Court Opinion

ID: 9868595
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-26 18:42:55.049477+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:45:51.722855
License: Public Domain

On Petition to Rehear.
It is urged that the Court erroneously ruled that the search warrant sent up was not a part of the record because of an order of the trial judge directing that the search warrant introduced on the hearing below be made a part of the record. Such action on the part of the court below makes no difference since the paper there introduced was not included in the bill of exceptions nor otherwise identified by the trial judge. . It was so held many years ago in Wynne v. Edwards, 26 Tenn. 418. In that case, referring to a bond sent up with the transcript, the Court said (26 Tenn. at page 419):
*121“There is an order "upon the minutes by which it is directed that the bond and proceedings thereon be made a part of the record but this will not do; before extraneous matter can become part of the record, it must be examined and authenticated under the hand and seal of the judge; it is a high exercise of judicial power to make extraneous matters part of the record,, and if it be not exercised with great care may be productive of much mischief. ’ ’
This rule has prevailed for about a hundred years. If not included in the bill of exceptions, extraneous'matter must be authenticated by the judge before it can be considered in this Court. We are aware of no departure from this practice.
In Battier v. State, 114 Tenn. 563, 86 S. W. 711, and Nashville R. & Lt. Co. v. Martin, 117 Tenn. 698, 99 S. W. 367, the bill of exceptions showed a direction by the trial judge that certain papers be included therein but their identification was left to the clerk of the lower court. They were not authenticated by the trial judge and were not considered here.
The defendants refer to the statutes for the correction of clerical errors and insist that they are applicable here in order to make the search warrant introduced below a part of the record. This cannot be done, for one reason, because the time for settling the bill of exceptions by the lower courts is fixed by statute and that time has long since expired in this case.
Defendants also rely on the constitutional provisions, State and Federal, against unreasonable searches. Searches, however, are not unreasonable when made under a valid search warrant. The search warrant introduced below was held valid by the trial judge and, the search warrant not being before us, we cannot say that *122it was invalid and that it did not fully authorize the search made. If the objections taken to the paper in the transcript purporting to be a search warrant were deemed good, nevertheless we have no means of knowing that these particular papers were the papers introduced in the trial court.
Petition to rehear must be denied.