Opinion ID: 2831691
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Challenge to the Search of Galán's Apartment

Text: Galán gets the ball rolling with a challenge to the search of his apartment. His central accusation is that Agent 2 We have considered the remaining arguments and find them to be unpersuasive. 3 In addition to bypassing detailed discussion of several of the defendants' claims, we note the government's concern that the defendants improperly joined each others' appellate arguments and that each defendant failed to independently object at trial. In a closer case, these points could be fruitful. Here, we not need resolve these issues as defendants cannot succeed regardless of their validity. -10- Cedeño intentionally falsified observations in the affidavit submitted to obtain a warrant for Galán's residence. The district court, in Galán's view, then erred in ruling otherwise after a Franks hearing. Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154 (1978) (providing a mechanism for a defendant to challenge the veracity of statements in affidavits submitted to obtain search warrants). He thus asks us to reverse the district court's Franks determination and conclude that the fruits of the search should have been suppressed. Where, as here, a Franks hearing was held and the challenge is targeted at its results, [w]e bypass the question of whether [the defendant] made the 'substantial preliminary showing' necessary to invoke a Franks hearing, and, instead, review de novo the district court's ultimate decision to suppress [or not suppress] the evidence obtained pursuant to the warrant at issue. United States v. Tzannos, 460 F.3d 128, 135-36 (1st Cir. 2006). Any antecedent factual findings are reviewed for clear error. Id. at 136. To succeed in challenging the affidavit, Galán must show by a preponderance of the evidence that the affiant in fact made a false statement knowingly and intentionally, or with reckless disregard for the truth, and, that with the affidavit's false material set to one side, the affidavit's remaining content is insufficient to establish probable cause. Id. at 136. While a knowing and intentional falsehood requires proof of intent, -11- recklessness can be inferred from circumstances evincing obvious reasons to doubt the veracity of the allegations. United States v. Ranney, 298 F.3d 74, 78 (1st Cir. 2002). A material omission can also form the basis of a Franks violation. United States v. Castillo, 287 F.3d 21, 25 (1st Cir. 2002). Galán fails at the first prong. He homes in on Agent Cedeño's repeated statement in the affidavit that he observed Galán or other individuals entering or exiting the apartment. At the Franks hearing, however, Cedeño testified that he could not technically see the entrance to Galán's apartment because the door was obstructed by a concrete staircase. That inconsistency, Galán insists, exposes an intentional falsehood in the affidavit. Since those alleged observations by Cedeño were the only statements connecting the crime with the apartment, Galán believes that once the statements are excised, no probable cause for the search exists. We do not evaluate this argument on a blank slate. Instead, the district court made extensive factual determinations and credibility assessments to which we defer unless clearly erroneous. Notably, the magistrate judge (whose decision was adopted by the district court), found that Cedeño testified knowing that there are two apartments on the second floor. To the left, there is one apartment, and to the right is the only other door on that floor. He knows this because he has gone up those stairs on several occasions and the distribution is -12- always the same. The door cannot be seen because the stairs to the third floor cover the door and if the defendant would have gone up to the third floor, the officer would have seen him because of the visibility. The officer knew that the defendant entered the apartment because there is no other door . . . [h]e stated that he would have seen him going up to third floor. In the magistrate judge's view, its decision then turned on Cedeño's credibility. The court found Cedeño's explanation to be truthful. Accordingly, the magistrate judge ruled that no Franks violation had occurred. Regardless of the standard of review, the record -- one which details Cedeño's familiarity with the apartment complex and the intensity of his investigation -- compels the same finding. No evidence supports Galán's belief that Cedeño had any intent to falsify statements or to omit critical information, nor can we even say that there were any actual falsehoods in the affidavit. The circumstances also do not suggest that Cedeño was somehow reckless in writing entering/exiting instead of the more precise I inferred that he entered or exited. Simply put, neither the affidavit nor the hearing transcript supports Galán's view. Instead, as the district court correctly concluded, Cedeño made an obvious and natural inference from his observations. See United States v. D'Andrea, 648 F.3d 1, 14 (1st Cir. 2011) (upholding -13- denial of a Franks claim when the factual question turned on the reasonableness of the inference from the facts available).4 We note that accepting this clear and obvious inference on this record is entirely consistent with the broader purposes underpinning Franks: to ensure that a warrant judge has adequate information to make a decision, and to dissuade officers from misrepresenting their observations. At its core, this requires that the officer is being truthful in the sense that the information put forth is believed or appropriately accepted by the affiant as true. Franks, 438 U.S. at 165. Here, the warrant judge had sufficient and accurate information with which to base a decision, and nothing in the affidavit (or from the hearing transcripts) leads us to question Cedeño's belief in the statements he provided. We thus find no reason to disturb the lower court's Franks determination.5