{"id":4033,"date":"2010-05-18T22:53:14","date_gmt":"2010-04-05T13:03:31","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-05T13:03:31","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=4033","title":{"rendered":"CO: Two SW affidavits on the same day for same property may be read together even though first not incorporated into second"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Where two search warrants are issued for property on the same day by the same magistrate, the two affidavits may be read together to determine probable cause, even though the second does not incorporate the first. The second warrant in this dog fighting case should not have been suppressed. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.courts.state.co.us\/Courts\/Supreme_Court\/opinions\/2009\/09SA225.pdf\">People v. Scott<\/a>, 227 P.3d 894 (Colo. 2010):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>However, the second affidavit need not be read in a vacuum. It is common practice for a single warrant to be supported by multiple affidavits, or for an affidavit to incorporate by reference and then expand upon an earlier affidavit. See, e.g., People v. Hakel, 870 P.2d 1224 (Colo. 1994) (reading two affidavits together as establishing probable cause where the second affidavit incorporated the first by reference); Commonwealth v. Saleh, 486 N.E.2d 706 (Mass. 1985) (same); see also 2 Wayne R. LaFave, Search and Seizure: A Treatise on the Fourth Amendment \u00a7 4.3(d), at 516 (4th ed. 2004) (stating that \u201c[i]t is clear &#8230; there is no inherent defect in utilizing multiple affidavits\u201d for the purpose of probable-cause determinations). Here, though, the affidavit supporting the second warrant does not explicitly incorporate by reference the affidavit supporting the first warrant. Rather, the second affidavit only states that the officers made their observations while executing the first search warrant at Scott\u2019s residence. <\/p>\n<p>Nonetheless, the observations sworn in the first affidavit clearly informed the ongoing investigation as well as the second warrant request. To force the two affidavits to be considered separately simply because Officer Feeney failed to explicitly incorporate the first affidavit into the second would be to impose hypertechnical requirements on an affidavit\u2019s form and constrain the commonsense approach that guides a magistrate\u2019s probable-cause determinations. See Kaiser v. Lief, 874 F.2d 732, 734-35 (10th Cir. 1989) (discussing the propriety of magistrates considering information in documents before them other than the affidavit supporting a warrant request and stating that a magistrate should not be constrained by unnecessary limitations on his use of common sense); United States v. Fogarty, 663 F.2d 928, 930 (9th Cir. 1981) (\u201c[W]e can think of no Fourth Amendment reason why the magistrate had to read either affidavit with tunnel vision.\u201d). We will not so constrict a magistrate\u2019s analysis.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Hat tip to Jeri Merritt, who dubbed this the &#8220;eight corner rule.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>b2evALnk.b2WPAutP <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=4033\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4033\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}