Court Opinion

ID: 9618877
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:18:29.016699+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:32.923238
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Lee
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent.
The trial court was of the opinion this case was governed by the rule announced by unanimous decision of this Court in People v. Avery, 173 Colo. 315, 478 P.2d 310. Accord, People v. Alarid, 174 Colo. 289, 483 P.2d 1331. I agree with the trial court and would affirm its ruling granting the motion to suppress.
In Avery this Court held that when authority is desired to search a particular apartment within an apartment building, or a particular room within a multioccupancy structure, the warrant must describe the apartment or subunit to be searched “either by number or other designation, or by the name of the tenant or occupant” of the apartment or subunit.
Here, the warrant merely described the premises to be searched as “basement apartment at 502 Morrison Avenue, Pueblo, Colorado,” without designating which basement apartment was to be searched. Nowhere in the warrant was there any reference to the name of the occupant or tenant (Maes) of the particular apartment, although this was clearly known to the officer whose supporting affidavit contained this information. Nor was there reference in the warrant to any other designation, fact or circumstance by which the apartment might be further identified.
This failure to specify with particularity by name or otherwise the apartment sought to be searched, in my view renders the warrant fatally defective and to uphold it does violence to the unequivocal mandate of both the federal and state constitutions — that the warrant “particularly describe the place to be searched” and that it describe the place “as near as may be.”
The Supreme Court of the United States has many times declared that the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches should be liberally interpreted in *436favor of the citizen, most recently in Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 29 L.Ed.2d 564. In Gouled v. United States, 255 U.S. 298, 41 S.Ct. 261, 65 L.Ed. 647, it was stated:
“* * * It been repeatedly decided that these Amendments [the Fourth and Fifth] should receive a liberal construction, so as to prevent stealthy encroachment upon or ‘gradual depreciation’ of the rights secured by them, by imperceptive practice of courts or by well-intentioned but mistakenly overzealous executive officers.”
To honor the warrant in this case would appear to contribute to the gradual depreciation and erosion of that right.
The view espoused here does not impose any undue burden upon law enforcement. It would have been a simple matter for the officer, whose affidavit of probable cause supported the warrant and whose informant advised that defendant Maes was engaged in illegal conduct at Maes’ basement apartment, to insert Maes’ name in the warrant so as to particularly identify the place to be searched.
To quarrel with my brethren at any length concerning the factual setting in which this controversy arose, as shown by the record, would serve no constructive purpose, other than to note, as often repeated, that it ill-behooves this Court on review to indulge in the luxury of finding facts and drawing inferences contrary to those implicit in the trial court’s findings and order. The majority opinion would seem to indulge in that luxury.
Mr. Justice Erickson authorizes me to state that he joins in this dissent.