Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-07-01582/USCOURTS-ca8-07-01582-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Anthony Alan Taylor
Appellant
United States
Appellee

Document Text:

1

 The HONORABLE DONOVAN W. FRANK, United States District Judge for

the District of Minnesota.

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

___________

No. 07-1582

___________

United States of America, *

*

Plaintiff - Appellee, *

* Appeal from the United States

v. * District Court for the

* District of Minnesota.

Anthony Alan Taylor, *

*

Defendant - Appellant. *

___________

Submitted: October 18, 2007

Filed: March 27, 2008

___________

Before LOKEN, Chief Judge, GRUENDER and BENTON, Circuit Judges.

___________

LOKEN, Chief Judge.

Anthony Alan Taylor entered a conditional plea of guilty to conspiring to

distribute over five grams of cocaine base and possessing a firearm during and in

furtherance of a drug trafficking crime in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1),

(b)(1)(B), and 846 and 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A). He appeals the district court’s1

denial of his motion to suppress cocaine base and a loaded handgun seized at the time

of his arrest. He argues that he was arrested without probable cause by police officers

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who were also guilty of outrageous government conduct. Reviewing the district

court’s findings of fact for clear error and its conclusions of law de novo, we affirm.

See United States v. Brown, 49 F.3d 1346, 1348-49 (8th Cir. 1995) (standard of

review). 

I. Probable Cause to Arrest

At the suppression hearing, Minneapolis narcotics investigator Kurt Radke and

police sergeant Elizabeth Dea testified for the government. Radke testified that he

learned from another officer that Jerome Palmore had proposed, in exchange for

leniency, that he purchase crack cocaine from a third party in a controlled buy. Radke

investigated and learned from a third officer that Palmore had previously provided

accurate and timely information that led to the seizure of drugs and a firearm. Based

on this officer’s confidence in Palmore’s reliability, Radke met with Palmore, who

offered to set up a controlled buy of crack cocaine from a supplier he called “T.”

Palmore described “T” and the car he drove and said that “T” was a member of the

“Detroit Boys” gang. In Radke’s presence, Palmore arranged in a series of phone

calls to buy an ounce of crack from “T” at an Arby’s restaurant in Hopkins, a

Minneapolis suburb. 

Sergeant Dea testified that she then drove Palmore to the Arby’s parking lot.

With six Minneapolis and Hopkins police vehicles positioned nearby, Palmore talked

with “T” by phone from Dea’s car. Palmore rejected “T’s” request to change their

rendezvous to an apartment complex across the street from the Arby’s. Shortly

thereafter, Taylor came out of the apartment complex, approached the Arby’s, and

appeared to place a call on his cell phone at the same time Palmore’s cell phone

received a call. Palmore identified Taylor as “T,” and Dea advised Radke of

Palmore’s identification. Never losing sight of “T” as he approached, Radke held the

arrest team until Taylor entered a convenience store adjacent to the Arby’s, which

Radke described as a more “controlled arrest situation.” Radke then assisted in

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Taylor’s arrest and observed the search incident to his arrest. Palmore was called as

a defense witness when the suppression hearing resumed one week later. He recanted

what he told Taylor’s counsel in a phone conversation and corroborated the prior

testimony by Officer Radke and Sergeant Dea. 

Taylor argues that the evidence seized incident to his arrest must be suppressed

because the officers lacked probable cause to arrest him without a warrant. Probable

cause exists if the facts and circumstances within the arresting officers’ collective

knowledge “are sufficient to warrant a prudent person, or one of reasonable caution,

in believing . . . that the suspect has committed, is committing, or is about to commit

an offense.” Brown, 49 F.3d at 1349 (quotation omitted). When the arrest is based

on information provided by an informant, that information “may be sufficiently

reliable to support a probable cause finding if the person providing the information

has a track record of supplying reliable information, or if it is corroborated by

independent evidence.” United States v. Williams, 10 F.3d 590, 593 (8th Cir. 1993);

see Draper v. United States, 358 U.S. 307, 313 (1959); Brown, 49 F.3d at 1349. 

Here, the district court concluded the officers had probable cause to arrest

Taylor based upon information provided by Palmore, an informant known to be

reliable in the past, and corroborated when Palmore arranged a controlled buy in

Radke’s presence, Palmore identified Taylor as “T” when he approached the agreed

location, Taylor matched Palmore’s prior physical description of “T,” and Sergeant

Dea saw Taylor placing a call on his cell phone as Palmore received a call from “T.”

It is clear from our prior cases that these facts and circumstances amply support the

court’s probable cause ruling. See, e.g., United States v. Taylor, 106 F.3d 801, 802-03

(8th Cir. 1997); Brown, 49 F.3d at 1349-50. Taylor argues that Radke admitted

Palmore was not a “confidential reliable informant,” and the police did not sufficiently

corroborate Palmore’s information because they did not wait for Taylor to enter the

Arby’s and check his cell phone for Palmore’s number prior to the arrest. Taylor cites

no factually similar case in support of these contentions. We agree with the district

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court that Radke adequately investigated Palmore’s reliability and substantially

corroborated the information Palmore provided. See United States v. LaMorie, 100

F.3d 547, 553 (8th Cir. 1996) (“personal contact with an informant can strengthen an

officer’s decision to rely on the information provided”); United States v. Gladney, 48

F.3d 309, 313 (8th Cir. 1995) (when an “informant’s information is at least partly

corroborated . . . attacks upon credibility and reliability are not crucial to the finding

of probable cause”). 

Taylor further argues that the district court clearly erred in crediting the

testimony of Radke, Dea, and Palmore because Radke “misled the court” about

Palmore’s prior arrests and lied about a warrant search of Taylor’s apartment

conducted after the arrest, and because Palmore recanted what he told defense counsel

and admitted that he identified Taylor and cooperated in a controlled buy in exchange

for leniency. These contentions are without merit. A district court’s findings

regarding witness credibility are “virtually unreviewable on appeal.” United States

v. Candie, 974 F.2d 61, 64 (8th Cir. 1992). The district court did not clearly err in

crediting the consistent descriptions by Radke, Dea, and Palmore of the events leading

up to Taylor’s arrest that were critical to the probable cause determination. 

II. Outrageous Government Conduct

The search incident to Taylor’s arrest yielded a driver’s license listing his

address as an apartment in the nearby complex from which he had just emerged.

Radke testified that he and other officers went to the complex, where they located a

car matching Palmore’s description of Taylor’s car. A narcotics dog alerted to the

vehicle. The police entered the apartment and, because people were present, “froze”

the apartment and its occupants while Radke applied for a search warrant. A state

court judge issued a warrant to search Taylor’s car but not the apartment. At the

suppression hearing, the government advised that Radke’s warrant application, which

he completed at the nearby Hopkins Police Department, could not be found. Taylor’s

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girlfriend testified that the police kicked in the apartment door, cuffed her and her

cousin, and searched the apartment for over two hours without a warrant. At the

suppression hearing, the government represented that it would not offer any evidence

from the warrant search of the car, nor was evidence from the alleged warrantless

search of the apartment at issue. Taylor nonetheless argues that the lost warrant and

the alleged warrantless search of his apartment amounted, cumulatively, to outrageous

government conduct that violated his right to due process and require suppression of

the evidence seized incident to his arrest. 

 

We agree with the government that Taylor has waived this issue. A guilty plea

waives all non-jurisdictional defenses. United States v. Arrellano, 213 F.3d 427, 430

(8th Cir. 2000). Rule 11(a)(2) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure provides

a limited exception to this rule -- with the consent of the court and the government,

a defendant may enter a conditional guilty plea that preserves his right to appeal “an

adverse determination of a specified pretrial motion.” (Emphasis added.) Here,

Taylor moved to suppress evidence on Fourth Amendment and due process grounds.

The district court in denying the motion separately addressed both issues, but Taylor’s

conditional guilty plea preserved only his right “to appeal the Court’s determination

that there was no violation of [his] Fourth Amendment rights.” Applying the plain

meaning of Rule 11(a)(2), this plea waived the due process issue. Taylor’s contention

that the alleged due process violation was a jurisdictional defect not waived by his

guilty plea is without merit. A “knowing and intelligent guilty plea forecloses

independent claims relating to the deprivation of constitutional rights that occurred

prior to the entry of the guilty plea.” United States v. Vaughan, 13 F.3d 1186, 1187

(8th Cir.), cert. denied, 511 U.S. 1094 (1994), quoting Tollett v. Henderson, 411 U.S.

258, 267 (1973).

The judgment of the district court is affirmed.

______________________________

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