Court Opinion

ID: 9476940
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:09:36.93872+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:35.883078
License: Public Domain

LAY, Chief Judge,
concurring.
I agree with the result the majority reaches, but write separately for two reasons. First, I cannot agree with the majority’s application of the principle announced in Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 106 S.Ct. 1092, 89 L.Ed.2d 271 (1986). The Malley Court emphasized that a police officer cannot simply rely on the magistrate’s issuance of a warrant to demonstrate his objective good faith. Id. at 1098-99. The magistrate’s issuance of the warrant is irrelevant to the question of the officer’s good faith; the “good faith inquiry is confined to the objectively ascertainable question whether a reasonably well trained officer would have known that the search was illegal despite the magistrate’s authorization.” United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 922 n.23, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 3420 n. 23, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984).
I therefore believe that the majority errs by attaching such great weight to the fact that “a state court judge found that Powers’ affidavit established probable cause * * Maj. op. at 756. I believe that the majority then strays even further from the principle of Malley by reasoning that: 1) the federal court’s disagreement with the state court judge demonstrates that the validity of the warrant was a close ques*757tion; and 2) therefore, Powers’ reliance on the issuance of the warrant must have been reasonable. The effective result of this reasoning is exactly what the Malley Court proscribed: the finding of objective good faith by the police officer whenever a magistrate issues a warrant.1
I write separately for a second reason. I believe, as did both the magistrate and the district judge, that the face of the affidavit at issue here is “so lacking in indicia of probable cause as to render official belief in its existence entirely unreasonable.” Leon, 468 U.S. at 923, 104 S.Ct. at 3421 (quoting Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 610-11, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 2265, 45 L.Ed.2d 416 (1975) (Powell, J., concurring in part)).
The bare bones affidavit contains one isolated reference to Martin’s vehicle, involving an observation Powers made some six weeks before. This singular observation standing alone is too remote and speculative to justify a search of Martin’s vehicle. I thus must reach the question that the majority mentions but need not resolve: whether, in making the objective good faith determination, this court may look to facts known by Powers but not included in the affidavit.2
It is well-established that courts may not look to facts outside the affidavit in determining the existence of probable came. See, e.g., Whiteley v. Warden, 401 U.S. 560, 565 n. 8, 91 S.Ct. 1031, 1035 n. 8, 28 L.Ed.2d 306 (1971). However, whether a police officer acted in objective good faith is a separate and distinct question. Cf. Anderson v. Creighton, — U.S. —, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 3039, 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987). Deciding whether an officer acted in good faith requires an examination of the totality of circumstances beyond the four corners of the affidavit. Cf. Leon, 468 U.S. at 922-23 n. 23, 104 S.Ct. at 3420 n. 23. Moreover, when assessing the good faith of an officer who conducted a warrantless search, the Court has stated that the inquiry must be fact-specific, taking into account all the information known by the officer. See Anderson, 107 S.Ct. at 3040. Contrary to the appellee’s argument, this does not substitute a subjective test for an objective one. This inquiry must be addressed to the objective reasonableness of the belief of an officer in Powers’ position —meaning an officer with knowledge of the facts that Powers possessed.
Here, Detective Powers had conducted a six-week investigation uncovering numerous facts connecting Martin’s car to the stolen furs. The facts known to him but omitted from the affidavit clearly were sufficient to justify a reasonable belief that probable cause existed.3 On this basis, I concur in the majority’s judgment that the district court’s decision must be reversed.

. Nowhere is this more apparent than when the majority states: “When judges can look at the same affidavit and come to differing conclusions, a police officer's reliance on that affidavit must, therefore, be reasonable." (At 756). A federal court that finds an affidavit insufficient to establish probable cause will always disagree with the issuing judge, who presumably found the affidavit sufficient. Thus, in every case in which a warrant is issued, later to be invalidated, there is disagreement between judges; under the majority’s reasoning, there thus is also objective good faith in every such case.

. The majority states that it "must look to the totality of the circumstances including what Officer Powers knew but did not include in his affidavit." (Maj. op. at 756). The majority need not look to these circumstances, however, because it finds that the affidavit was not so lacking in indicia of probable cause as to render Powers’ belief in it unreasonable — a conclusion with which I disagree.

. Martin argues that the relevant information recited in Powers’ affidavit — the January 6 sighting of Martin and his 1979 Mercury — was "stale" because it occurred six weeks prior to execution of the warrant. This argument is well-taken. Nevertheless, the facts known to Powers but omitted from the affidavit were gathered during that six-week period and were sufficiently connected in time to the date of the warrant and its execution.