Court Opinion

ID: 9471594
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:36:27.405343+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:29.128491
License: Public Domain

KEARSE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting in part:
With due respect for the majority’s view, I dissent from so much of the judgment as reverses the district court’s order suppressing the gun found in Joseph Travisano’s home pursuant to the search warrant issued by the state court. I agree with the district court that the affidavit submitted in support of the request for a warrant to search both the car and the house did not present sufficient facts to show probable cause to search the house.
The central question in a review of whether a warrant has been issued on probable cause is whether the issuing official had a “ ‘substantial basis for ... concluding]’ that a search would uncover evidence of wrongdoing.” Illinois v. Gates, - U.S. -, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 2331, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983) (quoting Jones v. United States, 362 U.S. 257, 271, 80 S.Ct. 725, 736, 4 L.Ed.2d 697 (1960)). There is no question here that probable cause existed to issue a warrant for the search of the car. In, my view, however, there was lacking a substantial basis for concluding that evidence relating to the robbery would be uncovered in a search of the house.
The pertinent facts presented to the state court were as follows. A robbery occurred in Hamden, Conn., at 2:13 on the afternoon of August 9. The next morning, before 10:30 a.m., the white Cadillac that had been used by the robbers was seen in nearby West Haven, Conn., outside the home of its owner, Marie Travisano. Mrs. Travisano was not one of the robbers, all of whom were males. Her son Mark was known as a frequent operator of her car. The “news media” had indicated that the car used in the robbery was a white Cadillac with a front vanity plate. When, on the morning of August 10, police spotted Marie Travisa-no’s car, the car’s vanity plate had been removed.
On these facts, I agree with many of the statements in the majority opinion; I simply do not believe they add up to probable cause to search the house. For example, the majority opinion states that it is “prob*349able that there was some nexus between the car and those residing at 371 Elm Street,” ante at 346, and that “there was an articulable connection between the residence and the Cadillac used in the robbery,” id. Indeed there was an articulable nexus or connection: the woman who owned the Cadillac .lived at that residence. But no basis was presented for showing that the owner of the residence was a robber or that a robber had that residence. And, the majority opinion states, “the owner had either recently loaned the Cadillac or acquiesced in someone else’s use of it.” Id. This is probably true — although I have heard of sons who used their parents’ cars without permission — and I would not second-guess a magistrate’s inference that Mrs. Travisano had allowed Mark to use the car on August 9. But there are so many factual gaps that a conclusion that evidence of the robbery would likely be found in the house must involve speculation. The affidavit made no attempt to establish probable cause to believe that Mark was one of the robbers. The robbers were described only as three white males; no information was given as to their ages, heights, weights, etc. Further, the affidavit did not state or suggest that Mark lived at his mother’s house. Nor did the affidavit suggest that any other male lived at Mrs. Travisano’s house. Neither the fact that Mark may have gone frequently to his mother’s house in order to pick up and return her ear, nor the inference that he returned the car to her house on August 9 or 10, seems to me to justify an inference that Mark — if it should be inferred that he was one of the robbers — likely chose her house in which to hide evidence of the crime.
Further, the time and distances involved do not create any inference that a robber went directly or quickly from the scene of the crime to the residence of Marie Travisano. There was apparently an interval of some 20 hours between the robbery and the sighting of the car at Mrs. Travisano’s house. West Haven, where Mrs. Travisano lived, is perhaps 10 miles from Hamden, where the robbery occurred. In the 20-hour span, the robbers could have done just about anything with the stolen items.
Given the gaps in the affidavit upon which the search warrant was issued, it appears that the rule adopted by the majority today is as follows: if (a) a mother frequently allows her son to use her car, and (b) the car is used by a male of the same race in a nearby robbery one afternoon, and (c) the car is next seen on the following morning in front of the owner’s house (with its vanity plate missing), the owner has been “remove[d] ... from the category of innocent householders whose privacy the Fourth Amendment protects.” Majority Opinion, ante at 346. I do not believe that probable cause — or the Fourth Amendment — means so little.