State v. Sweeney

621 A.2d 304, 30 Conn. App. 550, 1993 Conn. App. LEXIS 103
CourtConnecticut Appellate Court
DecidedMarch 9, 1993
Docket10534
StatusPublished
Cited by14 cases

This text of 621 A.2d 304 (State v. Sweeney) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Connecticut Appellate Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Sweeney, 621 A.2d 304, 30 Conn. App. 550, 1993 Conn. App. LEXIS 103 (Colo. Ct. App. 1993).

Opinion

Landau, J.

The defendant was convicted, after a trial by jury, of possession of less than four ounces of marihuana in violation of General Statutes § 21a-279 (c)1 and conspiracy to distribute marihuana in violation of General Statutes §§ 53a-48 (a)2 and 21a-277 (b).3 On appeal, the defendant claims that the trial court improperly (1) denied her motion to suppress all materials seized pursuant to the financial records warrant, alleging that the warrant failed to state with particularity the items to be seized, (2) admitted the testimony of the state’s expert witness, and (3) denied the defendant’s motion for judgment of acquittal. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.

[552]*552The jury reasonably could have found the following facts. On November 15,1990, at about 7:55 p.m., members of the North Central Municipal Narcotics Task Force4 executed a search warrant at 68 Arrowhead Road, Windsor, for the seizure of marihuana and drug trafficking equipment. This warrant is not the subject of this appeal. The defendant and her four children were at home at the time of the search. During the search, the officers encountered a locked door that led into the garage. They opened the door with a credit card. The inside of the garage windows were painted black, and there was a strong odor of marihuana. Inside the garage, the officers found three large green garbage bags containing a total of approximately seventy pounds of marihuana. They also found other green bags wrapped in duct tape with plant residue on the tape and in the bags, a 100 pound scale, a small electronic scale, and boxes of plastic bags in varying sizes.

From a kitchen cabinet, the officers seized a plastic bag containing approximately 1.1 ounces of marihuana. In the den, they found a business card with prices of drugs printed on the back. The officers found a triple beam Ohaus scale, three guns and various ammunition, and a total of $12,350 in two separate dresser drawers in a downstairs bedroom. From the top of a hutch in the dining room, they seized a loaded nine millimeter semiautomatic pistol. The officers found cardboard boxes filled with plastic bags of different sizes in various locations throughout the house. In an upstairs bedroom, $7660 was found in a dresser drawer. They searched the defendant’s purse and seized a passbook for a joint savings account with her father and $940. At about 10 p.m., one of the officers left the defendant’s house to secure a second warrant for the seizure of financial records. This warrant is the subject of this [553]*553appeal. The second search resulted in the seizure of income tax returns, payroll stubs, a bankbook from a Jamaican bank, and receipts for the purchase of a number of personal items. The payroll records indicated that the defendant was employed at First Brands Corporation, a manufacturer of plastic bags. The income tax records established the income that she earned in this capacity.

I

The defendant’s first claim is that the trial court improperly denied her motion to suppress the evidence seized as a result of the financial records warrant. That warrant provided as follows: “All financial records, including, but not limited to cancelled checks, bank statements, bank books, income tax reports, receipts for purchases, answering machines and tapes, telephone pager records, and all records, memos, passports, telephone records, income records, and other records used as means and instrumentalities of the crimes of possession of more than one kilogram of marijuana with intent to sell, operating a drug factory, and possession of more than four ounces of marijuana.” The defendant alleges that the warrant lacked sufficient particularity to satisfy the requirements of the fourth amendment to the United States constitution and article first, § 7, of our state constitution.5 Specifically, the defendant alleges that the phrases but not limited to and and other records used as means and instrumentalities are so generic and unconstitutionally vague as to violate the fourth amendment. We disagree.

[554]*554“The fourth amendment to the United States constitution provides that a warrant must ‘particularly [describe] . . . the persons or things to be seized.’ A particular description of the item to be seized is necessary to avoid a general exploratory rummaging in the search. Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 467, 91 S. Ct. 2022, 29 L. Ed. 2d 564 (1971). In determining whether a warrant is sufficiently particular in describing an item to be seized, a number of factors are relevant, namely, the purpose for which the warrant was issued, the relevance of the item to the crime charged, and the total circumstances surrounding the case. Marron v. United States, 275 U.S. 192, 196, 48 S. Ct. 74, 72 L. Ed. 231 (1927). The warrant must be sufficiently definite so that the officer executing it can identify the property sought with reasonable certainty. Id.” State v. Gagnon, 18 Conn. App. 694, 709-10, 561 A.2d 129, cert. denied, 213 Conn. 805, 567 A.2d 835 (1989). While the warrant must describe the objects of the search with “reasonable specificity, [it] need not be elaborately detailed. . . . Nor must the warrant enable authorities to minutely identify every item for which they are searching. . . . Thus, a description is valid if it is as specific as the circumstances and the nature of the activity under investigation permit. (Citations omitted.)” (Internal quotation marks omitted.) State v. Ruscoe, 212 Conn. 223, 234, 563 A.2d 267 (1989), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 1084, 110 S. Ct. 1144, 107 L. Ed. 2d 1049 (1990).

A high degree of scrutiny is required when reviewing the particularity requirement of search warrants for documents. The Supreme Court recognized this in Andresen v. Maryland, 427 U.S. 463, 482 n.11, 96 S. Ct. 2737, 49 L. Ed. 2d 627 (1976), when it stated that “[i]n searches for papers, it is certain that some innocuous documents will be examined, at least cursorily, in order to determine whether they are, in fact, among [555]*555those papers authorized to be seized. Similar dangers, of course, are present in executing a warrant for the ‘seizure’ of telephone conversations. In both kinds of searches, responsible officials, including judicial officials, must take care to assure that they are conducted in a manner that minimizes unwarranted intrusions upon privacy.”

The warrant and accompanying affidavit in this case were sufficiently particular to guard against this danger. The affidavit specifically described the results of the initial search and described many of the items found, relating to the possession and sale of drugs, in the course of that search. It also described how, in the affiants’ knowledge and experience, certain documents are evidence of an attempt to secrete and launder proceeds from these activities, and the fact that the affiants had specifically observed “numerous records which are pertinent to identifying assets and other property gained from this illegal activity.”

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Bluebook (online)
621 A.2d 304, 30 Conn. App. 550, 1993 Conn. App. LEXIS 103, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-sweeney-connappct-1993.