Court Opinion

ID: 9881400
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-02 15:00:24.033885+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:08:45.089793
License: Public Domain

22-1637-cr
     United States of America v. Pratt

                                   UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
                                       FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

                                              SUMMARY ORDER

     RULINGS BY SUMMARY ORDER DO NOT HAVE PRECEDENTIAL EFFECT.
     CITATION TO A SUMMARY ORDER FILED ON OR AFTER JANUARY 1, 2007, IS
     PERMITTED AND IS GOVERNED BY FEDERAL RULE OF APPELLATE
     PROCEDURE 32.1 AND THIS COURT’S LOCAL RULE 32.1.1. WHEN CITING A
     SUMMARY ORDER IN A DOCUMENT FILED WITH THIS COURT, A PARTY
     MUST CITE EITHER THE FEDERAL APPENDIX OR AN ELECTRONIC DATABASE
     (WITH THE NOTATION “SUMMARY ORDER”). A PARTY CITING A SUMMARY
     ORDER MUST SERVE A COPY OF IT ON ANY PARTY NOT REPRESENTED BY
     COUNSEL.

 1         At a stated term of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit,
 2   held at the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, 40 Foley Square, in the
 3   City of New York, on the 2nd day of October, two thousand twenty-three.
 4
 5            PRESENT: REENA RAGGI,
 6                             RAYMOND J. LOHIER, JR.,
 7                             SUSAN L. CARNEY,
 8                                     Circuit Judges.
 9            ------------------------------------------------------------------
10            UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
11
12                              Appellee,
13
14                       v.                                                        No. 22-1637-cr
15
16            CHRISTOPHER J. PRATT,
17
18                             Defendant-Appellant.
19            ------------------------------------------------------------------
20
 1         FOR DEFENDANT-APPELLANT:                      RICHARD D. WILLSTATTER
 2                                                       (Theodore S. Green, on the
 3                                                       brief), Green & Willstatter,
 4                                                       White Plains, NY

 5         FOR APPELLEE:                                 PAUL David Silver, Rajit Singh
 6                                                       Dosanjh, Assistant United
 7                                                       States Attorneys, for Carla B.
 8                                                       Freedman, United States
 9                                                       Attorney for the Northern
10                                                       District of New York, Albany,
11                                                       NY

12         Appeal from a judgment of the United States District Court for the

13   Northern District of New York (Mae A. D’Agostino, Judge).

14         UPON DUE CONSIDERATION, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, ADJUDGED,

15   AND DECREED that the judgment of the District Court is AFFIRMED.

16         Defendant-Appellant Christopher J. Pratt appeals from a judgment of the

17   United States District Court for the Northern District of New York (D’Agostino,

18   J.) convicting him of (1) distribution of child pornography, (2) receipt of child

19   pornography, and (3) possession of child pornography involving prepubescent

20   minors or minors under the age of 12, in violation of 18 U.S.C §§ 2252A(a)(2)(A),

21   2252A(b)(1), 2252A(b)(2), 2252A(a)(5)(B), and 2256(8)(A). In July 2019 the District

22   Court denied Pratt’s pre-trial motion to suppress evidence seized during a search

23   of his home, as well as statements he made to police. In August 2021, pursuant

                                               2
 1   to a written plea agreement, Pratt entered a conditional guilty plea to all three

 2   counts, reserving his right to appeal the District Court’s denial of his motion to

 3   suppress evidence. Pratt was later sentenced principally to a term of 148 months’

 4   imprisonment. On appeal, Pratt challenges the denial of his motion to suppress.

 5   We assume the parties’ familiarity with the underlying facts and the record of

 6   prior proceedings, to which we refer only as necessary to explain our decision to

 7   affirm.

 8         The written plea agreement permits Pratt to raise only two issues on

 9   appeal: (1) “[w]hether the June 1, 2017 search warrant established probable cause

10   to believe that child pornography would be found in [his] home,” and (2)

11   “[w]hether law enforcement acted in good faith reliance on the June 1, 2017

12   search warrant when searching [his] home on June 5, 2017.” App’x 142. On

13   appeal, Pratt makes the additional argument that his statements to police should

14   be suppressed. We conclude that Pratt has waived that argument, however,

15   because it was not clearly included in the plea agreement’s reservation of issues

16   for appellate review. United States v. Coffin, 76 F.3d 494, 497 (2d Cir. 1996).

17         “On appeal from a district court’s ruling on a motion to suppress, we

18   review the court’s factual findings for clear error. We review the court’s legal

                                               3
 1   determinations, including the existence of probable cause and the good faith of

 2   officers relying on a search warrant, de novo.” United States v. Raymonda, 780

 3   F.3d 105, 113 (2d Cir. 2015).

 4         Pratt argues that there was no probable cause supporting the warrant in

 5   this case because “no verbal description of the [computer] files was provided” to

 6   the judge who authorized the warrant. Appellant’s Br. 17(quotation marks

 7   omitted). Pratt also argues that the information contained in the search warrant

 8   was “too stale to be relied upon” because the “warrant application described just

 9   a single download of files . . . eight months prior to the application.” Appellant’s

10   Br. at 21-22; see Raymonda, 780 F.3d at 114 (“[W]e may conclude that a warrant

11   lacks probable cause where the evidence supporting it is not sufficiently close in

12   time to the issuance of the warrant that probable cause can be said to exist as of

13   the time of the search — that is, where the facts supporting criminal activity have

14   grown stale by the time that the warrant issues.”) (quotation marks omitted).

15         We need not resolve the probable cause issue because we agree with the

16   District Court that the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies even

17   assuming that probable cause was lacking. See United States v. Jones, 43 F.4th 94,

18   110–11 (2d Cir. 2022); United States v. Boles, 914 F.3d 95, 103 (2d Cir. 2019). Pratt

                                                4
 1   relies on our decision in Raymonda to argue that the good faith exception does not

 2   apply for two reasons.

 3         First, Pratt describes the warrant as “so lacking in indicia of probable cause

 4   as to render official belief in its existence entirely unreasonable.” Appellant’s Br.

 5   7. The issue of whether a warrant contains adequate indicia of probable cause

 6   “most frequently arises when affidavits are bare bones—that is, when they are

 7   totally devoid of factual circumstances to support conclusory allegations.” Jones,

 8   43 F.4th at 112 (quotation marks omitted). “The concern is particularly acute

 9   when facts indicate that the bare-bones description . . . was almost calculated to

10   mislead.” United States v. Clark, 638 F.3d 89, 103 (2d Cir. 2011) (quotation marks

11   omitted). “We have emphasized that this is a very difficult threshold to meet.”

12   Jones, 43 F.4th at 112 (quotation marks omitted, emphasis supplied).

13         We do not agree that the warrant application in this case was “totally

14   devoid” of factual support such that it was unreasonable to rely on it. Clark, 638

15   F.3d at 103. To be sure, the warrant application approaches the line between just

16   enough and too little specificity with respect to the description of the computer

17   files at issue. But the warrant application did advise that another FBI Task Force

                                               5
 1   Officer downloaded files that “consisted of” child pornography from a

 2   BitTorrent “share” folder that was later connected to Pratt. App’x 34.

 3         We have explained that “[w]here a relevant legal deficiency was not

 4   previously established in precedent, [an] agent’s failure to recognize that

 5   deficiency cannot vitiate good faith.” Raymonda, 780 F.3d at 119 (quotation

 6   marks omitted). As relevant here, we have not previously identified the level of

 7   specificity required in a warrant application that describes computer files. Nor

 8   have we decided whether downloading and sharing a file on a platform such as

 9   BitTorrent can, in and of itself, rebut staleness. For that reason, the officers’

10   failure to notice any legal deficiency in the level of factual detail in the warrant in

11   this case does not “vitiate [their] good faith” reliance on the warrant. Id.

12         Second, Pratt contends that the authorizing judge’s decision to “rubber-

13   stamp the warrant was proof he wholly abandoned his judicial role.”

14   Appellant’s Reply Br. 12; see Raymonda, 780 F.3d at 118 (listing one circumstance

15   where good faith exception does not apply as “where the issuing magistrate

16   wholly abandoned his or her judicial role”). We see no evidence, however, that

17   the judge was not “independent of the police and prosecution” or that he

                                                6
 1   abandoned his “judicial neutrality and detachment” when he approved the

 2   warrant. Clark, 638 F.3d at 101.

 3         Even so, we note concern about the conclusory nature of the allegations set

 4   forth in the warrant application and the application’s apparently complete

 5   reliance on Pratt’s use of BitTorrent to defeat staleness. In particular, the

 6   application omitted details that might more clearly have demonstrated probable

 7   cause to think that Pratt was a “collector” of child pornography, including a

 8   description of the steps he must have taken to seek out or share such files on

 9   BitTorrent. See Raymonda, 780 F.3d at 115 (holding that an issuing judge can find

10   probable cause for a warrant based on months-old evidence where a suspect

11   either redistributed or took “sufficiently complicated steps” to access child

12   pornography). Moreover, at oral argument, government counsel was unable to

13   say whether a BitTorrent user shares files as a default or by taking an affirmative

14   step. Accordingly, it would have been better practice for the government to

15   provide greater detail to establish probable cause that child pornography

16   remained on Pratt’s devices at the time the warrant was sought.

17         Given the novelty of this issue, however, and for the reasons stated above,

18   we nonetheless affirm the District Court’s denial of Pratt’s motion to suppress on

                                               7
1   the ground that the searching officers relied in good faith on the issuing judge’s

2   determination that the search warrant was supported by probable cause.

3         We have considered Pratt’s remaining arguments and conclude that they

4   are without merit. For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the District Court

5   is AFFIRMED.

6                                         FOR THE COURT:
7                                         Catherine O’Hagan Wolfe, Clerk of Court
8

                                             8