Court Opinion

ID: 9703539
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 23:59:55.763666+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:11:50.171692
License: Public Domain

Morse, J.,
concurring. I concur and would also affirm, but disagree with the Court’s rejection, in Part I, of State v. Brown, 151 Vt. 533, 562 A.2d 1057 (1989), on the ground that its standard requires “a rigid quantitative analysis for determining probable cause.” I would not overrule the Brown probable cause standard. I will admit, however, that Brown’s, author could have made the standard clearer.
I believe Brown was correctly decided and, under the facts and circumstances there, any test less stringent than “more likely than not” would be unwarranted. This case presents similar circumstances, the Brown standard fits the case, and we not need deviate from it.
In Brown, there was evidence that a crime — felony possession of marijuana — had been committed and evidence — marijuana plants and defendant’s statements to neighbors — linking him to the crime. Based on this evidence, we ruled that a search *632warrant was justified because marijuana or evidence of its use or sale would more likely than not be found on defendant’s premises. The premises included the residence and “unoccupied sheds, storage buildings, trailers and junk autos.” Id. at 534, 562 A.2d at 1058. We wrote:
The standard of probable cause may depend on the nature of the matter under consideration — e.g., whether a crime has been, committed, whether a particular person has committed it, whether evidence of crime is to be found in a particular place, and so on. See generally 1 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 3.2(e) (2d ed. 1987). Our holding that the standard for “probable cause” is “more likely than not” is limited to situations, such as that obtaining here, where the pertinent inquiry is whether evidence of a crime will be found in a particular place.
Id. at 535 n.2, 562 A.2d at 1059 n.2 (emphasis added).
The words “in a particular place” were an inartful way of describing everything included in the premises that were the subject of the warrant application, that is, the residence and “sheds, storage buildings, trailers and junk autos.” The holding must be reasonably read in light of the facts of the case. If defendant in Brown had had other places to conceal the contraband, those too would have fallen under the rubric of “premises.” I view the “more likely than not” standard as applying to the likelihood of finding the sought-after fruits of the crime in any hiding place available to defendant. Exclusive focus on a particular place is not a necessary part of the Brown standard.
As stated in Brown, the standard of probable cause depends on the nature of the search’s objective. The objective here was similar to Brown. There was strong evidence that a crime had been committed and strong evidence linking defendant to that crime. The police sought an instrumentality of the crime at defendant’s premises, including the foundation or anywhere else available to defendant to stash the gun. The Brown standard was satisfied in this case, and we should affirm on that basis. Given the relatively narrow focus of places to search in Brown, it would have been unacceptable to define probable cause as less than a preponderance. Unless we struggle to give probable *633cause a reasonably tight definition in specific circumstances, it may become a mere hunch in all circumstances.
The standard of probable cause may, depending on the circumstances, differ from the Brown standard, but this issue should be left to future cases, keeping in mind the role probable cause plays in protecting privacy. See 1 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 3.2(e), at 601 (2d ed. 1987) (“fair compromise between privacy and law enforcement interests” in determining probable cause depends on how “substantial [the] danger that the privacy of an innocent person will be invaded”).