Court Opinion

ID: 9724825
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 11:16:03.939141+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:10:48.106161
License: Public Domain

O’Connor, J.
(dissenting, with whom Lynch, J., joins). I would reverse the judge’s allowance of the defendants’ motion to suppress, and I would remand for further findings with regard to the following questions: (1) Were the officers who executed the warrant unaware, at that time, of the ambiguity of the description in the warrant as it applied to the physical facts? (2) Based on information in addition to the description in the warrant, did the executing officers possess sufficient knowledge concerning the apartment to which the warrant was intended to apply to eliminate any danger of a mistaken search of the wrong apartment? The teaching of Commonwealth v. Rugaber, 369 Mass. 765 (1976), is that affirmative answers to those questions would require denial of the motion to suppress. There is no significant distinction between Rugaber and this case, and Rugaber was rightly decided.
In Rugaber, this court held that evidence of the fruits of a search conducted pursuant to a facially adequate, but ambiguous, warrant, by officers with first hand knowledge of what premises were intended to be governed by the warrant, should not be suppressed. In that case, the warrant ordered a search of “#3, Fenwick St., Springfield, a two story wooden frame dwelling, color red & grey.” Number 3 Fenwick Street was a brick house with a green porch. The house next door was red, grey, and wooden. The officers who obtained the warrant executed it. They searched No. 3 Fenwick Street. They did so at night and were unaware of the discrepancy in house *363descriptions. Id. at 767. The officers “were not reckless; at most they were negligent in this respect.” Id.
In Rugaber, supra at 768, the motion judge “concluded that an officer attempting to execute the warrant with no information other than the description contained within it and the attached affidavit would ‘most assuredly’ have invaded the wrong property.” This court observed that “[pjerhaps it would be more accurate to say that the warrant was ambiguous in its description of the property to be searched.” Id. That is precisely the case here.
The court reasoned in Rugaber, supra at 769, as follows: “The description here was not inadequate on its face. The executing officers did not become aware of its ambiguity as applied to the physical facts, and they were not reckless in this respect. They had probable cause to search No. 3 Fenwick Street, the address was a sufficient description if the erroneous references to color and type of building material were disregarded, and the knowledge of the officers on the scene eliminated any danger that there might be a mistaken search of the premises next door. In these circumstances we agree with the judge, who ruled that even if the warrant was defective, the exclusionary rule should not be applied, since it could have no deterrent effect.” (Emphasis added.)
In the present case, too, the warrant was adequate on its face, for it described with particularity, although inaccurately, the place to be searched. However, as in Rugaber, the description in the warrant was ambiguous. It described the apartment to be searched as being located over apartment no. 17 and displaying a “Make My Day” sticker on its door, while only one apartment actually displayed such a sticker and a different apartment was over apartment no. 17.
The judge made no finding with respect to whether the officers were aware of the ambiguity when they executed the warrant, but the evidence strongly suggests they were not. Nothing in the evidence suggests that the officers acted recklessly in this respect. Furthermore, the officers had probable cause to search the defendant’s apartment and, as in Rugaber, the description in the warrant was sufficient if “the erroneous *364references to [location over apartment no. 17] were disregarded.”
Most importantly, there was an abundance of evidence presented at the suppression hearing in this case that “the knowledge of the officers on the scene eliminated any danger that there might be a mistaken search of the [apartment over apartment no. 17].” Two officers, who applied for the warrant and executed it, testified. Their testimony would have warranted findings that, on January 17, 1986, the officers were in a parked vehicle, engaged in surveillance, when they observed another vehicle drive up to the building at 50C Memorial Road. They watched an individual alight from the vehicle, take money from his pocket, and enter the building. Because the window shades were up, they could see into the apartment on “the second floor, upper right.” That is the apartment with the “Make My Day” sticker on its door that they ultimately searched. They watched the individual enter and leave the apartment and return to the vehicle in which he had come. The officers followed that vehicle to another location and, when it stopped, they approached it and found the individual, whom they had seen enter and leave the apartment, holding glossine bags containing a white powdery substance. They arrested and talked to him.
According to the testimony, the individual described the defendant’s apartment, including its location on the second floor at the upper right of the building as one faces the building from the street. In addition, there was testimony that, before they approached the defendant’s apartment to search it, the officers had been told that the apartment they wanted to search and to which the warrant was intended to apply belonged to Patricia Treadwell. Then, when they arrived at the apartment, they saw the name Treadwell on the door. There was also evidence that the officers gained entry by saying, “Craig sent me.” Upon the saying of those words, the door to the apartment was immediately opened by Michael Treadwell. They did not know his name, but he fit a description given to the officers by the individual whom they had seen in that apartment and arrested.
*365Nothing in the record suggests that the judge rejected any of the suppression hearing testimony as lacking credibility. Rather, it appears that he disregarded it as irrelevant. However, the evidence as to the officers’ lack of awareness of the ambiguity in the description in the warrant, as well as the evidence concerning the officers’ knowledge concerning the proper apartment to search, was highly relevant. If believed in substantial part, the evidence demonstrates that, even if the warrant was defective, the exclusionary rule should not be applied because it would not deter the type of police misconduct the rule was designed to deter. That is the teaching of Rugaber, and it is sound. I would reverse the order below, and remand for further findings.