Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-06-02203/USCOURTS-ca8-06-02203-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Keith Byron Baranski
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

1

The Honorable Charles A. Shaw, United States District Judge for the Eastern

District of Missouri.

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

___________

No. 06-2203

___________

Keith Byron Baranski, *

*

Plaintiff - Appellant, *

* Appeal from the United States

v. * District Court for the

* Eastern District of Missouri.

United States of America, *

*

Defendant - Appellee. *

*

___________

Submitted: September 27, 2007

Filed: January 16, 2008

___________

Before MURPHY, MELLOY, and SMITH, Circuit Judges.

___________

MURPHY, Circuit Judge.

Keith Baranski moved under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 to vacate or set aside his

sentence for conspiracy to import machine guns illegally. Although the district court1

denied the motion, it granted a certificate of appealability to review its decision in

light of Groh v. Ramirez, 540 U.S. 551 (2004). Baranski appeals, and we affirm. 

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An attorney for the warehouse was present at the time of the search and was

informed by an agent what ATF was looking for pursuant to the warrant. 

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Baranski was indicted for conspiracy to import machine guns by submitting

false entries on forms for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) in

violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371 and 26 U.S.C. § 5861(l) after ATF agents had seized 372

machine guns and 12 crates of accessories from a warehouse pursuant to a search

warrant. Baranski filed a pretrial motion to suppress the weapons. The trial court

denied the motion and allowed a limited number of the weapons into evidence. Other

trial evidence included documents submitted by Baranski to ATF, letters and faxes

sent by Baranski, and testimony from ATF agents and coconspirators. The jury found

Baranski guilty, and he was sentenced to sixty months and the seized weapons were

forfeited to the government. 

Baranski unsuccessfully appealed on several grounds. He continued to argue

that the search warrant violated the Fourth Amendment's particularity requirement

because it did not list the items sought. The warrant did, however, incorporate a

sealed affidavit which specified the objects of the search although it was not attached

to the warrant at the time of the search.2

 We upheld Baranski's conviction, concluding

that Baranski's Fourth Amendment claims failed because the agents had acted in good

faith pursuant to the warrant, that the district court had not erred by admitting fifteen

of the seized firearms, and that any error from the admission of the guns would have

been harmless. United States v. Baranski, 75 F. App'x 566 (8th Cir. 2003) (per

curiam), cert. denied, 541 U.S. 1011 (2004) (Baranski I). 

After his petitions for rehearing, rehearing en banc, and certiorari were denied,

Baranski filed this § 2255 motion, again arguing that the trial court erred in not

suppressing the weapons and also contending that the Supreme Court's intervening

decision in Groh v. Ramirez, 540 U.S. 551 (2004), and his success in a since reversed

Bivens action entitled him to relief. The government disagreed and argued that

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Baranski was barred under Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 465 (1976), from again raising

his Fourth Amendment claim. The district court denied the motion without a hearing,

concluding that Baranski's Fourth Amendment claim was not cognizable on a § 2255

motion because it had been raised and decided on direct appeal, relying on Dall v.

United States, 957 F.2d 571, 572 (8th Cir. 1992), and also citing Stone. The district

court then granted a limited certificate of appealability to review its decision in light

of Groh.

Our review in this matter is restricted to the issue in the certificate of

appealability. See, e.g., Pruitt v. United States, 233 F.3d 570, 572-73 (8th Cir. 2000).

The legal issues are reviewed de novo, but we review any underlying factual findings

for clear error. United States v. Davis, 406 F.3d 505, 508 (8th Cir. 2005).

In Stone, the Supreme Court curtailed the ability of state prisoners to raise

Fourth Amendment issues in § 2254 habeas proceedings in federal court, holding that

"where the State has provided an opportunity for full and fair litigation of a Fourth

Amendment claim, the Constitution does not require that a state prisoner be granted

federal habeas corpus relief on the ground that evidence obtained in an

unconstitutional search or seizure was introduced at his trial." 428 U.S. at 482.

Although we have not addressed the issue, some courts of appeal have ruled that the

Stone bar also applies when federal prisoners seek to raise Fourth Amendment claims

under § 2255. See, e.g., United States v. Cook, 997 F.2d 1312, 1317 (10th Cir. 1993);

United States v. Hearst, 638 F.2d 1190, 1196 (9th Cir. 1980), cert. denied, 451 U.S.

938 (1981).

Stone left open the question of whether Fourth Amendment claims may be

raised by federal prisoners under § 2255, see Matta-Ballesteros v. Henman, 896 F.2d

255, 262 n.8 (7th Cir. 1990), and it did not overrule Kaufman v. United States, 394

U.S. 217 (1969). See Stone, 428 U.S. at 479-81 & n.16. In Kaufman, the Court had

unequivocally held that a claim of unconstitutional search and seizure is cognizable

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in a § 2255 proceeding, 394 U.S. at 231, and a Stone footnote suggested a different

policy reason might underlie Kaufman because of the Court's supervisory role over

federal proceedings. See 428 U.S. at 481 n.16. It is well recognized that the

supervisory power of federal appellate courts over district courts is broader than its

authority to review state court decisions under § 2254. See Cupp v. Naughten, 414

U.S. 141, 146 (1973). We conclude that Stone does not bar our consideration of the

issue certified by the district court, that is whether Groh v. Ramirez would entitle

Baranski to prevail on his § 2255 motion. 

Groh was a Bivens action against ATF agents who conducted a search of a

ranch pursuant to a search warrant which in the space allotted for items to be seized

only described the house to be searched, not the weapons the agents hoped to find.

540 U.S. at 554. Although the application for the warrant listed the items sought, it

was under seal and neither accompanied the warrant nor was incorporated into it. Id.

at 554-55. The Court held that the warrant was "plainly invalid" under the Fourth

Amendment's particularity requirement because it "did not describe the items to be

seized at all." Id. at 557-58 (emphasis in original). The Court reaffirmed that a search

conducted pursuant to a warrant which does not conform to the particularity

requirement is unconstitutional, and it found this rule sufficiently well established to

deprive the agents of qualified immunity. Id. at 559, 563-65.

We subsequently had occasion to consider the application of Groh in somewhat

similar circumstances. United States v. Gamboa, 439 F.3d 796, 807 (8th Cir.), cert.

denied, __ U.S. __, 127 S. Ct. 605 (2006). In Gamboa, we held that a warrant which

did not list the objects of the search but incorporated a document listing the items to

be seized did not violate the particularity requirement, for an "'affidavit may provide

the necessary particularity for a warrant if it is either incorporated into or attached to

the warrant.'" Id., quoting Rickert v. Sweeney, 813 F.2d 907, 909 (8th Cir. 1987). We

distinguished Groh because that case "did not rule upon the validity of a warrant that

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sufficiently incorporated a second document in order to meet the particularity

requirement." Id.

Analogous to Gamboa, the warrant here also referred to an incorporated

document, a sealed affidavit which described the items sought. In contrast to the

warrant in Groh, the warrant in Baranski's case plainly showed that a neutral

magistrate had approved the search with reference to the incorporated affidavit and

had had the opportunity to limit the scope of the search authorized. Cf. Groh, 540 U.S.

at 561 n.4 (whether the magistrate was aware of the scope of the authorized search

was not ascertainable).

Baranski argues that Groh requires that a supporting document accompany a

warrant in order to supplement any deficiency in particularity, citing a since vacated

panel decision in the Sixth Circuit finding the warehouse search in Baranski's case

unconstitutional because the warrant had not described the evidence sought and the

incorporated affidavit was not attached at the time of the search. Baranski v. Fifteen

Unknown Agents of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms, 401 F.3d 419, 428-29

(6th Cir. 2005). According to the panel, the agents' claims of qualified immunity

should therefore have been denied. Id. at 432. In contrast to the panel, the en banc

court distinguished Groh, reasoning that it had turned on the facial invalidity of the

warrant there and that it had not established a "bright-line rule" that an incorporated

affidavit must accompany a warrant at the time of the search. Baranski v. Fifteen

Unknown Agents of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms, 452 F.3d 433, 443 (6th

Cir. 2006) (en banc), cert. denied, __ U.S. __, 127 S. Ct. 1908 (2007). Because the

warrant in Baranski's case satisfied the particularity requirement when issued and

because officers performed the search reasonably, no constitutional violation occurred.

Id. at 436.

We agree that Groh does not entitle Baranski to relief on his Fourth

Amendment claim. Rather than announcing a new principle of law, Groh applied the

text of the Fourth Amendment and long standing precedent to a particular set of facts.

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Cf. Smith v. Groose, 205 F.3d 1045, 1053 (8th Cir. 2000), citing Teague v. Lane, 489

U.S. 288 (1989) (noting that for purposes of determining retroactive application a new

rule of law is one that is not dictated by precedent and that does not break new ground

or impose a new obligation on the government). We have previously distinguished

Groh from a situation like the one here where an incorporated document provided

"'the necessary particularity for [the] warrant'" required under the Fourth Amendment.

Gamboa, 439 F.3d at 807 (citation omitted). 

On direct appeal we earlier determined that the district court did not err in

denying Baranski's motion to suppress since the agents had acted in good faith and

that any error from admission of the evidence would have been harmless. Baranski

I, 75 F. App'x at 568. Those rulings are the law of the case and will not be disturbed

absent an intervening change in controlling authority. See United States v. Blahowski,

324 F.3d 592, 596-97 (8th Cir. 2003); see also Liberty Mut. Ins. Co. v. Elgin

Warehouse & Equip., 4 F.3d 567, 571 (8th Cir.1993). Because Groh does not

represent a change in law that would affect Baranski's case, we affirm the order of the

district court.

______________________________

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