Opinion ID: 206195
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Good Faith Exception Applies to this Case

Text: A determination that the warrant at issue was not supported by probable cause to search the entire multi-family dwelling does not automatically dictate the suppression of all physical evidence seized or statements derived therefrom. As the Supreme Court recently reminded courts, suppression is `our last resort, not our first impulse' in dealing with violations of the Fourth Amendment. Herring v. United States, 555 U.S. 135, 129 S.Ct. 695, 700, 172 L.Ed.2d 496 (2009) (quoting Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U.S. 586, 591, 126 S.Ct. 2159, 165 L.Ed.2d 56 (2006)). The animating principle of the exclusionary rule is deterrence of police misconduct, but the extent to which the rule is so justified varies with the culpability of the law enforcement conduct. Id. at 701 (suggesting that deterrent value of exclusionary rule is most effective in cases of `flagrant or deliberate violation of rights' (quoting Henry J. Friendly, The Bill of Rights as a Code of Criminal Procedure, 53 Calif. L.Rev. 929, 953 (1965), and citing Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 610-11, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 45 L.Ed.2d 416 (1975) (Powell, J., concurring in part))). Thus, in United States v. Leon , the Supreme Court recognized an exception to the exclusionary rule for evidence obtained in objectively reasonable reliance on a subsequently invalidated search warrant. 468 U.S. at 922, 104 S.Ct. 3405. The Court reasoned that, in those circumstances, [p]enalizing the officer for the magistrate's error, rather than his own, cannot logically contribute to the deterrence of Fourth Amendment violations. Id. at 921, 104 S.Ct. 3405. The burden is on the government to demonstrate the objective reasonableness of the officers' good faith reliance on an invalidated warrant. United States v. George, 975 F.2d 72, 77 (2d Cir. 1992); accord United States v. Santa, 180 F.3d 20, 25 (2d Cir.1999). In assessing whether it has carried that burden, we are mindful that, in Leon, the Supreme Court strongly signaled that most searches conducted pursuant to a warrant would likely fall within its protection. [S]earches pursuant to a warrant will rarely require any deep inquiry into reasonableness, Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. at 267 [103 S.Ct. 2317] (White, J., concurring in judgment), for a warrant issued by a magistrate normally suffices to establish that a law enforcement officer has acted in good faith in conducting the search. United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798, 823 n. 32 [102 S.Ct. 2157, 72 L.Ed.2d 572] (1982). United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. at 922, 104 S.Ct. 3405 (alteration in Leon ). It was against this presumption of reasonableness that the Supreme Court identified four circumstances where an exception to the exclusionary rule would not apply: (1) where the issuing magistrate has been knowingly misled; (2) where the issuing magistrate wholly abandoned his or her judicial role; (3) where the application is so lacking in indicia of probable cause as to render reliance upon it unreasonable; and (4) where the warrant is so facially deficient that reliance upon it is unreasonable. United States v. Moore, 968 F.2d 216, 222 (2d Cir.1992) (citing Leon, 468 U.S. at 923, 104 S.Ct. 3405). Here, the district court concluded that the last three circumstances were all present in this case, precluding application of the good faith exception. Reviewing this determination de novo, we conclude to the contrary.
The district court concluded that the issuing judge had abandoned his judicial role by relying solely on the affidavit's conclusory allegations of control in finding probable cause to search the whole of a multiple-occupancy building. This misconstrues the abandonment concern identified in Leon. There, the Supreme Court observed that in issuing warrants, a magistrate must perform his neutral and detached function as a judicial officer and not serve merely as a rubber stamp for the police. United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. at 914, 104 S.Ct. 3405 (internal quotation marks omitted). But, as the Court later explained, what this means is that officers cannot reasonably rely on a warrant issued by a magistrate who wholly abandoned his judicial role in the manner condemned in Lo-Ji Sales, Inc. v. New York, 442 U.S. 319 [99 S.Ct. 2319, 60 L.Ed.2d 920] (1979). Id. at 923, 99 S.Ct. 2319. The quoted language contains two important qualifiers. The abandonment must be (1) wholesale rather than partial and (2) in the manner condemned in Lo-Ji Sales.  That is not this case. In Lo-Ji Sales, a town justice issued a warrant for the seizure of obscene materials from an adult bookstore. The justice then accompanied police officers and prosecutors to the store and, in the course of a six-hour search, reviewed items for himself and decided which could be seized. See Lo-Ji Sales, Inc. v. New York, 442 U.S. at 322, 99 S.Ct. 2319. The Supreme Court held the warrant invalid, reasoning that the judge had allowed himself to become a member, if not the leader, of the search party which was essentially a police operation. Id. at 327, 99 S.Ct. 2319. He had ceased to act as a judicial officer and assumed the role of an adjunct law enforcement officer. Id. In reaching this conclusion, Lo-Ji Sales relied on Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971), a case in which the Supreme Court invalidated warrants issued by a State Attorney General in his capacity as a justice of the peace although he was the law enforcement officer actively in charge of the investigation and later was to be chief prosecutor at the trial, id. at 450, 91 S.Ct. 2022 (observing that prosecutors and policemen simply cannot be asked to maintain the requisite neutrality with regard to their own investigations). Animating these two decisions is a common precept: that someone independent of the police and prosecution must determine probable cause. Shadwick v. City of Tampa, 407 U.S. 345, 348, 92 S.Ct. 2119, 32 L.Ed.2d 783 (1972). Nevertheless, the law will not hastily assume a magistrate's surrender of his judicial independence to the police or prosecution. As the Supreme Court clarified in Lo-Ji Sales, such an inference cannot be drawn from the mere fact that a magistrate has made himself readily available to law enforcement officers who may wish to seek the issuance of warrants by him, 442 U.S. at 328 n. 6, 99 S.Ct. 2319, a point this court emphasized in United States v. Whitehorn, 829 F.2d 1225, 1232 (2d Cir.1987) (upholding application of good faith exception where magistrate did not abandon neutral and detached role by going to FBI office to review and issue warrants because magistrate did not assist in the drafting of the warrant or in any aspect of the ... investigation, and nothing suggested he was in FBI office for any reason other than to facilitate the issuance of the warrant on a Saturday). More to the point for this case, abandonment of judicial neutrality and detachment properly cannot be inferred from the fact that the magistrate committed legal error in his assessment of probable cause. See 1 LaFave, supra, § 1.3(f), at 78 & n. 84 (collecting cases concluding that rubber stamp cannot be established merely on the basis of the substantial inadequacy of the probable cause showing in the affidavit). Indeed, Leon separately addresses that circumstance and instructs that it precludes good faith reliance only when the warrant affidavit was `so lacking in indicia of probable cause as to render official belief in its existence entirely unreasonable.' United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. at 923, 104 S.Ct. 3405 (quoting Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. at 610-11, 95 S.Ct. 2254 (Powell, J., concurring in part)). We address that concern infra at 103-05. Here, we simply clarify that legal error by the issuing judge in identifying probable cause does not, by itself, indicate the sort of wholesale abandonment of the judicial role discussed in Leon. Because nothing else in the record indicates such abandonment in this case, we conclude that this factor did not preclude the officers' good faith reliance on the challenged warrant.
In Leon, the Supreme Court observed that a warrant may be so facially deficienti.e., in failing to particularize the place to be searched or the things to be seizedthat the executing officers cannot reasonably presume it to be valid. Id. at 923, 104 S.Ct. 3405. The district court identified such a facial defect in the warrant's description of the premises to be searched as a multi family dwelling, which it concluded should have raised a red flag as to the need to show probable cause to search each unit of the premises. Interim R & R at 7 (emphasis in original). This conclusion conflates a facial defect in the warrant with a patent lack of probable cause to support the warrant. Massachusetts v. Sheppard, 468 U.S. 981, 104 S.Ct. 3424, 82 L.Ed.2d 737 (1984), and Groh v. Ramirez, 540 U.S. 551, 124 S.Ct. 1284, 157 L.Ed.2d 1068 (2004), illustrate that a warrant is facially defective when it omits or misstates information specifically required to be contained therein, i.e., the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. U.S. Const. amend. IV. In Sheppard, a form warrant for narcotics searches was used to authorize a search for evidence of murder. Although the affidavit in support of the warrant detailed the non-narcotics evidence sought, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court determination that the warrant was constitutionally defective because the description [of items to be seized] in the warrant was completely inaccurate and the warrant did not incorporate the description contained in the affidavit. 468 U.S. at 988 n. 5, 104 S.Ct. 3424. [11] In Groh v. Ramirez , agents submitted for approval a warrant that erroneously described the suspect's residence in the area reserved for identification of the items to be seized. Although the warrant affidavit detailed the latter information, the Court concluded that its complete absence from the warrant precluded reasonable reliance. See 540 U.S. at 564, 124 S.Ct. 1284; [12] see also United States v. George, 975 F.2d at 78 (holding that officers could not reasonably rely on warrant that included authorization to seize unspecified evidence of criminality not limited either to a generic classification, ... or, even more egregiously, to a particular crime). The warrant here contains no similar defect. It specifically identified the place to be searched1015 Fairfield Ave, being a multi family dwelling located on the south side of Fairfield Ave and located on SBL# 144.31-3-26, in the City of Niagara Falls, New York. Warrant at 1. It specifically identified the items that could be seized: Cocaine and any other controlled substances as defined in Article 220 and 221 of the Revised Penal Laws of the State of New York, as well as for any implements used to administer same, or prepare same for packaging or sale or other dispensation of aforementioned substances, as well as for any monies, all written papers or articles, or keys, or any other papers that tend to show that crimes relating to violation of Article 220 and 221 of the Revised Penal Laws of the State of New York have been committed. Id. To be sure, the Constitution further requires that warrants be issued only upon probable cause, but it does not require that probable cause be stated in the warrant itself. See, e.g., United States v. Grubbs, 547 U.S. 90, 98, 126 S.Ct. 1494, 164 L.Ed.2d 195 (2006). Thus, to the extent probable cause was lacking to support a warrant to search the whole of the premises particularly described, the defect lies not in the warrant but in the warrant affidavit. That defect is properly addressed in considering a different Leon concern, whether the lack of probable cause was so obvious as to preclude reasonable reliance. See 1 LaFave, supra § 1.3(f), at 87 (noting [t]his kind of case... does not fit within the Leon third situation [but, rather,] is analytically most similar to that in which it turns out the warrant is lacking in any probable cause showing, and ought to be resolved in the same way (internal citations omitted)). We turn to that concern in the next subsection of this opinion.