Page 118 - TPA Police Officers Guide 2021

Note 1: The description stated in full:
The location of the premises is at the address of 1015 East Cliff Drive, Santa Cruz, CA 95062 and is described as
follows:
• It is a white, wooden, one story residence with green trimming. There is a small wrap-around driveway that has
one way in and out. A small sign with house number “1015” is hanging in front of the house from the roof of the
porch. The front door has a screen door with green trimming.
• There are large bay-windows in the front left of the residence.
• Residences are only located on the northbound side of East Cliff Drive.
• Facing the residence from the street, there isn’t a house on the right side. The home is covered by trees.

Scully moved to suppress the evidence seized from his office, arguing that the search of the office was unreason-
able under the Fourth Amendment because it had a separate street address not listed on the warrant and because
the physical description of the property contained in the warrant described only the primary residence and not the
separate home office. At a hearing, Scully presented evidence showing that Pacific Gas and Electric had the pri-
mary residence and home office listed as separate accounts at separate addresses. Agent Hardeman testified that
while he knew there was a small apartment/office located behind the primary residence, he did not know that the
buildings had separate addresses and did not investigate whether the separate buildings had separate addresses or
utilities. Agent Ploetz did not check with the post office to see if the home office had a separate address. The agents
explained that they had treated the front house and home office as part of the same location during the search, that
they did not realize that there was such an address as 1015½, and that they had sought and executed the warrant
in good faith. The district court denied Scully’s motion to suppress, finding that “law enforcement’s activities
[were] reasonable within the Fourth Amendment” and “not in violation of the good faith exception.”

First, Scully argues that the district court erred in admitting evidence seized from his home office because the
search violated the Fourth Amendment. He claims that the officers exceeded the scope of the warrant when they
searched the home office behind his house at 1015½ East Cliff Drive because the warrant4 described only the pri-
mary residence at 1015 East Cliff Drive. The Government argues that the good-faith exception to the exclusion-
ary rule applies because the agents did not commit the sort of deliberate, reckless, or grossly negligent violation
that would warrant suppression, and, alternatively, that the good-faith exception is unnecessary because the war-
rant adequately described the location the agents searched, and therefore the search did not violate the Fourth
Amendment.

We review “de novo the reasonableness of an officer’s reliance upon a warrant issued by a magistrate.” When eval-
uating a motion to suppress, “[w]e consider the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict, and accept the
district court’s factual findings unless clearly erroneous or influenced by an incorrect view of the law.”

In United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897 (1984), “the Supreme Court held that the Fourth Amendment does not re-
quire the suppression of evidence obtained as a result of objectively reasonable reliance on a warrant, even if the
warrant is subsequently invalidated.” “We employ a two-step process for reviewing a district court’s denial of a
motion to suppress when a search warrant is involved.” Id. We first “determine whether the good-faith exception
to the exclusionary rule announced in [Leon] applies,” and if it does, the analysis ends. Id. “If not, we proceed to
the second step, in which we ‘ensure that the magistrate had a substantial basis for concluding that probable cause
existed.’”

The warrant in this case presents two potential issues. First, it listed only the address for the primary residence,
1015 East Cliff Drive, and not the address for the separate home office that the agents searched, 1015½ East Cliff
Drive. Second, the warrant’s description of the place to be searched described only the primary residence and not
the home office. We address each potential problem in turn to determine whether either, or both combined, ren-
dered the officers’ actions in searching the home office unreasonable.

A Peace Officer’s Guide to Texas Law 112 2021 Edition