Court Opinion

ID: 9843169
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 02:29:29.95221+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:14:39.940326
License: Public Domain

KOZINSKI, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
1. The majority opens up a square conflict with United States v. Turner, 926 F.2d 883 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 502 U.S. 830, 112 S.Ct. 103, 116 L.Ed.2d 73 (1991), a case where we upheld a no-knock entry. In Turner, police forced open a locked apartment door and entered the defendant’s bedroom; Turner argued the no-knoek entry was illegal because the police couldn’t be sure he was armed, but we upheld the search. The majority contrasts Turner with Shelby, characterizing the former as a “considerably more impressive]” threat, maj. op. at 1301, and the latter as an “escape artist” whose “degree of dangerousness bespoke a mild exigency,” if that. Id. at 1301.
The record contradicts the majority’s romantic description of Shelby — a hardened and desperate criminal, much more dangerous than Turner. But words are cheap; here are facts:
Turner Shelby
Highly likely Current access to guns Highly likely
“Turner kept weapons in the apartment he used for his drug operations.” Past access to guns “Shelby was a major Methamphetamine manufacturer and has had access to large caches of weapons.”
Yes Threatened police Yes
No Threatened witnesses Yes
0 Escape attempts 3
0 Police and civilians assaulted 3
0 People tortured 1
1 conviction for Serving 20 receiving stolen years plus, on property, 17 state and feder-years earlier al charges, for dealing meth-amphetamines and using a gun in a drug transaction. Criminal Record
No Yes Knew police were looking for him
*1305My colleagues trip lightly over the fact that Shelby had “a history of violent escapes.” ER at 22. But, in his dogged efforts to flee from custody, Shelby not only struck two law enforcement officers, but “assaulted a woman in a parking lot and stole her vehicle,” id.; he then crashed into a police car in making his getaway. Assaulting helpless civilians and then using a ton of mechanized steel as a battering ram hardly comports with the majority’s characterization of Shelby as a latter-day Harry Houdini. The majority also dismisses reports of Shelby’s torture activities with “it was said,” as if to suggest they lacked substance. Maj. op. at 1298. But the record is positive on this point: “Alan Shelby has brutally tortured others in the past with a hammer.” ER at 22. The majority’s characterization of Shelby as “[pjerhaps ... mildly dangerous,” is more than mildly off the mark.
The majority posits two main distinctions between Shelby and Turner. First, it argues, Turner had threatened to kill police while Shelby had not. Wrong. Shelby had “made threats to kill witnesses and police officers associated with his incarceration.” ER at 22. Next, the majority says, the police here didn’t know Shelby had access to weapons, while the police in Turner did. Wrong again. In Turner, the police only knew that the suspect was armed at another location. Turner claimed the police had no way of knowing he would carry a gun with him, but we rejected his argument: Although “[the police] may not have had specific information that Turner currently had weapons, ... the facts they did have made this highly likely.” 926 F.2d at 887.
Here, the police had more information about the suspect’s access to weapons than in Turner. According to the Confidential Reliable Informant (CRI), Shelby was hiding in the home of another suspected drug dealer, ER at 52; two law enforcement officers confirmed that someone matching Shelby’s description was on the premises. ER at 23-24. The CRI also told police that “there were supposed to be guns in the garage,” ER at 52, a garage attached to the house where Shelby was thought to be hiding. Police thus not only were informed that Shelby was at that location, but that there were guns there — something the police in Turner merely surmised. The police in our case did have to infer that Shelby or someone else in the house might go for the guns if cornered but, as we said in Turner, “the facts that [the police] did have made this highly likely.” 926 F.2d at 887.
The majority’s every effort to disparage the search here only underscores the conflict with Turner. The majority criticizes the police for failing to recognize they “were not attacking a gang or cult hangout where they might be met by a fusillade of gunfire,” maj. op. at 1301; the same was true in Turner. The majority complains that “[t]here is no suggestion that the police presence was known,” id. at 1302; Turner complained about the exact same thing. See 926 F.2d at 887. The majority points out that “the phalanx of already positioned officers on hand made escape [by Shelby] unlikely,” maj. op. at 1302; in Turner, we held that “[t]he number of officers surrounding the building and Turner’s lack of prior charges for escape are irrelevant.” 926 F.2d at 887. The majority carps, “Shelby was not known to have ever shot or shot at anyone,” maj. op. at 1301; Turner hadn’t even committed a violent crime. Every argument the majority makes here was considered and rejected in Turner.1
*1306My colleagues try to duck Turner by claiming that our cases “graph a ... complex curve.” Id. at 1302. But if the law is that much in turmoil, we must call for sua sponte en banc. See Atonio v. Wards Cove Packing Co., 810 F.2d 1477, 1479 (9th Cir.1987) (“A panel faced with [an irreconcilable] conflict must call for en banc review_”). In fact, there is no pre-existing conflict because Turner is the only case on point. The other eases the majority cites did not involve the breaking of property;2 no more than a mild exigency was thus required to uphold those entries. These cases did not — could not— speak to whether a more serious intrusion was warranted.
The majority’s ruling not only creates a circuit conflict, it’s bad law on its own terms. There is much rhetoric in the opinion about the sanctity of every man’s “little castle,” but the principal reason we can sleep safely at night is that the men and women of law enforcement put their lives on the line to keep our castles from being invaded by brutal criminals. When police track down “a major Methamphetamine manufacturer^ who] has had access to large caches of weapons” and a history of torture and other violent conduct, they are entitled to take precautions. A castle, little though it be, often looks like a fortress from the outside; police cannot know what’s lurking within. It’s easy enough, sitting in our well-guarded offices, and with the benefit of hindsight, to issue pronouncements about what the police should or could have done, but this provides little useful guidance to police in the field who must make difficult judgments in unknown territory and subject to unpredictable developments. What if the police had adopted the majority’s rosy view of Shelby and had politely tapped at the door and asked if he would come along, but Shelby had seized the guns in the garage, taken the Ramirez family hostage and precipitated a shoot-out? No doubt, we would then have issued a similarly smug opinion, this time lecturing the police that they were not free to ignore the words and warnings of their CRI, and affirming the payment of compensation to the Ramirezes or anyone else harmed in the altercation.
My guess is that, had any of us been in charge of this operation — had we been responsible for the lives and safety of dozens of law enforcement officers and the family sleeping inside — we would have done just what the police here did. To have done less would have been foolhardy (my colleagues’ high-fallutin’ rhetoric notwithstanding); to have done more would have been excessive. The police properly balanced the homeowner’s privacy and property interests against the dictates of security. See Wilson v. Arkansas, — U.S.-, - — -, 115 S.Ct. 1914, 1918, 131 L.Ed.2d 976 (1995) (“The Fourth Amendment’s flexible requirement of reasonableness should not be read to mandate a rigid rule of announcement that ignores countervailing law enforcement interests.”); United States v. Bustamante-Gamez, 488 F.2d 4, 10 (9th Cir.1973) (“[I]t has never been suggested that the [no-knock] requirement is an inflexible one; both at common law and in the constitutional context the courts have acknowledged that the interests [protected by the rule] may give way to other considerations.”), cert. denied, 416 U.S. 970, 94 S.Ct. 1993, 40 L.Ed.2d 559 (1974). They deserve to be congratulated, not chastened and ridiculed.
2. Even had the no-knoek search been illegal, this would provide no grounds for suppression of the evidence pertaining to Ramirez. In reaching the contrary conclusion, the majority raises conflicts with two other of our eases, United States v. Jones, 608 F.2d 386 (9th Cir.1979), and United States v. Garcia, 516 F.2d 318 (9th Cir.), cert. denied sub nom. Martinez-Lopez v. United States, 423 U.S. 934, 96 S.Ct. 290, 46 L.Ed.2d 265 (1975). In Jones, the police arrested the defendant on suspicion of a Los Angeles area burglary and found a motel room key on him; they then searched the room and discovered evidence of an unrelated burglary at San Francisco’s Presidio. Although the initial arrest *1307was illegal, evidence obtained from the motel room was not excluded because exclusion could have had no deterrent value. We held it “crucial” that the police were not investigating the Presidio burglary when they illegally found the evidence, because “deterrence can have its effect only when it can be said that an object of the illegal conduct was the securing of the evidence sought to be suppressed.” Id. at 391 (quoting Allen v. Cupp, 426 F.2d 756, 759 (9th Cir.1970)). Here, the police weren’t out to catch a felon in possession; they didn’t even know Ramirez owned the house, much less that he was a felon.3 The object of the supposedly illegal search was the arrest of Alan Shelby for escape; police couldn’t possibly be deterred by the threat of exclusion of evidence relating to a completely different person and crime. Cf. Allen, 426 F.2d at 759 (exclusion when illegal police conduct inadvertently reveals evidence would merely “make tasting' the fruit more difficult, but would not diminish its temptation”).
The majority leaps over the deterrence question with a single bound: “[Tjhere can be little doubt that suppression would serve to dissuade the police from this kind of unnecessary invasion of people’s homes.” Maj. op. at 1303. This is contrary to Jones and other cases where we have held that suppression can provide no deterrence when police officers, through “investigatory serendipity,” stumble across evidence of a crime of which they were previously unaware. See United States v. Bacall, 443 F.2d 1050, 1056 (9th Cir.) (it’s “crucial to a determination of taint” that police didn’t suspect the defendant of the crime for which their illegal activity produced evidence), cert. denied, 404 U.S. 1004, 92 S.Ct. 565, 30 L.Ed.2d 557 (1971); Durham v. United States, 403 F.2d 190, 196 (9th Cir.1968) (“The price is too high and the advantage too uncertain to make it reasonable to suppose that law enforcement officers will be encouraged to indulge in unlawful searches, knowing that what they find will be suppressed, in the hope of obtaining admissible evidence as remote and fortuitously acquired as this.”).
The majority creates yet a third conflict, this time with United States v. Garcia. Garcia was stopped at an illegal checkpoint but then sped off and was captured; police searched the car and found marijuana. We declined to suppress. The suspect’s intervening act, we held, gave police new grounds for probable cause that were untainted because police didn’t intend to provoke the response. Garcia, 516 F.2d at 320 (“By ordering [the defendant] to stop, the officer could hardly have intended him to flee.”). Here, police developed new grounds for searching Ramirez’s house when he fired his gun. Following Garcia’s rationale, Ramirez’s use of the gun was evidence untainted by the (supposed) earlier illegality, unless police intended to provoke the response. It’s ludicrous to suppose the police broke the garage window hoping to provoke those inside to shoot at them. The majority claims, inexplicably borrowing a deliberate ignorance instruction from substantive criminal law, that the police “willfully blinded themselves to [the] possibility” of Ramirez’s response, maj. op. at 1303 (citing United States v. Jewell, 532 F.2d 697, 700-04 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 426 U.S. 951, 96 S.Ct. 3173, 49 L.Ed.2d 1188 (1976)). But, according to Garcia, the test isn’t willful blindness, it is intent. Far from intending that the occupants of the house shoot at them, the police here tried to prevent a shoot-out by covering the area where they thought the guns were stored. *1308Because Ramirez’s intervening act was not “the intended result of illegal police conduct,” Garcia, 516 F.2d at 319 (emphasis added), it attenuates the alleged taint from the no-knock entry.
Because I cannot join in this wholesale flouting of circuit authority and common sense, I dissent.

. Any material differences between this case and Turner cut against the majority’s conclusion. First, the intrusion in Turner was much more serious than that here. In Turner, police broke into the apartment and “found Turner in bed with a woman.” 926 F.2d at 886. Here, they broke a single window of the garage where they were told the guns were located and poked a gun through the hole. Quite clearly, this was an effort to keep Shelby (or whoever else was in the house) from making a run for the weapons. While the maneuver failed, it was a rational and measured effort by the police to deal with the dangerous situation presented to them. The search here was also much less troublesome than in Turner because police had obtained a no-knock warrant. In Turner, police decided to break down the door unilaterally and on the spur of the moment. Finally, unlike in Turner, police here tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to announce their presence. ER. at 53 (the police announced their presence over a loud speaker, but Ramirez could not determine what was going on); see United States v. Moreno, 701 F.2d 815, 817 n. 3 (9th Cir.1983) ("An attempt to notify by knocking and announcing complies with the statute wheth*1306er or not it is heard.”), vacated on other grounds, 469 U.S. 913, 105 S.Ct. 286, 83 L.Ed.2d 223 (1984).

. E.g., United States v. Von Willie, 59 F.3d 922 (9th Cir.1995); United States v. Scott, 74 F.3d 175 (9th Cir.1996); United States v. Reed, 15 F.3d 928 (9th Cir.1994).

. Ramirez apparently was fond of pseudonyms. Utility records indicated a "Hernan Rios” lived at 23170 S.E. Bohna Park Rd. ER. at 24. The CRI, however, said the owner went by "Angel” or "Havannah." Id. DMV records showed an "Angel Rios" had a driver’s license in the name "Angel Estrada." Id. Even after the raid, the police weren’t sure who Ramirez was. The affidavit for the second warrant seeks to search "the premises occupied by Herman Ramirez aka Her-nán Ramirez, Angel Estrada.” Id. at 44.
Ramirez’s criminal record was also unknown to the police before the search. After the search, Ramirez told police that his birthday was May 8, 1957, and he had heen convicted of burglary in 1981. Id. at 45. Only then did a check of police records reveal a Heman or Herman Ramirez who was bom on May 8, 1955 and was convicted of rape in 1978 and burglary with a firearm in 1982. Id. at 46.