Court Opinion

ID: 9619163
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:23:03.269394+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:37.968991
License: Public Domain

GRIFFITH, J.,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. I would hold the search exceeded the parameters permitted by the search warrant, and improperly intruded into the residence of Appellant without an authorizing search warrant, and, therefore, evidence obtained in the search of Appellant’s residence should have been excluded from Appellant’s trial.
In the course of his undercover investigation of Appellant’s business, Trains, Scott Wilson played eight-liner machines and gathered other evidence that Appellant was using her silver railroad car for gambling purposes. Wilson’s affidavit, supported by, and consistent with, the evidence he gathered in his investigation, specifically described the structure in which he had seen gambling activity as “a silver in color passenger train car.” Although there was also a red caboose on the premises, no mention of the red caboose was made in either the affidavit in support of the search warrant or in the search warrant. The evidence at the hearing on the admission of records taken from the red caboose, and the evidence during the trial clearly established that the officers knew, and both the State conceded and Appellant contended, the red caboose was Appellant’s residence.
The affidavit for the search warrant noted that “unnamed business establishment known locally as Train’s is located at 1076 Pritchett Lane, Seven Points, Henderson County, Texas. The structure is a silver in color passenger train car.” Three times in the paragraph describing and locating the premises, the affiant, Wilson, specifically described the place and premises as a silver passenger train car, and once as only “[t]he passenger train car.” The final description definitively noted that “[t]his is the only silver in color passenger train car located on Pritchett Lane.... ”
*430The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution provides:
The right of the people to be secure in their person, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
U.S. Const, amend. IV. The Texas Constitution states:
The people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers and possessions, from all unreasonable seizures or searches, and no warrant to search any place, or to seize any person or thing, shall issue without describing them as near as may be, nor without probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation.
Tex. Const, art. I, § 9.
The United States Supreme Court has consistently given homes heightened protection from search and seizure. In Payton v. New York, the Supreme Court wrote:
The Fourth Amendment protects the individual’s privacy in a variety of settings. In none is the zone of privacy more clearly defined than when bounded by the unambiguous physical dimensions of an individual’s home — a zone that finds its roots in clear and specific constitutional terms: “The right of the peo-pie to be secure in their ... houses ... shall not be violated.” That language unequivocally establishes the proposition that “[a]t the very core [of the Fourth Amendment] stands the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable government intrusion.” Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505, 511, 81 S.Ct. 679, 683, 5 L.Ed.2d 734. In terms that apply equally to seizures of property and to seizures of persons, the Fourth Amendment has drawn a firm line at the entrance to the house.
Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 590, 100 S.Ct. 1371, 1382, 63 L.Ed.2d 639 (1980); see also Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 34, 121 S.Ct. 2038, 2043, 150 L.Ed.2d 94 (2001) (“in the case of the search of the interior of homes — the prototypical and hence most commonly litigated area of protected privacy — there is a ready criterion, with roots deep in the common law, of the minimal expectation of privacy that exists, and that is acknowledged to be reasonable.”)(emphasis in original).
Had Wilson wanted to search the red caboose, which was established as being known as Appellant’s residence, he had only to include sufficient information in his affidavit to establish probable cause to search the Appellant’s residence, the red caboose, and, based on that probable cause affidavit, to obtain a search warrant for the red caboose, duly signed by the reviewing magistrate.1 Wilson’s affidavit con*431tains no suggestion of any criminal activity in any other building located at 1076 Pritchett Lane, Seven Points, Henderson County, Texas. Rather, the facts contained in his affidavit explicitly specified only the silver colored passenger rail car.
As the affidavit in support of the search warrant allowed the officers to only search the silver passenger rail car, the search of Appellant’s residence, the red caboose, which was a separate building2, was beyond the scope of the search authorized by the search warrant. Article 38.23 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure provides that “[n]o evidence obtained ... in violation of any provisions of the Constitution or law of the State of Texas, or of the Constitution or laws of the United States of America, shall be admitted in evidence against the accused on the trial of any criminal case.” Tex.Code Crim. PROC. Ann. art. 38.23 (Vernon Supp.2003).
The evidence having been obtained during the search of Appellant’s home was beyond the scope of the search warrant and should have been excluded from the trial.

. "The point of the Fourth Amendment ... is not that it denies law enforcement officers the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime. Any assumption that evidence sufficient to support a magistrate’s disinterested determination to issue a search warrant will justify the officers in making a search without a warrant would reduce the Amendment to a nullity and leave the people's homes secure only in the discretion of police officers. Crime, even in the privacy of one’s own quarters, is, of course, of grave concern to society, and the law allows such crime to be reached on proper showing. The right of officers to thrust themselves into a home is also a grave concern, not only to the individual but to a society which chooses to dwell in reasonable security and freedom from surveillance. When the right of privacy must reasonably *431yield to the right of search is, as a rule, to be decided by a judicial officer, not by a policemen or Government enforcement agent." Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14, 68 S.Ct. 367, 369, 92 L.Ed. 436 (1948) (footnotes omitted).

. That Appellant’s residence, the red caboose, was a separate building is a very salient factor in evaluating the scope of the search permitted under the search warrant. Where a building is the subject of a search warrant, and a defendant claims a portion of the building to be his residence, greater latitude is permitted the officers executing the search. See Amir v. State, 45 S.W.3d 88 (Tex.Crim.App.2001).