Court Opinion

ID: 9551176
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:48:43.280625+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:23:13.548501
License: Public Domain

O’CONNELL, C. J.,
dissenting.
The requirement that a warrant specify the place to be searched was designed to prevent the abuses and evils which flowed from searches made under general warrants. An ambiguous warrant in the hands of a police officer creates the risk that he will either wittingly or unwittingly invade the privacy of a citizen as to whom no probable cause has been established. The warrant in the present case creates such a risk.
The majority holds that there “could be no real doubt as to what premises were intended by the warrant” because “no one could have made a mistake or been confused about a word like ECURB, but anyone could easily have made a mistake about a numeral.”
I do not think that the directions in the warrant are that clear. An officer attempting to execute this warrant would first read that he was authorized to search “Apartment 2 in the basement of the residence” at the named address. Reading on, he would see what was intended as a further description of that apartment—“* * * said apartment having the letters ECURB on the door.”
The majority assumes that when an officer, in attempting to execute this warrant, finds the two parts of the description inconsistent he will choose the designation “ECURB” because, being unique, it is more likely to have been the one intended. However, it cannot be assumed that an officer would realize, as we now *38do, that “ECURB” was intended as the equivalent of “BRIJCE,” and thus as a designation of the place where an individual resided. The card hearing the word “ECURB,” like the picture and the other card with the inscription “CHANGE . . . CONTROVERSY ... CHALLENGE,” would simply appear to constitute a message of some kind and not the expression of an occupant’s identity. The officer would note that, unlike the designation of Apartment 2 with a permanently affixed numeral, the word ECURB was on a card which was moveable, and that it therefore could have been on the door of Apartment 2 when the informant identified the suspect premises but removed or relocated prior to the actual search.
Since, in my opinion, there is a real possibility that an officer might construe a warrant such as we have here as authorizing a search of Apartment 2 only, the warrant is invalid because it creates the risk that premises not authorized to be searched would be subjected to unreasonable examination.
In addition to the foregoing reason for holding the warrant invalid, I adopt the reasoning in the dissenting opinion of Chief Judge Schwab in this case when it was decided in the Court of Appeals.
Denecke, J., joins in this dissent.