Court Opinion

ID: 9578831
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:48:50.433775+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:26:38.332083
License: Public Domain

*184FINE, J.
¶ 29. (dissenting). The Majority recognizes that in reviewing whether there is probable cause for the issuance of a search warrant we are " 'limited to the record established before the court at the time it issued the warrant.'" Majority, ¶ 5 (quoted source omitted). Thus, where the issuance is based on an affidavit, our review is limited to the " 'facts shown in the affidavit before the issuing authority.'" Ibid, (quoted source omitted). Further, we must consider the "totality of the circumstances" as revealed by the affidavit and the "reasonable inferences" that permit the issuing magistrate "to make a practical, common-sense decision whether, given all the circumstances set forth in the affidavit... there is a fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime will be found in a particular place." Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 230-231, 238, 240 (1983). Additionally, "we give great deference to the warrant-issuing magistrate." State v. Sloan, 2007 WI App 146, ¶ 8, 303 Wis. 2d 438, 446, 736 N.W.2d 189, 193. With these elemental principles in mind, I turn to the affidavit submitted to the magistrate in support of the search warrant here.
¶ 30. The affidavit said that:
• Adrian J. Jackson was a convicted felon;
• Jackson gave his address when booked at the Milwaukee County Jail as "4124 N. 21st Street";
• "Address of 4124 N. 21st Street is a two-story duplex residence"; and
• "[A] reliable confidential informant... within the past eight days, went to 4124 N. 21st Street and observed Adrian Jackson in possession of two-semi automatic pistols at the residence of 4124 N. 21st Street in the City and County of Milwaukee."
(Bolding in original.) Inexplicably, the Majority says in ¶ 26 that the affidavit's averment that the informant *185saw the defendant "in possession of two-semi automatic pistols at the residence" (emphasis added) is not sufficient under Gates and its progeny to let the magistrate draw the common-sense inference that the informant saw the defendant and his arsenal in the residence. The magistrate was surely able to reasonably infer that "at" in the context of the sentence meant "in." There are, however, additional flaws in the Majority's analysis.
¶ 31. Although the Majority concedes that we may not look outside the affidavit, the Majority does so in holding that the word "duplex" meant that the two-story building at 4124 North 21st Street was a "multifamily residence," and that therefore the affidavit should have specified for which "unit" the search warrant was sought. Majority, ¶ 1. There is nothing in the affidavit, however, that says 4124 North 21st Street was a "multifamily residence." The affidavit merely says that it was a "duplex" that had but one address. The Majority, however, interposes a dictionary definition and holds as a matter of law that in every case a description of a building as a "duplex" invariably means that the building is a two-unit structure where the units are as separate from each other as were the two Berlins before the wall was torn down. But, of course, that is not always the case; indeed, that was not the case here because Jackson shared the "duplex" with his mother. (I mention this not, as the Majority says in footnote 7, to add gloss to the affidavit submitted in support of the search warrant, but to demonstrate that the Majority's iron-clad presumption about the living arrangements in a building that is structurally a duplex is wrong.)
¶ 32. Although the Majority conclusively presumes as a matter of law that persons living in duplexes confine their occupancy to either the top or the bottom *186unit (the Berlin-wall analogy referred to in the previous paragraph), there is nothing in the affidavit that even hints that that was the situation here. The magistrate was fully justified in concluding that the defendant's killing arsenal was somewhere in the two-story house, which, as we have seen, the affidavit described as a "residence," especially because the affidavit also represented that "weapons can be secreted in any part of a residence." (Emphasis added.) This is the "probable cause" that the Majority says is missing. Simply put, the affidavit gave the magistrate probable cause to believe that guns would be found in the duplex; that is all that is required. It is immaterial "who resides in, or otherwise controls, either unit of the duplex," Majority, ¶ 15, because "[sjearch warrants are not directed at persons; they authorize the search of'placets]' and the seizure of 'things,' and as a constitutional matter they need not even name the person from whom the things will be seized" Zurcher v. Stanford Daily, 436 U.S. 547, 555 (1978) (quoted source omitted; brackets by Zurcher).
[T]he [Fourth] Amendment has not heen a barrier to warrants to search property on which there is probable cause to believe that fruits, instrumentalities, or evidence of crime is located, whether or not the owner or possessor of the premises to be searched is himself reasonably suspected of complicity in the crime being investigated.
Id. at 549-550.
¶ 33. The magistrate was fully justified in issuing the search warrant for the entire two-story building. Accordingly, I would affirm.