Court Opinion

ID: 9487768
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:25:50.392349+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:28.292819
License: Public Domain

BOYCE F. MARTIN, Jr., Circuit Judge,
with whom KEITH, JONES, and DAUGHTREY, Circuit Judges, join, dissenting.
Because we believe that the search warrant in this case was based upon an affidavit “so lacking in indicia of probable cause as to render official belief in its existence entirely unreasonable,” United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 923, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 3421, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984), we dissent.
The issue decided by the district court, and by the majority of this Court, is whether evidence found during the execution of a search warrant should have been admitted under the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule articulated in Leon.1 We assume that the majority believes that there was no probable cause for the warrant, and therefore has focused on the next step, namely whether the good-faith exception applies. As this Court has previously noted, one purpose of the exclusionary rule is “to preserve the integrity Qf the judicial process by not having the judiciary, as one arm of the government, condone the wrongful conduct of another arm of the government.” United States v. Rodriguez, 596 F.2d 169, 174 (6th Cir.1979). Because we believe the police officers here acted “in a way we should want to prevent in the future,” id. at 174-75, we do not believe that the Leon good-faith exception should be applied to these facts.
Further, we note that another important issue in this case seems to be obscured by the Fourth Amendment concerns presented. The majority has endorsed a search which resulted in the discovery of less than a palmful of marijuana residue, including seeds and droppings. For possessing this 1.6 grams of marijuana, found during the execution of a search warrant at his law office, Edward Czuprynski was sentenced to fourteen months’ imprisonment. The majority concerns itself with “how the marijuana was recovered and not the significance of the amount recovered.” Majority Opinion at 561. We just cannot condone the type of *566prosecutorial overkill that has taken place here; it only points out the great expense of this Court’s time and resources in rehearing en banc a case involving such an insignificant amount of marijuana. We find it unnecessary to reach this concern, however, because we believe that the information submitted in support of the search warrant application did not provide probable cause that contraband or evidence would be found in the search, and that no reasonable officer could conclude that probable cause existed to secure and execute a search warrant.
Czuprynski’s troubles began in February 1992 when he fired an associate with his law firm, Judith Sawicki. She then filed assault charges against him and submitted affidavits in support of search warrants for his office. After this earlier trial in the Michigan state court, Czuprynski was acquitted of the assault charges, the trial court there stating that Sawicki was “obviously a liar.” Unfortunately for Czuprynski, this belief was not widely held. On March 18,1992, Bay County prosecutors, after earlier unsuccessful attempts, obtained and executed a warrant for Czuprynski’s home and office. The warrant application relied on Sawicki’s affidavit alleging regular marijuana use by Czuprynski, that she had seen him smoke marijuana in his office and even smoked marijuana with him. Included in this affidavit was Sawicki’s assertion that Czuprynski assaulted her on the day she was fired. But, the affidavit did not recount any specific dates, nor did it imply that Sawicki had seen Czuprynski since the date she had been fired, February 21, 1992, almost a month prior to her affidavit.
The warrant was also supported by the affidavit of Sergeant Greg Tait, a Michigan State Police Officer in Bay City, and two previous search warrants and returns. Tait’s affidavit, however, offered no evidence to corroborate Sawicki’s affidavit, nor did it support her reliability or credibility in any way. Moreover, while seeking the warrant, Tait understood that other police departments had declined to involve themselves with Saw-icki’s complaint. Tait was also aware that there were “disputes” between Czuprynski, a criminal defense attorney, and the Bay County Prosecutor’s office, and that “hard feelings” existed between the two. Despite this knowledge, Tait failed to corroborate any aspect of Sawicki’s affidavit by independent investigation.
The only other information submitted to support the application were the two previous search warrants and returns. These are likewise insufficient to provide probable cause. Although submitted to support the March 1992 application, they concern searches conducted in 1974 and 1983. Despite the fact that each search uncovered evidence of marijuana usage, Czuprynski was acquitted by a jury of possession charges after the 1983 search. Finally, the warrant authorizing the March 1992 search was signed by Magistrate Philip Boes of the 74th District Court, whom years earlier Czupryn-ski had attempted to get fired from his position at the time as Bay County purchasing agent.
Given this situation, we cannot find either probable cause from which to issue a warrant or an objectively reasonable reliance on the part of the executing police officers. We believe that the warrant was facially deficient because it failed to establish any basis for the magistrate to conclude either that Sawicki was a reliable informant in general or that her allegations in this particular case were credible. We cannot find that the wholly uncorroborated allegations of a disgruntled former employee, who had been recently fired, and who was involved in a separate dispute over that discharge, even remotely support a determination of probable cause. Under the circumstances of this ease, the magistrate could not constitutionally issue a warrant without information by which to assess Sawicki’s veracity. Thus, the warrant issued was facially lacking in indicia of probable cause.
A further problem with the warrant application is that it was based on stale information. Aside from the affidavit of Sawicki, whose credibility is questionable given her motive to make the affidavit, the only other information presented to the magistrate was the results of searches conducted nine and eighteen years earlier. No bright-line test exists for determining when information is *567stale. Whether the information provided in support of a warrant application is
sufficiently timely to establish probable cause depends on the particular circumstances of the ease, and the vitality of probable cause cannot be quantified by simply counting the number of days between the occurrence of the facts supplied and the issuance of the affidavit. Time factors must be examined in the context of a specific case and the nature of the crime under investigation.
United States v. Koelling, 992 F.2d 817, 822 (8th Cir.1993) (citation omitted). Determining the staleness of information requires consideration of four factors: the defendant’s course of conduct; the nature and duration of the crime; the nature of the relevant evidence; and any corroboration of the older and more recent information. United States v. Henson, 848 F.2d 1374, 1382 (6th Cir.1988), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 1005, 109 S.Ct. 784, 102 L.Ed.2d 776 (1989).
Although our caselaw is replete with instances where information is not considered to be stale, we believe this case is different. Here, the last two factors weigh heavily in finding the information presented to support the warrant was stale. When considering the nature of Sawicki’s affidavit, the lack of any corroboration, and the extreme lapse of time between this application and the prior searches, the conclusion that this information was stale is inevitable. It is certainly more than a possible weakness as the majority suggests. The tragedy of this case is that the complaining witness herself, a member of the bar who admits to possessing and using marijuana, was in a position to know that the information she provided was stale.
Turning now to Leon, we believe that the good-faith exception does not apply to the facts of this case. In Leon, the court acknowledged that no police officer could “manifest objective good faith in relying on a warrant based on an affidavit ‘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)). In our view, this warrant application is an example of what the court was contemplating: an application which contains no information from which a magistrate could conclude that the informant’s information is either rehable or credible. This application not only lacks information to support Saw-icki’s truthfulness, but it also gives rise to the probability that Sawicki made these allegations maliciously after Czuprynski fired her. Despite knowledge to this effect, Officer Tait failed to conduct any independent investigation to corroborate the allegations. Although prior efforts to obtain a warrant had failed, Tait ultimately took the application to a magistrate who had a past conflict with Czupryn-ski. Tait then executed the signed warrant even though he had made no effort to ensure Sawicki’s credibility.
The majority reasons that the basis of Sawicki’s knowledge was clear, and that her affidavit bears intrinsic evidence of her credibility because it was contrary to her own penal interest. The majority concedes that Sawicki had a motive to cause trouble. However, it then makes a generalization that “persons with personal motives are often the source of very reliable information.” Majority Opinion at 564-65. While we don’t doubt the truth of that statement, we would require some independent investigation to corroborate and verify the reliability of the information provided in a case such as this. In our view, rather than lending credibility to her affidavit, admitting her own criminal culpability evidences the degree of malice Sawicki harbored toward Czuprynski. We do not believe that the execution of a warrant can be in “complete good faith,” Leon, 468 U.S. at 919, 104 S.Ct. at 3419, unless some information provides credibility to the informant’s allegations. Without even any attempt to verify the information in Sawicki’s affidavit, we cannot agree that Tait’s actions fall within the good-faith exception of Leon. As noted in Leon at 923, 104 S.Ct. at 3421, the reasonable behavior of the officer is based upon his experience. Here, in our view, Tait was being taken advantage of by the local prosecutors, who clearly, along with Czuprynski’s former employee intended to do whatever *568they could to remove Czuprynski from his law practice.
We therefore dissent.

. We note that the district court considered the question of whether Leon applied to be the "threshold issue" on whether to admit the evidence. This is incorrect. The threshold issue is whether the search was constitutional or not, i.e., whether the magistrate was detached and neutral, and whether there was probable cause to issue the warrant. The majority today seems to take the same approach, confining itself to the applicability of Leon and concluding that the district court "properly upheld the search in this case under Leon." Majority Opinion at 561. The problem here is that Leon provides an exception to the exclusionary rule; we must first find, however, that the search was unconstitutional in order to invoke the exclusionary rule. The district court and the majority opinion seem to turn Fourth Amendment analysis on its head, making the exception swallow the rule.