Court Opinion

ID: 9471706
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:39:26.991766+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:32.786600
License: Public Domain

POOLE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I dissent. Neither affidavit contains sufficient facts to establish probable cause. The majority’s attempt to save the affidavits will not withstand scrutiny.

The Clark Home

The majority’s analysis of the Clark affidavit is misleading. The majority states that, “[apparently, the basis of Source # l’s knowledge is observation of the methamphetamine laboratory . ... ” Maj. op. at 542 (emphasis added). The affidavit does not indicate any’such observation. The only information provided to the district judge who issued the warrant was that “sometime” between March and November, 1981, Clark’s children supposedly told an anonymous informant, “Source # 1,” that Clark was manufacturing “speed” in his basement. The only inference possible is that the informant told the DEA agent that appellant Clark’s son had done so. There is no indication that Source # 1 had any personal knowledge of the underlying allegation, or that Source # 1 had ever observed a laboratory.
Agent Gregory stated that a laboratory would make sounds like “a pump and running water” and it would produce “noxious odors.” But if Source # 1 had “apparently” at some time been in the Clark home, he never said that he heard such sounds or smelled such odors. The affidavit only establishes one thing: Source # 1 did not see, hear,’ or smell the laboratory. Any contrary conclusion is pure conjecture, and improperly indulged in to justify an unwarranted search and seizure.
The majority also states that “apparently” Source # 1 had seen the basement where the drugs were manufactured. Maj. op. at 542 (emphasis added). This is certainly not “apparent” from the recitals of the affidavit. This too is without support. The affidavit states that “[t]he confidential source stated that Clark manufactured methamphetamine in a vented room in the basement of the residence.” If Source # 1 had seen the basement, the affidavit should have reflected that fact. Throughout the affidavit, whenever Source # 1 had in fact observed something, this was specifically indicated.
Besides “liberally construing” the affidavit, the majority points to the fact that Source # 1 saw “unfamiliar” chemicals in Clark’s bedroom. I am at a loss to understand the connection between this uninformative statement and Clark’s illicit manufacturing operation. No facts are set forth to support Source # l’s purported conclusion. We are not told that he had expertise in identifying chemicals, nor is it explained what is meant by “unfamiliar.” Apparently the majority equates “unfamiliar” with illegal. In this state of information, such an inference is improper. To one untrained in chemistry, many legitimate chemicals would be “unfamiliar.”
The majority attempts to bolster Source # l’s veracity by claiming that “a police investigation corroborated much of his information.” Maj. op. at 542. However, all this police corroboration related solely to innocent details, completely unrelated to Clark’s criminal activity. For instance, the police corroborated that Clark was a doctor without hospital privileges, who did not practice his profession, and had an unlisted phone number. This intelligence corroborates no aspect of Source # l’s allegation that Clark was manufacturing drugs in his basement. Many doctors without hospital privileges do not make methamphetamine in their basements. Moreover, thousands of people with unlisted phone numbers are not drug manufacturers and many professionals, including lawyers and judges, maintain neither offices nor chambers.
Additionally, the police uncovered that Clark only wrote prescriptions for con*545trolled substances for family members. Clark was legally entitled to prescribe these drugs. There is no corroboration in these prescriptions, which were presumably filled with legally acquired drugs, and no known connection between these prescriptions and Clark’s illegal drug operation.
Essentially, the majority assumes, that corroboration of largely insignificant facts will establish the credibility of the informant. This is a faulty assumption. At the very least there must be produced facts bearing some relationship to the criminal activity alleged. Without this connection, the warrant should not issue.
One must assume that the affidavit’s absence of allegations of any firsthand knowledge, and the suggestive but indirect manner of exposition, are contrived, not accidental. The documents seem to have been deliberately couched in vagueness, and no matter how eminent the official may be, who, sitting as a federal magistrate, issued the search warrant, the probable eause is simply lacking. The affidavit was patently insufficient.

The Landis Home

The majority admits that the search of the Landis home is a “much closer question,” Maj. op. at 542, but still concludes that the search was permissible. I disagree. There was an even greater lack of probable cause to search the Landis home than there was to search the Clark home.
The most significant information provided by the informant in this case, Source # 3, was her mere conclusion that “Lee Clark is currently at [the Landis home] to manufacture methamphetamine.” Source # 3 never said how she acquired this information. As a result the district judge was unable “to verify the [conclusion] and confirm that [it was] not based merely on rumor or reputation.” United States v. Ghesher, 678 F.2d 1353, 1359 (9th Cir.1982).
The only fact provided by Source # 3 is that she observed “glassware which she knows is used for the manufacture of methamphetamine.” Source # 3 does not describe the glassware or say why it could only be used to manufacture methamphetamine, nor what gave her the descriptive expertise to suggest that it could not have been useful for legitimate chemicals.
Source # 3’s bald assertion coupled with her observation of “glassware” is a far cry from Illinois v. Gates,-U.S. -, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983). There the informant’s anonymous letter “contained a range of details relating not just to easily obtained facts and conditions existing at the time of the tip . ... ” Id. 103 S.Ct. at 2335. The amount of detail provided by Source # 3 was not enough to suggest that she was an insider to the drug operation or otherwise had to know something an ordinary, suspicious observer would not.
Agent Gregory’s information is equally deficient. Gregory’s only personal observation was that he heard sounds like that of a “pump and running water” emanating from the building. These are common sounds which can be produced by many normal household activities. Before such ordinary sounds or odors can be used to establish probable cause, it must be shown that they are “sufficiently distinctive to identify a forbidden substance.” Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10,13, 68 S.Ct. 367, 368, 92 L.Ed. 436 (1948).
Gregory also claimed that the remoteness of the Landis home was consistent with a clandestine laboratory. According to Gregory the remoteness was needed to conceal “noxious odors.” But Gregory never smelled these odors. Moreover, neither the magistrate nor we were ever told that anyone smelled these odors emanating from Clark’s home.
The fact that Landis and Clark telephoned three chemical supply companies which manufactured chemicals “which can be used to manufacture methamphetamine,” Maj. op. at 543, does not bolster this flimsy case. There is no indication that any glassware or chemicals were ever ordered. One may guess that these companies sell many products that can be used to produce legal chemicals.
I am therefore convinced that there was insufficient probable cause to search the *546Landis home. Source # 3’s conclusory assertion coupled with Agent Gregory’s observation of commonplace sounds and even bolstered by Source # l’s tips do not satisfy the “totality of the circumstances” test.
Finally, all the facts which the majority details at page 543 are innocent, or equivocal, and without nexus to the probability that the appellants were engaged in the criminal manufacturing for which the search was intended.
Approval of the issuance of a warrant on the nebulous grounds presented by the affidavits here, do us and the magistrate no credit. But; more than that, it denigrates the protections which we are commanded in every case to afford. That the search turned up evidence by which a conviction was won is not, as I read the books, the point.
I would reverse.