Opinion ID: 3066075
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: seizure beyond the search warrant

Text: Government agents searched Seda’s home in 2004 pursuant to a valid search warrant authorizing the seizure of a limited set of documents: financial records and communications related to the preparation of the 2000 tax return. The government emerged from the search, however, with much more: news articles, records of visits to various websites about Chechnya, photographs of Chechen war scenes, and other documents that were introduced at trial as evidence of Seda’s desire to fund the Chechen mujahideen. The Fourth Amendment famously protects the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures. . . .” U.S. UNITED STATES V. SEDAGHATY 45 Const. amend. IV. To effectuate this right, it provides that “no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” Id. The question we consider de novo is whether the search was unreasonable because agents relied on the affidavit in support of the warrant to expand the authorized scope of items detailed in the warrant itself. See United States v. Hurd, 499 F.3d 963, 965 (9th Cir. 2007) (considering whether a search is within the scope of a warrant is a question of law reviewed de novo). The search warrant incorporated two attachments (A and B) and an affidavit supporting probable cause for the search. See United States v. SDI Future Health, Inc., 568 F.3d 684, 699–701 (9th Cir. 2009) (“A warrant expressly incorporates an affidavit when it uses ‘suitable words of reference.’”) (quoting United States v. Towne, 997 F.2d 537, 545 (9th Cir.1993)). The affidavit described Al-Haramain-U.S. and its structure, detailed facts about the El-Fiki donation, AlHaramain-U.S.’s purchase of the Ashland and Springfield prayer houses, and inconsistencies on the 2000 tax return. The affidavit also included background information from news articles about the conflict in Chechnya, investigations into connections between several Al-Haramain branches and the funding of terrorism, and statements of Al-Haramain’s former director about funding for the Chechen mujahideen. Attachment A described the location of Seda’s home (also Al-Haramain-U.S. headquarters). Attachment B listed five 46 UNITED STATES V. SEDAGHATY individuals and five entities associated with the violations and it detailed the items to be seized:16 Evidence Relating to the Tax Violation Evidence concerning the subscription to a false Form 990 Tax Return, in violation of Title 26, United States Code, Section 7206(1), as described in the attached affidavit, for the year 2000, limited to the following: Records and communications, including electronic records and communications involving the individuals or entities above, pertaining to the preparation of an IRS Form 990 for the year 2000; Records relating to bank accounts, bank transactions, bank records, safe deposit records, asset purchases or sales, other financial transactions, and donor and donee lists, involving the year 2000 which relate to the individuals or entities above; and 16 The five individuals listed were: Pirouz Sedaghaty, Soliman Al-Buthe, Aqeel Al-Aqeel, Mansour Al-Kadi, Mahmoud Talaat El-Fiki. The five entities listed were: Al Haramain; Al Haramain Foundation; Al Haramain Islamic Foundation, Inc.; Al Haramain Headquarters aka Al Haramain Riyadh. UNITED STATES V. SEDAGHATY 47 Records relating to credit card accounts, records, and transactions involving the year 2000, which relate to the individuals or entities above. (emphasis added).17 The warrant contained similar language for the currency reporting (CMIR) violation, expressly limiting the evidence seizure to “records of financial transactions and communications” between October 1997 and February 2003 pertaining to the same named individuals and entities. Neither Attachment A nor B referenced Chechnya or the mujahideen. Attachment B also permitted the government to review computer equipment to determine whether it would be practical to search or copy it on site and, if not, allowed the government to remove the computers in order to “extract and seize any data that falls within the list of items to be seized” described above. Attachment B required the government to return any data outside of that list within sixty days. Agents removed nine computers from the house, and computer forensic experts used an evolving list of search terms to comb through the computers for useful materials. In addition to financial records and communications describing the preparation of the tax return, the agents seized hundreds of other items, including internal Al-Haramain-U.S. organizational documents, news articles, records of internet 17 The dissent selectively quotes from the warrant to support its broad reading. In fact, the plain language of the warrant explicitly limits the items to be seized more narrowly. 48 UNITED STATES V. SEDAGHATY access to various websites about Chechnya, webpages sent to Al-Haramain-U.S. by various listservs, photographs of Chechen war scenes, and articles about Seda’s civic life. Seda moved to stop the searches of electronic media and to suppress the evidence that was beyond the scope of the warrant.18 The district court denied Seda’s motion, reasoning that the “crimes charged require proof of intent and thus records beyond simple financial records were appropriately seized, such as evidence of support of the efforts of the Chechnyan mujahideen.” The district court cited SDI Future Health, 568 F.3d at 699, for the proposition that an affidavit incorporated in the warrant is “potentially curative of any defects.” Without doubt, the warrant references the affidavit, but the question is to what effect. The plain meaning of the text provides the answer: the warrant seeks “evidence concerning the” tax and currency reporting violations “described in the attached affidavit.” The affidavit describes in separate sections both the willful filing of a false return and the CMIR violations, along with the requirements for each and evidence supporting probable cause for the search. Adopting the commonsense reading that the affidavit was incorporated for the specific purpose of describing the offenses and establishing probable cause does not require a hyper-technical parsing of the language. 18 Seda consistently argued that the seizure was unlawful because it exceeded the scope of the warrant. At oral argument, Seda’s counsel argued that the seizure exceeded the warrant’s scope even if the affidavit was incorporated into the warrant. UNITED STATES V. SEDAGHATY 49 The plain text of the warrant likewise clearly delineates what is to be seized. Under the heading “ITEMS TO BE SEIZED,” Attachment B states that “[e]vidence concerning the” tax violation is “limited to the following,” and then discusses tax documents, financial records, and associated communications “pertaining to the preparation of an IRS Form 990 for the year 2000.” “Evidence concerning the” CMIR charge is similarly limited to records of financial transactions and associated communications between the listed individuals from 1997 to 2003. The only reference in the affidavit to the evidence sought is the concluding request for authorization to search “for the evidence listed in Attachment B and to seize the same.” Therefore, there is no reason to read the affidavit as defining the scope of the items to be seized. Instead, that list is contained in Attachment B to the warrant.19 Even if the affidavit is understood to describe evidence “relevant” to the violations, that does not authorize the far flung scope of the agents’ search. Relevance, of course, is not the standard; the language of the warrant controls. United States v. Tamura, 694 F.2d 591, 595 (9th Cir. 1982) (“As a 19 The affidavit, in fact, is consistent with a limited authorization focusing on financial records and communications pertaining to the 2000 tax return and the CMIR: in describing documents likely to be found at Al-Haramain-U.S.’s Ashland office in order to establish probable cause for the search, it lists “financial records” such as “correspondence, receipts, negotiated instruments, contracts, bank statements and other records,” plus documentation concerning “income, expenses, asset purchases, communications with tax preparers and other officers.” The affidavit specifically references an interest in “transaction details from the organization’s Quickbooks program for the 1999 and 2000 years.” The magistrate judge could not have known from the affidavit that the agents instead intended to seize records of Seda’s internet browsing of religious websites or his correspondence with friends and co-workers. 50 UNITED STATES V. SEDAGHATY general rule, in searches made pursuant to warrants only the specifically enumerated items may be seized.”) (citation omitted). The warrant was expressly limited in scope and did not include items such as the records of visits to websites about Chechnya, the communications unrelated to the preparation of the tax return with individuals never named or referenced in the affidavit, or the general background information about the Chechen mujahideen that were seized. The dissent suggests that all of this evidence is necessary to establish the required mens rea. But it is not authorized by the warrant. Upon failing to find evidence of willfulness in the records pertaining to the preparation of the tax return that were authorized to be seized, the government should not be able to comb through Seda’s computers plucking out new forms of evidence that the investigating agents have decided may be useful, at least not without obtaining a new warrant. See United States v. Heldt, 668 F.2d 1238, 1266 (D.C. Cir. 1981) (“[T]he particularity requirement of the fourth amendment prevents the seizure of one thing under a warrant describing another. As to what is to be taken, nothing is left to the discretion of the officer executing the warrant.”) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). In light of the specific limitations of the warrant, it is difficult to embrace the government’s justification that the search terms “bore a logical connection to the affidavit” and that all of the materials seized “were relevant given the nature of the charges.” To adopt the government’s approach would permit a kitchen sink probable cause affidavit to overrule the express scope limitations of the warrant itself. The issue here is not whether the warrant incorporated the affidavit. That is not in doubt—instead the issue is the scope of the reference. May a broad ranging probable cause affidavit serve to expand the UNITED STATES V. SEDAGHATY 51 express limitations imposed by a magistrate in issuing the warrant itself? We believe the answer is no. The affidavit as a whole cannot trump a limited warrant. Our cases have not dealt with this situation directly. Rather, we have considered cases in which an affidavit could cure a defective warrant. That circumstance has arisen when there is a clerical error or when the warrant is overbroad but could be cured by a particularized affidavit. Towne, 997 F.2d at 544 (affirming the “well-settled principle that a warrant’s overbreadth can be cured by an accompanying affidavit that more particularly describes the items to be seized”) (citation omitted); United States v. Bowler, 561 F.2d 1323, 1326 (9th Cir. 1977) (holding that the presence of the correct address in the sworn affidavit could correct a typographical error in the warrant). Here, however, there is no error in the warrant for the affidavit to cure. The error is with the seizure, which exceeded the warrant’s scope. See United States v. Angelos, 433 F.3d 738, 746 (10th Cir. 2006) (noting that “it is apparent that the problem lies in the execution, and not the constitutionality, of the search warrant”). We have never held that an affidavit could expand the scope of a legitimate warrant beyond its express limitations nor do we do so here. Our approach accords with the D.C. Circuit’s treatment of a warrant in United States v. Kaye, 432 F.2d 647, 649 (D.C. Cir. 1970): “It is the description in the search warrant, not the language of the affidavit, which determines the place to be searched.” The same principle—that it is the warrant and not the affidavit that controls—applies equally to the items to be seized. The court in Kaye explicitly rejected the argument that “the scope of the search warrant was determined or broadened by the . . . supporting affidavit.” Id.; see also Angelos, 433 F.3d at 746 (concluding that a 52 UNITED STATES V. SEDAGHATY search congruent with the affidavit but beyond the explicit terms of the warrant exceeded the warrant’s scope). This approach is also supported by the Third Circuit’s decision in Doe v. Groody, 361 F.3d 232, 240 (3d Cir. 2004). Although the affidavit in Groody was not incorporated into the warrant, the court reasoned more generally that while an affidavit can be used to cure an otherwise overbroad warrant by narrowing its scope, an affidavit cannot be relied upon to authorize a search beyond the scope of a judicially authorized warrant. Id. at 241. (“Bluntly, it is one thing if officers use less than the authority erroneously granted by a judge [by relying on an affidavit to narrow the warrant]. It is quite another if officers go beyond the authority granted by the judge.”) (emphasis added). Indeed, “the warrant provides the license to search, not the affidavit.” Id. The supervising agent here may well have believed that the affidavit took precedence over the warrant, but the subjective state of mind of the officer executing the warrant is not material to our initial inquiry. United States v. Ewain, 88 F.3d 689, 694 (9th Cir. 1996) (“A policeman’s pure heart does not entitle him to exceed the scope of a search warrant . . . .”). Any other conclusion would elevate the author of the incorporated probable cause affidavit over the judge issuing the warrant. Cf. Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13–14 (1948) (noting that the Fourth Amendment requires that any inferences from the evidence be “drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime”). The district court determined that the “fact that a further warrant was requested when information possibly relating to UNITED STATES V. SEDAGHATY 53 a separate crime was discovered belies the allegations that the search was a general fishing expedition.” That may be. But the fact that the government sought a separate warrant for some materials outside the scope of the warrant does not somehow countenance the seizure of other materials outside its scope. Cf. United States v. Crozier, 777 F.2d 1376, 1381 (9th Cir. 1985) (“A search must be limited to the terms of the warrant.”). To the extent the agents wanted to seize relevant information beyond the scope of the warrant, they should have sought a further warrant. The Supreme Court has emphasized that “there are grave dangers inherent in executing a warrant authorizing a search and seizure of a person’s papers” as opposed to physical objects, and that given the danger of coming across papers that are not authorized to be seized, “responsible officials, including judicial officials, must take care to assure that [searches] are conducted in a manner that minimizes unwarranted intrusions upon privacy.” Andresen v. Maryland, 427 U.S. 463, 482 n.11 (1976). The search warrant here was properly issued and clearly stated the locations to be searched and the items that could be seized. The government agents responsible did not minimize intrusions on privacy, however, but instead seized papers and records beyond those the warrant authorized. See United States v. Rettig, 589 F.2d 418, 423 (9th Cir. 1978) (concluding that although the warrant was sufficiently particular, the executing “agents did not confine their search in good faith to the objects of the warrant, and that while purporting to execute it, they substantially exceeded any reasonable interpretation of its provisions” ). Unlike cases where the magistrate judge erred in filling out the warrant but the government reasonably relied on the judge’s approval, here the magistrate judge properly authorized the warrant but 54 UNITED STATES V. SEDAGHATY the agents did not follow it. See Hurd, 499 F.3d at 969 (holding that officers reasonably relied on the warrant, though judge inadvertently failed to initial the appropriate line); United States v. Hitchcock, 286 F.3d 1064 (9th Cir. 2002) (determining that magistrate’s error in post-dating one line of the warrant did not require suppression of the evidence seized). The government’s seizure of items beyond the terms of the warrant violated the Fourth Amendment. In the absence of “flagrant disregard for the terms of the warrant,” a district court need not “suppress all of the evidence, including evidence that was not tainted by the violation.” United States v. Chen, 979 F.2d 714, 717 (9th Cir. 1992) (internal quotation marks omitted). “Th[e] extraordinary remedy [of suppressing evidence seized within the scope of the warrant] should be used only when the violations of the warrant’s requirements are so extreme that the search is essentially transformed into an impermissible general search.” Id. Because the record does not reflect a flagrant general search, we reject Seda’s contention that the violation requires suppression of all of the evidence seized. However, the exclusionary rule generally bars admission of the evidence seized that was beyond the scope of the warrant. See United States v. Payton, 573 F.3d 859, 864 (9th Cir. 2009) (reversing conviction where “search of [defendant’s] computer without explicit authorization in the warrant exceeded the scope of that warrant”). The illegal seizure of this evidence was not without consequence, as much of the illegally seized evidence was admitted to bolster the government’s theory that Seda sympathized with and sought to aid the mujahideen. Cf. Tamura, 694 F.2d at 597 (declining to order a new trial where, despite unlawful seizure of items outside the scope of UNITED STATES V. SEDAGHATY 55 the warrant, “[a]ll of the documents introduced at trial were seized and retained lawfully because described in and therefore taken pursuant to the valid search warrant”). The district court erroneously concluded that the items seized were within the scope of the warrant, and thus did not consider the applicability of the exclusionary rule. Nor did the parties brief this issue on appeal. For this reason, we part company with the dissent and conclude that it is not appropriate for us to make the initial determination of good faith on appeal. On remand, the district court should determine in the first instance which specific items seized can be understood to be “records or communications pertaining to the preparation of an IRS Form 990 for the year 2000” or otherwise authorized by Attachment B and whether the seizure of items beyond that scope implicates the principles of United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897 (1984), and Herring v. United States, 555 U.S. 135, 140–48 (2009).