Defendant lived in a house that several people shared, but it wasn’t apparent to the police who got the search warrant. There were no “barriers” on the inside, other than doors, that suggested separate living quarters, and the “do not enter” sign on defendant’s door wasn’t enough to require a separate warrant for his room. Also, a lack of any substantive argument why the state constitution should not provide for a good faith exception is a default of the issue. One can’t merely state the issue without law or argument. State v. Kwalalon, 2015 Del. Super. LEXIS 85 (February 13, 2015):
B. The Fourth Amendment and the Community-Living Situation
. . .
In community-living situations, courts have determined that a single warrant covering the entire structure permits a search of the whole premises. Because it is assumed that residents in a community-living situation can generally access each other’s bedrooms, occupants “who share living quarters … have a shared expectation of privacy in the premises.” A lock on a bedroom door does not automatically make a bedroom a separate living unit. Similarly, where each resident has access to the entire house, even though each may separately lock his or her bedroom, and one such resident is suspected of criminal activity, courts have found probable cause exists to search the entire home. It would be unreasonable to require the police to obtain and execute separate search warrants to search individual bedrooms, especially when evidence could then be moved or destroyed.
If there were evidence-indicators supporting the barriers Kwalalon attempts to construct here, the Court would be faced with a very different Fourth Amendment case that might present the recognized need for a separate warrant, i.e., the true multi-unit structure. Some courts have found warrants invalid in rental situations,34 or where the defendant, a renter with no familial relationship to that “cases from other jurisdictions support the proposition that renters do enjoy exclusive use of their rooms.” Id. at 565. Fleming rejected the rationale behind the community-living exception the subject of the search warrant, placed a “Do Not Enter” sign on his door. But, the factors that partition the places searched there simply are not here. There was no obvious cordoning off of any area in the house, no evidence that Kwalalon was renting his bedroom, and no fixed indication that entry to his room was prohibited. Rather, the officers knew Kwalalon and Shaheen were family and that they, from all appearances, shared the entire residence.
C. Search Warrant’s Validity under Fourth Amendment and Community-Living Situation
Kwalalon’s argument as to whether the warrant was valid wavers; the Court’s finding it was valid does not. The validity of a warrant is “assessed on the basis of the information that the officers disclosed, or had a duty to discover and to disclose, to the issuing Magistrate.” And even the discovery of facts that would actually demonstrate that a valid warrant was unnecessarily broad (of which there are none here) does not retroactively invalidate the warrant.
This warrant was “valid when it issued” – the police rightly believed this to be a single family home with multiple occupants. The warrant language describes the residence as a “three story end of the row townhome” and makes no mention of separate sub-units. The supporting affidavit states that the occupants – Shaheen and Kwalalon – shared their residence. Thus, the warrant properly issued in this community-living situation.
The warrant here was issued for the entire residence under the circumstances known to the police at the time. The police knew that Kwalalon lived at 2 South Sherman Place with his cousin, who was openly dealing drugs therein. A person with his last name, Kwalalon, owned the residence. Drug dealing was occurring from the shared kitchen. And evidence of possession of kilos of cocaine was discovered in the communal trash. There was constant phone contact between Kwalalon and Shaheen. Given the totality of these circumstances, which was known to the police and was set forth in the warrant application, issuance of a warrant for the entire residence was fitting. Aside from the generally recognized propriety of a warrant for the entirety of a shared single residence like this, there was sufficient evidence of probable cause that Kwalalon was, if not directly participating in, aware of, facilitating and permitting his cousin’s drug dealing from their shared residence. And so the warrant and its scope were well-grounded on facts adequate for a judicial officer to form a reasonable belief that drug crimes had been committed and that evidence of those crimes would be found in a particular place – the entirety of 2 South Sherman Place. The Court finds, therefore, that the warrant permitting a search of the entire premises is valid.
D. Search Warrant’s Reasonable Execution under Fourth Amendment and Community-Living Situation
Kwalalon also challenges the reasonableness of the warrant’s execution. If there were, in fact, separate living units or separate premises, the police may arguably have been obligated to limit their search to the communal areas and Shaheen’s quarters. But, that was not what the police found at Kwalalon and Sheheen’s house. Having found the warrant was validly issued, the Court finds that the police were entitled accordingly to search the entire premises. There was no reason for the police to believe the townhome presented anything other than a community-living situation. Indeed, that is what they encountered once they entered. The SORT did break an ordinary interior door lock to Kwalalon’s bedroom, when securing the area for the search team. That door did not create some separate “place” outside the warrant’s scope and its reasonable execution.
And Kwalalon does not suggest this breaking was unreasonable, given that weapons were known to be in the residence. Kwalalon instead tries to posit that there is some other ill-defined delimiting factor that should have been recognized and that precluded the police search of his room. But there is none supported by either the evidence or the law. The search of Kwalalon’s bedroom was reasonable given the community-living situation that the warrant and supporting affidavit described and that the police actually encountered.
E. Good Faith Exception Analysis Unnecessary
[Warrant good; GFE moot.]
