Court Opinion

ID: 9498986
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:34:43.591366+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:12.945049
License: Public Domain

E. GRADY JOLLY, Circuit Judge, dissenting:
I respectfully dissent because I believe the Leon good-faith exception applies, because the majority opinion reflects an erroneous view of the record, and because the majority engages in appellate fact-finding. As an appellate fact-finder, the majority recharacterizes the officer as a “liar,” contradicting not only the district judge but also the defendant’s appellate counsel, who said at oral argument that he did not doubt the officer’s good faith and that the officer believed he was doing the right thing.
No one questions that Officer Baird, in applying for and executing the original search warrant, believed that probable cause supported a search warrant for evidence of illegal prescription-drug sales. Baird applied for a warrant on that basis alone,1 and the magistrate issued a warrant on that basis alone. Baird’s “reliance on the magistrate’s probable-cause determination and on the technical sufficiency of the warrant,” United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 922, 104 S.Ct. 8405, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984) (internal quotations omitted), was objectively reasonable. This is what the District Court properly found as fact and law.
To upset this finding of the District Court, the majority, taking liberties with the record, contends that Baird’s application for and execution of the warrant was in bad faith because he concealed from the magistrate judge his “true purpose” and allegedly his sole motivation in seeking the warrant, namely, his anticipation of finding plain-view evidence of a methamphetamine cook taking place on the premises. In short, the majority argues that Baird’s belief that probable cause supported the search for prescription-drug evidence is irrelevant because his subjective motive in seeking the warrant was to search for methamphetamines for which there was no probable cause. However, the Supreme Court repeatedly has emphasized that the subjective intent of the officer is not to be considered:
*350Not only have we never held, outside the context of inventory search or administrative inspection ..., that an officer’s motive invalidates objectively justifiable behavior under the Fourth Amendment; but we have repeatedly held and asserted the contrary. In United States v. Villamonte-Marquez, 462 U.S. 579, 584, n. 3, 103 S.Ct. 2573, 77 L.Ed.2d 22 (1983), we held that an otherwise valid warrantless boarding of a vessel by customs officials was not rendered invalid “because the customs officers were accompanied by a Louisiana state policeman, and were following an informant’s tip that a vessel in the ship channel was thought to be carrying marihuana.” We flatly dismissed the idea that an ulterior motive might serve to strip the agents of their legal justification. In United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 94 S.Ct. 467, 38 L.Ed.2d 427 (1973), we held that a traffic-violation arrest ... would not be rendered invalid by the fact that it was “a mere pretext for a narcotics search,” id., at 221, 94 S.Ct. 467, n. 1; and that a lawful postarrest search of the person would not be rendered invalid by the fact that it was not motivated by the officer-safety concern that justifies such searches, see id., at 236, 94 S.Ct. 467. See also Gustafson v. Florida, 414 U.S. 260, 266, 94 S.Ct. 494, 38 L.Ed.2d 427 (1973). And in Scott v. United States, 436 U.S. 128, 138, 98 S.Ct. 1717, 56 L.Ed.2d 168 (1978), in rejecting the contention that wiretap evidence was subject to exclusion because the agents conducting the tap had failed to make any effort to comply with the statutory requirement that unauthorized acquisitions be minimized, we said that “subjective intent alone ... does not make otherwise lawful conduct illegal or unconstitutional.” We described Robinson as having established that “the fact that the officer does not have the state of mind which is hypothecated by the reasons which provide the legal justification for the officer’s action does not invalidate the action taken as long as the circumstances, viewed objectively, justify that action.” 436 U.S. at 136, 138, 98 S.Ct. 1717.
Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 812-13, 116 S.Ct. 1769, 135 L.Ed.2d 89 (1996) (parallel citations omitted).2 In other words, Baird’s subjective motive is irrelevant here. An appellate court’s finding of fact as to Baird’s true purpose is, as always, inappropriate.
To be sure, the majority’s inquiry and fact-finding concerning Baird’s one true motive demonstrate the wisdom of eschewing such inquiries. Baird’s affidavit is mis-eharacterized as containing “deliberate falsehoods,” and it is suggested that “we know from Baird’s own lips that he lied to the magistrate.” Neither assertion is supported by the record. Baird’s seven-page affidavit contains a single, short sentence relating to purpose that is not inconsistent with an additional, unstated, underlying motive: “The purpose [of the evidentiary search warrant] is to obtain evidence of a crime that has already been committed, as will be specified later below,” i.e., the illegal sale of prescription drugs. Even accepting the inference of a hidden motive, the sentence plainly is not a falsehood, *351deliberate or reckless. And there is nothing — I repeat nothing — in the record suggesting that Baird admits lying to the magistrate. Just the opposite. Baird testified, and reaffirmed on cross-examination, that the magistrate read the affidavit carefully, asked no questions of the officers, and received no evidence not in the affidavit. Baird testified only that in seeking the warrant when he did, he was motivated by his suspicion, based on an informant’s tip, that a methamphetamine cook was taking place. He did not concede that he was “only interested” in evidence of the meth lab. Nothing in the record or suppression-hearing- transcript supports the accusation that Baird “lied to the magistrate,” let alone that he admitted to doing so. As the majority notes, the Government expressly argued to the District Court that “[tjhere was no evidence of deliberate recklessness ... in the affidavit.” And even Pope’s attorney at oral argument stated, “subjectively, I don’t doubt this officer’s good faith; I’m sure he thought he was doing the right thing.”
The majority’s exaggerations of the record to brand the officer as a liar are presumably found necessary because Leon “confine[s] [the good-faith inquiry] to the objectively ascertainable question whether a reasonably well-trained officer would have known that the search was illegal despite the magistrate’s authorization.” 468 U.S. at 922, 104 S.Ct. 3405 n. 23. To reason that the good-faith exception does not apply, the majority must characterize the affidavit as an outright and admitted lie in order to cast its analysis as a “purely objective inquiry” into the motive of the officer. Respectfully, the analysis is anything but objective.3 Moreover, it is appellate fact-finding.
At the very least, the majority should remand this case to allow the District Court to address, and make findings of fact concerning, Pope’s claim on appeal that the warrant affidavit was recklessly false. The record reveals that the issue upon which the majority reverses the District Court’s finding of good faith was never before the District Court. Even Pope’s own motion to suppress cursorily addresses the good-faith exception in a short section arguing only and simply that the evidence should be suppressed because the warrant was supported only by a “bare-bones” affidavit, i.e., 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. 3405. Nothing in the record indicates that Pope argued to the District Court, before or after the suppression hearing, that the affidavit was recklessly false. The District Court properly rejected the bare-bones-affidavit argument, but because it was not presented with the claim of reckless falsehood in the supporting affidavit, it did not even think for a moment about the issue. Although the Government has not objected to the Defendant’s untimely raising the issue on appeal, the majority has no license to engage in fact-finding and to seize upon this tardy and inappropriate argument to reverse the District Court on grounds not argued below.4
*352In sum, I respectfully dissent to the reversal of the District Court because of the majority’s misapplication of the law, its mischaracterization of the record, and its engagement in appellate fact-finding.

. Baird recognized the lack of probable cause to search for methamphetamines and wanted the warrant for prescription-drug evidence to "stand on its own.”

. The majority opinion faults any reliance on traffic-stop cases, but the passage quoted from Whren plainly discusses a principle not limited to traffic stops but applicable in all Fourth Amendment contexts. The cases cited by the Court involve not just traffic stops but also wiretaps and the boarding of maritime vessels. The Supreme Court recently reiterated, in a case far removed from traffic stops, that “under the Fourth Amendment ... [t]he officer’s subjective motivation is irrelevant.” Brigham City v. Stuart, — U.S. -, 126 S.Ct. 1943, 164 L.Ed.2d 650 (2006).

. In fact, the majority's description of its inquiry as purely objective is circular. The majority states, “the question is not 'What was Officer Baird’s subjective state of mind?’, but rather 'Would a reasonably well-trained officer rely on a warrant that he personally obtained by deceit?’ ” But the majority can only conclude that Baird obtained the warrant by deceit after first determining the disputed question of Baird’s subjective state of mind.

. The majority opinion ends with a reference to a passage in the record in which Pope supposedly “highlighted Officer Baird’s deceptive behavior in securing the warrant.” *352The majority again misreads the record. The quoted passage was not directed to Baird's alleged desire to find evidence of metham-phetamines, because that issue was not raised below at all; instead, Pope was arguing that her single sale of a mere six pills was insufficient to support a search for evidence of dealing (in those same drugs) on a greater scale. The quoted passage is not a reference to deceptive behavior, misrepresentation, or omission relating to Baird's request for a warrant, and certainly suggests no reason to question Baird's good-faith reliance on the magistrate’s finding of probable cause, which is simply a determination that “there is a fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime will be found in a particular place.’’ United States v. Grubbs, — U.S. -, 126 S.Ct. 1494, 164 L.Ed.2d 195 (2006) (citing Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 238, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983)). The erroneous citation of this passage demonstrates why an appeals court should not attempt to relitigate an issue forfeited below.