Opinion ID: 206195
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Heading: The Affidavit's Allegations of Control Were Insufficient To Establish Probable Cause To Search the Entire Subject Premises

Text: When the allegations of control in this case are properly considered in the context of the totality of circumstances, we conclude that the whole does not establish probable cause to support the challenged search of all residences in the subject building. To be sure, an informant reported that Clark exercised full control over the building, but the informant was then untried and his assertion entirely conclusory. While no specific test determines when informant information can be relied on in making a probable cause determination, the Supreme Court has instructed that the totality of circumstances must present the magistrate with [s]ufficient information ... to allow that official  to make the necessary determinations; his action cannot be a mere ratification of the bare conclusions of others. Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. at 239, 103 S.Ct. 2317 (emphasis added). Here, such information was totally lacking on the issue of control. [8] First, the issuing judge was not advised as to the size of the building or the number of residential units it contained, which would have provided an important, if not essential, context for evaluating the probability of the full control allegation. Second, nothing in the warrant affidavit advised the issuing judge what the informant meant by full control. Indeed, the affidavit did not even disclose whether the informant's allegation was based on personal observation, a hearsay account, or mere rumor. Third, the affidavit did not provide any descriptive facts consistent with the full control allegation. We do not suggest that any one of these facts was necessary to establish probable cause, see id. at 230, 103 S.Ct. 2317, but the Supreme Court has recognized such facts as relevant to a consideration of the totality of circumstances, see id. at 233, 103 S.Ct. 2317. We thus conclude that the absence of any such information left the issuing judge with a record from which he could not himself make a determination of control sufficient to support probable cause to search the entire multi-family dwelling. See id. at 239, 103 S.Ct. 2317 (reiterating that wholly conclusory statement is inadequate to allow independent determination of probable cause (citing Nathanson v. United States, 290 U.S. 41, 54 S.Ct. 11, 78 L.Ed. 159 (1933))). In urging otherwise, the government submits that the informant's control conclusion must be considered together with two other allegations: (1) that surveillance officers observed Clark entering and remaining and exercising control at the residence of 1015 Fairfield Ave, Warrant Aff. at 2 (emphasis added), and (2) that the informant made two controlled purchases of cocaine from Clark at the subject building. We are not persuaded that the sum of these allegations provided a substantial basis to order the search of all parts of and persons in the multi-family dwelling. Focusing first on the controlled purchase allegations, the warrant affidavit states only that the informant went to the area of 1015 Fairfield Avenue to make the first purchase and to the building's front porch area to make the second. Id. at 3. Thus, these allegations failed to provide any information as to where within the multi-family dwelling Clark dealt or stored drugs, much less did they establish his control over all units in and parts of the premises. [9] The government does not contend otherwise. Rather, it submits that the controlled purchases corroborated the informant's allegation that Clark was dealing drugs at 1015 Fairfield Avenue and that the partial corroboration provided a basis for the issuing judge to credit the informant's further allegation that Clark exercised full control over the building. Partial corroboration of an informant is a circumstance that, on totality review, may allow a judicial officer to credit the informant's whole account. See Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. at 237-38, 103 S.Ct. 2317; United States v. Wagner, 989 F.2d 69, 73 (2d Cir.1993). While we generally defer to an issuing judge's discretion in deciding when partial corroboration suffices to this purpose, there are outer limits, some grounded in law, others in common sense and experience. Here, law and experience combine to require more than corroboration of defendant's criminal conduct somewhere in the subject building conduct that does not speak at all to the defendant's control over the whole of the buildingto transform the informant's conclusory assertion of full control into a substantial basis to authorize the search of an undisclosed number of residential units. The law to which we refer is, of course, the Fourth Amendment, which specifically identifies the right of persons to be secure in their homes as a basis for conditioning the issuance of warrants on a demonstration of probable cause and particularity. See generally Georgia v. Randolph, 547 U.S. 103, 115, 126 S.Ct. 1515, 164 L.Ed.2d 208 (2006) (acknowledging Fourth Amendment's recognition that the home is entitled to special protection as the center of the private lives of our people (internal quotation marks omitted)). This, by itself, cautions against hastily ascribing control over one person's home to another. This lesson is reinforced by experience, which teaches that it is not typically the case that those involved in ... criminality somewhere in a multiple-occupancy building would have access to all of the separate living units contained therein. 2 LaFave, supra § 4.5(b), at 579. Where law and experience thus effectively give rise to a presumption that one person's home is not in the control of a third party, a conclusory assertion of control by an informant who has been corroborated only in some other respect does not provide a substantial basis for a judicial officer to find it probable that evidence of the third party's criminality will be found in residences other than his own. This conclusion is consistent with the view of the New York Court of Appeals in People v. Tambe, 71 N.Y.2d at 503, 527 N.Y.S.2d at 377, 522 N.E.2d 448, which, in upholding probable cause to search multiple premises controlled by a number of confederates for criminal evidence likely to be in the possession of one of them, emphasized that a different rule might apply where the fruits of the criminal enterprise are probably located in one of a few locations but the nature of the information is such that a search of each of these locations would intrude upon the rights of individuals in no way involved in the criminal activity under investigation. Id. That is this case. Because the warrant affidavit contained no information as to either the number of residential units within 1015 Fairfield Avenue or where within the building Clark dealt drugs, there was a real possibility that a search of the entire building and all persons in it would intrude upon the rights of persons in no way linked to the suspected criminal activity. In these circumstances, the law demanded more than a conclusory allegation of control by a partially corroborated informant to permit the issuing judge to find probable cause to support the challenged warrant. Nor do we think that more was supplied by surveillance observations of Clark entering and remaining and exercising control at the residence at 1015 Fairfield Ave. Warrant Aff. at 2 (emphasis added). While the surveillance allegation derived from police officers rather than an untested informant, and was based on personal observation, it was nevertheless conclusory. The issuing judge was not told what the officers meant by exercising control, a concept that could easily mean less than full control. A surveillance officer who saw a suspect unlock the common entry door to a multiple-occupancy building might reasonably think he was exercising control over the building, but that would hardly provide a substantial basis for finding probable cause to search an unspecified number of residential units not linked to the defendant or his criminal activities. We further note that to the extent the affidavit reported that surveillance observed Clark exercising control at the residence, the affidavit is devoid of information that would allow the issuing judge to determine whether residence referred to the building as a whole or to a particular residential unit. In sum, while the totality of circumstances permitted the issuing judge to find it probable that Clark was dealing drugs from somewhere within 1015 Fairfield Avenue, it did not provide a substantial basis to conclude that Clark so controlled the various residential units in that multi-family dwelling that there was probable cause to think evidence of his criminal conduct could be found throughout the building. [10]
A determination that the warrant at issue was not supported by probable cause to search the entire multi-family dwelling does not automatically dictate the suppression of all physical evidence seized or statements derived therefrom. As the Supreme Court recently reminded courts, suppression is `our last resort, not our first impulse' in dealing with violations of the Fourth Amendment. Herring v. United States, 555 U.S. 135, 129 S.Ct. 695, 700, 172 L.Ed.2d 496 (2009) (quoting Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U.S. 586, 591, 126 S.Ct. 2159, 165 L.Ed.2d 56 (2006)). The animating principle of the exclusionary rule is deterrence of police misconduct, but the extent to which the rule is so justified varies with the culpability of the law enforcement conduct. Id. at 701 (suggesting that deterrent value of exclusionary rule is most effective in cases of `flagrant or deliberate violation of rights' (quoting Henry J. Friendly, The Bill of Rights as a Code of Criminal Procedure, 53 Calif. L.Rev. 929, 953 (1965), and citing Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 610-11, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 45 L.Ed.2d 416 (1975) (Powell, J., concurring in part))). Thus, in United States v. Leon , the Supreme Court recognized an exception to the exclusionary rule for evidence obtained in objectively reasonable reliance on a subsequently invalidated search warrant. 468 U.S. at 922, 104 S.Ct. 3405. The Court reasoned that, in those circumstances, [p]enalizing the officer for the magistrate's error, rather than his own, cannot logically contribute to the deterrence of Fourth Amendment violations. Id. at 921, 104 S.Ct. 3405. The burden is on the government to demonstrate the objective reasonableness of the officers' good faith reliance on an invalidated warrant. United States v. George, 975 F.2d 72, 77 (2d Cir. 1992); accord United States v. Santa, 180 F.3d 20, 25 (2d Cir.1999). In assessing whether it has carried that burden, we are mindful that, in Leon, the Supreme Court strongly signaled that most searches conducted pursuant to a warrant would likely fall within its protection. [S]earches pursuant to a warrant will rarely require any deep inquiry into reasonableness, Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. at 267 [103 S.Ct. 2317] (White, J., concurring in judgment), for a warrant issued by a magistrate normally suffices to establish that a law enforcement officer has acted in good faith in conducting the search. United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798, 823 n. 32 [102 S.Ct. 2157, 72 L.Ed.2d 572] (1982). United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. at 922, 104 S.Ct. 3405 (alteration in Leon ). It was against this presumption of reasonableness that the Supreme Court identified four circumstances where an exception to the exclusionary rule would not apply: (1) where the issuing magistrate has been knowingly misled; (2) where the issuing magistrate wholly abandoned his or her judicial role; (3) where the application is so lacking in indicia of probable cause as to render reliance upon it unreasonable; and (4) where the warrant is so facially deficient that reliance upon it is unreasonable. United States v. Moore, 968 F.2d 216, 222 (2d Cir.1992) (citing Leon, 468 U.S. at 923, 104 S.Ct. 3405). Here, the district court concluded that the last three circumstances were all present in this case, precluding application of the good faith exception. Reviewing this determination de novo, we conclude to the contrary.
The district court concluded that the issuing judge had abandoned his judicial role by relying solely on the affidavit's conclusory allegations of control in finding probable cause to search the whole of a multiple-occupancy building. This misconstrues the abandonment concern identified in Leon. There, the Supreme Court observed that in issuing warrants, a magistrate must perform his neutral and detached function as a judicial officer and not serve merely as a rubber stamp for the police. United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. at 914, 104 S.Ct. 3405 (internal quotation marks omitted). But, as the Court later explained, what this means is that officers cannot reasonably rely on a warrant issued by a magistrate who wholly abandoned his judicial role in the manner condemned in Lo-Ji Sales, Inc. v. New York, 442 U.S. 319 [99 S.Ct. 2319, 60 L.Ed.2d 920] (1979). Id. at 923, 99 S.Ct. 2319. The quoted language contains two important qualifiers. The abandonment must be (1) wholesale rather than partial and (2) in the manner condemned in Lo-Ji Sales.  That is not this case. In Lo-Ji Sales, a town justice issued a warrant for the seizure of obscene materials from an adult bookstore. The justice then accompanied police officers and prosecutors to the store and, in the course of a six-hour search, reviewed items for himself and decided which could be seized. See Lo-Ji Sales, Inc. v. New York, 442 U.S. at 322, 99 S.Ct. 2319. The Supreme Court held the warrant invalid, reasoning that the judge had allowed himself to become a member, if not the leader, of the search party which was essentially a police operation. Id. at 327, 99 S.Ct. 2319. He had ceased to act as a judicial officer and assumed the role of an adjunct law enforcement officer. Id. In reaching this conclusion, Lo-Ji Sales relied on Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971), a case in which the Supreme Court invalidated warrants issued by a State Attorney General in his capacity as a justice of the peace although he was the law enforcement officer actively in charge of the investigation and later was to be chief prosecutor at the trial, id. at 450, 91 S.Ct. 2022 (observing that prosecutors and policemen simply cannot be asked to maintain the requisite neutrality with regard to their own investigations). Animating these two decisions is a common precept: that someone independent of the police and prosecution must determine probable cause. Shadwick v. City of Tampa, 407 U.S. 345, 348, 92 S.Ct. 2119, 32 L.Ed.2d 783 (1972). Nevertheless, the law will not hastily assume a magistrate's surrender of his judicial independence to the police or prosecution. As the Supreme Court clarified in Lo-Ji Sales, such an inference cannot be drawn from the mere fact that a magistrate has made himself readily available to law enforcement officers who may wish to seek the issuance of warrants by him, 442 U.S. at 328 n. 6, 99 S.Ct. 2319, a point this court emphasized in United States v. Whitehorn, 829 F.2d 1225, 1232 (2d Cir.1987) (upholding application of good faith exception where magistrate did not abandon neutral and detached role by going to FBI office to review and issue warrants because magistrate did not assist in the drafting of the warrant or in any aspect of the ... investigation, and nothing suggested he was in FBI office for any reason other than to facilitate the issuance of the warrant on a Saturday). More to the point for this case, abandonment of judicial neutrality and detachment properly cannot be inferred from the fact that the magistrate committed legal error in his assessment of probable cause. See 1 LaFave, supra, § 1.3(f), at 78 & n. 84 (collecting cases concluding that rubber stamp cannot be established merely on the basis of the substantial inadequacy of the probable cause showing in the affidavit). Indeed, Leon separately addresses that circumstance and instructs that it precludes good faith reliance only when the warrant affidavit was `so lacking in indicia of probable cause as to render official belief in its existence entirely unreasonable.' United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. at 923, 104 S.Ct. 3405 (quoting Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. at 610-11, 95 S.Ct. 2254 (Powell, J., concurring in part)). We address that concern infra at 103-05. Here, we simply clarify that legal error by the issuing judge in identifying probable cause does not, by itself, indicate the sort of wholesale abandonment of the judicial role discussed in Leon. Because nothing else in the record indicates such abandonment in this case, we conclude that this factor did not preclude the officers' good faith reliance on the challenged warrant.
In Leon, the Supreme Court observed that a warrant may be so facially deficienti.e., in failing to particularize the place to be searched or the things to be seizedthat the executing officers cannot reasonably presume it to be valid. Id. at 923, 104 S.Ct. 3405. The district court identified such a facial defect in the warrant's description of the premises to be searched as a multi family dwelling, which it concluded should have raised a red flag as to the need to show probable cause to search each unit of the premises. Interim R & R at 7 (emphasis in original). This conclusion conflates a facial defect in the warrant with a patent lack of probable cause to support the warrant. Massachusetts v. Sheppard, 468 U.S. 981, 104 S.Ct. 3424, 82 L.Ed.2d 737 (1984), and Groh v. Ramirez, 540 U.S. 551, 124 S.Ct. 1284, 157 L.Ed.2d 1068 (2004), illustrate that a warrant is facially defective when it omits or misstates information specifically required to be contained therein, i.e., the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. U.S. Const. amend. IV. In Sheppard, a form warrant for narcotics searches was used to authorize a search for evidence of murder. Although the affidavit in support of the warrant detailed the non-narcotics evidence sought, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court determination that the warrant was constitutionally defective because the description [of items to be seized] in the warrant was completely inaccurate and the warrant did not incorporate the description contained in the affidavit. 468 U.S. at 988 n. 5, 104 S.Ct. 3424. [11] In Groh v. Ramirez , agents submitted for approval a warrant that erroneously described the suspect's residence in the area reserved for identification of the items to be seized. Although the warrant affidavit detailed the latter information, the Court concluded that its complete absence from the warrant precluded reasonable reliance. See 540 U.S. at 564, 124 S.Ct. 1284; [12] see also United States v. George, 975 F.2d at 78 (holding that officers could not reasonably rely on warrant that included authorization to seize unspecified evidence of criminality not limited either to a generic classification, ... or, even more egregiously, to a particular crime). The warrant here contains no similar defect. It specifically identified the place to be searched1015 Fairfield Ave, being a multi family dwelling located on the south side of Fairfield Ave and located on SBL# 144.31-3-26, in the City of Niagara Falls, New York. Warrant at 1. It specifically identified the items that could be seized: Cocaine and any other controlled substances as defined in Article 220 and 221 of the Revised Penal Laws of the State of New York, as well as for any implements used to administer same, or prepare same for packaging or sale or other dispensation of aforementioned substances, as well as for any monies, all written papers or articles, or keys, or any other papers that tend to show that crimes relating to violation of Article 220 and 221 of the Revised Penal Laws of the State of New York have been committed. Id. To be sure, the Constitution further requires that warrants be issued only upon probable cause, but it does not require that probable cause be stated in the warrant itself. See, e.g., United States v. Grubbs, 547 U.S. 90, 98, 126 S.Ct. 1494, 164 L.Ed.2d 195 (2006). Thus, to the extent probable cause was lacking to support a warrant to search the whole of the premises particularly described, the defect lies not in the warrant but in the warrant affidavit. That defect is properly addressed in considering a different Leon concern, whether the lack of probable cause was so obvious as to preclude reasonable reliance. See 1 LaFave, supra § 1.3(f), at 87 (noting [t]his kind of case... does not fit within the Leon third situation [but, rather,] is analytically most similar to that in which it turns out the warrant is lacking in any probable cause showing, and ought to be resolved in the same way (internal citations omitted)). We turn to that concern in the next subsection of this opinion.