Court Opinion

ID: 9494317
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:35:05.371169+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:21.073585
License: Public Domain

KYLE, District Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. While I agree with the majority that the warrant Officer Harris executed was defective, I disagree with the majority’s view that United States v. Curry, 911 F.2d 72 (1990), “directly controls this case.” Evaluating this case against the standard articulated in what seems to be a more apposite case, United States v. Clement, 747 F.2d 460 (8th Cir. 1984), I can only conclude that, under the totality of the circumstances, Officer Harris did not act in “objectively reasonable reliance on a subsequently invalidated warrant.” United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 922, 104 S.Ct. 3406, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984). Indeed, Officer Harris does not appear to have relied on the warrant at all.
The facts of this case do not fit the pattern presented in Curry, in which a detective entered and searched a private residence with a warrant that had no address — no particularized description of the place to be searched. Given the fact that the warrant was plainly deficient on its face, this. Court analyzed the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Leon and concluded that, depending on the circumstances of the case, Leon’s “good faith” *810exception might apply even “where a warrant is found invalid on the ground that it is insufficiently particular.” Curry, 911 F.2d at 77 (emphasis added).
In this case, as the majority has observed, the warrant Officer Harris obtained satisfied the Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirement. Here, the problem is that the place the warrant authorized to be searched — 3108 South 62nd Street, Apartment #2 — is not the place the officers intended to and actually did search — 3202 South 62nd Street, Apartment #22. This Court has squarely addressed the problem of a warrant that inaccurately describes the place to be searched in Clement. There, the officers obtained a warrant to search “the apartment of Vance Clements, apartment No. 4 at 3300 Irvine Avenue.” Clement, 747 F.2d at 461. -Clement, the apartment manager, had been living in apartment No. 4 but, at the time the warrant issued, was living in apartment No. 3, adjacent to No. 4. Id. When the officers came to execute the warrant, they immediately went to apartment No. 3, having been there the day before. Id. Upon entering, they seized a firearm in- plain view. Id. Clement moved to suppress the gun because the warrant authorized a search of apartment 4, not apartment 3. Id.
This Court identified several factors it had “relied upon in upholding searches conducted under the authority of a warrant inaccurately describing the place to be searched,” id., including
(1) whether the address in the warrant, although incorrect, still describes the same piece of property; (2) whether the premises intended to be searched are adjacent to those described and are all under .the control of the defendant; and (3) whether other parts of the description which are correct limit the place to be searched to one place.
Id. Also noted as being of particular importance from an earlier decision was the fact that the agents personally knew which premises were intended to be searched. Id. (citing United States v. Gitcho, 601 F.2d 369, 372 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 871, 100 S.Ct. 148, 62 L.Ed.2d 96 (1979)).
Applying the Clement factors to this case, it is evident that the inaccuracies in the warrant at issue here are far more glaring than those in Clement. There is no question that the address “3108 South 62nd Street, Apartment # 2” does not describe the same piece of property as “3202 South 62nd Street, Apartment # 22.” Nor does it appear that 3108 South 62nd Street, Apartment # 2 is adjacent to 3202 South 62nd Street, Apartment #22, certainly not in the way that apartment No. 3 was adjacent to apartment No. 4 in Clement. The evidence indicates that the apartment actually described in the warrant was no longer under the defendant’s control; indeed, the defendant had moved from that address and no longer resided there. Finally, no other part of the description in the warrant was correct. Thus, none of the factors outlined in Clement supports upholding the search in this case.
That leaves only the fact that Officer Harris personally knew which premises were to be searched. In the analyses of whether the “good faith” exception applied in Gitcho, Clement, and Curry, it was important that the officer who directed the search had also prepared the application because “it is appropriate to take into account the knowledge that an officer in the searching officer’s position would have possessed.” See Curry, 911 F.2d at 78 (citing *811Massachusetts v. Sheppard, 468 U.S. 981, 989 n. 6, 104 S.Ct. 3424, 82 L.Ed.2d 737 (1984)). However, the fact that the executing officer also had first-hand knowledge of the place to be searched should not, standing alone, be enough to excuse the unconstitutional search of a home using a warrant that describes a wholly separate location. Indeed, it cannot without reading the particularity requirement out of the Fourth Amendment, for under those circumstances, it would not matter what the warrant said — if anything at all — about the place to be searched.3
In the end, it is clear that Officer Harris did not rely on what was written on the face of the warrant when he directed the search of defendant’s apartment. Therefore, I cannot conclude that Officer Harris acted in “objectively reasonable reliance on a subsequently invalidated warrant,”' see Leon, 468 U.S. at 922, 104 S.Ct. 3405, particularly where, had he read the warrant at any time before knocking on the door at 3202 South 62nd Street, the warrant’s defect would have been obvious to him. This case just does not seem to fit within the Leon “good faith” exception.4 Accordingly, I dissent.

. In concluding that the admission of the evidence in Curry was not contrary to the purpose of the exclusionary rule, this Court adopted the reasoning of the First Circuit in United States v. Bonner, stating that "the responsibility for the inadvertent omission of the address on the warrant itself, must be borne by the [issuing official], as the final reviewing authority.” Curry, 911 F.2d at 78 (quoting United States v. Bonner, 808 F.2d 864, 867 (1st Cir.1986)). The majority reiterates this position today. The reasoning in Curry and Bonner does not precisely fit this case, however.
Bonner relied on the Supreme Court’s opinion in Massachusetts v. Sheppard, 468 U.S. 981, 104 S.Ct. 3424, 82 L.Ed.2d 737 (1984), in which the issuing judge told the applying officer that necessary changes to the warrant form would be made and then, in front of the officer, made changes to the warrant. Sheppard, 468 U.S. at 989, 104 S.Ct. 3424. The Supreme Court concluded that the officer’s actions were objectively reasonable, “re-fus[ing] to rule that an officer is required to disbelieve a judge who has just advised him, by word and by action, that the warrant he possesses authorizes him to conduct the search he has requested.” Id. at 989-990, 104 S.Ct. 3424. Thus, the Supreme Court held that "[suppressing evidence because the judge failed to make all the necessary clerical corrections despite his assurances that such changes would be made will not serve the deterrent function that the exclusionary rule was designed to achieve.” Id. at 990-91, 104 S.Ct. 3424.
In this case, however, the incorrect address had been written on the warrant by Officer Harris at the time it was presented to the issuing judge. Harris had filled out the warrant using the defendant’s old address and failed to update the warrant after learning that the defendant had moved. If the purpose of the exclusionary rule is to deter the errors of police officers, surely that purpose is served by excluding the evidence in this case.

. The execution of the warrant might fit within the Leon "good faith” exception had (1) Officer Harris given the warrant to a colleague for execution, (2) that officer gone to the address stated on the warrant, and (3) found drugs at that address. Under those facts, the executing officer — who was not the officer who applied for the warrant — could be said to have acted in "objectively reasonable reliance” on a facially valid warrant that later turned out to be unsupported by probable cause.