Opinion ID: 1359705
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Misstatements and Material Omissions in the Affidavit.

Text: Buchanan also claims that the district court erred in denying his suppression motion because Tolsma recklessly misrepresented the nature of Buchanan's statements in Tolsma's warrant application and, thus, there was no basis for probable cause. An affidavit in support of a warrant must contain statements that are truthful. See Franks, 438 U.S. at 164-165, 98 S.Ct. 2674. This, however, does not require that every fact recited in the warrant affidavit is necessarily correct. Id. at 165, 98 S.Ct. 2674. [P]robable cause may be founded ... upon information within the affiant's own knowledge that sometimes must be garnered hastily. Id. Therefore, the affidavit must be `truthful' in the sense that the information put forth is believed or appropriately accepted by the affiant as true. Id.; see also Schmitz, 181 F.3d at 984, 986-87 (holding that inaccuracies of an affiant's testimony regarding the details of an incident did not undermine probable cause where the affiant reasonably concluded that she had observed a crime in progress). The test is whether, viewing all the evidence, the affiant must have entertained serious doubts about the truth [of his statements] or had obvious reasons to doubt the accuracy of the information. Schmitz, 181 F.3d at 986-87 (quotation omitted). Here, the district court found no evidence that Tolsma acted untruthfully or recklessly in preparing his affidavit and application for a search warrant, and the record demonstrates that the district court's finding was not clearly erroneous. The affidavit was written in haste and spoken over the phone. Thus, as the district court recognized, Any mistake Tolsma may have made in this regard would have been an understandable mistake, given the context of the conversation in which Mr. Buchanan's statement was made. There is no indication in the record that Tolsma was attempting to mislead the state magistrate nor that Tolsma had serious doubts about his statements or had obvious reason to doubt the accuracy of what he was relaying. Buchanan argues, however, that the procedure used by the state magistrate to assess probable cause in this case violated the Fourth Amendment. He claims the state magistrate adopted Tolsma's interpretation of Buchanan's statement, and in so doing, put the cart before the horse because he effectively allowed Tolsma to assess the presence of probable cause. This is essentially a reiteration of Buchanan's challenge to the validity of the warrant affidavit. Our Fourth Amendment inquiry requires only that the evidence as a whole provide a substantial basis for the finding of probable cause. See Gates, 462 U.S. at 238, 103 S.Ct. 2317. In light of the totality of the circumstances, there were sufficient reliable facts from which the state magistrate could find that there was a fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime [would] be found, id. at 238, 103 S.Ct. 2317, in Buchanan's house and therefore the district court did not err in denying Buchanan's motion to suppress.