Court Opinion

ID: 9852508
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:31:57.592714+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:28.859961
License: Public Domain

VANDE WALLE, Justice,
concurring specially.
I, like Justice Levine, am bothered by the officers’ “bad faith” in entering the premises with the hope and intention of finding evidence of other crimes unrelated to the subject of the search warrant.1 Furthermore, I agree with Justice Levine that we reverse a suppression order only when there is insufficient competent evidence fairly capable of supporting the trial *877court’s determination concerning the suppression of evidence. In this instance, however, it appears to me that the issue surrounding the suppression order involves more of a question of law than a question of fact and that the factual standard on review is not therefore controlling. That question of law is whether or not the motives of the officers, i.e., their intent and hope of discovering evidence of other crimes, vitiates the validity of the warrant and the application of the “plain view” doctrine. I agree with the majority opinion that the officers’ intent is immaterial if they were on the premises legally and the items seized were in “plain view.”
Although the officers had to lift the microwave oven to find the serial number I have great difficulty in concluding that effort involved a “search” within.the meaning of the constitutional prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures. Considering what knowledge the officers possessed, I believe that if the serial number were emblazoned on the door of the oven that the officers, because they were on the premises under a valid search warrant, would not be prohibited from contacting headquarters to determine whether or not the oven was stolen, regardless of their motives. The action of lifting the oven, which undeniably was in plain view, to look for the serial number is, at worst, a de minimis intrusion, if indeed it is an intrusion at all.
The opinion of the trial court and the dissenting opinion reflect the distaste for the “bad faith” of the officers in entering the home, albeit with a valid search warrant, with the hope and intent of discovering evidence of crimes unrelated to the subject of the search warrant. This distaste has apparently been transferred to the issue before us and would result in what I believe to be an unwarranted restriction of the “plain view” doctrine by attempting to obfuscate the fact that the police officers were on the premises under a valid search warrant.

. Although I am bothered by the officers’ admitted intent of looking for evidence of other crimes not covered by the search warrant, I cannot equate that "bad faith” intent with the cases referred to in footnote 1 of the dissenting opinion which, as the footnote indicates, all involved the use of evidence which the prosecution knew to be false in order to obtain convictions. There is little, if any, similarity between this situation and the “bad faith” involved in those cases.