Court Opinion

ID: 9653347
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:44:39.561372+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:55.799176
License: Public Domain

SEILER, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. The loose-leaf desk calendar, Exhibit 48, was not described in the search warrant. Its warrantless seizure was therefore per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment, as the principal opinion concedes, unless it can be brought under one of the exceptions. The state carries a heavy burden to show that the seizing of the desk calendar falls within the particular exception. Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 455, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971); Vale v. Louisiana, 399 U.S. 30, 34, 90 S.Ct. 1969, 26 L.Ed.2d 409 (1970). This, for the reasons set forth below, the state does not succeed in doing, and the case should therefore be reversed and remanded, as we cannot say beyond a reasonable doubt that the jury verdict was not influenced by the desk calendar. The jury indubitably was influenced in the weight it attached to the handwriting evidence as to the authorship of Exhibit 50, the handwritten note, by the fact that the calendar from which the note apparently came was found in defendant’s home.
The principal opinion upholds the seizure and admission of the desk calendar in evidence on the plain view doctrine, saying that it was apparent to the police they had evidence before them incriminating the defendant and the discovery of the evidence was inadvertent.1
In hindsight, after the pieces of paper were assembled by technician Cayton two *723days after the crime, and as we see his work before us in Exhibit 50, it is easy to see that what we have is a page for Thursday, October 24, 1974, from a loose-leaf book type desk calendar, about three' and one half by six inches in size, with two uniformly sized perforations near the left margin to accommodate the two rings by which the separate sheets of such desk calendars are held in loose-leaf sequence. The hand-written message is on this sheet.
However, Sgt. Morton, who seized the desk calendar, did not have the page before him in assembled form. All he had was the disjointed scraps of paper brought to him by detective Starr. Even so, the principal opinion states “[A]ny two or three of the larger pieces when considered separately, without question indicate they are parts of a page from a small calendar.” The principal opinion states further: “It is important to note that the unassembled pieces contained printed words and figures clearly identifying them for even the most casual observer ... as parts of a page from a calendar” and points out that the pieces showed the date October 24,1974. The two uniformly sized perforations, mentioned earlier for the binder or arch rings on a loose-leaf book-type desk calendar, are also plain to be seen in two of the pieces of paper.
Yet the principal opinion, after concluding that it was apparent to Morton when he saw the calendar that he had evidence before him incriminating the defendant because of what is set forth above, then states that “Morton had no probable cause to believe a desk calendar pad was the source of the scraps” and that “nothing supports the assumption that he realized that the unas-sembled scraps represented a page from a desk calendar . . so it is asserted, the discovery of the evidence was inadvertent.
It is difficult to understand how Morton could have no idea the scraps were from a desk calendar and at the same time recognize instantly that the desk calendar on the telephone stand in defendant’s house was evidence incriminating the defendant. No explanation of this contradiction is offered. The state cannot have it both ways.
As stated earlier, in hindsight, with all the facts before us, knowing as we do now that the page for October 24, 1974 was missing from the desk calendar, it is easy to see a connection between the scraps and Exhibit 50, the desk calendar. But Morton did not have all these facts, and for us to look at it as though he did is to use the results of the seizure to justify it in the first place. This approach would do away with probable cause and permit police to justify any search on the basis of what they found during its course.
Morton testified that Starr accompanied him when Morton obtained the search warrant. So presumably Morton knew about the scraps of paper at that time, which was shortly before 9:00 a. m. according to his testimony. As the principal opinion states, when Starr found the scraps of paper he immediately took them to Morton. Yet Morton testified that he obtained the search warrant not because of anything he learned from Starr, but as a result of his earlier conversations that morning with defendant at the police station, where no mention had been made by defendant or anyone else about scraps of paper. The question was asked Mortion: “Now, as a result of your conversation with Mr. Clark earlier that morning on the 7th, did you obtain a search warrant?”, to which he replied, “Yes, sir; I did.”
When Morton was questioned as to why he seized the desk calendar, he did not advance any of the reasons discussed or deductions drawn in the opinions herein. The question was asked: “And while this conversation was taking place in the family room [the examiner was referring to the conversation between Morton and defendant’s wife], what, if anything, did you observe that led you to believe, might be connected with this crime?”, to which he answered, “A desk calendar pad that was setting [sic] on the telephone stand.” No further statement appears in the record as to why Morton believed the calendar pad “might” be connected with the crime. *724There would be no limit to what the officers could seize for later scrutiny if all the officer need do is to think it “might” be connected with the crime and then later, if it turns out that he was correct, thereby justify the seizure. Morton’s “might” as the basis for seizing the calendar is the equivalent of a “hunch” or a “stab in the dark.” His hunch turned out to be.remarkably prescient, but the courts cannot determine search and seizure questions on the basis of rewarding a police officer whenever he has a lucky hunch. If that is to be the standard, we can forget about probable cause.
The point I am trying to make is further demonstrated by the fact that when the state offered the desk calendar, Exhibit 48, in evidence, it did so not on the basis that it was simply a desk calendar (which is what Morton seized) but on the basis that it was a desk calendar with the page for October 24 missing (which Morton could not have seen or known when he seized it). Something more had to be done with the calendar before the state could use it — the pages had to be turned, it had to be opened and the missing page uncovered. This is equivalent to seizing a billfold which is in plain view and then opening the billfold, searching it, and using the contents against the defendant. The courts have, held this is not permissible. See United States v. Berenguer, 562 F.2d 206, 210 (2d Cir. 1977), a narcotics prosecution, where defendant was arrested in his apartment and the agents seized a billfold lying on a bureau. The agents opened the billfold and found $3200 in $100 bills. The trial court permitted introduction of the bills against defendant, under the plain view doctrine. On appeal, the court held it was error to admit the bills, citing Coolidge v. New Hampshire, supra, saying at 562 F.2d 210: “It is the third requirement [of Coolidge ] that is clearly missing in this case. The billfold offered no immediately apparent evidence of an inculpatory nature. It was only after the billfold itself had been searched that the large denomination currency was revealed . . . ”
It may appear to be a fine line to draw here between the desk calendar as Morton seized it and the desk calendar as it was offered in evidence to show the missing page, but there is an important interest to every citizen in requiring that the state cannot make a warrantless seizure unless the object seized clearly comes within one of the. permissible exceptions. Here the calendar did not.
The difficulty with the state’s position in this case is the undeniable fact that the desk calendar, resting on the telephone stand, in defendant’s home, was an entirely innocuous and neutral object, not in any way indicating any criminal activity on the part of the defendant. There was nothing about it as it sat there to indicate that the page for October 24 was missing and without that the desk calendar was of no significance. To be incriminating evidence the calendar had to be one with a particular page missing. Its apparent innocuousness is clear when we consider that had it contained a page for October 24 it would have had no significance whatever, yet it would not have looked any different to Morton when he spotted it on the telephone stand.
It is conceded that not until much later, when the crime laboratory people riffled through the pages of the calendar, was it discovered that the page for October 24, 1974 was missing. No contention is made by the state that as part of the plain view of the desk calendar by Morton on the telephone stand he could see that the critical page, October 24,1974, was missing. In the course of the search for the articles mentioned in the search warrant, Morton saw the desk calendar, but not its contents. That required thumbing through the calendar, which did not occur until at least two days later, after technician Cayton had assembled the pieces as they now appear in Exhibit 48. Cayton testified that he was the one who examined the calendar as to whether there were any missing pages in it. He said that he found several pages missing, one of which, October 24, 1974, “was missing as you open the calendar.”
*725The principal opinion attaches no significance to the fact that further examination of the calendar pad was required to establish its probative quality. The only authority cited in support of this position is People v. Caruso, 2 Ill.App.3d 80, 276 N.E.2d 112 (1971), but the facts in that case are far from similar to the present ease. The Caruso case involved illegal gambling activities. There, federal agents, on the premises by virtue of a search warrant for stolen property, overheard, on an extension, a telephone caller ask defendant, “Are the results in for today?” and his response, “Call me back later.” The agent then observed defendant in a rear bedroom at a desk with a telephone and an electric blender which was turned on. Strewn on top of the desk were racing forms, newspapers, and numerous slips of paper with numbers and figures written on them. About this time the telephone rang again and the agent heard the caller say, “This is 510. Give me 9-4-2 in the tenth. Are the results in for today?” The agent told the caller to check back in about five minutes. The agent then returned to the bedroom and saw scraps of paper in the liquid contents of the electric blender, but could not determine what had been written on them. The local police were notified and when they arrived they arrested defendant and seized the slips of paper and the racing publications.
The court upheld the seizure of the slips of paper, pointing out that when they seized the slips, the police knew from the agent the nature of the conversations heard over the telephone, the defendant was discovered in a back room near a telephone, they observed racing forms and newspapers in the room and numerous slips of paper with notations thereon, both on top of the desk and immersed in the blender. The court said that the inability of the police officers to identify positively the slips of paper as record evidence of bets did not render the seizure unlawful “where surrounding circumstances give rise to a reasonable belief that such slips of paper constitute evidence of a crime.” 276 N.E.2d at 113.
In the Caruso case, the slips of papers were what was seized. The police could see they had notations on them, under circumstances that indicated illegal gambling was going on, and the slips in the electric blender were in process of being destroyed. Gambling paraphernalia is contraband and subject to seizure. The Caruso case is a clear case of seizure of evidence in plain view indicating criminal activity on the part of the defendant.
The case before us involves slips of paper, true, but not in the sense of the slips of paper seized in the Caruso case. It was not the slips of paper which were seized by Sgt. Morton. Morton seized a desk calendar pad which was not contraband and which as it lay in front of him did not indicate any criminal activity whatever on the part of defendant. What Morton could see of the desk calendar looked the same, regardless of whether the page for October 24 was missing or not. It was not until it was later discovered by searching through the pages that the page for October 24 was missing, that the calendar became incriminating. The incriminating part of the calendar was not in plain view, whereas the incriminating evidence seized in the Caruso case — the betting slips — was contraband and in plain view.
I do not believe the cases support the seizure of the desk calendar under the plain view theory here relied on. In Schergen v. State, 371 So.2d 575 (Fla.App.1979), defendant was convicted of possession of obscene materials. Armed with a search warrant authorizing a search of the premises for a particular film, “Knights of the Night — The Sling”, the police entered the premises and set up film projectors and began to search for the specified film. In the process the officers screened a number of reels of film, all of which they seized as obscene, as well as eleven copies of the film described in the original warrant. The officers sought to justify the seizure of the films not described on the theory that they were in a place where they had a legal right to be and that the additional items seized were in plain view. The court, on appeal, reversed the conviction as to the additional films seized, *726saying that the evidence should have been suppressed. The court held the plain view exception did not apply, saying at 371 So.2d 577: “If the objectionable contents of these films were truly in plain view, it would not have been necessary to remove them from their boxes and place them in a projector for viewing.”
Similarly in the case before us, if the incriminating nature of the desk calendar were truly in plain view, it would not have been necessary to remove the calendar so that technician Cayton could search through it several days later after he had assembled the scraps of paper into a complete page to determine that the page in question was missing from the calendar.
For other cases illustrating the point that it takes more than for an object simply to be in plain view to make its seizure admissible, that such evidence is inadmissible where, as here, the incriminating nature of the evidence in plain view could be appreciated only by delving into the portions of the object seized which were not in plain view, see People v. Hamilton, 74 Ill.2d 457, 24 Ill.Dec. 849, 386 N.E.2d 53 (1979), a possession of heroin case, where the state offered various justifications for opening defendant’s locked briefcase at the hospital where defendant had been taken for injuries when his car ran off the highway. The heroin was found in the brief case. The state sought to invoke the plain view doctrine. The court held to the contrary, saying at 24 Ill.Dec. 856, 386 N.E.2d 60: “In our case the officer had no authority to open [the] briefcase in which the defendant had an expectation of privacy. Had the briefcase been sitting open on the counter, with its contents in view, then the plain view exception would have applied. Here, however, the officer could only discover the evidence after opening the briefcase . . . The plain view exception is not applicable under the facts of this case.”
Nor is it applicable in the case at bar, where the desk calendar was not open to the only place in the entire calendar which could constitute evidence against defendant.
See, also, United States v. Jackson, 576 F.2d 749 (8th Cir. 1978) (a prosecution for conspiracy relating to stolen securities in interstate commerce). When defendant was arrested in his office the agent seized a file drawer full of documents and a briefcase resting on top of the file cabinet. Later the FBI searched through the drawer and briefcase, finding two documents which were introduced at trial. The trial court admitted the evidence, on the plain view theory, saying the contents of the cabinet were visible without the need to open drawers and the briefcase was on top of the cabinet. On appeal, the Eighth Circuit held the evidence was illegally obtained, saying at 576 F.2d 753: “Although the file drawer and the brief case that the agent seized were perhaps in plain view, the contents of each were not. The plain view doctrine does not authorize search and seizure of items contained within objects like attache cases, file cabinets, and luggage that are themselves in ‘plain view’ ... It [the plain view doctrine] cannot be used as justification for rummaging through file cabinets, even with probable cause to believe that incriminating evidence lies within
See, also, People v. Denwiddie, 50 Ill.App.3d 184, 8 Ill.Dec. 592, 597, 365 N.E.2d 978, 983 (1977) (an armed robbery conviction). Defendant was arrested in the living room of his studio apartment. One of the officers noticed near a couch a pair of shoes which appeared to contain some business cards. Hoping to identify another man who was found hiding in the bathroom and who was also arrested at the same time, the officer picked up the shoes and tilted them so that the cards fell out on a coffee table. The cards bore the name of Richard Steller, one of the robbery victims, whose wallet was taken in the robbery. On appeal the court held that the identification cards found in the shoes should have been suppressed, observing that the officer was not able to read the cards until he tilted the shoe and caused the cards to tumble onto the table. “The fact that Gerdes saw some cards in a shoe cannot justify their seizure *727under the plain view doctrine where the criminal character of the evidence was not apparent on mere surface inspection . .”
The state in the instant case has failed to prove that the absence of the page for October 24 from the desk calendar, as distinguished from the desk calendar itself, was in plain view or inadvertently discovered in the course of a search properly limited to the items named in the search warrant. Sgt. Morton would have had no right to riffle through the pages of the calendar as he stood by the telephone stand in defendant’s home. The desk calendar could properly be considered private papers of the defendant, in which defendant was entitled to a reasonable expectation of privacy, particular when in his home. It was not properly subject to a warrantless examination of its contents. People frequently and customarily use calendars of the type before us as a record of events, transactions, memo-randa and for notations of personal and business matters. The plain view doctrine does not give the officers the right to riffle through personal papers to locate information otherwise hidden from view.
The element of Coolidge, supra, that it be apparent to the police that they have evidence before them incriminating the defendant, “in essence, amounts to a requirement that police have probable cause to believe the evidence is incriminating before they seize it”, State v. Wilson, 279 Md. 189, 367 A.2d 1223, 1227 (1977). On the same subject see United States v. Gray, 484 F.2d 352, 356 (6th Cir. 1973), cert. den. 414 U.S. 1158, 94 S.Ct. 916, 39 L.Ed.2d 110 (1974), stating: “[I]t must be ‘immediately apparent’ to the police that the object is in fact incriminating or the seizure of the object would be without probable cause and would turn the search into a general or exploratory one.”
As earlier stated, Sgt. Morton had no explanation as to why he seized the desk calendar other than that it “might” be connected with the crime. This hunch or suspicion on his part, however, was not confirmed by actual observation of the desk calendar, because it could not be told by what he could see whether the page for October" 24 was missing. It took a later investigation of the desk calendar at headquarters, to make the determination. Thus, it is clear that no probable cause existed to seize the calendar on the spur of the moment as Morton proceeded to do. It was physically impossible for the fact which would have made the desk calendar incriminating — the absence of the page for October 24 — to have been “immediately apparent” to Sgt. Morton.
By reason of the erroneous admission of the desk calendar into evidence, I would reverse and remand for a new trial.

. It is important that we understand exactly what sort of object the desk calendar in question is. While counsel have been unable to locate and to produce it for our examination (it was an exhibit at the trial) I am confident it is the kind of book-type desk calendar in common use on desks everywhere and that virtually every reader of this opinion has seen and used such a desk calendar many times. Sgt. Morton described it as a “standard desk calendar,” found in “a great many offices.” From the calendar page before us, Exhibit 50, with the two uniformly sized perforations on the left margin, the page being approximately 3⅛ inches wide and 6 inches long, we can see that the desk calendar in question is the loose-leaf book type, where the pages are arranged in proper sequence, from the first to the last day of the year. The calendar for the entire month of October is in the upper left corner of the page in a space, about 1¼ inches square, with the day of the week, Thursday, at the top of the page and the date — 24—in large red numbers at the top right and the month and year in smaller black letters just below the date. The remainder of the page is blank (except that in our case it has been written on), save at the bottom of the page, where the date — Thursday, October 24 — again appears with the figure 297 at the lower left corner and 68 at the lower right corner. Starting on the right hand side (as shown by the position of the perforations in Exhibit 50), the pages are turned to the left, book fashion, sliding on two rings or arches. As the year progresses, the pile of pages on the right diminishes and that on the left increases. What a person sees when he looks at such a calendar is the page for whatever date to which it is open. He does not see any of the other pages or dates. Assuming that defendant’s desk calendar was kept current, which would be the normal practice (the state, which has the burden of proof offered no evidence to the contrary) the desk calendar would have been open to December 7, 1974 when Morton seized it, and the page for October 24, 1974 (or the absence of said page) would be out of sight, buried beneath the pages for the 44 days which had passed in the interim, completely out of view. Even if the desk calendar were not open to December 7, 1974, the state conceded it was not open to where the page for October 24, 1974 should have been. In other words, Sgt. Morton could not tell when he saw the desk calendar whether the page for October 24, 1974 was missing or not.