Court Opinion

ID: 9695638
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:25:58.784865+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:15.304177
License: Public Domain

*395POPOVICH, Judge,
dissenting:
I cannot join the Majority in the face of record evidence that the affidavit, upon which the warrant to search the defendant’s premises was based, lacked the specificity as to the point in time the alleged observations of drugs on the said premises were made by two anonymous informants. Also, contrary to the Majority, I find the suppression court’s receipt of testimony from the affiant/officer to fill this void, and, in effect, supplement the “four-corners” of the warrant to be violative of Pa.R.Crim.P. 2003’s prohibition against evaluating “evidence outside the warrant affidavit[] on the issue of probable cause____” Commonwealth v. Graham, 334 Pa.Super. 170, 178, 482 A.2d 1277, 1282 (1984), citing Commonwealth v. Swint, 256 Pa.Super. 169, 389 A.2d 654 (1978).
Surely, the absence of the time in the warrant, as to when the informants viewed the defendant’s premises and drugs, undermines a predicate for probable cause to believe that a crime is or was being committed and that the defendant was the guilty party. For the Majority to dismiss the lack of such a fact from the warrant, and condoning its inclusion into the warrant by the use of extraneous information/testimony as to what the officer supposedly told the magistrate at the moment the warrant was secured, is at odds with this writer’s understanding of the Fourth Amendment and its strictures. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Kalinowski, 303 Pa.Super. 354, 449 A.2d 725 (1982) (POPOVICH, J.).
Moreover, there appears to be no indication from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that it is receptive to United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984). See Commonwealth v. Weisenthal, 517 Pa. 241, 535 A.2d 600 (1988). As such, my reading of the facts does not disclose the mere non-compliance with a technical requirement under the law. Rather, we have a warrant which is facially defective in not meeting the requirements necessary to invade the defendant’s substantive rights to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. Accordingly, I *396respectfully dissent to the Majority’s determination to the contrary.