Court Opinion

ID: 9583682
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:41:05.525336+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:58:34.145280
License: Public Domain

Marshall, Presiding
Justice, dissenting.
- Under the authority of Bellamy v. State, 134 Ga. App. 340 (214 SE2d 383) (1975), a police officer executing a warrant to search a certain specified residence is authorized to search vehicles located within the curtilage of the residence. “Curtilage” is defined as the ground used with the residence. See Black’s Law Dictionary, p. 460 (4th Ed., 1968). The evidence here shows that, when the search warrant was executed, the Landers’ van was parked on a driveway used by Campbell and his guests, but leading to the adjacent lot and located within the boundary line of the adjacent lot owner. The apparent reason for use of the driveway by Campbell and his guests was that the house on the adjacent lot had been demolished by fire and, therefore, was vacant. Under these circumstances, it seems to me that the Landers’ van was within the Campbell curtilage.
Furthermore, under the facts appearing at the time of the search, the officer executing the warrant, fully versed in the principles of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, could have reasonably concluded that the search of the van was legal. Under these circumstances, the reason for the exclusionary rule ceases to exist, because suppression of the evidence can have no deterrent effect either on the police or on the magistrates issuing search warrants. See United States v. Williams, 622 F2d 830 (5th Cir. 1980); New York v. Adams, 422 NE2d 537 (N. Y., 1981).
*811To hold that the evidence must be suppressed under the circumstances of this case “betrays a mind-set more useful to those who officiate at shuffleboard games, primarily concerned with which particular square the disc has landed on, than to those who are seeking to administer a system of justice whose twin purposes are the conviction of the guilty and the vindication of the innocent.” Florida v. Royer, 51 USLW 4293, 4301 (Docket No. 80-2146; decided March 23, 1983) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting). In this case, the majority overturns criminal convictions entered against two citizens whose sole misdeeds consisted of unlawfully possessing controlled substances. One wonders whether the majority would have reached the same result if the fruits of the search had been critical evidence in a heinous murder case, and one also wonders what complications the majority opinion will create if the facts underlying this search are ever repeated in a heinous murder case. However, the facts of this case in all probability will not repeat themselves. Thus, all that is accomplished by the majority opinion is to overturn criminal convictions, not because the warrant lacked the specificity required by the Fourth Amendment, and not because the officer executing the warrant clearly overstepped his authority, but because at the time of the search the “disc” had landed on the wrong “square.”
I respectfully dissent.