Court Opinion

ID: 9545467
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:13:06.589677+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:14:51.365520
License: Public Domain

Dolliver, J.
(dissenting) — Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1971), defines inadvertent as "1 : not turning the mind to a matter : heedless, negligent, inattentive ... 2 : unintentional". The trial court found:
6. Although the search warrant limited the search to marijuana, the officers conducted a wide open, general search for all controlled substances and drugs.
If the police officers were conducting a wide open search *721"for all controlled substances and drugs", it is simply an impossibility for the discovery of the drug phencyclidine to have been inadvertent.
The majority spends a good deal of time illuminating the obvious: that a search for marijuana is a "very thorough search" and that there is "little objective difference between an authorized search for marijuana and the general search referred to in finding of fact No. 6." Unless, however, the majority wishes to probe new frontiers in the business of lexicology, the "objective difference" between the general search for the drug authorized by the search warrant and the "general search" for all controlled substances and drugs is not relevant. What is relevant is the intentionality of those conducting the search. If the search was only for marijuana and in that general, wide ranging search other controlled substances and drugs were found, that discovery would be inadvertent. But if, as here, the unchallenged finding of the court is that the search was not just for marijuana but for all controlled substances and drugs, then there can be no inadvertence.
The majority writes, "[W]e would be blind to the realities of contemporary law enforcement practice if we did not realize that a policeman in the course of a valid search is entitled to keep his senses open to the possibility of contraband, weapons, or evidence of a crime." This is certainly so. But that is not what happened here. In contrast to the commendable vigilant police work applauded by the majority, here the police entered not searching for marijuana and merely keeping alert for other contraband but rather with the initial intent to search for all contraband. The discovery of phencyclidine was not from that serendipitous inadvertence which often accompanies thorough police work. The discovery came from the kind of police work which flouts the limitations of the search warrant and the Fourth Amendment, limitations which were, until now, the mandate of this court.
*722I dissent.
Rosellini and Utter, JJ., concur with Dolliver, J.
Reconsideration denied December 7, 1981.