Source: https://casetext.com/case/us-v-gilbert-14
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 12:59:38
Document Index: 661440480

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 30', '§ 841', '§ 841', '§ 922', '§ 924', '§ 5861', '§ 5871', '§ 5861', '§ 5871', '§ 933']

U.S. v. Gilbert, 942 F.2d 1537 | Casetext
U.S. v. Gilbert
942 F.2d 1537 (11th Cir. 1991)
U.S.v.Gilbert
United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh CircuitSep 25, 1991
No. 90-3268.
Appellant, a criminal defendant, challenges a search warrant directed to the Sheriff and Deputy Sheriffs of Duval County, Florida, but executed by two federal agents and two municipal police officers. Since Florida law requires that "search warrant[s] [only] . . . be served by any of the officers mentioned in its direction," appellant contends that the district court should have suppressed the evidence seized pursuant to that warrant as the fruit of an illegal search. Since the challenged search in no sense violated principles vindicated by the Fourth Amendment, we affirm.
Agents Mitchell and Riehl of the (federal) Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, together with two municipal police officers, Patrolman O'Neal and Detective Bounds, executed the search warrant. Neither Agents Mitchell and Riehl, nor Officers O'Neal and Bounds, were deputy sheriffs of Duval County, although Detective Bounds was a "special" deputy sheriff of Duval County.
Florida statutory authority does not authorize special deputies to execute search warrants. Ramer v. State, 530 So.2d 915 (Fla. 1988). See also Fla.Stat.Ann. § 30.09(4) (West 1988).
Agents subsequently charged Gilbert in a six-count indictment with (1) distribution of cocaine in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1), (2) possession with intent to distribute cocaine, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1), (3) possession of a firearm after a felony conviction, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g) and 924(a)(2), (4) use of a firearm, during and in relation to, a drug trafficking crime, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), (5) possession of an unregistered short-barrelled firearm, in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 5861(d) and § 5871, and (6) possession of a firearm without a serial number, in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 5861(i) and § 5871. Gilbert originally entered pleas of "not guilty" to all six charges.
Appellant now contends that the district court should have suppressed the evidence seized pursuant to the search warrant as the result of an illegal search. He argues, in effect, that since the state court judge directed the warrant's execution by "the sheriff or deputy sheriffs of Duval County," neither the federal agents nor the municipal officer who actually executed the search possessed the authority to do so.
Search warrants to be served by officers mentioned therein — The search warrant shall in all cases be served by any of the officers mentioned in its direction, but by no other person except in aid of the officer requiring it, said officer being present and acting in its execution.
Fla.Stat.Ann. § 933.08 (West 1985). Here, the state court judge directed the warrant only to officers of the county — in this case, the Sheriff and Deputy Sheriffs of Duval County, Florida. Two federal agents and two municipal officers, however, executed the search. Since the Florida statute requires that only officers "mentioned" in a warrant's directive may execute a search, appellant contends that these agents and officers had no authority to search his home.
As we noted in Martin, the participation of federal agents transformed this search into one we evaluate under federal standards for a federal search. Martin, 600 F.2d at 1180. The Supreme Court has held that courts must suppress evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961). The Supreme Court has never directed, however, that we must suppress evidence obtained when a misdesignated state officer executes a warrant.
In the instant case, constitutional considerations, rather than the demands of state law, direct our resolution of this issue. As the Supreme Court noted in Elkins v. United States, 364 U.S. 206, 223-24, 80 S.Ct. 1437, 1447, 4 L.Ed.2d 1669 (1960), a federal court's inquiry in search and seizure matters necessarily differs in scope from that which a state court must resolve:
We recognize that a Florida state court has suppressed evidence from a "fatally defective [warrant] . . . directed to one category of peace officers [when] . . . another category of police executed the warrant." Hasselrode v. State, 369 So.2d 348, 350 (Fla.Dist.Ct.App. 1979), cert. den. 381 So.2d 766 (Fla. 1980). In Hasselrode, the Florida court indicated that it will regulate searches by suppressing evidence gathered by one not named in a warrant, but otherwise authorized to gather such evidence. That is for Florida to say. Our construction of the warrant at issue here, however, forces us to determine that the warrant did not violate federal constitutional law. We may agree that state authority did not empower these municipal officers to execute this particular warrant. State authority, however, clearly empowered them to execute warrants at the location at issue in this search; the State Attorney obtaining the warrant merely neglected to include them within the scope of those authorized to execute this search.
Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14, 68 S.Ct. 367, 369, 92 L.Ed. 436 (1948).
Violations of the Fourth Amendment authorize courts to order the suppression of evidence. State statutory authority, on the other hand, may determine who should execute a state search warrant. In Martin, neither party noted that distinction. In Martin, we evaluated a faulty state warrant against the framework required by state law. Both parties to that case conceded that, if the wrong person executed the warrant, we would suppress the evidence generated by the search. Today we reject that assumption. We hold instead that, although this search may not have complied with certain conditions required by the state, it did not offend any constitutional principles that support the suppression of evidence.
See e.g. Street v. Surdyka, 492 F.2d 368, 371 (4th Cir. 1974) ("The fourth amendment protects individuals from unfounded arrests by requiring reasonable grounds to believe a crime has been committed. The states are free to impose greater restrictions on arrests, but their citizens do not thereby acquire a greater federal right."); Fisher v. Washington Metro. Area Transit Authority, 690 F.2d 1133, 1138 (4th Cir. 1982) ("Where, as here, the claimed violation is by state action, binding precedent in this circuit has it that the constitutional standard is not affected by the fact that state law may impose a more stringent arrest standard upon state police officers."); United States v. Janik, 723 F.2d 537, 548 (7th Cir. 1983) ("But even if the arrest was invalid under state law, the action of the state officers in arresting Janik was not an `unreasonable' seizure under the Fourth Amendment").
In United States v. Dunnings, 425 F.2d 836, 840 (2nd Cir. 1969), cert. den. 397 U.S. 1002, 90 S.Ct. 1149, 25 L.Ed.2d 412 (1970), the Second Circuit characterized the exclusionary rule, at least as courts apply it in Fourth Amendment cases, as "a blunt instrument, conferring an altogether disproportionate reward not so much in the interest of the defendant as in that of society at large." Courts thus hesitate to apply "the exclusionary rule in search and seizure cases to violations which are not of constitutional magnitude." United States v. Burke, 517 F.2d 377, 386 (2nd Cir. 1975). Since the search at issue here violated only the statutory provisions of the state, we hold that the district court correctly admitted the evidence of contraband that this search engendered.
[34] TJOFLAT, Chief Judge, specially concurring:
Although I concur in the result reached by the court today, I cannot agree with the court's analysis. This case does not require an analysis of the niceties of state or federal law on persons authorized to execute a search warrant. Instead, this case presents a straightforward fourth amendment issue. Struggling to distinguish the old fifth circuit opinion of United States v. Martin, 600 F.2d 1175 (5th Cir. 1979), overruled on other grounds by United States v. McKeever, 905 F.2d 829 (5th Cir. 1990) (en banc), cert. denied sub nom. Newman v. United States, ___ U.S. ___, 111 S.Ct. 790, 112 L.Ed.2d 852 (1991), the court fails to focus on the decisive issue of whether the search in question constituted an unreasonable search in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
The district court's denial of appellant's motion to suppress the rifle and the cocaine bags should be affirmed because this evidence was seized in the course of a reasonable search of appellant's home. This search was conducted pursuant to a search warrant issued by a "neutral and detached magistrate," see Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 14, 68 S.Ct. 367, 369, 92 L.Ed. 436 (1948), namely the Chief Judge of the Fourth Judicial Circuit of Florida. Moreover, the warrant was clearly issued on probable cause, based on a firefighter's observation of a short-barrelled rifle in appellant's residence. As a matter of fact, appellant does not even contest the reasonableness of the search which produced the evidence he sought to suppress at trial. The Fourth Amendment, however, protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. As the search of appellant's residence was not unreasonable, the district court's denial of appellant's motion to suppress must be affirmed.
I agree with the court that Martin compels a finding that the officers executing the search warrant in this case were not authorized to do so. Unlike the court, however, I would affirm the judgment below not because the warrant's shortcoming "implicated none of the interests that the Fourth Amendment protects," ante at 1541, nor because "[s]tate authority . . . clearly empowered [the officers] to execute warrants at the location at issue in this search," ante at 1541, but simply because the warrant's execution constituted a reasonable search not in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The search in this case implicated appellant's Fourth Amendment interest in being free from unreasonable searches and seizures. The search was constitutional because it was not unreasonable. Given that, as the court repeatedly points out, see ante at 1541, our federal constitutional review of the district court's judgment does not rely on Florida state law pertaining to persons authorized to execute a warrant, the court's reliance on "[s]tate authority" is misplaced.