Court Opinion

ID: 9696442
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:48:09.867428+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:22.429081
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Spaeth, J.:
The hearing judge found that the officer who applied *559for the warrant had made changes in the affidavit after the warrant was issued. In making this finding the judge rejected the officer’s testimony at the suppression hearing that the changes had been made before the warrant was issued. It is not surprising that the judge rejected the officer’s testimony. On direct examination the officer said he made the changes only because he had inadvertently transposed the last two figures of the telephone number, and that when “I proof-read the affidavits then that’s when I picked my mistake up and corrected it.” (Record, 12A.) On cross-examination, however, it was pointed out that the last three figures of the telephone number had been changed, and that the changes had been made on a different typewriter.
The majority, “find[ing] nothing magical about a telephone number,” Majority Opinion at 558, nevertheless upholds the warrant because, it concludes, even without the telephone number “the affidavit set forth sufficient circumstances to show that the informant is reliable and that his belief that illegal activity is going on is substantiated.” Id. I cannot agree.
The way to decide whether a misstated fact (here, the telephone number) is material is to delete it from the warrant, and see what remains. The majority says that what remains includes the following: “the informant knew the address of the apartment from which the operation took place;” “the informant knew that this operation ran between 11:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday.” (Majority opinion at 556-557.) If the informant did know these facts, however, it was because the informant knew the telephone number (the officer stated in the affidavit that “[t]he informant personally knows the party involved in this operation and the location of the above telephone number.”) (Majority opinion at 553; emphasis added.) Delete the telephone number, and the source of the informant’s knowledge becomes a matter of speculation.
Suppose the following: An informant tells an officer that he has spoken to D at telephone number 823-4777. *560The officer recites this “fact” in the application, and on the strength of the application, obtains a warrant. After executing the warrant, the officer learns that D’s telephone number is really 823-4694. He thereupon alters the application for the warrant, changing “823-4777” to read “823-4694.”
This supposititious case is indistinguishable from the present case. The officer’s conduct demonstrates that he at least considered the telephone number most material: he mentioned it five times in his application, and found it necessary to change the number as many times. True, in the present case we cannot tell what figures were replaced by the figures “694.” Whatever they were, however, the telephone number as presented to the issuing authority was not the correct telephone number; it was not even close, for it was three figures off. Had the issuing authority known this fact, he could not have regarded the informant as reliable; neither, for that matter, could the officer applying for the warrant.
There is, however, another basis for my disagreement with the majority, which is more fundamental than my disagreement about the adequacy of so much of the application as remains after the telephone number is deleted.
When an officer obtains a warrant, it is our duty to construe it sympathetically, and not in a critical or legalistic spirit. United States v. Ventresca, 380 U.S. 102, 108 (1965); Commonwealth v. Thomas, 448 Pa. 42, 53, 292 A.2d 352, 357 (1972). Since the officer has acted in good faith, a court should not penalize him because he may have worded his application for the warrant in a possibly clumsy or ambiguous way. The same reasoning underlies the cases concerning misstatements in an application for a warrant. Thus, in United States v. Jones, 366 F. Supp. 237 (W.D. Pa. 1973), aff’d., 493 F.2d 1402 (3d Cir. 1974), an agent mistakenly described a firearm as a pistol, when in fact it was a sawed-off shotgun. The court held that this mistake, made in good faith, did not invalidate the warrant. In MacLean v. Trainor, 365 F. Supp. 695 *561(W.D. Pa. 1973), the officer stated that he had received his information from an investigator for the State Bureau of Consumer Protection. In fact, the investigator had reported to the Deputy Attorney General for Consumer Protection, who had spoken to the officer. The court found the officer’s misstatement of the source of information negligent and inadvertent, and held that it did not invalidate the warrant. In Commonwealth v. Monte and Testa, 459 Pa. 495, 329 A.2d 836 (1974), an affidavit stated that police officers had seen appellant passing papers. When questioned, the officers admitted that they had meant to say that appellants were seen passing what appeared to be papers. Our Supreme Court did not find the affidavit to be a deliberate misstatement:
“It would be absurd to expect police officers to possess the precision of language expected of lawyers. Furthermore, a rule of exclusion is only employed for flagrant overreaching and was never contemplated to be used where an inadvertent inaccuracy may have occurred.” Id. at 509, 329 A.2d at 843.
See also, United States v. Curwood, 338 F. Supp. 1104 (D.Mass. 1972) (an incomplete sentence does not invalidate an affidavit in a search warrant); United States v. Carter, 337 F. Supp. 604 (D.Minn. 1971) (when a search warrant contained the correct addresses of the premises to be searched, omitting the fact that the only entrance to the apartment was through another building was not a fatal defect); Commonwealth v. Ambers, 225 Pa. Superior Ct. 381, 310 A.2d 347 (1973); Commonwealth v. Ametrane, 205 Pa. Superior Ct. 567, 210 A.2d 902 (1965).
Here, there was flagrant overreaching. The officer did not simply misstate the telephone number in the application for the warrant, and then change it; he attempted by testifying falsely at the suppression hearing to conceal what he had done.
The majority refrains from this harsh statement; it blinks at the facts. True, when a judge rejects a witness’s testimony, the rejection does not necessarily imply that the judge thought the witness dishonest. The judge may *562have found that the witness was not in a position to see what he thought he saw, or that his memory or ability to express himself were faulty; or the judge may have rejected only the witness’s opinion, as for example he must when two expert witnesses disagree. Hussey v. May Dept. Stores, Inc., 238 Pa. Superior Ct. 431, 357 A.2d 635 (1976). None of these explanations fits the case here. The officer was the only witness to testify. On direct examination he said he changed the application before the warrant issued; on cross-examination this was shown to be improbable; the judge found that he changed the application after the warrant issued. The conclusion is inescapable that in rejecting the officer’s factual statement, the judge found that the officer testified falsely. It is not for us as an appellate court to disagree; the judge’s finding binds us, Commonwealth v. Bruno, Pa. ,
, 352 A.2d 40, 45 (1976) (citing Commonwealth v. Garvin, 448 Pa. 258, 269, 293 A.2d 33, 39 (1972)), and our responsibility is to apply the law as required by the finding. If we do that here, we must invalidate the warrant.
Our Supreme Court has moved decisively to protect the integrity of applications for search warrants by requiring that they be judged solely on the basis of the affidavits. Pa.R.Crim.P. 2003(a), (b). This requirement was necessary because if an application insufficient on the basis of the affidavits could be made sufficient by oral testimony, the temptation was presented to an officer to say that he had told the issuing authority something that in fact he had not told him. The decision of the majority in the present case is inconsistent if not with the letter at least with the spirit of the rules, for by upholding the warrant the majority rewards improper conduct (changing the application after the warrant issued), compounded by false testimony.
I would affirm the order of the lower court suppressing the evidence.
Hoffman, J., joins in this opinion.