Court Opinion

ID: 9471908
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:43:50.740844+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:38.208577
License: Public Domain

BAILEY BROWN, Senior Circuit Judge.
I respectfully dissent.
As the majority opinion demonstrates, Officer Tomsheck had probable cause to believe, as is set out in his affidavit, that LeBron was operating a large fencing operation at his home. It also appears from the affidavit that Tomsheck had probable cause to believe that, in operating such a large illegal business, LeBron would have records of the numerous transactions that would be involved. Thus the affidavit adequately supports the generic category: “any records which document illegal transactions involving stolen property.”
The district court adopted the magistrate’s determination that the involved guns were seized while in plain view during the course of the search for such records. This determination is adequately supported *540by the record in this case, and I do not understand the majority opinion to find fault with it. The majority opinion is based on the proposition that the generic description “any records which document illegal transactions involving stolen property” is not sufficiently specific to pass constitutional muster. It seems to me that the warrant and the lengthy and explicit affidavit, fairly construed, make it reasonably clear that the records referred to were records of purchases and sales that one would expect to be kept in operating such a business. Certainly, this generic description would exclude any records that had nothing to do with the purchase and sale of firearms, motor homes, televisions, video tape recorders, lawn mowers and sheet steel in which, according to the affidavit, LeBron was dealing. I can see no difference between the generic description involved here, if reasonably construed in the light of the facts set out in the affidavit, and the generic description involved in United States v. Dennis, 625 F.2d 782 (8th Cir.1980). There, as pointed out in the majority opinion here, this court approved, in a loan shark case against an individual preying on his fellow employees, a generic description “certain books and records (or items of evidence) relating to the extortionate credit transaction business.” If records relating to the “extortionate credit transaction business” is sufficiently specific, records that document “illegal transactions involving stolen property” should be sufficiently specific. After all, what we are dealing with in these cases is a reasonable assumption that the actors must have kept some records of a business carried on at this scale, and the officer should not be required to know, and to insert in the warrant, precisely what records would be kept.
The majority opinion is, in my view, an apt example of an approach that Justice Goldberg precisely warned against in United States v. Ventresca, 380 U.S. 102, 85 S.Ct. 741, 13 L.Ed.2d 684 (1965). There the Court said:
These decisions reflect the recognition that the Fourth Amendment’s commands, like all constitutional requirements, are practical and not abstract. If the teachings of the Court’s cases are to be followed and the constitutional policy served, affidavits for search warrants, such as the one involved here, must be tested and interpreted by magistrates and courts in a commonsense and realistic fashion. They are normally drafted by nonlawyers in the midst and haste of a criminal investigation. Technical requirements of elaborate specificity once exacted under common law pleadings have no proper place in this area. A grudging or negative attitude by reviewing courts toward warrants will tend to discourage police officers from submitting their evidence to a judicial officer before acting.
Id. at 108, 85 S.Ct. at 746.
Certainly, if we put aside a “grudging and negative attitude” (Ventresca at 108, 85 S.Ct. at 746), we should conclude that the generic description involved here is at least as definite as that approved by this court in Dennis.
I would affirm the district court.