Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-03-03681/USCOURTS-ca8-03-03681-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Mark Allen Hallam
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

1

The Honorable Richard E. Dorr, United States District Judge for the Western

District of Missouri, adopting the report and recommendations of the Honorable

James C. England, United States Magistrate Judge for the Western District of

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

___________

No. 03-3681

___________

United States of America, *

*

Appellee, *

* Appeal from the United States

v. * District Court for the Western

* District of Missouri.

Mark Allen Hallam, *

*

Appellant. *

___________

Submitted: May 12, 2004

Filed: May 17, 2005

___________

Before MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD, MCMILLIAN, and MELLOY, Circuit

Judges.

___________

MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD, Circuit Judge.

Mark Hallam was convicted of two counts of possessing a firearm while being

a felon and unlawful user of a controlled substance in violation of 18 U.S.C.

§ 922(g)(1), (3). The firearms at issue were discovered and seized during two

searches, separated by several months, that were conducted at Mr. Hallam's home

pursuant to state search warrants. The district court1

 denied Mr. Hallam's motion to

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Missouri. See 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(B).

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suppress the firearms, which was based on the alleged insufficiency of the affidavits

supporting the two warrants. Mr. Hallam conditionally pleaded guilty to both counts,

reserving the right to have this court review the denial of his suppression motion. He

now appeals, contending that the district court erred in denying his motion to

suppress and in determining his sentence. We affirm.

I.

A.

We first address the district court's refusal to suppress the guns seized from

Mr. Hallam's residence during the first search. The fourth amendment, applicable to

the states through the fourteenth amendment, protects individuals' rights to be secure

in their homes against "unreasonable" searches, and provides that "no Warrants shall

issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation." U.S. Const.

amend. IV. It is uncontested that the first search warrant was invalid because the

information contained in the affidavit in support of the warrant was insufficient to

establish probable cause, and that the search thus violated Mr. Hallam's constitutional

rights.

At issue is whether the district court correctly held that the illegally seized

evidence was admissible against Mr. Hallam because the warrant, despite its

invalidity, was executed in good faith. As a general matter, in the absence a valid

search warrant issued by a detached and neutral magistrate pursuant to his

independent determination of probable cause, evidence discovered by the police

during a non-consensual search of a defendant's home is not admissible at the

defendant's trial, see Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 655-57 (1961). The fourth

amendment, however, does not itself "expressly preclud[e] the use of evidence

obtained in violation of its commands," United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 906

(1984), and the Supreme Court has held that evidence obtained by an officer pursuant

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to an invalid warrant need not be excluded from the prosecution's case-in-chief if the

officer's reliance on a magistrate's erroneous probable-cause determination was

"objectively reasonable" and manifested "objective good faith," id. at 922-23. The

reasonableness of the execution of the warrant at issue here is a mixed question of

law and fact that we review de novo, considering all of the relevant circumstances.

See, e.g., United States v. Marion, 238 F.3d 965, 968-69 (8th Cir. 2001); United

States v. Riedesel, 987 F.2d 1383, 1391 (8th Cir. 1993).

B.

The county prosecutor who applied for the warrant to search Mr. Hallam's

residence presented an affidavit signed by Trooper Kelsey Rutledge in support of the

application. The affidavit provided the following factual basis for Trooper Rutledge's

information and belief that probable cause existed:

[W]ithin the last 6 hours, a cooperating individual advised me in person

that he had seen methamphetamine on the dining room table of the Mark

Hallam residence. ... [T]he cooperating individual had been stopped by

me in a traffic stop, and provided this information after I had arrested

him for felony driving while revoked ... and had found marijuana on his

person in the course of a search incident to arrest. The cooperating

individual indicated he had seen the methamphetamine only minutes

before, as he had just left the Mark Hallam residence prior to my

stopping him.

The affidavit went on to describe the precise location of the "property where the

methamphetamine was seen by the confidential informant." Based on this affidavit,

a state magistrate signed a search warrant and Trooper Rutledge and other state

officials executed the search, during which eight guns were seized.

The district court determined that Trooper Rutledge's affidavit failed to

establish probable cause, as it did not include any information regarding the reliability

of the unnamed "cooperating individual" or any corroborating information. The court

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concluded, however, that Mr. Hallam's motion to suppress the evidence obtained

through the first search warrant should be denied because Trooper Rutledge had acted

in good-faith reliance on the warrant in executing the search. The Supreme Court has

noted that the so-called "good faith" exception to the exclusionary rule is broad,

advising that "a warrant issued by a magistrate normally suffices to establish that a

law enforcement officer has acted in good faith in conducting the search," and thus

that exclusion of evidence discovered during the search is inappropriate. Leon,

468 U.S. at 922 (internal quotations omitted). The Court has made clear, however,

that suppression of the fruits of a search conducted pursuant to an invalid warrant

remains the appropriate remedy "in cases where the issuing magistrate wholly

abandoned his judicial role" or where the warrant is "based on an affidavit so lacking

in indicia of probable cause as to render official belief in its existence entirely

unreasonable," among other situations. Id. at 923 (internal quotations omitted).

Mr. Hallam contends that the first search warrant exhibits both of these infirmities,

and that the district court thus erred in denying his motion to suppress.

C.

Mr. Hallam contends first that Trooper Rutledge's reliance on the warrant was

objectively unreasonable because the magistrate abandoned his judicial role in issuing

it. Trooper Rutledge met with a prosecutor at about 2:00 AM on the day of the

search. They collectively prepared an affidavit and search warrant for the magistrate

to sign, and then asked the magistrate to come to the prosecutor's office. Trooper

Rutledge testified during the suppression hearing that the issuance of the warrant took

place in a "pretty casual atmosphere," that the magistrate had no questions and made

no statements about the search warrant or affidavit, and that the magistrate "was

anxious to get back to bed."

While the magistrate's relative silence and his desire to return to his slumber

might tend to show that he was acting as a mere "rubber stamp" instead of actively

making an independent probable cause determination, such behavior is only to be

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expected from a man who has been rousted out of bed in the middle of the night.

There is no indication that the magistrate was biased or impartial, nor is there any

evidence of a pattern of passive, automatic issuance of warrants. The record provides

only a very limited insight into the magistrate's internal mental processes, and we

simply do not have sufficient information to conclude that he "wholly abandoned his

judicial role."

D.

Mr. Hallam also contends that the firearms should be suppressed because

Trooper Rutledge's affidavit, which provided the only factual basis for the

magistrate's probable cause determination, was "so lacking in indicia of probable

cause as to render official belief in its existence entirely unreasonable." Both parties

agree that the affidavit failed to provide sufficient facts establishing the reliability of

the statements of the "cooperating individual." It did, however, provide some fairly

specific information in the form of first-hand observation of the unnamed informant

that methamphetamine would be found at the residence of Mr. Hallam; all that was

missing was an additional factual basis to corroborate this evidence. We conclude

that the affidavit, while scant, was not so utterly lacking in facts as to render Trooper

Rutledge's belief that it established probable cause "entirely unreasonable."

E.

Background facts disclosed by Trooper Rutledge during his testimony at the

suppression hearing also indicate that he was acting with good faith in relying on the

magistrate's probable cause determination. Trooper Rutledge testified that this was

the first search warrant that he had sought since beginning his job with the highway

patrol. He executed the warrant after two attorneys, the prosecutor and the

magistrate, represented to him that the affidavit established probable cause. Trooper

Rutledge testified that he believed that he had probable cause to conduct the search,

and that he relied upon the fact that the magistrate had signed the warrant. Due to his

relative inexperience in dealing with search warrants and his limited legal knowledge,

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it was reasonable for him to give some deference to the judgment of the prosecutor

and the magistrate, and there is no reason to presume that his reliance on their

affirmations and on the magistrate's issuance of the warrant was in bad faith.

Prior to the preparation of the affidavit, Trooper Rutledge showed the

prosecutor a statement signed by the informant mentioned in the affidavit (who turned

out to be Mr. Hallam's brother), which stated that he "saw meth on the table of Mark

Hallam tonight on the dinning [sic] room table in two separate bags," and described

where Mr. Hallam lived. In addition, the trooper told the prosecutor about a

conversation that he had had with Mr. Hallam's brother in which the brother described

other drug-related incidents that the trooper was able to corroborate independently.

Trooper Rutledge testified that Mr. Hallam's brother provided the incriminating

information about Mr. Hallam in exchange for an agreement to "cut him a deal" on

traffic and drug charges that he was facing. Trooper Rutledge also told the prosecutor

about another incident that occurred two days prior to the issuance of the warrant

involving a man named Paul Murphy. He had arrested Mr. Murphy for a traffic

violation, after which Mr. Murphy disclosed to him that Mr. Hallam was producing

large quantities of methamphetamine, and was employing Mr. Murphy's ex-wife and

supplying her with methamphetamine.

Trooper Rutledge testified that the typical procedure in obtaining a warrant is

that the troopers "go to [the prosecutor] with information, give him the case, and

basically he types things up for us." He testified that the prosecutor wrote up the

affidavit that he signed and that for some reason unknown to him, the prosecutor

failed to include in the affidavit any information about the informant's identity, the

additional independently corroborated information relayed by the informant, or the

conversation with Mr. Murphy, and that he had relied on the prosecutor to include in

the affidavit whatever the prosecutor thought was necessary. Had the affidavit

contained the additional facts that Trooper Rutledge relayed to the prosecutor, it quite

likely would have established probable cause, as these facts tended to bolster the

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reliability of the information that the prosecutor did include in the affidavit. In any

event, we agree with the district court that, based on the totality of circumstances,

including facts that do not appear on the face of the affidavit, "[i]t was entirely

reasonable for Trooper Rutledge to have believed that probable cause existed," and

"Trooper Rutledge acted in good faith in relying on the county prosecutor and state

judge's probable cause determination." We thus conclude that the district court's

denial of Mr. Hallam's motion to suppress the firearms seized during the first search

of his home was not erroneous.

II.

We next address the district court's refusal to suppress a firearm found in

Mr. Hallam's home during the second search. Mr. Hallam contends that the evidence

seized during the second search should have been suppressed because it is a "fruit of

the poisonous tree," as the affidavit in support of the second search warrant was based

in part on information gleaned as a result of the first search conducted pursuant to the

first, deficient search warrant. This argument is disposed of by our holding above

that the first search was conducted in reasonable good-faith reliance on the invalid

warrant; the good faith served to purge any taint that might otherwise require

exclusion of evidence that was obtained during the second search as a proximate

result of the inadequate first warrant.

Mr. Hallam also argues that the second search warrant was invalid because the

affidavit in support of the warrant, signed by Deputy Chris Spratt, did not establish

probable cause. The district court determined that "[t]he affidavit in support of the

[second] search warrant is replete with reliable information and clearly provides

probable cause for a search warrant of Defendant's residence." In reviewing the

issuance of a warrant, a district court need not make a de novo inquiry into the

existence of probable cause, but rather should uphold the decision to issue the warrant

so long as it is supported by "substantial evidence in the record." See Massachusetts

v. Upton, 466 U.S. 727, 728 (1984) (per curiam).

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Deputy Spratt's affidavit stated that a "reliable informant" had reported to him

that he had witnessed Mr. Hallam cooking methamphetamine in the kitchen and

bathroom of Mr. Hallam's house, that several thousand dollars in cash was hidden in

vehicles parked outside Mr. Hallam's residence, that Mr. Hallam had surveillance

cameras watching the highway outside his house, and that methamphetamine, pills,

and marijuana were hidden in several precisely identified locations at Mr. Hallam's

residence, including behind false floors and inside hidden compartments and chicken

coops. The affidavit stated that the informant had bought methamphetamine from

Mr. Hallam off and on for three years and was willing to testify against him. Deputy

Spratt's affidavit also stated that a man named Mark Neil, whose methamphetamine

was discovered during a search following an arrest for a traffic violation, disclosed

that he had obtained the drugs from Mr. Hallam that very day, and that he had

purchased drugs from Mr. Hallam about seventy-five times over the past year.

Finally, Deputy Spratt, who had taken part in the first search, stated in the affidavit

that he had personally received numerous phone calls since Mr. Hallam's last arrest

"stating that he is back to cooking and selling methamphetamine and Marijuana."

We agree with the district court that the probable cause determination was

supported by substantial evidence. The various sources referred to in Deputy Spratt's

affidavit all pointed to the same conclusion that Mr. Hallam was operating an illegal

drug business out of his home, and some of that information was exceptionally

detailed. Collectively, the information provided in the affidavit quite clearly gives

rise to "a fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime," Illinois v. Gates,

462 U.S. 213, 238 (1983), would be found at Mr. Hallam's residence. We thus affirm

the denial the motion to suppress the firearm seized during the second search.

III.

Finally, we address the two sentencing questions raised by this case. The first

is whether the district court erred when it enhanced Mr. Hallam's guidelines

sentencing range pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(b)(5). The second is whether the

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district court committed plain error by sentencing Mr. Hallam pursuant to the

mandatory-guidelines regime instead of the advisory-guidelines regime laid out in

United States v. Booker, 125 S. Ct. 738 (2005). We answer both questions in the

negative.

We conclude that the district court appropriately calculated Mr. Hallam's

guidelines sentencing range, which is advisory in the wake of Booker, 125 S. Ct. at

756-57. Section 2K2.1(b)(5) provides that a court should add four levels to a

defendant's offense level "[i]f the defendant used or possessed any firearm ... in

connection with another felony offense." Mr. Hallam argues that there is no evidence

that he committed another felony offense and, in the alternative, that there is no

evidence connecting the firearms to any such offense that he committed.

In our view, the record supports the district court's conclusion that Mr. Hallam

committed at least one other felony offense. When the police searched Mr. Hallam's

house the first time, they found (in addition to ten firearms) drug paraphernalia

associated with the manufacture and distribution of methamphetamine, almost four

grams of methamphetamine, and almost $800 in cash. (He does not deny that the

police found these items.) This evidence, along with the statements by Mr. Hallam's

brother and Mr. Murphy, see generally United States v. Tucker, 286 F.3d 505, 510

(8th Cir. 2002), more than supports the district court's finding under a preponderanceof-the-evidence standard that Mr. Hallam committed other felony offenses, namely

the attempted manufacture of methamphetamine, Mo. Rev. Stat. § 195.211 (2004),

possession with the intent to distribute methamphetamine, id., and possession of drug

paraphernalia with the intent to manufacture methamphetamine, Mo. Rev. Stat.

§ 195.233. See generally United States v. Marks, 328 F.3d 1015, 1017 (8th Cir.

2003). And in fact, Mr. Hallam had been charged with these crimes in Missouri state

court at the time of his sentencing.

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We also conclude that the district court appropriately determined that the

firearms were connected with these other offenses. When the other offenses are drug

related, as they are here, the four-level enhancement is appropriate unless it is

" 'clearly improbable' " that the firearms were used in connection with those offenses.

See United States v. Regans, 125 F.3d 685, 687 (8th Cir. 1997), cert. denied, 523 U.S.

1065 (1997) (quoting U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1 comment. (n. 3)); United States v. Kanatzar,

370 F.3d 810, 815 (8th Cir. 2004), vacated on other grounds by 125 S. Ct. 1010

(2005). "In connection with means that the firearm must have [had] ... the potential

of facilitating [ ] another felony offense; its presence or involvement cannot [have]

be[en] the result of accident or coincidence." United States v. Frederickson, 195 F.3d

438, 439-40 (8th Cir. 1999) (per curiam) (internal quotations omitted). We cannot

say that it is "clearly improbable" that the firearms found at the house had the

potential of facilitating the drug crimes which probably occurred at the house, as

firearms are "tools of the drug trade providing protection and intimidation," United

States v. Linson, 276 F.3d 1017, 1019 (8th Cir. 2002); see United States v. Brown,

148 F.3d 1003, 1009 (8th Cir. 1998), cert. denied, 525 U.S. 1169 (1999). 

Turning to the second sentencing question, we hold that the district court did

not plainly err by sentencing Mr. Hallam under the mandatory-guidelines regime. To

demonstrate plain error, Mr. Hallam would have to show, based on the record as a

whole, that there is a reasonable probability that he would have received a more

favorable sentence had the judge sentenced him under the advisory-guidelines system.

United States v. Pirani, No. 03-2871, 2005 WL 1039976, at *6 (8th Cir. April 29,

2005) (en banc). Mr. Hallam cannot make this showing. The only evidence that the

judge might have given him a lower sentence under the new system is that the judge

sentenced him to the bottom of the guidelines range. Under Pirani, however, that is

not enough to carry the defendant's burden. Id. at *7.

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IV. 

For the reasons given, we affirm the district court's denial of Mr. Hallam's

motion to suppress and affirm his sentence. 

______________________________

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