United States v. James Saunders, III ( 2020 )

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 19-4882
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
JAMES ALBERT SAUNDERS, III,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, at
Richmond. Henry E. Hudson, Senior District Judge. (3:19-cr-00090-HEH-1)
Submitted: September 22, 2020 Decided: October 7, 2020
Before NIEMEYER, AGEE, and QUATTLEBAUM, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Geremy G. Kamens, Federal Public Defender, Alexandria, Virginia, Nia Ayanna Vidal,
Assistant Federal Public Defender, OFFICE OF THE FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER,
Richmond, Virginia, for Appellant. G. Zachary Terwilliger, United States Attorney,
Alexandria, Virginia, Stephen W. Miller, Assistant United States Attorney, Holli R. Wood,
Special Assistant United States Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES
ATTORNEY, Richmond, Virginia, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
James Albert Saunders, III, appeals from the criminal judgment entered following
his conditional guilty plea to possession with intent to distribute cocaine base, in violation
of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1), (b)(1)(C). On appeal, Saunders challenges the district court’s
denials of his motion for a hearing pursuant to Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154 (1978),
and his motion to suppress evidence seized during the execution of a search warrant at his
home. We affirm.
I.
A.
Beginning with the district court’s denial of Saunders’ request for a Franks hearing,
Saunders maintains that the officer who applied for and obtained the September 19, 2018
search warrant for Saunders’ home falsely stated in the Affidavit for Search Warrant (the
“Affidavit”) that a person named “Jamar L Blount” lived there. (J.A. 33). 1 The Affidavit
added that Blount had “several narcotic[s] arrest[s].” (J.A. 33). The Affidavit based those
statements on information from “criminal intelligence databases” and “personal
observation.” (J.A. 33). In reality, however, Blount has been incarcerated since 2013, and
he thus could not have been living at Saunders’ home when the officer submitted the
Affidavit in September 2018. Saunders also faults the officer for omitting several facts
from the Affidavit, including that one of the criminal databases used by the officer reflected
1
Citations herein to “(J.A. ___)” refer to the contents of the Joint Appendix filed by
the parties in this appeal.
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that Blount was associated with at least 7 other addresses and that 54 other people were
associated with Saunders’ address. According to Saunders, the purportedly false statement
that Blount lived at Saunders’ home was material to the state magistrate’s probable cause
determination because the remaining facts in the Affidavit were insufficient to establish
probable cause. And, Saunders asserts, the aforementioned omissions were material
because the inclusion of the omitted information in the Affidavit would have defeated
probable cause for the search.
We have explained that “[a]n accused is generally not entitled to challenge the
veracity of a facially valid search warrant affidavit.” United States v. Allen, 631 F.3d 164,
171 (4th Cir. 2011). “In its decision in Franks v. Delaware, however, the Supreme Court
carved out a narrow exception to this rule, whereby an accused is entitled to an evidentiary
hearing on the veracity of statements in the affidavit.” Id. Given the “presumption of
validity” afforded to an affidavit supporting a search warrant, the defendant faces a “heavy
burden” when invoking the narrow exception recognized in Franks. See United States v.
Moody, 931 F.3d 366, 370 (4th Cir. 2019) (internal quotation marks omitted), cert. denied
140 S. Ct. 823 (2020).
To earn a Franks hearing, the defendant “must make a substantial preliminary
showing that (1) law enforcement made a false statement; (2) the false statement was made
knowingly and intentionally, or with reckless disregard for the truth; and (3) the false
statement was necessary to the finding of probable cause” (also known as the “materiality”
requirement). Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). When the defendant predicates his
Franks hearing request on information omitted from an affidavit, he is obliged “to make a
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substantial preliminary showing that the omissions were intentional or reckless,” and that
the omissions were material to the probable cause determination—that is, the inclusion of
the omitted information in the affidavit would have defeated probable cause. United States
v. Jones, 942 F.3d 634, 640 (4th Cir. 2019) (internal quotation marks omitted). “We assess
the legal determination underlying the district court’s Franks ruling de novo.” Id.We are satisfied that the district court correctly denied Saunders’ Franks hearing
request. After removing the allegedly false statement or adding the omitted information,
the Affidavit still supports a finding of probable cause. See Jones, 942 F.3d at 640; Allen,
631 F.3d at 171.
To explain, probable cause exists to search a location when, considering the totality
of the circumstances, “there is a fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime will
be found in [that] particular place.” Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 238 (1983). That
“practical, common-sense” standard, id., is satisfied here based on two facts in the
Affidavit: (1) the officer who submitted the Affidavit received a tip that Saunders’ home
was a “narcotics house” about two weeks before the search, and (2) the officer conducted
a trash pull at Saunders’ home immediately before applying for the warrant and discovered
“a large amount of plastic baggies with twisted and torn off corners,” with some of those
baggies containing a white residue that the officer “believed to be a . . . narcotic,” (J.A.
33). The Affidavit further stated that the trash pull evidence was “consistent with the
distribution and sale of narcotics.” (J.A. 33).
Important here, we have ruled that the corroboration of a tip through the discovery
of drug trafficking evidence during a trash pull supports probable cause for a search
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warrant. See United States v. Gary, 528 F.3d 324, 327-28 (4th Cir. 2008). Consequently,
we conclude that the district court did not err in denying Saunders’ request for a Franks
hearing because, after removing the allegedly false statement or adding the omitted
information, the Affidavit nevertheless supports a finding of probable cause. 2
B.
Next, Saunders argues that the district court erred by denying his motion to suppress
because the Affidavit was insufficient to support a finding of probable cause even with the
information about Blount. In assessing a district court’s ruling on a motion to suppress,
we review conclusions of law de novo and any underlying factual findings for clear error.
See United States v. Clarke, 842 F.3d 288, 293 (4th Cir. 2016). When considering a
challenge to a magistrate’s finding of probable cause, we afford the magistrate’s
“determination great deference, and ask only whether the [magistrate] had a substantial
basis for finding probable cause.” Jones, 942 F.3d at 638 (internal quotation marks
omitted).
As previously explained, the tip and the officer’s corroboration of that tip provided
a substantial basis for the magistrate’s probable cause finding. See United States v.
Montieth, 662 F.3d 660, 664-65 (4th Cir. 2011) (ruling that magistrate had substantial basis
2
Insofar as Saunders relies on our decision in United States v. Lyles, 910 F.3d 787(4th Cir. 2018), we are unpersuaded that it requires a different result here. In Lyles, there
was no tip to corroborate, and the evidence from the trash pull was less substantial. 910
F.3d at 793.
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for probable cause finding in similar circumstances); Gary, 528 F.3d at 327-28 (same). We
are therefore satisfied that the district court properly denied Saunders’ motion to suppress.
II.
For those reasons, we affirm the district court’s judgment. We dispense with oral
argument because the facts and legal contentions are adequately presented in the materials
before this court and argument would not aid the decisional process.
AFFIRMED
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