Court Opinion

ID: 9477730
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:29:57.841979+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:01.186602
License: Public Domain

WILKINS, Circuit Judge:
Charlene M. Owens appeals from her drug-related convictions in violation of 21 U.S.C.A. §§ 846 and 841(a)(1) (West 1981), and 18 U.S.C.A. § 2 (West 1969). We affirm.1
I.
In October 1985 the Baltimore City Police Department began an investigation into what the government characterized as the “Elfe/Canady” heroin-trafficking organization. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service subsequently joined the investigation after several arrests and drug seizures. On June 25, 1986, after an extensive investigation including a series of wire communication interceptions, several search warrants were issued by a federal magistrate. One of the warrants described the place to be searched as “3901 Edgewood Road, Apartment 336, Baltimore, Maryland, ... a *463three-story multi-dwelling apartment house, brown entrance door, # 3901 affixed to premises, security lock on door.”
The affidavit supporting this search warrant set forth facts which supported a probable cause finding that an apartment in the 3901 Edgewood Road building was leased to Michelle Cherry; that Owens (referred to by her co-conspirators as “Charlie”) exercised control over this apartment; and that this apartment was being used as a storage place for heroin brought to Baltimore for distribution. Prior to applying for the warrant, records of the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company were reviewed to determine the exact number of “Charlie’s” apartment in building 3901. The records listed the apartment number as 336.2
Within hours after this warrant was issued but prior to its execution, Phillip Wilson, an individual identified as a participant in the drug operation, was arrested. Wilson confirmed the factual assertion in the affidavit that an apartment in the 3901 Edgewood Road building was being used as a storage house for drugs. He admitted that he had recently delivered a shipment of narcotics to “Charlie’s” apartment at 3901 Edgewood, which Wilson explained was the apartment located on the third floor on the right side.
On the morning of June 26,1986 officers began to simultaneously execute five warrants. The officers executing the warrant at 3901 Edgewood had also prepared the supporting affidavit. They forced entry through the common door of building 3901 on the ground floor and proceeded to the third floor. There they discovered that there were two apartments on that floor but neither apartment was numbered 336. The apartment on the left was vacant and as the district court found, there was “no indication that anyone had ever occupied it.” The apartment on the right was numbered 324. The officers knocked on the door of this apartment, and after receiving no response, they forcibly entered. Owens, who identified herself to the officers as “Charlie,” was found sitting in a bedroom. A briefcase from the bedroom closet was seized and later searched. It contained 600 bags of heroin which provided a basis for Owens’ subsequent convictions.
Prior to trial, Owens sought to suppress the evidence seized from the apartment on the ground that the warrant was invalid. Following an evidentiary hearing, the suppression motion was denied by the district court. The court determined that the evidence was admissible on the basis that exigent circumstances justified the entry and search. Since the search was lawfully conducted pursuant to the warrant we need not address the validity of the search based on exigent circumstances.
II.
The fourth amendment provides that search warrants will not issue unless they particularly describe the place to be searched. Evidence seized in violation of the particularity requirement is subject to suppression pursuant to the judicially created exclusionary rule. See Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 398, 34 S.Ct. 341, 346, 58 L.Ed. 652 (1914); Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 655, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 1691, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961).
The particularity requirement prohibits general, exploratory searches. Andresen v. Maryland, 427 U.S. 463, 480, 96 S.Ct. 2737, 2748, 49 L.Ed.2d 627 (1976). A warrant meets the particularity requirement “if the description is such that the officer with a search warrant can, with reasonable effort, ascertain and identify the place intended.” Steele v. United States, 267 U.S. 498, 503, 45 S.Ct. 414, 416, 69 L.Ed. 757 (1925). An erroneous description in the warrant, however, does not necessarily invalidate a warrant and subsequent search. United States v. Ridinger, 805 F.2d 818, 819 (8th Cir.1986); United States v. Burke, 784 F.2d 1090, 1092 (11th Cir.1986). As the Supreme Court has recently stated, limitations on the execution of search warrants *464should be examined in light of “the need to allow some latitude for honest mistakes that are made by officers in [this] dangerous and difficult process.” Maryland v. Garrison, 480 U.S. 79, 107 S.Ct. 1013, 1018, 94 L.Ed.2d 72, 82 (1987).
Moreover, the exclusionary rule has undergone significant change in recent years, exemplified by the adoption of a good faith exception to the rule in United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 82 L.Ed. 2d 677 (1984). The Court in Leon considered “whether the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule should be modified so as not to bar the use in the prosecution’s case in chief of evidence obtained by officers acting in reasonable reliance on a search warrant issued by a detached and neutral magistrate but ultimately found to be unsupported by probable cause.” Id. at 900, 104 S.Ct. at 3409. The Court found that when an officer acts in good faith reliance on a facially valid warrant, the purpose of the exclusionary rule would not be furthered by suppression of relevant and probative evidence.
In Leon, police officers obtained a warrant to search for drugs based upon an informant’s tip. The warrant, although facially valid, was lacking in probable cause due to the insufficiency of the informant’s credibility. Both the district court and the court of appeals found the evidence seized to be inadmissible pursuant to the exclusionary rule. The Supreme Court reversed, finding that “the officers’ reliance on the magistrate’s determination of probable cause was objectively reasonable, and application of the extreme sanction of exclusion is inappropriate.” Id. at 926, 104 S.Ct. at 3422.
The Court also provided guidance on applying its newly-created warrant exception by listing four situations in which it would not be objectively reasonable for police officers to rely on a warrant. First, the Court stated that officers may not rely on a warrant issued on the basis of a deliberately false affidavit. Id. at 923, 104 S.Ct. at 3420. Officers also cannot rely on a warrant where the magistrate has wholly abandoned his neutral and detached role. Id. Further, a warrant may not be relied upon if it is so lacking in indicia of probable cause that reliance by police officers would be unreasonable. Id. Finally, officers will not be allowed to claim reliance on a warrant if it is “so facially deficient—i.e., in failing to particularize the place to be searched or the things to be seized — that the executing officers cannot reasonably presume it to be valid.” Id. It is important to note in regard to this last situation that the Court did not state that police officers can never reasonably rely on a facially deficient warrant. Indeed, in the companion case to Leon the Court held that the officers executing a search warrant were justified in relying on it even though it was facially deficient. Massachusetts v. Sheppard, 468 U.S. 981, 104 S.Ct. 3424, 82 L.Ed.2d 737 (1984).
The search warrant in Sheppard failed to describe with particularity the items to be seized. An officer had presented a magistrate with a warrant form for controlled substances because it was the only form he had access to during the weekend. The officer received the assurance of the magistrate that the necessary changes would be made so that the warrant authorized a search for evidence of a homicide. The magistrate, however, failed to make the requisite changes and the warrant executed by the officer was therefore technically deficient for failure to particularly describe the items to be seized. The Supreme Court upheld the officer’s reliance on the warrant stating that “the exclusionary rule should not be applied when the officer conducting the search acted in objectively reasonable reliance on a warrant issued by a detached and neutral magistrate that subsequently is determined to be invalid.” Id. at 987-88, 104 S.Ct. at 3427.
More recently, the Court in Garrison articulated the standards by which a search pursuant to a warrant should be judged. In Garrison, the Court upheld the validity of a search conducted at the wrong apartment. The warrant described the premises to be searched as “2036 Park Avenue third floor apartment.” Relying on records of *465the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company3 the police reasonably concluded that the third floor contained only one apartment and that it was occupied by Lawrence McWebb. Actually, there were two apartments on the third floor, the second belonging to Garrison. After Garrison’s apartment had been searched and narcotics and drug paraphernalia seized, the police realized that the third floor contained two apartments and that they had searched the wrong one. The Court affirmed Garrison’s conviction holding that a search warrant must be judged “in light of the information available to [the officers] at the time they acted.” 480 U.S. at-, 107 S.Ct. at 1017, 94 L.Ed.2d at 81. The Court reasoned that before the factual mistake was discovered, the officers reasonably perceived McWebb’s apartment and the third floor premises as one and the same. The officers’ actions were “consistent with a reasonable effort to ascertain and identify the place intended to be searched.” Id. at -, 107 S.Ct. at 1019, 94 L.Ed.2d at 83. Although Garrison argued that the officers should have been required to verify the particular layout of the premises, the Court rejected this argument.
III.
We find the search valid under the reasoning of Garrison.4 Additionally, the rationale of Leon and Sheppard support the admissibility of the evidence.
The affidavit clearly presented probable cause to search “Charlie’s” apartment in the 3901 Edgewood Road building. The error in the warrant arose from reliance on the records of Baltimore Gas and Electric Company which showed the apartment to be number 336 instead of 324. The issue presented is “whether that factual mistake invalidated a warrant that undoubtedly would have been valid if it had reflected a completely accurate understanding of the building’s floor plan.” Garrison, at-, 107 S.Ct. at 1017, 94 L.Ed.2d at 81. When the error was discovered the most prudent course would have been for the officers to apply for another warrant which corrected the error. But, as the district court found, the officers were justified in their belief that there was a good likelihood that if narcotics were in the apartment they would be destroyed or removed unless immediate action was taken.5
The warrant authorized the search of an apartment on the third floor of building 3901. There were only two apartments on that floor and one appeared to have never been occupied. The affidavit clearly identified the apartment to be searched as one that was occupied and Wilson’s statement confirmed the officers’ observations that it had to be the one on the right. No other apartment fit that description. Based on this information, “the right number was readily ascertainable.” United States v. Bentley, 825 F.2d 1104, 1109 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, — U.S.-, 108 S.Ct. 240, 98 L.Ed.2d 198 (1987). Under all of these circumstances, “there was no probability of a mistaken search, and we cannot conclude that the inaccurate address in the warrant should operate to invalidate the search.” United States v. Clement, 747 F.2d 460, 461 (8th Cir.1984).
An honest mistake was made by the police officers and their conduct should be gauged by the standard set forth in Garrison. As in Garrison the police verified their information regarding the identity of the apartment with the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company. The Court in Garrison reiterated that “ ‘[b]ecause many situations which confront officers in the course of executing their duties are more or less ambiguous, room must be allowed for some mistakes on their part. But the mistakes must be those of reasonable men, acting on *466facts leading sensibly to their conclusions of probability.’ ” 480 U.S. at - n. 11, 107 S.Ct. at 1018 n. 11, 94 L.Ed.2d at 82 n. 11 (quoting Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 176, 69 S.Ct. 1302, 1311, 93 L.Ed. 1879 (1949)).
Suppression of the evidence here would clearly run counter to the reasoning of Garrison. The Court there articulated the underlying rationale which compelled rejection of the argument for suppression.
It would brand as illegal the execution of any warrant in which, due to a mistake in fact, the premises intended to be searched vary from their description in the warrant. Yet in this case, in which the mistake in fact does not invalidate the warrant precisely because the police do not know of the mistake in fact when they apply for, receive, and prepare to execute the warrant, the police cannot reasonably know prior to their search that the warrant rests on a mistake in fact.
Id. 480 U.S. at - n. 14, 107 S.Ct. at 1019 n. 14, 94 L.Ed.2d at 83 n. 14.
The officers had a reasonable and objective basis on which to conclude that the warrant authorized a search of the apartment numbered 324. This determination was much more than a calculated guess and cannot be described as an effort to conduct a fishing expedition. The officers were justified in using common sense and reliable information known to them outside the four comers of the warrant and affidavit to assist in determining the place actually authorized by the warrant to be searched. They were not prohibited from making a good faith interpretation of the warrant “in light of the information available to them at the time they acted.” Garrison, at -, 107 S.Ct. at 1017, 94 L.Ed.2d at 81.
A search must be viewed against the requirements of the fourth amendment and the goals of the judicially created exclusionary rule. The framers of the Constitution included the requirement that the place to be searched be described with particularity to protect citizens from random intrusion by government officials and general exploratory searches. The extreme sanction of exclusion would be inappropriate since this was not a random exploratory search or intrusion without probable cause. The officers searched the apartment which, based upon reason and reliable information, they concluded the warrant intended.
Our holding is not contrary to Leon for that decision did not foreclose reliance on every warrant which can be classified as facially deficient. And, our conclusion is supported by the Court’s decision in Sheppard, where the failure to properly describe the items to be seized did not bar admission of probative evidence. While the warrant here was facially deficient because an incorrect apartment number was given, the deficiency was corrected prior to the search by personal observations and information on which one could reasonably and in good faith make a determination of the actual place the warrant authorized to be searched.
AFFIRMED.

. This case was consolidated on appeal with United States v. Bates, 843 F.2d 1388 (4th Cir. 1988) (per curiam). However, since Owens and Bates were tried separately and raised unrelated issues on appeal, separate opinions are filed.

. Owens does not contend that the 18-page affidavit supporting the search warrant did not supply ample probable cause. Her only challenge to the search is based on the fact that the apartment number was listed in the warrant as number 336 instead of 324.

. Ironically, this is the same utility company whose records incorrectly listed "Charlie’s" apartment as 336 instead of 324.

. The district court ruled on the motion to suppress prior to the filing of the Garrison decision in February 1987. The case was not cited by either party on this appeal.

.The district court recognized that if police officers had entered the apartment building pri- or to the search or contacted the building manager to verify the apartment number they could have jeopardized the investigation by alerting those under surveillance.