Court Opinion

ID: 9848602
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:23:20.524611+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:29.125598
License: Public Domain

SEARS, Chief Justice,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
The majority holds that the authorization to search for and seize “notes” and “papers” and “evidence” of the crimes of murder and cruelty to children did not amount to an unconstitutional general warrant under the particular facts of this case.1 I concur with the result reached by the majority as to “evidence” of the crimes of murder and cruelty to children. I dissent as to “notes” and “papers.” On all other issues, I concur with the majority.
*1911. As the majority correctly describes, each of the warrants in this case contained an authorization to search for and seize “evidence” of the crimes of murder, cruelty to children, or both. The majority stresses that the “list of specific items” preceding the general phrase regarding “evidence” of the specified crimes “ ‘provided guidelines for the officers conducting the search.’ ”2 The majority reasons that, under “ ‘the canon of construction known as ejusdem generis,’ ”3 the general phrase would take on a meaning that is sufficiently limited to satisfy the particularity requirement of the Fourth Amendment. Black’s Law Dictionary defines ejusdem generis as follows:
A canon of construction that when a general word or phrase follows a list of specifics, the general word or phrase will be interpreted to include only items of the same type as those listed.4
Thus, the majority interprets the phrase regarding “evidence” of the crimes of cruelty to children and murder as being limited to the items of the same type as the specific items preceding that phrase. Stated differently, the general phrase authorizes the search for and seizure of only items that are logically related to the items specifically named in the warrant. Given that limited construction of the general phrase, I concur with the majority’s conclusion that its inclusion in the warrants in this case did not render them unlawful general warrants.
2. Most of the items specifically named in the warrants were described adequately. However, I believe that the general authorization in each of the four warrants to seize unspecified “notes” and “papers” lacked sufficient detail to satisfy the particularity requirement of the Fourth Amendment.5 Contrary to the suggestion of the majority, the warrants’ specifying murder and cruelty to children as the crimes likely committed does not lend sufficient particularity to the general words “notes” and “papers,” because the crimes speci*192fied would not generate, in the mind of a reasonable police officer, an implied, common-sense list of predictable documentary evidence that would be readily apparent to the officer when executing such a warrant. Holding otherwise would authorize an indiscriminate rummaging through all of the documents at a named location based on a showing of probable cause6 that some particular document connected to the crime likely exists. In fact, the officer that obtained three of the four warrants at issue in this case actually testified in the hearing held in Reaves’s co-defendant’s case that she always tries to include phrases such as “any writings” and that she does not feel in any way limited in the items she can seize under such language. I would hold that the trial court must suppress any evidence that would not have been seized if the offending portions of the four warrants generically describing “notes” and “papers” had been omitted.
Decided July 11, 2008.
Gary V. Bowman, Christopher E. Chapman, for appellant.
Tommy K. Floyd, District Attorney, James L. Wright III, Assistant District Attorney, Thurbert E. Baker, Attorney General, Susan V Boleyn, Senior Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.
I am authorized to state that Presiding Justice Hunstein joins in this separate opinion in full and that Justice Melton joins in Division 2 only.

 U. S. Const. Amend. IV (“[N]o Warrants shall issue. . . [without] particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”).

 Majority op. at p. 186 (quoting State v. Reid, 687 P2d 861, 867 (Wash. App. 1984)). See Lance v. State, 275 Ga. 11, 21 (19) (b) (560 SE2d 663) (2002) (quoting United States v. Buck, 813 F2d 588, 591 (II) (2d Cir. 1987), for the proposition that “ ‘boilerplate’ language in a warrant” is more likely to be found permissible when “it was preceded by a list of specific items to be sought”). See also Andresen v. Maryland, 427 U. S. 463, 479-482 (III) (96 SC 2737, 49 LE2d 627) (1976) (upholding a clause in a warrant that authorized a search for evidence of the crime of false pretenses regarding a specifically-named parcel of land and that followed an exhaustive list of other, related items to be searched for and seized).

 Majority op. at p. 186 (quoting United States v. Pindell, 336 F3d 1049, 1053 (II) (D.C. Cir. 2003)).

 Black’s Law Dictionary, p. 556 (8th ed. 2004).

 See 2 LaFave, Search and Seizure, § 4.6 (d), pp. 633-636 (4th ed. 2004).

 Although not raised by Rodney Reaves in his interim review, I agree with the argument made by his co-defendant, Charlott Reaves, that no probable cause was shown for a search for “notes” and “papers.” See Reaves v. State, 284 Ga. 236 (1) (b) (664 SE2d 207) (2008).