A Montrose County sheriff’s deputy had probable cause to search a Cimarron home and seize 33 firearms based on information she learned about one of the home’s occupants, a federal judge ruled on Monday.

Anna Dulaney, the owner of the home, sued Deputy Angela Grubbs for an alleged Fourth Amendment violation, arguing Grubbs’ application for a search warrant did not establish there were illegally-owned guns at her property.

In the fall of 2019, Grubbs began investigating a report from one of Dulaney’s neighbors. He showed Grubbs footage from his property camera, depicting Mark Young, who lived at Dulaney’s house, wandering onto the neighbor’s property with a gun.

“Mark has also made reference to hurting another neighbor,” Grubbs wrote in her affidavit for a search warrant. The neighbor “wanted to report this in case (Young) is actually a felon and cannot carry firearms.”

Grubbs’ investigation confirmed that Young had a felony conviction. A police report from his 2009 arrest in Mesa County indicated Young owned firearms and a “large gun safe.” Grubbs requested to search Young’s property and a judge authorized the warrant.

Prosecutors charged Young with 40 offenses, mostly involving the illegal possession of a firearm by a previous offender. The district attorney for the Seventh Judicial District dismissed the criminal case in 2021, explaining only that it was “in the best interests of judicial economy.”

Dulaney then sued Grubbs, claiming the deputy had seized 33 guns in her search without describing in the warrant how Dulaney or Dulaney’s property was connected to Young, or why firearms would be at the home. 

The information suggesting Young owned a gun safe “was a decade old at the time of the filing of the affidavit for the search of the Cimmaron, CO residence,” wrote attorney Daniel R. Shaffer for Dulaney. “Any reasonable officer would have concluded that information from a decade ago is clearly stale and unreliable.”

U.S. District Court Chief Judge Philip A. Brimmer disagreed. Grubbs’ investigation revealed a “fair probability” that Young illegally possessed a weapon as recently as in the neighbor’s video footage, and that evidence of the crime was at the Dulaney-Young property.

“Deputy Grubbs relied on multiple sources of information to conclude there was probable cause for the search and seizure,” Brimmer wrote on March 13, “including official records confirming that Mr. Young was a felon, information from Mr. Young’s neighbor establishing that Mr. Young lived at the property, and video evidence and information from the neighbor demonstrating that Mr. Young was in possession of a rifle on September 19, 2019 on Mr. Young’s property.”

Finding Grubbs’ affidavit contained probable cause to search the property, Brimmer determined there was no constitutional violation. He dismissed the lawsuit.

The case is Dulaney v. Grubbs.