Court Opinion

ID: 9626779
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 08:23:52.17349+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:13:05.589667
License: Public Domain

HUNSTEIN, Presiding Justice,
dissenting.
This case is wholly controlled by Watts v. State, 274 Ga. 373, 375 (2) (552 SE2d 823) (2001), in which this Court clearly articulated the burden-shifting framework to be applied when a search warrant is challenged:
*739“Once a motion to suppress has been filed, the burden of proving the lawfulness of the warrant is on the (S)tate and that burden never shifts. (Cits.) The only burden upon the challenger of a search warrant is that of producing evidence to support his challenge, which burden is shifted to him only after the (S)tate has met its initial burden of producing evidence showing the validity of the warrant. (Cit.)” Davis v. State, [266 Ga. 212, 213 (465 SE2d 438) (1996)]. Where a motion to suppress is based on a statutory ground, the State satisfies its initial evidentiary burden “ ‘by production of the warrant and its supporting affidavit, and by showing... that the warrant is not subject to the statutory challenge alleged. . . .’ ” Davis v. State, supra at 213. See also State v. Slaughter, [252 Ga. 435, 439 (315 SE2d 865) (1984)]; [Cits.]. Even if the challenge to the warrant is not based upon one of the statutory grounds, the State’s burden of producing evidence shifts to the defendant only after production of the warrant and its supporting affidavit. State v. Slaughter, supra at 439.
(Emphasis supplied.) Watts, supra at 375.
The majority states that “the question is whether Young’s motion to suppress sufficiently put the State on notice that the very existence of a search warrant was being challenged.” Op. at 738. However, as set forth above, our long-standing case law has put the State on notice that it must produce the warrant and supporting affidavit whenever a search and seizure is challenged by the filing of a motion to suppress. Young was not required to reiterate in his motion that this threshold showing must be made.
Attempting to distinguish Watts, supra, the majority notes that the allegations of the defendant’s motion to suppress in that case were held sufficient to put the State on notice. Op. at 737. The defendant in Watts only alleged that the warrant had unspecified material omissions that undermined its validity, however. Watts, supra at 373. There is no indication that the lack of a warrant was alleged in the motion to suppress, and the warrant was never introduced into evidence. Id. at 375. Because “[t]he warrant and supporting affidavit are necessary to establish the standard against which [the defendant’s] allegations [a]re required to be balanced,” the Court held that the State’s failure to meet its initial burden of production rendered the trial court’s denial of the defendant’s motion to suppress erroneous. Id. at 376. This holding does not undermine the requirements of OCGA § 17-5-30 (b), but merely clarifies that the defendant’s burden of producing evidence to support the allegations that he has set forth and thus put the State on notice of in his motion *740to suppress, i.e., that the warrant is insufficient on its face, that there was no probable cause for its issuance, or that it was illegally executed, see OCGA§ 17-5-30 (a) (2), arises only after the State has produced the warrant and supporting affidavit.
Decided November 21, 2007.
William O. Cox, for appellant.
Tom Durden, District Attorney, Mark A. Hendrix, Assistant District Attorney, for appellee.
Because the State failed to meet its initial burden of producing the warrant here, the burden of producing evidence in support of the motion to suppress never shifted to Young. Accordingly, the Court of Appeals erred in affirming the trial court’s denial of his motion to suppress.
I am authorized to state that Chief Justice Sears joins in this dissent.