Opinion ID: 2634483
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the duty of disclosure before a magistrate

Text: ¶13 In holding that McNaughton was obligated to disclose the prior warrantless entry to the magistrate, the court of appeals reasoned that an officer must be forthcoming about any conduct related to the search warrant request so that a magistrate can determine, independently, how, or if, the prior conduct impacts a probable cause determination. Krukowski, 2002 UT App 433 at ¶ 14. To support its reasoning, the court of appeals relied on Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154 (1978), as applied by this court in State v. Nielsen, 727 P.2d 188 (Utah 1986). [2] Krukowski, 2002 UT App 433 at ¶¶ 14-16. ¶14 In Franks, the United States Supreme Court recognized that the Fourth Amendment's probable cause requirement rests on the premise that there will be a truthful showing of probable cause. 438 U.S. at 164-65 (internal quotations omitted). If the trial court finds that a false statement in a warrant affidavit was made deliberately or with reckless disregard for the truth and that the false statement materially affected the magistrate's determination of probable cause, the search warrant must be voided and the fruits of the search excluded to the same extent as if probable cause was lacking on the face of the affidavit. Id. at 156. ¶15 In Nielsen, we extended the Franks holding to cases involving material omissions. Just as police officers may not include materially false statements in a warrant affidavit, they similarly cannot omit information that materially affects the finding of probable cause. 727 P.2d at 191. Under Nielsen, omitted information will be deemed material [i]f an affidavit fails to support a finding of probable cause after . . . the omitted information is added. Id. ¶16 While Franks and Nielsen accurately describe the importance of candor in the search warrant process, they do not decide the particular materiality issue that is of critical importance in this case. Police officers' duty to be candid to magistrates when seeking warrants does not impose an affirmative duty on them to disclose matters immaterial to a determination of probable cause. Here, the prior illegal entry does not bear upon probable cause, which must be established on the basis of circumstances existing and evidence observed independent of the illegal entry. ¶17 In concluding that McNaughton's prior warrantless entry was material to the magistrate's probable cause determination, the court of appeals relied on Murray v. United States, 487 U.S. 533 (1988). Although the court of appeals acknowledged that Murray does not explicitly requir[e] officers to inform a magistrate of a prior illegal entry, Krukowski, 2002 UT App 433 at ¶ 12, it nevertheless relied on Murray and Nielsen in concluding that an officer must be forthcoming about any conduct related to the search warrant request so that a magistrate can determine, independently, how, or if, the prior conduct impacts a probable cause determination. Id. at ¶ 14. ¶18 Murray, however, does not support such a result. Although the Murray Court separately addressed the role of the magistrate in issuing a warrant and the role of the trial judge in ruling on a motion to suppress, 487 U.S. at 540, the court of appeals conflated the two. In rejecting the argument that the availability of the independent source doctrine would give police an incentive to undertake illegal entries, the Murray Court observed: We see the incentives differently. An officer with probable cause sufficient to obtain a search warrant would be foolish to enter the premises first in an unlawful manner. By doing so, he would risk suppression of all evidence on the premises, both seen and unseen, since his action would add to the normal burden of convincing a magistrate that there is probable cause the much more onerous burden of convincing a trial court that no information gained from the illegal entry affected either the law enforcement officers' decision to seek a warrant or the magistrate's decision to grant it. Nor would the officer without sufficient probable cause to obtain a search warrant have any added incentive to conduct an unlawful entry, since whatever he finds cannot be used to establish probable cause before a magistrate. Id. (first emphasis added) (citation omitted). ¶19 Contrary to the court of appeals' conclusion, this language neither alters the standard for establishing probable cause before a magistrate nor enlarges the scope of information material to a probable cause determination. In fact, the Murray Court distinguished between the normal burden a police officer must meet when seeking a warrant from a magistrate and the much more onerous burden the State must meet in the trial court when relying on the independent source doctrine to defend a motion to suppress. Id. While the fact of a prior illegal entry may be material to a trial court's application of the independent source doctrine in the context of a motion to suppress, it is not material to a magistrate's determination of probable cause. ¶20 Krukowski argues that an officer's illegal entry is material to a magistrate's probable cause determination because a magistrate's knowledge of such an entry would aid in evaluating the officer's credibility. He asserts that an officer who would illegally enter property without applying for a warrant may be dishonest or unethical and that the magistrate should take this into account in evaluating the factual assertions contained in a warrant application. We disagree. An officer's illegal entry does not necessarily imply a defect in character. Rather, it may stem from an error of judgment, an imperfect understanding of the law, or a lack of time to make decisions. More importantly, however, while a prior illegal entry is not material to the magistrate's probable cause determination, it is material to a trial court's assessment of the officer's credibility and the independent source doctrine in the context of a motion to suppress. This is the additional and much more onerous burden that the United States Supreme Court described in Murray. Id. ¶21 Krukowski also contends that a prior illegal entry is material to a probable cause determination because the officer may include in his warrant application facts known to him only by virtue of the illegal entry. We find this argument similarly unpersuasive because, when seeking a warrant, police officers are obligated to establish probable cause to enter based on evidence perceptible from outside the premises. ¶22 Our holding that police officers are not required to disclose a prior illegal entry to a magistrate when seeking a search warrant is further supported by the reality that a magistrate's knowledge of a prior entry could improperly influence his assessment of probable cause. If informed that police officers have already entered the premises sought to be searched, a magistrate could reasonably infer that the prior entry confirmed the existence of valuable evidence, thereby providing police officers with an incentive to seek a warrant. [3] In short, disclosing a prior illegal entry signals to the magistrate that incriminating evidence already has been found. We conclude that it would be unwise to require such disclosure and decline to do so.