Court Opinion

ID: 9578025
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:40:43.102195+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:22:23.056389
License: Public Domain

YANDE WALLE, Justice,
concurring specially.
Neither of the trial courts involved in these appeals considered the application of United States v. Leon, 468 U.S.-, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984), in reaching their separate conclusions because the decision in Leon was released either after the trial court’s decision [county court] or simultaneously with the trial court’s decision [district court]. The application of Leon would be of prime significance because, as the majority opinion observes, and with which observation I agree, the search warrant does not meet the standard of the “totality of the circumstances” approach adopted in Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983). Therefore, we are discussing an issue which has not been presented to nor considered by the trial court. Although that is contrary to normal procedure in this court, it appears to me that the issue is essentially one of law. A remand to the trial court for consideration of the application of the “good-faith” exception announced in Leon, although it would provide us with the legal analysis of the learned trial judges, would again place the issue before us on appeal with little additional facts or evidence to assist us.
With respect to the application of Leon to these cases, I am not so convinced, as is the majority, that the “officer’s reliance on the magistrate’s determination of probable cause was objectively unreasonable, he having supplied the information on which the search warrant was issued, ...” Although, as the majority opinion points out, even if analyzed in a “commonsense, non-hypertechnical way, the affidavit in the instant case does not supply anything more than a most tenuous and conclusory suggestion that the Thompsons were involved in criminal activity,” Leon nevertheless reversed a decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that concluded the affidavit in that ease contained no facts indicating the basis for the informants’ statements concerning Leon’s criminal activities and was devoid of information establishing the informants’ reliability and that these defects were not cured by the police investigation. Despite those facts the Supreme Court determined that the reliance by the police officers on the warrant was “objectively reasonable.”
The majority opinion may thus appear to apply the “good-faith” exception in a more narrow manner than the Supreme Court did in Leon. However, I agree with the majority opinion that in this instance, contrary to Leon, the affidavit contains no indication as to what, if anything, the officer did to verify that the informant had, in fact, given the officers information which had led to a previous arrest and conviction of Stockert and that Stockert was presently *375serving time in the State Penitentiary for that conviction. Had the affidavit revealed clearly that such information was verified by Deputy Sheriff Berg, in order to determine that there was an informant in the Stockert matter, that only the person who was the informant in that matter would have had the information, and thus attempted to establish the reliability of the informant, the officer’s reliance on the warrant would have been “objectively reasonable.” Instead, as the majority notes, the information verified was information that would have been commonly known to most people living in an area with so few people.
Perhaps information concerning the reliability of the informant was known by the Deputy Sheriff. If so, it should have been revealed in the affidavit. The United States Supreme Court has not extended the “good-faith” exception to encompass the subjective attitude of the police officer. Although I suspect that the Deputy Sheriff and others relying on the search warrant in this instance were acting in good faith, as that term might ordinarily be used, we must nevertheless view it from an objective standpoint. In so doing, it may appear that we are giving little more than token recognition to the “good-faith” exception to the exclusionary rule and that our application of that exclusion will be little different from the “totality of the circumstances” standard of review of Gates, supra.