Court Opinion

ID: 9462715
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:48:21.6778+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:44.446369
License: Public Domain

*343McCREE, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. I would hold that the affidavit presented to the magistrate who issued the first warrant to search the warehouse did not establish probable cause to believe the essential fact, viz, that the things to be seized, the guns stolen from a store located thirty miles from Cairo, were present in the warehouse, the place to be searched.
The affidavit showed only that some suspicious persons who behaved in a furtive manner unloaded some unidentified objects from a passenger vehicle into the warehouse. The affidavit stated that the persons under surveillance threw some objects-under the car. The objects were retrieved and were found to be two crowbars to which adhered gray paint fragments similar to the color of the paint on the door of the building where the robbery had occurred thirty miles away in East Cape, Illinois.
The occupants of the car were arrested, and a search of the car revealed gloves, a pair of pliers, some chisels, and some broken clothes hangers. However, the results of this search may not be considered in determining whether there was probable cause for the issuance of the warrant because they were not communicated to the magistrate. Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 109 n.1, 84 S.Ct. 1509, 1511, 12 L.Ed.2d 723, 725 (1964). Nor was the magistrate informed that the officers’ suspicions were originally aroused when they learned that the license plates were issued for a 1966 Chrysler, not a 1966 Oldsmobile automobile.
The information presented to the magistrate may have established probable cause to arrest the occupants of the car for possession of burglary tools, but it did not afford probable cause to believe that property obtained in the gun theft in East Cape was in the Cairo warehouse. The objects that were unloaded into the warehouse were not described as guns, boxes, bags, or in any other manner except as “chattel property,” and the magistrate was uninformed about what kinds of containers, if any, were obtained in the gun theft. The only nexus communicated to the magistrate between the robbery in East Cape and the persons arrested in Cairo was the gray paint observed on the crowbars. Gray paint is a common commodity, and no chemical matching was performed to determine whether the paint on the crowbars matched the paint on the door of the gun store. The affidavit stated only that the paint was similar in color.
I would conclude that the affidavit did not afford probable cause to believe that guns stolen in East Cape were in the warehouse in Cairo, the place to be searched. Since the entry into the warehouse was unlawful, then the discovery of the clothes stolen from Memphis was a consequence of an illegal intrusion, and the motion to suppress should have been granted.