Opinion ID: 169091
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Pre-Trial Filings

Text: M r. Gonzales filed a motion to suppress the evidence and a motion to disclose the identity of the confidential source on Friday, October 7, 2005, one working day (given the federal holiday on October 10) before the trial w as to begin (Tuesday, October 11, 2005). The next day, on October 8, the government responded to both motions. In his motion to suppress evidence, M r. Gonzales alleged that Officer Guenther, the affiant, had inserted two false statements either intentionally or with reckless disregard for the truth in his affidavit in support of the search warrant application. The two statements M r. Gonzales alleged to be false were: (1) “that a confidential source (CS) had informed APD that ‘within the last 52 hours’ . . . it [sic] had purchased suspected cocaine ‘from an individual it [sic] knew as ‘Juan’ from the residence to be searched (245 Glorietta SE [sic])”; and (2) “that an ‘an individual named ‘Juan’ was selling large amounts of illegal drugs’ ‘within the past four months’ from that same residence.” Rec. vol. I, doc. -5- 48, ¶¶ 2, 3. M r. Gonzales also claimed that if this information were redacted from the affidavit, the remaining information did not state probable cause for the issuance of the warrant. M r. Gonzales offered “to take a polygraph examination and/or testify to prove that he never sold cocaine or any other drug from 245 Glorietta SE [sic]; neither in the 52 hours preceding the issuance of a warrant . . . nor at any other time.” Id. ¶ 6. M r. Gonzales claimed that “there appears to be serious credibility problems regarding the CS” and that “the existence of the CS is fiction.” Id. ¶¶ 10, 7. In its response to M r. Gonzales’s motion to suppress, the government argued that the motion was untimely because the motion had been filed one working day prior to trial. Both parties note that the district court set a deadline for filing pretrial motions ten business days before trial. 1 The government also argued that M r. Gonzales was not entitled to a hearing regarding the allegedly false information contained in the affidavit supporting the 1 W e note that the district court’s scheduling order set a deadline for filing motions in limine no later than ten business days prior to jury selection, which was scheduled for October 11, 2005. There is no dispute that the subject motions are not motions in limine. The date by which pre-trial motions were to have been filed would normally be much earlier than ten business days before trial and may have been as early as February 25, 2005 in this case. However, because the parties agree that the motion-in-limine scheduling order was the operative one as to substantive pre-trial motions as w ell, and since that construction is more generous to the defendant, we use the motion-in-limine deadline of ten business days before trial as the operative one for purposes of our Rule 12(e) analysis. -6- application for a warrant, see Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154 (1978), because: (1) M r. Gonzales had failed to submit affidavits or reliable statements of witnesses in support of his allegations of false statements in Officer Guenther’s affidavit; (2) M r. Gonzales was focusing on the informant’s credibility and not Officer Guenther’s; (3) probable cause existed without the informant’s statements; and (4) even if the district court was to determine that the search warrant was invalid, the United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897 (1984), good-faith exception applied. See Rec. vol. I, doc. 51, at 2-6. In his motion for disclosure of the confidential informant, M r. Gonzales acknowledged that there was no absolute right to require disclosure of an informant’s identity but argued that the CS’s “testimony would be highly relevant, and could throw possible doubt onto, the identity of the person who was alleged to have been selling drugs from the residence for four months, and whether in facts [sic] drugs were being sold from that house for that time period . . . .” Id. doc. 49, ¶ 16. In opposition to M r. Gonzales’s motion to disclose the CS, the government argued: (1) the motion was untimely; (2) the controlled buy monitored by APD officers and ATF agents established the CS’s credibility and, thereby, obviated any need to disclose the informant’s identity; and (3) the informant did not witness or participate in the circumstances giving rise to the charges in the indictment. Rec. doc. 50, at 1-4. -7- On the day of trial, M r. Gonzales filed a reply to the government’s responses. M r. Gonzales claimed his girlfriend had told the police that she and M r. Gonzales “had only been in the residence one month.” Rec. vol. I, doc. 52 ¶ 1. M r. Gonzales argued that “[t]his directly contradicts the testimony in the affidavit (regarding the CS know ing ‘Juan’ to have been selling from the residence for four months).” Id. As to M r. Gonzales’s request to disclose the identity of the CS, M r. Gonzales said, “A lthough the CS was not a w itness (to Defendant’s knowledge at this time) regarding the drugs located inside the residence searched, it was the only witness regarding any activity which permitted the search warrant to issue. Therefore, its disclosure is crucial.” Id. ¶ 4.