Court Opinion

ID: 9531697
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:14:00.832266+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:34.112621
License: Public Domain

DUBOFSKY, Justice,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent.
First, I question whether this appeal concerns evidence which is a substantial part of the proof of the charge pending against the defendant. C.A.R. 4.1(a). By taking this interlocutory appeal, the People certify that the evidence which the district court suppressed — photographs, videotapes, and a diagram of the house — is a substantial part of the proof of the charge against the defendant. However, the district court did not suppress the gun, notes, whiskey bottle, blood-soaked sheets, etc. Moreover, the district court ruled that the officers who first entered the house could testify about what they observed.
Second, I believe that the district court exercised its discretion reasonably in suppressing evidence which was not essential and which was obtained by police criminal laboratory technicians prior to the issuance of a search warrant. There was no consent by the defendant or a resident of the house to a warrantless search of the premises for the purpose of making diagrams, photographs, or videotapes, nor were there any exigencies requiring such a search. Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385, 98 S.Ct. 2408, 57 L.Ed.2d 290 (1978). The house and its contents had been secured, awaiting the arrival of the search warrant. There was no need for the criminal laboratory technicians to *534make the videotapes, photographs, and measurements at issue here without a search warrant.
Finally, the majority directs the district court to determine whether the police exceeded the scope of the plain view doctrine in taking photographs, videotaping, and dia-graming the scene of the crime because the record, according to the majority, does not allow us to determine whether the photographs or measurements included more of the defendant’s home than was justified under the plain view doctrine. Clearly, with respect to the measurements, the record discloses that the three-foot by five-foot diagram of the house depicts the entire house, and the officers’ testimony does not indicate that the plain view doctrine would support the taking of such extensive measurements prior to the issuance of a search warrant. In addition, the record discloses that the officers rearranged the notes and opened the cylinder of the revolver for the purpose of taking photographs.
I would uphold the district court’s suppression order.
I am authorized to say that QUINN, J., joins me in this dissent.