Opinion ID: 346694
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: legal consequences of the misrepresentation

Text: 15 This court has had several recent occasions to consider the effects of misstatements of fact in search warrant affidavits. See United States v. Park, 531 F.2d 754 (5th Cir. 1976); United States v. Hunt, 496 F.2d 888 (5th Cir. 1974); United States v. Thomas, 489 F.2d 664 (5th Cir. 1973), cert. denied 423 U.S. 844, 96 S.Ct. 79, 46 L.Ed.2d 64 (1975); United States v. Morris, 477 F.2d 657 (5th Cir.), cert. denied 414 U.S. 852, 94 S.Ct. 146, 38 L.Ed.2d 101 (1973). In its most thorough discussion of the issue, Thomas, supra, the Circuit stated its approach succinctly: 16 (W)e hold that affidavits containing misrepresentations are invalid if the error (1) was committed with any intent to deceive the magistrate, whether or not the error is material to the showing of probable cause; or (2) made nonintentionally, but the erroneous statement is material to the establishment of probable cause for the search. 17 489 F.2d at 669. 18 As the court below correctly observed, the Thomas opinion expressly declined to decide what degree of unintentional material misrepresentations, i. e. reckless, negligent or innocent, would invalidate an affidavit. See Thomas, supra, 489 F.2d at 671 n. 5. Surveying the jurisprudence, the district judge adopted the conclusion of United States v. Carmichael, 489 F.2d 983, 989 (7th Cir. 1973), that evidence should not be suppressed unless the officer was at least reckless in his misrepresentations. Because we find that the few hints offered by decisions of this court tend in the opposite direction and, more importantly, because we conclude that a sound balance between deterring potentially intrusive police misconduct and encouraging effective police investigatory work dictates a different conclusion, we reject the approach taken in Carmichael and the court below. 19 First, in deciding cases this court has generally looked initially at the materiality of the misstatement. See, e. g., Park, supra; Thomas, supra. While findings of non-materiality have usually rendered further inquiry unnecessary, the approach offers, if inconclusively, a possible further implication. In Park, supra, for example, we concluded that the misstatement could only have been an honest mistake. Drawing on the holding of Thomas quoted above, the court found it necessary only to determine whether the mistake was material to the existence of probable cause. This tends to imply that a material honest mistake would require invalidation of the affidavit. In any case, the Park court's consistent focus on materiality suggests that inquiry as the appropriate tool for insuring that the judiciary does not fall into assessing affidavits as entries in an essay contest; see United States v. Harris, 403 U.S. 573, 91 S.Ct. 2075, 29 L.Ed.2d 723 (1971). The inference to be drawn is that the materiality determination is a preferable analysis to a difficult set of distinctions between degrees of unintentional misconduct. 20 In one case since Thomas, United States v. Hunt, 496 F.2d 888 (5th Cir. 1974), moreover, this court required the excision of an intentional misstatement in a search warrant affidavit. Additional parts of the affidavit were excluded from the probable cause review because they rested on a prior illegal seizure. With the affidavit thus twice deleted, the court found probable cause lacking and invalidated the warrant. This court is thus on record as having overturned a search resting on an affidavit in part defective because of an unintentional misstatement, without identifying any particular degree of unintentional misconduct. 3 21 Even without any indication in our decisions that negligent material misstatements invalidate a search warrant affidavit, such a rule is salutary as a matter of policy. The 7th Circuit, adopting the contrary rule in Carmichael, supra, recognized that negligent misstatements by the police should and theoretically could be deterred. Opining that the line between innocence and negligence would be difficult to draw, however, that court determined to invalidate affidavits only for reckless misstatements. See Carmichael, supra, 489 F.2d at 989. 22 Distinguishing reckless from merely unreasonable behavior seems at least as difficult an inquiry. Certainly nothing suggests that the signposts of the recklessness inquiry will be so clear in this context as to compel a rule exonerating a degree of misconduct the law generally assumes deterable. 23 As this court has noted, (t)he warrant procedure operates on the assumption that statements in the affidavit are at least an accurate representation of what the affiant knows . . . . That ex parte process would quickly deteriorate into a meaningless formality were we to approve searches or arrests based upon misrepresentations or incorrect factual statements. United States v. Morris, 477 F.2d 657, 662 (5th Cir. 1973). 24 Our refusal to countenance affidavits which fail to establish probable cause absent negligent misrepresentations will effectuate those assumptions underlying the integrity of the warrant procedure. The materiality inquiry is a sufficient counterbalance to any judicial tendency to demand semantic precision from those engaged in the harried and often hurried pursuit of crime. We agree with the following comment upon the type of misstatement involved here, an officer's negligent reduction of a report from another source to the four corners of an affidavit: 25 Exclusion of evidence only when procured by negligent misstatements material to showing probable cause should prod police to make prudent investigations about as well as a full-scale exclusionary rule, since the police will usually not know until they apply exactly which allegations will be critical . . . Allowing the introduction of evidence when the affiant's negligence affects only an immaterial allegation will save a number of otherwise unobjectionable convictions without significantly restricting the deterrent values of the rule. 26 Kupperman, Inaccurate Search Warrant Affidavits As A Ground For Suppressing Evidence, 84 Harv.L.Rev. 825, 832 (1971).