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293 F.2d 539

Docket No. 16063.

Johnson v. United States

District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals

Argued April 17,1961.

Decided June 22, 1961.

Petition for Rehearing Denied Aug. 15, 1961.

District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals · decided 1961-06-22

2 counsel of record

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“[a]n officer engaged in a lawful search is not confined to seizing only those items described in the warrant, especially when the unlisted items seized are instrumentalities of a crime.”

quoted by 5 later decisions, including Porter v. United States, In re Houlihan

Relies on Harris v. United States · Bryant v. United States · Palmer v. United States

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1961-06-22

How this case has been cited

Cited by 57 later decisions — most recently March 2007 · most notably Gurleski v. United States (1968), State v. Johnson (1972)

23 federal appellate · 5 district · 21 state decisions — followed in 14 states

29019611970198019902000decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

¶1Mr. Harold F. Golding, Washington, D. C. (appointed by the District Court) for appellant.

¶2Mr. Arnold T. Aikens, Asst. U. S. Atty., with whom Messrs. Oliver Gasch, U. S. Atty., at the time of argument, and Carl W. Belcher, Asst. U. S. Atty., at the time of argument, were on the brief, for appellee. Mr. Donald S. Smith, Asst. U. S. Atty., also entered an appearance for appellee.

¶3Before Wilbur K. Miller, Chief Judge, and Bazelon and Burger, Circuit Judges.

¶4BURGER, Circuit Judge.

¶5Appellant was convicted of “forging and uttering” under 22 D.C.Code § 1401 (1951). At his own request he was tried without a jury. A motion to suppress the victim’s stolen credit card was denied and the appellant contends this was error because the search warrant which authorized search of his dwelling did not describe the credit card but only other *540stolen articles which were recovered in the search.1

¶6A police officer engaged in searching appellant’s bedroom under a warrant which described numerous articles of stolen personal property 2 opened a dresser drawer in the process of search. In the drawer he saw a credit card issued in the name of the complaining witness whose other stolen personal property had just been found in appellant’s possession. With the credit card was a statement from Lansburgh’s Department Store also in the complaining witness’ name. Neither the credit card nor the statement was specified in the warrant.

¶7 Appellant contends that it was reversible error for the District Court to refuse to suppress the card and statement as evidence. He argues that the police could not seize the credit card and statement without securing a new warrant as provided by Rule 41(c) Fed.R.Crim.P., 18 U.S.C.A. With the credit card were documents of purchase of merchandise in the name of the same person. Appellant’s brief states that the searching officer “discovered what ostensibly appeared to be forged documents An officer engaged in a lawful search is not confined to seizing only those items described in the warrant, especially where the unlisted items seized are instrumentalities of a crime. “The Fourth Amendment provides that the warrant must particularly describe the ‘things to be seized.’ But it is well established that given a lawful search some things may be seized in connection therewith which are not described in the warrant * Palmer v. United States, 1953, 92 U.S. App.D.C. 103, 104, 203 F.2d 66, 67. See also Bryant v. United States, 5 Cir., 1958, 252 F.2d 746. “This Court has frequently recognized the distinction between merely evidentiary materials, on the one hand, which may not be seized either under the authority of a search warrant or during the course of a search incident to arrest, and on the other hand, those objects which may validly be seized including the instrumentalities and means by which a crime is committed Harris v. United States, 1947, 331 U.S. 145, 154, 67 S.Ct. 1098, 1103, 91 L.Ed. 1399.

¶8Affirmed.

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