Opinion ID: 2643772
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: 2004-2005 Postal Inspector Conduct

Text: The Supreme Court has recently held that the taking of a DNA sample from an arrestee using a buccal swab on the inside of a person's cheek is a search. Maryland v. King, 133 S. Ct. 1958, 1968-69 (2013). Certain consequences follow from the holding that is a search. We agree with Thomas that the obtaining of the buccal swab is a violation of the Fourth Amendment on the facts of this case. That is because since this was a search, under present law the mere use of a grand jury form, without any judicial or even grand jury involvement and no determination of the basis for such an intrusion, is inadequate. We bypass the issue of whether Thomas, to assert the claim, was required to object to the subpoena or seek a hearing to that effect at the time, and assume he is free to present the claim now.9 9 Thomas never challenged the grand jury subpoena either before or after his compliance with it in 2005. The government further contends that even assuming the taking of the DNA sample pursuant to the grand jury subpoena was a search, Thomas consented to it. See Vale v. Louisiana, 399 U.S. 30, 35 (1970) (no Fourth Amendment violation where a search is authorized by consent). But as the district court stated, the passage of time also makes it -13- Though grand jury proceedings are entitled to a presumption of regularity, In re Lopreato, 511 F.2d 1150, 1152 (1st Cir. 1975), the grand jury is also without power to invade a legitimate privacy interest protected by the Fourth Amendment, Calandra, 414 U.S. at 346. In order to decide whether Thomas's rights were violated here, we do not need to decide under what Fourth Amendment standard a grand jury may obtain a DNA sample through intrusive personal samples by investigative means. More generally, the Supreme Court has said that the standard governing grand jury subpoenas is something less than probable cause, reasoning that the Government cannot be required to justify the issuance of a grand jury subpoena by presenting evidence sufficient to establish probable cause because the very purpose of requesting the information is to ascertain whether probable cause exists. United States v. R. Enters., Inc., 498 U.S. 292, 297 (1991). Of course, there is a qualitative difference between the documents compelled by the subpoena in R. Enterprises and the DNA sample compelled here; R. Enterprises involved the production of documents in which the company did not have a Fourth more difficult to assess whether Thomas voluntarily consented to give the DNA sample when he complied with the subpoena. Whether an individual consented to a search is a question of fact to be determined from the totality of all the circumstances. Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218, 227 (1973). The prosecution bears the burden of proof on this inquiry. Id. at 222. While we do not resolve the issue, we assume, in Thomas's favor, he did not consent. -14- Amendment interest. What is clear here is that there was no determination by a grand jury or a judge of whether any particular level of Fourth Amendment justification had been met to justify the grand jury subpoena for the DNA sample. On that basis alone, we conclude his Fourth Amendment rights were then violated. Our issue, though, is not whether Thomas's rights were violated, but whether the Herring test for application of the exclusionary rule has been satisfied. The district court's determination, after a hearing and supported by the evidence, found that the police conduct was not flagrant or deliberate within the meaning of Herring. Thomas, 815 F. Supp. 2d at 38. There is no evidence here that the postal inspectors involved in obtaining and executing the subpoena knowingly engaged in any misconduct.10 William Kent testified during the suppression hearing that he recalled other investigators requesting DNA samples by use of grand jury subpoenas before the Austin Prep investigation, and that those requests had produced useful information. Kent's testimony was that while requesting a DNA sample in a grand jury subpoena may not 10 There has been an established practice of allowing the U.S. Attorney to issue subpoenas in order to secure and bring evidence before a grand jury. In re Lopreato, 511 F.2d at 1153; see also In re Grand Jury Matters, 751 F.2d 13, 16 (1st Cir. 1984) (Although grand jury subpoenas are issued in the name of the district court, they are issued pro forma and in blank to anyone requesting them without prior court approval or control.). When Desrosiers requested a grand jury subpoena from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Maine, at least for fingerprint data, he was acting within the scope of normal law enforcement conduct. -15- have been everyday practice, it was not considered an illegal action at the time.11 Thomas argues that applying the exclusionary rule in this 2011 case would deter any future use of mere forms for grand jury subpoenas obtained by the U.S. Attorney's Office to obtain DNA swabs. If that practice as to grand juries has continued (and we do not know if it has), exclusion arguably could deter such conduct as to grand jury practice. Even so, the Supreme Court has said that would not justify exclusion at the grand jury level. Calandra, 414 U.S. at 349-53. The deterrence question here is different. Turning, as we must under Herring, to the attenuation and larger deterrence questions, there is a major attenuation problem with his deterrence argument. Had there been a prosecution resulting from the 20042005 investigation which used that DNA sample, we agree that there would have been some deterrence value in excluding such evidence if it then had been obtained by nothing more than use of a subpoena form. No such prosecution ultimately occurred, so the issue of possible violation of Thomas's rights never came up. And he never sought destruction of the data. 11 In 2005, neither our circuit nor the Supreme Court had spoken decisively on the Fourth Amendment implications of a cheek swab like the one used here. The Supreme Court characterized the process of using a buccal swab on the inner tissues of a person's cheek in order to obtain DNA samples as a search for the first time in 2013. King, 133 S. Ct. at 1968-69. -16- It is difficult to see why suppression in this later and unforeseen prosecution of an offense not yet committed at the time of the search would have acted to deter the law enforcement agents in the 2011 case from acting improperly any more than they would have already been deterred by knowledge that the results of the search would likely have been excluded at trial of the offense being investigated. Thomas's hypothesized deterrent effect is simply too attenuated to justify applying the exclusionary rule under Herring. The underlying conduct that violated the Fourth Amendment took place six or seven years ago, and the connection between the 2005 investigation and the 2011 letters was largely a result of happenstance. First, the connection turned on the Loring House address, which Desrosiers happened to remember from a 2008 investigation, not the 2005 investigation, during the 2011 meeting with FBI agents. Second, it was happenstance that it was Desrosiers who was involved in both the 2005 and 2011 investigations. The circumstances surrounding the issuance and service of this subpoena and the subpoena's attenuated relationship to the 2011 investigation plainly do not justify exclusion under Herring.