United States v. Mayle , 382 F. App'x 329 ( 2010 )

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 09-4009
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
RONALD CHRISTOPHER MAYLE, a/k/a Chris Mayle,
Defendant – Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern
District of West Virginia, at Elkins. Robert E. Maxwell, Senior
District Judge. (2:07-cr-00012-REM-JSK-1)
Submitted: May 12, 2010 Decided: June 11, 2010
Before WILKINSON, SHEDD, and DUNCAN, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
George J. Cosenza, Parkersburg, West Virginia, for Appellant.
Betsy C. Jividen, Acting United States Attorney, Stephen D.
Warner, Assistant United States Attorney, Elkins, West Virginia,
for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
Ronald Christopher Mayle pleaded guilty to one count
of possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking
crime, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A) (2006),
reserving his right to appeal the denial of his motion to
suppress evidence seized from his home. On appeal, Mayle
contests that the search warrant application failed to establish
probable cause and that the affidavit supporting the warrant was
so “bare bones” as to preclude use of the good faith exception
to the warrant requirement announced in United States v. Leon,
468 U.S. 897 (1984). For the following reasons, we affirm.
I.
On November 3, 2006, Sergeant Ricky L. Hymes of the
Barbour County, West Virginia, Sheriff’s Department, applied for
a search warrant for Mayle’s home. The search warrant affidavit
provided, on the first page:
Over the past two months, the Barbour County Sheriff’s
Department has received information from various
sources that the within named defendant, Chris Mayle,
has been trafficking in narcotics out of his
residence. Anonymous tips have been verified by first
hand observations of members of the Sheriff’s
Department. Confidential informants have also
confirmed that the defendant has been selling cocaine
from his residence and have been in the residence
within the past few days. A separate information
advised . . .
The affidavit continued on a second page:
2
That the defendant has traded cocaine for stolen
property in the past. The defendant had traded a four
wheeler that was reported stolen by Charles Moore for
a quantity of cocaine. This four wheeler was seen in
the block garage within the last few days.
(JA 58-59.)
Sergeant Hymes presented the application and affidavit
to Magistrate Katherine McBee of Barbour County. Magistrate
McBee reminded Hymes that she would consider only the “four
corners” of the document, that is, the first page. Accordingly,
in Magistrate McBee’s presence, Hymes typed the material from
the second page of the affidavit onto the bottom of the first
page. Magistrate McBee thereafter approved the warrant.
The Barbour County Sheriff’s Department, executing the
warrant, conducted a search of Mayle’s residence on November 4,
2006 and recovered incriminating evidence, including firearms,
drugs, and United States currency. In April 2007, a federal
grand jury charged Mayle in a four-count indictment with
multiple drug charges and the firearm charge.
Mayle filed a motion to suppress, arguing that the
search warrant application failed to establish probable cause to
search his home. The case was referred to a magistrate judge,
who held two hearing on the motion. During the hearings,
Sergeant Hymes testified that he had only prepared three or four
search warrants in his career. Magistrate McBee likewise
3
testified that, in an average month, she received no warrant
applications and thus she rarely approved search warrants.
Following the conclusion of the two hearings, the
magistrate judge issued a written Report and Recommendation,
concluding that suppression of the evidence was not warranted
under the good faith exception announced in United States v.
Leon, 468 U.S. 897 (1984). See United States v. Perez, 393 F.3d
457, 460 (4th Cir. 2004) (explaining that where defendant
challenges both the probable cause determination and the
application of the good faith exception, the court may proceed
directly to the issue of good faith). The magistrate judge
concluded that the affidavit was not a “bare bones” affidavit
because it consisted of anonymous tips that were “verified by
first hand observations of members of the Sheriff’s Department.”
The magistrate judge noted that both Sergeant Hymes and
Magistrate McBee lacked experience in applying for and approving
search warrants but that there was neither the indication of bad
faith by Hymes nor any indication that Magistrate McBee
abandoned her role as neutral arbiter.
After the district court overruled Mayle’s objections
to the Report and adopted it in full, Mayle entered a
conditional guilty plea to the firearm charge, reserving his
right to appeal the denial of his suppression motion. The
district court sentenced Mayle to 60 months imprisonment but
4
stayed execution of the sentence pending appeal. Mayle filed a
timely appeal and this court has jurisdiction pursuant to 28
U.S.C. § 1291 (2006).
II.
On appeal, Mayle contends that Sergeant Hymes’s
affidavit fails to establish probable cause to search his home
and that the affidavit was so “bare bones” that the Leon
exception does not apply. We will use our discretion to
“proceed to the good faith exception without first deciding
whether the warrant was supported by probable cause.” United
States v. Legg, 18 F.3d 240, 243 (4th Cir. 1994). We review the
application of the Leon exception de novo. See United States v.
DeQuasie, 373 F.3d 509, 520 (4th Cir. 2004) (observing that,
where “there are no facts in dispute, the applicability of the
Leon exception . . . is purely a legal conclusion, and we review
the district court’s ruling de novo”).
“Generally, evidence seized in violation of the Fourth
Amendment is subject to suppression under the exclusionary
rule,” United States v. Andrews, 577 F.3d 231, 235 (4th Cir.
2009), the purpose of which is “to deter future unlawful police
conduct,” United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338, 347 (1974).
The deterrence objective, however, “is not achieved through the
suppression of evidence obtained by ‘an officer acting with
5
objective good faith’ within the scope of a search warrant
issued by a magistrate.” Perez, 393 F.3d at 461 (quoting Leon,
468 U.S. at 920); see United States v. Mowatt, 513 F.3d 395, 404
(4th Cir. 2008) (“[I]t is the magistrate's responsibility to
determine whether probable cause exists, and officers cannot be
expected to second-guess that determination in close cases.”).
Thus, the Leon Court created an exception to the exclusionary
rule, permitting the use of evidence “obtained by officers
acting in reasonable reliance on a search warrant issued by a
detached and neutral magistrate but ultimately found to be
unsupported by probable cause.” Leon, 468 U.S. at 900.
Accordingly, “under Leon’s good faith exception, evidence
obtained pursuant to a search warrant issued by a neutral
magistrate does not need to be excluded if the officer’s
reliance on the warrant was ‘objectively reasonable.’” Id.(quoting Leon, 468 U.S. at 922).
The Leon Court cautioned that an officer’s reliance on
a warrant would not qualify as “objectively reasonable,”
however, in four circumstances: where "(1) probable cause is
based on statements in an affidavit that are knowingly or
recklessly false; (2) the magistrate fails to perform a neutral
and detached function and instead merely rubber stamps the
warrant"; (3) the affidavit is so lacking in indicia of
probable cause as to render official belief in its existence
6
entirely unreasonable; or "(4) the warrant was so facially
deficient that the executing officer could not reasonably have
assumed it was valid." United States v. Gary, 528 F.3d 324, 329
(4th Cir. 2008) (internal quotation marks omitted) (citing Leon,
468 U.S. at 914-15).
In this case, the magistrate judge concluded that only
the third circumstance was potentially applicable. On appeal,
Mayle likewise focuses only on the third circumstance, whether
the affidavit in question was “so lacking in indicia of probable
cause” to make reliance on the search warrant unreasonable.
Leon, 468 U.S. at 923. In making his argument, Mayle relies on
United States v. Wilhelm, 80 F.3d 116 (4th Cir. 1996), in which
we declined to apply the Leon good faith exception due to the
“bare bones nature of the affidavit” and the fact that the
“state magistrate could not have acted as other than a rubber
stamp.” Id. at 121 (internal quotation marks omitted). The
affidavit in Wilhelm relied on an “unknown, unavailable
informant without significant [police] corroboration.” Id. at
123. Likewise, Mayle argues, the warrant affidavit in this case
is based upon information provided by unknown informants with no
description of their previous reliability. Mayle also notes
that the affidavit mentions that information was provided as
much as two months before Sergeant Hymes applied for a warrant,
suggesting that at least some of the information might have been
7
stale. Finally, Mayle contends that the generic statement that
deputies corroborated some of the anonymous informants
information is insufficient to move this case beyond Wilhelm.
While we agree with the Government that the affidavit
in this case is “not great,” (Appellee’s Br. at 7), we
nonetheless conclude that application of the Leon good faith
exception is warranted. As the Government notes, and in
contrast to the affidavit in Wilhelm, the affidavit here refers
to multiple anonymous tips. Unlike Wilhelm, the affidavit also
establishes that deputies performed an independent investigation
prior to applying for the warrant and were able to corroborate
at least some of the information from the tips. In addition,
the affidavit makes specific reference to the stolen four
wheeler that was viewed at Mayle’s house just several days
before the warrant application was filed; this reference
supported the anonymous tip that Mayle sometimes traded drugs
for goods. Moreover, as in United States v. Lalor, 996 F.2d
1578, 1583 (4th Cir. 1993), “two judicial officers have
determined that the affidavit provided probable cause to
search.”
We explained our principal concern in Wilhelm as
follows: “Upholding this warrant would ratify police use of an
unknown, unproven informant — with little or no corroboration —
to justify searching someone’s home.” Wilhelm, 80 F.3d at 120.
8
In contrast, the affidavit in this case established a police
investigation of roughly two months coupled with receipt of
information from various sources. The affidavit also
specifically states that Mayle was dealing drugs from his house,
including cocaine, and provided corroboration for another
allegation — that Mayle traded goods for drugs — by providing
that a recently stolen four wheeler was seen in his garage.
Accordingly, while the affidavit in this case was “not
great,” and both Sergeant Hymes and Magistrate McBee lacked
experience in search warrant procedure, the affidavit is not so
“bare bones” as to fall outside the Leon good faith exception.
III.
For the foregoing reasons, we affirm Ronald
Christopher Mayle’s conviction and sentence. We dispense with
oral argument because the facts and legal contentions are
adequately presented in the materials before the court and
argument would not aid the decisional process.
AFFIRMED
9