glinton, 154 F.3d 1245, 1256-57 (11th Cir.1998), cert. denied, 526 U.S. 1032, 119 S.Ct. 1281, 143 L.Ed.2d 374 (1999) (concluding that, after excising excludable information, application for warrant sufficed to establish probable cause and sustained warrant); State v. Revenaugh, 133 Idaho 774, 992 P.2d 769, 774-75 (1999) (same); State v. Vallas, 16 Conn.App. 245, 547 A.2d 903, 909-10 (1988) (same). The inconsistency between the Karo and Klingenstein approaches may be more facial than real. In Karo, the record before the Supreme Court allowed it to determine, with precision, the information that had to be excluded and thus the untainted information that was left. The Court could then make its traditional Constitutional appraisal of whether the remaining untainted information sufficed to establish probable cause for the warrant. That was not so clearly the case in Klingenstein. There, a detailed culling process needed to be performed. A court would be required (1) to consider each of the items seized pursuant to the first warrant, (2) to determine whether the item was or was not within the scope of the first warrant, (3) if it concluded that the item was wrongfully seized, to determine whether and to what extent it was mentioned in and may have materially tainted the application for the second warrant, (4) if the item was mentioned in and tainted the second warrant's application, to excise it, and then (5) to determine whether, absent all of the excised items, there remained sufficient facts alleged in the application to establish probable cause for the second warrant. It was clear from our conclusion (and that of the Court of Special Appeals) regarding the first warrant that the culling would have to be done by the suppression court. Neither appellate court was in a position to determine from the record which items were properly seized and which were not. Indeed, the Court of Special Appeals noted that it is difficult from our vantage point to predict precisely the value of the evidence recovered in the search of the pharmacy or to assess the precise nexus between it and the command clause of the warrant. Klingenstein, supra, 92 Md.App. at 336, 608 A.2d at 797. Absent that information, which, in large part, was factual in nature, we were reluctant to determine, as a matter of law, the effect on the second warrant of excising consideration of items that were improperly seized pursuant to the first warrant when it was impossible for us to determine what those items were. That difficulty does not concern us in the present case. Here, the sole alleged taint arising from the first intrusion was the discovery and mention of the safe in the bedroom closet. We know precisely what would have to be excised should that intrusion be declared invalid, and we can quite easily determine, as part of our Constitutional appraisal of the ultimate issue, whether, without that reference, the application suffices to establish probable cause. If, upon that appraisal, we conclude, as we shall, that, even without any reference to the existence of the safe, the application suffices to establish probable cause for the warrant, the validity of the initial intrusion becomes irrelevant. The challenged evidence would be admissible as properly seized under the warrant, and there would be no need to wander through the thicket of sub-issues implicit in the issues of consent and exigent circumstances.