Court Opinion

ID: 9732861
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 16:40:22.08772+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:35.638245
License: Public Domain

White, C. J.,
concurring in result.
I concur in the result reached in this case. The defendant had no standing to raise the issue of the sufficiency of the affidavit of probable cause upon which the search warrant was issued. That portion of the opinion containing a discussion and holding that the affidavit of probable cause was invalid is pure dictum. As such, it is not binding on the court, in my opinion, and *9can only serve to becloud similar issues in future cases. The broad principles governing such cases have long since been announced. In my opinion, shadows have been cast upon the validity of the breadth of the holdings in United States v. Ventresca, 380 U. S. 102, 85 S. Ct. 741, 13 L. Ed. 2d 684, and the following case of Aguilar v. United States, 363 F. 2d 379, cert. den., 388 U. S. 921, 87 S. Ct. 2119, 18 L. Ed. 2d 1369. Factual color matching of these cases is almost impossible. I feel that necessary steps to do so should be avoided as they would becloud the clarity of approach in future cases. As de Tocqueville reminded us in his classic statement on judicial power when a court goes beyond the necessary pronouncements of the law in the special cases before it, it may perhaps assert a more important influence than that of the judge, but it ceases to represent the judicial power. See, I de Tocqueville, Democrary in America, Judicial Power in the United States, p. 94.