Opinion ID: 795784
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Application of United States v. Medlin

Text: 54 Prior to our adoption of the severance doctrine, we held that, [w]hen law enforcement officers grossly exceed the scope of a search warrant in seizing property, the particularity requirement is undermined and a valid warrant is transformed into a general warrant thereby requiring suppression of all evidence seized under that warrant. Medlin, 842 F.2d at 1199; see also United States v. Foster, 100 F.3d 846, 849 (10th Cir.1996) ([E]ven evidence which is properly seized pursuant to a warrant must be suppressed if the officers executing the warrant exhibited `flagrant disregard' for its terms.) (quotation omitted). As a result, even where the Naugle requirements for severance are satisfied, total suppression rather than partial suppression pursuant to a redacted warrant is necessary when officers flagrant[ly] disregard the terms or grossly exceed the scope of a search warrant. 8 Medlin, 842 F.2d at 1199; see also Pitts, 173 F.3d at 681 n. 5 ([T]he doctrine of severability does not apply when police act in bad faith . . . .); Maddox, 67 P.3d at 1142 (Just as such a search taints all parts of a warrant that was completely valid at the time of its issuance, it taints, a fortiori, all parts of a warrant that was only partially valid at the time of its issuance.) (citing Foster, 100 F.3d at 849; Medlin, 842 F.2d at 1199; Marvin v. United States, 732 F.2d 669, 674-75 (8th Cir.1984); United States v. Crozier, 777 F.2d 1376, 1381 (9th Cir. 1985); United States v. Heldt, 668 F.2d 1238, 1259 (D.C.Cir.1981)) (footnote omitted). 55 Here, the district court found no indiscriminate rummaging or hours of ransacking. Nothing in the record suggests that this finding is clearly erroneous, Gay, 240 F.3d at 1225; nor does the record suggest that any of the officers' actions constituted the sort of flagrant disregard for the Fourth Amendment or the permissible scope, duration, and intensity of the search under the redacted warrant that would require the extreme remedy of total suppression. United States v. Le, 173 F.3d 1258, 1270 (10th Cir.1999); see also Freeman, 685 F.2d at 953 (Since the permissible scope, duration, and intensity of the search turns upon the nature of the items listed in the warrant, a court which permits severance of a warrant must consider what search and seizure would have been permissible if the warrant had only named those items as to which probable cause was established.) (quotation omitted). We therefore agree with the district court that total suppression is inapplicable in this case.