Court Opinion

ID: 9628432
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 09:20:24.749916+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:06:03.518954
License: Public Domain

Lockett, J.,
concurring: The majority correctly states that under United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 82 L. Ed. 2d 677, 104 S. Ct 3405, reh. denied 468 U.S. 1250 (1984), evidence seized pursuant to a search warrant may not be excluded unless it is shown that: (1) The judge or magistrate who issued the warrant was deliberately misled by false information; (2) the judge or magistrate wholly abandoned his or her neutral and detached role; (3) the warrant was so lacking in specificity that the officers could not determine the place to be searched or the things to be seized; or (4) there was so little indicia of probable cause contained in the warrant it was entirely unreasonable for an officer to believe the warrant valid. I concur with the majority’s finding that no probable cause existed for the issuance of the search warrant and that the evidence seized in the residence should have been suppressed. Because I cannot agree with the majority’s conclusion that “[n]one of the exceptions so stated [in Leon] are applicable herein,” I cannot join the majority’s creation of the “bare bones” affidavit exception.
Here, the evidence seized should be excluded for two reasons stated in Leon. First, the officers knew that the facts supporting probable cause for searching the residence referred to acts which occurred five years earlier. Any reasonable officer would realize that a seizure of drugs in a residence five years prior to the alleged crime would not support probable cause to believe that drugs would now be found in that residence. Therefore, since the warrant was lacking in indicia of probable cause, it was unreasonable for the officers to have believed that the warrant was valid.
Second, and more importantly, the evidence could have been excluded due to the fact that the magistrate wholly abandoned his neutral and detached role. The majority has misconceived the magistrate’s role in determining if the affidavit contains *505sufficient information for probable cause to issue the search warrant under Leon. The majority implies that a magistrate only abandons his or her neutral and detached role when the magistrate acts in bad faith, for example, by actively assisting the officers in establishing probable cause to issue the warrant or in executing the search warrant. This reasoning ignores the Supreme Court’s requirement in Leon that the magistrate reviewing the application for a search warrant conscientiously exercise judicial reasoning when determining if there is probable cause to issue the warrant.
As early as 1933, the United States Supreme Court stated that the Fourth Amendment prohibits a magistrate from issuing a warrant to search a private dwelling unless the magistrate could find probable cause from the facts and circumstances stated in the affidavit for the search warrant. Nathanson v. United States, 290 U.S. 41, 78 L. Ed. 159, 54 S. Ct. 11 (1933). Sufficient information must be presented to the magistrate to allow that official to determine probable cause; his or her action cannot be a mere ratification of the bare conclusions of others. In order to ensure that such an abdication of the magistrate’s duty does not occur, courts must continue to conscientiously review the sufficiency of the affidavit on which warrants are issued. Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 76 L. Ed. 2d 527, 103 S. Ct. 2317, reh. denied 463 U.S. 1237 (1983).
Here, when examining the application and the affidavit for the search warrant, the judge abdicated his duty by failing to conscientiously exercise judicial reasoning and merely ratified the conclusion of the officers that there was probable cause to issue the search warrant. Since the judge wholly abandoned his neutral and detached role, the evidence seized at the residence must be suppressed under Leon. The Fourth Amendment protects us not only from judges and law enforcement officers who act in bad faith, but also from those who are unaware of the protections contained in that amendment.
Holmes and Allegrucci, JJ., join in the foregoing concurring opinion.