Opinion ID: 6324618
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: analysis

Text: Bracy argues that the search warrant issued by the magistrate was not supported by probable cause, and therefore, the search violated the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and article I, section 8 of the Iowa Constitution. We disagree. When we look at the entirety of the warrant application and draw reasonable inferences in support of the warrant, there was clearly a substantial basis for finding probable cause that Bracy was dealing methamphetamine from the house. We consider all of the information in the warrant application. The detective’s application listed four separate tips from confidential informants that indicated Bracy was actively dealing methamphetamine. Two of those tips provided the nonpublic information that Bracy lived in his father’s house, and the informants were familiar enough to know where the house was. Also, Bracy had two prior drug convictions, one of which was for methamphetamine possession that had occurred only twenty months ago. Bracy was unemployed and living with his father at age thirty, yet he had “a lot of money” in his safe. When Bracy spoke to his dad from jail, he was suspiciously concerned about something happening to his safe “where everything is.” Later the same day, Bracy spoke with Cervantes in an apparently coded conversation about the sale of methamphetamine from his dad’s house. Perhaps, no single piece of information in the application would have sustained probable cause on its own. But that is not required. Considering the totality of the circumstances, the magistrate had a substantial basis for 11 concluding there was probable cause to believe illegal drugs could be found in the house. Bracy’s arguments on appeal rest on a series of faulty premises. First, and most erroneously, he contends that the four anonymous tips must be “redacted from the search warrant application” because on their own they do not establish probable cause. In so arguing, he treats appellate review of a warrant as some kind of high school biology lab exercise. He dissects the warrant, examining it bit-by-bit under a microscope and asks us to throw out any bits that, in his view, do not establish probable cause on their own. That’s not right. Under Franks, if the reviewing court finds that the affiant consciously falsified the challenged information, or acted with reckless disregard for the truth in their application for the warrant, the offensive material must be deleted and the remainder of the warrant reviewed to determine whether probable cause existed. 438 U.S. at 171–72. We have applied Franks in the past in cases involving allegations that the officer provided false information in the warrant application. See, e.g., State v. Niehaus, 452 N.W.2d 184, 186–87 (Iowa 1990); State v. Groff, 323 N.W.2d 204, 208–09 (Iowa 1982). Franks is a specific doctrine limited to intentionally or recklessly false statements by the officer in the warrant application. This case has nothing to do with Franks. There is no allegation that Detective Bowermaster provided false information to the magistrate. So there is no reason to delete or disregard anything in Detective Bowermaster’s warrant application. The entire application should be considered as a whole. See Baker, 925 N.W.2d at 613 (“We use the 12 totality-of-the-circumstances standard to determine whether officers established probable cause for issuance of a search warrant.”); McNeal, 867 N.W.2d at 105 (considering the “totality of the circumstances as presented in the application for search warrant”). Bracy tries to rely on State v. McNeal, a case in which we upheld a search warrant against a Fourth Amendment challenge. 867 N.W.2d at 99, 105. There, the defendant specifically complained about the affiant’s reliance on two items: an anonymous tip and an old conviction. Id. at 100–02. We found the warrant to be proper and said, “Here, even if we excise the information contained in the anonymous tip and evidence of McNeal’s prior conviction as argued by McNeal, based on the totality of the circumstances as presented in the application for search warrant, probable cause existed to support the search warrant in this case.” Id. at 103. We also said, “[E]ven if we accept McNeal’s argument that the application for search warrant contained impermissible information, a reviewing court can remove the offending information and determine whether the remaining information establishes probable cause.” Id. at 102 (citing Niehaus, 452 N.W.2d at 186–87). McNeal did not hold that one must excise from the warrant application information that is merely stale or insufficient on its own to support probable cause. That would be a novel extension of Fourth Amendment law under Franks. Rather, we said that even if the information hypothetically were excised, the warrant application remained sufficient. Id. McNeal was a Fourth Amendment case only, and we would have had no authority to divert from federal precedent. 13 Any suggestion in McNeal that merely unpersuasive information, as opposed to false information, should be excised would have been mere dicta, and inaccurate dicta at that. See, e.g., United States v. Mejía Romero, 822 F. App’x 1, 2–3 (1st Cir. 2020) (stating that “the warrant application must be read as a whole” and criticizing the defendant’s “piecemeal appraisal” and “divide-and-conquer approach”). There is no reason for us to disregard the tips from the confidential informants in this case. But of course, this case involves far more than four unnamed informants. Bracy had prior drug and weapons convictions, including a methamphetamine conviction from the previous year. Bracy argues that the 2014 and 2015 convictions are too old and the 2017 conviction “alone” does not establish probable cause. Again, that is not the issue; we don’t need to throw them out. Even an arrest can be considered as a supporting fact in a warrant application “when it tends to show a nexus between the defendant and illegal narcotics activity.” Baker, 925 N.W.2d at 616. All three convictions provide some weight toward probable cause, particularly the most recent conviction. The two jailhouse phone calls add substantial weight as well. On September 10, when Bracy called his father from jail, he said, “Don’t let nothing happen to my safe man. There is a lot of money in that safe. That’s where everything is.” Later that evening, a few hours before the detective submitted the warrant application, Bracy called Cervantes, his companion at the time of his arrest the previous week. Cervantes discussed going through a quantity of “shit” to get Bracy’s debt paid off, and Bracy responded that he had told “him” 14 (presumably Bracy’s creditor) that “all that shit is right there from my dad[’]s house.” Detective Bowermaster, a seasoned detective assigned to the Mid-Iowa Drug Task Force, stated in the application, “I know from experience that people often refer to meth as ‘shit.’ ” Bracy engages in an elaborate effort to dispute the incriminating nature of the calls. We are not convinced. Bracy says, “There is nothing nefarious about keeping money within a safe.” But it is curious that this unemployed person was so concerned about his safe, which contained “everything,” that he phoned his father about it from jail. See State v. Lindsey, 881 N.W.2d 411, 425–26 (Iowa 2016) (finding that an injured football player’s “unprompted concern about his bag ‘raised a red flag’ ” for Fourth Amendment purposes). Bracy also asks us to reject Detective Bowermaster’s expert opinion that Bracy and Cervantes were using “shit” over the phone to refer to “methamphetamine.” We decline to do so. Not only was this Detective Bowermaster’s trained opinion, but alternative interpretations of the phone call do not add up. Hypothetically, if “shit” means money, the exchange is hard to explain. Bracy would normally know the monetary amount of his own debt. And why would Bracy’s creditor care where Bracy had been storing the money to pay off the debt? On the other hand, if “shit” means meth, then the exchange makes sense. Cervantes was making a point to Bracy about how much meth she had been forced to peddle to pay off Bracy’s debt. Bracy, in turn, was explaining to 15 Cervantes how he had implied to their customer that there was more meth available where that meth came from. In sum, Bracy’s approach would deny the deference we are supposed to afford warrants that have been approved by a magistrate. And that would be unfair to law enforcement. Most likely, Detective Bowermaster could have provided more details to support the warrant application if the magistrate had said he needed them. That’s one reason our after-the-fact review asks only whether the grant of the warrant application had a “substantial basis.” The grant of this warrant clearly did.1