Opinion ID: 196502
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Lemieux Affidavit

Text: 25 The district court found the Lemieux affidavit similarly inconclusive. Although the affidavit might contribute to a plausible inference of police conspiracy, it certainly did not compel such a finding, especially since its temporal relevance is so unclear. For one thing, it is not unreasonable to think that Lemieux may have been imprecise in recollecting the sequence of the events which had occurred a year and a half earlier. That is to say, there is nothing in the affidavit to suggest but what Lemieux may have been remembering that Tibolt was arrested and that an informant's tip simply corroborated what the officers themselves accidentally discovered. Nor does the Lemieux affidavit, vague as it is, make it probable that an acquittal would result upon retrial. 26 In all events, we need not rest our decision solely on the credibility ground, since the district court found also--with respect to the information in the Lemieux affidavit--that Tibolt had not met the first two prongs of the Ortiz test. See Natanel, 938 F.2d at 313 (failure to establish any of the four Ortiz factors defeats motion for new trial). The court further found that Tibolt had not shown that this new evidence was either unknown or unavailable at the time of the pretrial suppression hearing, nor that Tibolt had exercised due diligence to discover the evidence earlier. See Tibolt, 868 F.Supp. at 382 (What is more, the government proffered at the suppression hearing the fact that Tibolt's home had been the subject of a local drug investigation before the search, and made available to Tibolt one of the officers involved in that investigation for questioning.). At the pretrial suppression hearing, moreover, the government disclosed to the defense that Officer Williams participated in a previous task force surveillance of the Tibolt residence, and that at that time there were some reports of possible drug activities involving that house. (Emphasis added.) This disclosure certainly should have alerted Tibolt to the probability that an informant was involved. Yet Tibolt failed to pursue information relating to whether the warrantless search of July 27, 1992 was a mere ruse designed to fabricate a showing of probable cause. Since the finding that Tibolt failed to exercise due diligence was not clearly erroneous, see Zapata, 18 F.2d at 975, he may not rely on this evidence to mount a renewed attack on the warrantless search or the search warrant application. 7 27 The district court judgment is affirmed.