IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR 

THE MIDDLE DISTRICT OF ALABAMA 

 NORTHERN DIVISION 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA * 

 * 

 * 

v. * CIVIL ACTION NO. 2:06cv736-WKW 

 * 

SEVENTY-FOUR THOUSAND SEVEN * 

HUNDRED DOLLARS ($74,700) * 

IN UNITED STATES CURRENCY, * 

BRIEF IN SUPPORT OF CLAIMANT'S MOTION TO SUPPRESS

 Comes now the Claimant George E. Jones, Jr., by and through counsel, and in 

support of his Motion to Suppress says as follows: 

 Facts 

 On March 31, 2006, B.W. Bartlett of the Montgomery Police Department applied for 

a "document" search warrant for Claimant's residence at 5304 West Shades Valley Drive, 

Montgomery, Alabama, utilizing an affidavit which is in evidence. That affidavit went into 

great detail about the operation of some drug enterprises but was, as officers testified, a 

"boiler plate" affidavit but for eight (8) allegations of facts specific to Claimant and/or the 

residence. Those eight allegations, however, covered a span of approximately eleven 

years prior to the search. Those eight allegations contained only two allegations that were 

less than two years old. The two allegations were (1) that a confidential informant said that 

Claimant was involved in trafficking multiple kilograms of cocaine, and, (2) that the 

informant had seen "a large quantity" of U.S. Currency at Claimant's residence. Officers 

testified at suppression hearing that they knew of no other investigation of either Claimant 

or his residence regarding occupancy of the residence, income sources for Claimant, 

quantities of cash or ownership of the residence. The officers, other than Bartlett, 

established surveillance on the residence to await the issuance of the "document search 

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warrant" and stopped a vehicle that left the residence without a search warrant and without 

probable cause to do so. Upon being told by Bartlett that the search warrant was signed 

pursuant to Alabama law by a judge of the Municipal Court of Montgomery, Alabama, the 

officers initiated seizure of the premises, chasing Claimant from his property onto other 

neighboring property, where, they say, he threw down a quantity of cocaine. Meanwhile, 

other officers had searched a vehicle on the premises, and entered the premises and 

found the cash that is the subject of this action (counting the case and listing it on the 

search warrant inventory). It is clear that, at the time of the seizure of the premises and the 

discovery of the money therein, there was no search warrant available for service and 

none of the officers can say that the warrant was ever either properly executed or delivered 

to a resident of the property. Indeed, the officers purportedly acting pursuant to the search 

warrant could not testify that they ever had the search warrant at Claimant's residence. 

The officers all testified that they did not actually see the search warrant at the time of 

execution and did not know what it authorized, but, rather, assumed that it said what all of 

their search warrants authorize because they always get the same authorization. 

 After finding drugs in the vehicle on Claimant's premises and discovering the money 

made subject of this action, the search was stopped and a "drug" search warrant was 

allegedly obtained. The affidavit for that alleged that narcotics were being stored at 

Claimant's residence because, upon executing the "document search warrant", they found 

illegal narcotics. It should be noted that 5403 Shades Valley Drive was called a 

"residence" in one part of the affidavit and a "business" in another. The affidavit did not 

specify what kind of narcotics were found. The "drug search warrant" issued at that time 

was never, as far as witnesses testified, actually taken to the residence and properly 

executed. 

 Issues Presented

 1. Whether the "document search warrant" was issued upon an adequate showing 

of probable cause to conduct the search authorized. 

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 2. Whether the "document search warrant" was a general search warrant 

proscribed by the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. 

 3. Whether the search of 5304 West Shades Valley Drive, Montgomery, Alabama, 

was conducted in a lawful manner, even assuming a lawful search warrant. 

 4. Whether the search of 5304 West Shades Valley Drive, Montgomery, Alabama, 

was the product of a search without a search warrant or of a search warrant that was 

vague and overbroad because, even assuming probable cause for some search, it 

authorized search of places and/or persons for which there was no probable cause to 

search and is constitutionally imprecise, and, so clearly failed to adequately describe the 

things to be seized, as to authorize a general search and seizure. 

 5. Whether the second search warrant and search pursuant to same was the 

product of an unlawful search and seizure arising from the first alleged warrant. 

 Discussion

 At the time of obtaining the "document search warrant", Detective Bartlett failed to 

inform the issuing judge that Bartlett had, in a previous federal case, been found to have 

given false testimony in an affidavit for a search warrant, and that his credibility was subject 

to question. Attached to the motion to suppress and incorporated by reference is the 

Recommendation of the Magistrate Judge from United States v. Keith Eldridge Williams,

Case No. 2:05CR68-T, which is a record of this Honorable Court, and Claimant requests 

the Court to take judicial knowledge of same. Claimant contends that any magistrate 

considering a search warrant based upon representations by Bartlett should have been 

notified of this since it tends to show a pattern and practice of false representations in 

applications for search warrants. A material misrepresentation or omission, when 

recklessly made or omitted, in an affidavit in support of a warrant compromises the 

warrant's legitimacy. When the Fourth Amendment demands a factual showing sufficient to 

comprise probable cause, the obvious assumption is that there will be a truthful showing. 

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Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154, 164-65 (1978). 

 The affidavit for the "document search warrant" failed to establish probable cause to 

believe any specific item SUBJECT TO SEIZURE would be found in the residence at 5304 

West Shades Valley Drive, Montgomery, Alabama. The case-specific information in the 

affidavit included two anonymous calls two and three years prior, the "fact" that Claimant 

gave his address as 5304 West Shades Valley Drive, Montgomery, Alabama, one year 

before and ten years before, the "fact" of a ten-year-old drug arrest of Claimant (not 

conviction), and the "fact" of a statement two years previously by an informant that 

Claimant was selling drugs. All of that information is and was stale and of no real value. 

The current information consisted only of two pieces of information that Bartlett claimed to 

have from an informant. They are that Claimant sold large quantities of cocaine and that 

Claimant had a "large quantity" of cash at his home. It is notable the police never 

undertook any effort to corroborate that current information or to determine whether facts 

existed which might explain a "large quantity" of cash in a lawful manner. They resorted 

immediately to the remedy of invading and searching Claimant's home. 

 The Fourth Amendment requires that "no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable 

cause, supported by Oath affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched 

and the persons or things to be seized." Probable cause must be determined by a neutral 

and detached magistrate. Fed. R. Crim P. 41(a). In this case, the information that "a 

large quantity" of money was so vague in and of itself as to make it impossible for a 

determination of probable cause to search and seize any particular thing, leaving it up the 

officers to decide what and what not to seize. It should be noted that officers testified that 

they get "document search warrants" for Montgomery Municipal Court judges and they 

always authorize the same thing. At the time of the searches and seizures, the police 

officers did not know what, if any, searches and seizures were authorized by search 

warrant, beyond what they assumed from the fact that they always get the same warrant, 

authorizing them to look anywhere because a document can be anywhere, including 

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personal diaries of persons not specifically named in the search warrants. 

 The Exclusionary Rule based upon the Fourth Amendment applies to civil forfeiture 

because they are quasi-criminal in nature. One 1958 Plymouth Sedan v. Pennsylvania, 

380 U.S. 693, 85 S.Ct. 1246 (1965), See U.S. v. Premises and Real Property with Bldgs., 

Appurtenances and Improvements at 500 Delaware Street, 113 F.3d 310, 312 n.3 (2nd Cir. 

1997). 

 "The effect of the Fourth Amendment is to put the courts of the United States and 

federal officials, in the exercise of their power and authority, under limitations and restraints 

as to the exercise of such power and authority, and to forever secure the people, there 

persons, houses, papers, and effects against all unreasonable searches and seizures 

under the guise of law..... The requirement that warrants shall particularly describe the 

things to be seized makes general searches under them impossible and prevents the 

seizure of one thing under a warrant describing another. As to what is to be taken, 

nothing is left to the discretion of the officer executing the warrant. (emphasis 

supplied) U.S. v. Marron, 275 U.S. 192 (1927). 

 "We need not decide in the present case whether the description of the things to be 

seized would have been too generalized to pass constitutional muster, had the things been 

weapons, narcotics or "cases of whiskey"....The point is that it was not any contraband of 

that kind which was ordered to be seized, but literary material-'books, records, pamphlets, 

cards, receipts, lists, memoranda, pictures, recordings, and other written instruments 

concerning the Communist Party of Texas, and the operations of the Communist Party of 

Texas." The indiscriminate sweep of that language is constitutionally intolerable. To hold 

otherwise would be false to the terms of the Fourth Amendment, false to its meaning, and 

false to its history." Stanford v. Texas, 379 U.S. 476 (1965). 

 The scope of the "document search warrant" in this case was such as to create a 

general search warrant. It permitted a search of every part of Claimant's home (and was 

arbitrarily extended to vehicles on the property with no real connection to the purpose of 

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the warrant), including looking in match boxes for drug records, reading the diary of 

Claimant's mother, and anything else the officers decided the wanted to search, read, or 

seize. Beyond that, the officers said that their technique was not to seize only those things 

described in the warrant, but to seize every document, take them away, and decide later 

what was actually useful under the warrant, and is a constitutionally intolerable general 

warrant. See Groh v. Ramirez, 540 U.S. 551 (2004). See also Andresen v. Maryland, 427 

U.S. 463 (1976). 

 By limiting the authorization to search to the specific areas and things for which 

there is probable cause to search, the requirement endures that the search will be carefully 

tailored to its justifications, and will not take on the character of the wide-ranging 

exploratory searches the Framers intended to prohibit. Maryland v. Garrison, 480 U.S. 79, 

84 (1987). 

 The search cannot be saved by a reasonable reliance on a facially valid warrant 

under U.S. v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897 (1984) because, (1) the affiant intentionally mislead the 

magistrate about the affiants reliability by failing to inform the magistrate of his prior 

misstatements in affidavits (within the four corners of the affidavit), (2) the magistrate was 

not neutral or detached (he always gives the officers the same "document search 

warrant"), (3) the affidavit was so lacking in indicia of probable cause as to render official 

belief in its existence entirely unreasonable, (4) the warrant was so facially deficient in 

particularizing the place to be searched and the things to be seized that the executing 

officers could not reasonably presume it to be valid, and (5) the executing officers did not 

know what it said, but merely presumed it was the standard rubber-stamp version. They 

could not rely on the facial validity of something whose face they had never seen. 

 The service of the "document search warrant", if it was served at all, was deficient. 

The officers did not "knock and announce" and did not present a copy of the search 

warrant to Claimant or anyone else. If anything was provided to anyone at the residence, it 

was the one-page document labeled "document search warrant", without the referenced 

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"Attachment I and Attachment II." As such, it was incomplete. Both Alabama law (3.11 

A.R.Cr.P.) require the delivery of a copy of the search warrant to the person from whom or 

from whose premises the property was taken. Here, a copy was not delivered, and, if it had 

been, it would not have been complete, and, as such, should be considered no warrant at 

all. Groh v. Ramirez, 540 U.S. 551 (2004). 

 The second search warrant was clearly the product of the illegal "document search 

warrant". A reading of the affidavit recites as probable cause, referring to the execution of 

the "document search warrant," that "during the execution of the search warrant illegal 

narcotics were found. The document search warrant was immediately ceased and the 

business (sic) was secured pending the court's approval of a drug search warrant." If the 

narcotics referred to in the second warrant were those in the truck tool box testified to a the 

suppression hearing, the affiant should have also informed the court of that fact, plus the 

information that the truck had just arrived and that nothing from the house had been placed 

in the tool box prior to its search, there then being no connection between the truck and the 

house regarding the narcotics. Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471 (1963). 

 Conclusion 

 The "document search warrant" was based neither upon probable cause nor full 

disclosure to the magistrate of pertinent facts. The fact of the search warrant's issuance 

under those circumstances, and the testimony of officer that they always get the same 

warrant, plus the general nature of the warrant, prove a "rubber stamp" magistrate. As a 

search warrant lacking in particularity and leaving all decisions to the executing officers, the 

"document search warrant" was a contitutionally intolerable general warrant. The warrant, 

if served at all, was improperly served. As a result of these facts, the "drug search warrant" 

must also be invalid as fruit of the poisonous tree, and all items seized and sought to be 

used as evidence by the government should be suppressed. 

Respectfully submitted this the 17th day of September, 2007. 

Case 2:06-cv-00736-WKW-SRW Document 26 Filed 09/17/2007 Page 7 of 8
 s/Bruce Maddox

Bruce Maddox (MAD013) 

Attorney for George Jones 

6728 Taylor Court 

Montgomery, Alabama 36117 

Phone: (334) 244-7333 

Fax: (334) 260-9600 

 

CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE

I hereby certify that on this 17th day of September, 2007, I electronically filed the 

foregoing with the Clerk of Court using the CM/ECF system which will send notification 

of such filing to appropriate parties. 

s/Bruce Maddox

Of Counsel 

 

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