United States v. Logan

Appellate Case: 20-3202 Document: 010110724390 Date Filed: 08/15/2022 Page: 1
FILED
United States Court of Appeals
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS Tenth Circuit
FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT August 15, 2022
_________________________________
Christopher M. Wolpert
Clerk of Court
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v. No. 20-3202
(D.C. No. 6:19-CR-10094-EFM-1)
COREY A. LOGAN, a/k/a Corey Antonio (D. Kan.)
Logan,
Defendant - Appellant.
_________________________________
ORDER AND JUDGMENT *
_________________________________
Before BACHARACH, MORITZ, and EID, Circuit Judges.
_________________________________
Corey Logan was shot by an unknown assailant at his mobile home. Shortly
after first responders carried Logan outside, officers checked his residence for
additional victims of the shooting. No victims were found, but officers observed
hallucinogenic mushrooms and a marijuana pipe. Logan refused to consent to a
search, so the officers obtained a warrant to look for evidence of the shooting, the
mushrooms, and the marijuana. Indicted on two counts related to the mushrooms,
Logan moved to suppress the mushroom evidence. The district court denied Logan’s
motion on the ground that the initial warrantless sweep for victims was justified by
*
This order and judgment is not binding precedent, except under the doctrines
of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. It may be cited, however, for
its persuasive value consistent with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 and 10th Cir. R. 32.1.
Appellate Case: 20-3202 Document: 010110724390 Date Filed: 08/15/2022 Page: 2
exigent circumstances. Alternatively, the district court held that the inevitable
discovery exception to the exclusionary rule applied because the officers would have
uncovered the mushrooms while executing a warrant limited to the shooting. Logan
entered a conditional guilty plea and appeals the suppression issue. Assuming
without deciding that the warrantless search of Logan’s home was not justified by
exigency, we conclude that the district court’s application of the inevitable discovery
exception was not in error. Exercising jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we
affirm.
I.
On March 29, 2018, at around two o’clock in the morning, there was repeated
knocking at the front door of Corey Logan’s mobile home in Wichita, Kansas.
Before Logan could answer the door, an unknown assailant opened fire and fled the
scene. Also in the home was Samantha Case, who called the police once she realized
Logan had been shot.
At 2:19 a.m., Wichita Police Officer Steven McKenna arrived. He found Case
in the doorway calling for help and followed her to the mobile home’s south
bedroom, where Logan was on the floor with a gunshot wound to his left side. At
2:22 a.m., medical personnel reached the bedroom and started evacuating Logan to a
hospital. Meanwhile, more police officers arrived outside. These officers spotted
five bullet holes on the mobile home’s exterior, just north of the front door, plus
corresponding shell casings, which suggested that multiple bullets entered the home’s
north bedroom. Officers also found blood on the floor near the front door.
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Officer McKenna requested Logan’s permission to search the home. Logan
refused. Officers reentered the home anyway, looking for more victims of the
shooting. The officers conducting this sweep found neither victims nor evidence of
the shooter’s identity—but they did find Logan’s hallucinogenic mushrooms. When
Wichita Police Officer Cale Carson opened the interior door to the north bedroom, he
immediately recognized a psilocybin grow operation; he also spotted a marijuana
pipe in the living room. Having found no more victims of the shooting, the officers
left the home, secured it, and obtained a search warrant from a county judge. The
warrant permitted law enforcement to reenter Logan’s home to investigate the
shooting, the mushrooms, and the marijuana.
In June 2019, a federal grand jury in the District of Kansas returned a two-
count indictment charging Logan under 21 U.S.C. § 841 with manufacturing a
controlled substance and possessing with intent to distribute a controlled substance.
Both counts involved the hallucinogenic mushrooms discovered by police after
Logan was shot. Logan moved to suppress the evidence and the district court held a
suppression hearing.
The court denied Logan’s motion in February 2020. The court held that the
search that first discovered the mushrooms, although warrantless, was justified by
exigent circumstances because “the officers had an objectively reasonable basis to
believe that another victim could have been in the residence.” R. Vol. I at 56.
Alternatively, the court held that the inevitable discovery exception to the
exclusionary rule applied because, even if the sweep for victims had never occurred,
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the government had demonstrated by a preponderance of the evidence that
“investigators would have nevertheless discovered evidence of the mushroom grow
operation while executing a warrant to discover further evidence of the shooting.”
Id. at 58.
With the motion to suppress denied, Logan entered a conditional guilty plea to
the manufacturing count and the government dismissed the possession count. In the
plea agreement, Logan reserved the right to appeal the suppression issue. The district
court sentenced Logan to five years’ probation. Logan timely appealed.
II.
On appeal, Logan argues that the district court erred by denying his motion to
suppress the mushroom evidence. He challenges both the district court’s finding of
exigent circumstances and its alternative application of the inevitable discovery
doctrine. Assuming without deciding that the initial search was not justified by
exigency, we affirm the district court’s application of inevitable discovery.
a.
The Fourth Amendment “protects the people from unreasonable searches and
seizures of ‘their persons, houses, papers, and effects.’” Soldal v. Cook Cty., 506
U.S. 56, 62 (1992) (quoting U.S. Const. amend. IV). A warrantless search of the
home is generally presumed unreasonable. See Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U.S. 398,
403 (2006). Here, the district court found that an exigency—specifically, the need to
check Logan’s mobile home for victims of the shooting—rendered the initial search
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reasonable. See id. (discussing exigency exception to presumption that warrantless
home searches are unreasonable).
The “principal judicial remedy to deter Fourth Amendment violations” is the
exclusionary rule, which “often requires trial courts to exclude unlawfully seized
evidence in a criminal trial.” Utah v. Strieff, 579 U.S. 232, 237 (2016). Here, Logan
invoked the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule in moving to suppress the
mushroom evidence on the ground that the initial search of his mobile home was
unlawful. But the exclusionary rule is subject to several exceptions. See, e.g.,
Murray v. United States, 487 U.S. 533, 537 (1988) (independent source); United
States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 913 (1984) (good faith). Here, the district court
invoked the inevitable discovery exception to the exclusionary rule as an alternative
ground for denying the motion to suppress.
Courts apply the inevitable discovery exception where “the prosecution can
establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the information ultimately or
inevitably would have been discovered by lawful means.” Nix v. Williams, 467 U.S.
431, 444 (1984). If so, the Supreme Court has explained, “the deterrence rationale”
underlying the exclusionary rule “has so little basis that the evidence should be
received.” Id. The inevitable discovery inquiry is premised on “probability,”
specifically “how likely it is that a warrant would have been issued and that the
evidence would have been found pursuant to the warrant.” United States v. Souza,
223 F.3d 1197, 1204 (10th Cir. 2000). “What makes a discovery ‘inevitable’ is not
probable cause alone . . . but probable cause plus a chain of events that would have
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led to a warrant (or another justification) independent of the search.” Id. (alteration
omitted) (quoting United States v. Brown, 64 F.3d 1083, 1085 (7th Cir. 1995)).
“[I]nevitable discovery involves no speculative elements but focuses on demonstrated
historical facts capable of ready verification.” United States v. Shrum, 908 F.3d
1219, 1235 (10th Cir. 2018) (quoting Nix, 467 U.S. at 444 n.5).
In the past, we have found several factors useful in navigating the inevitable
discovery exception. These include: (1) “the extent to which the warrant process has
been completed at the time those seeking the warrant learn of the search”; (2) “the
strength of the showing of probable cause at the time the search occurred”;
(3) “whether a warrant ultimately was obtained, albeit after the illegal entry”; and
(4) “evidence that law enforcement agents ‘jumped the gun’ because they lacked
confidence in their showing of probable cause and wanted to force the issue by
creating a fait accompli.” United States v. Cunningham, 413 F.3d 1199, 1203–04
(10th Cir. 2005) (quoting Souza, 223 F.3d at 1204).
We will assume without deciding that the initial warrantless search of Logan’s
mobile home was not justified by exigent circumstances and focus instead on the
district court’s finding that the inevitable discovery exception to the exclusionary
rule applies. “When this court reviews the denial of a motion to suppress, we view
the evidence in the light most favorable to the government and accept the district
court’s factual findings unless clearly erroneous.” United States v. Berg, 956 F.3d
1213, 1216 (10th Cir. 2020). When a party appeals a district court’s inevitable
discovery analysis, “[w]e review the district court’s factual determinations for clear
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error and its ultimate Fourth Amendment conclusions de novo.” United States v.
Christy, 739 F.3d 534, 540 (10th Cir. 2014).
We agree with the government that the district court’s finding that police
officers would have found the mushroom evidence while executing a lawful warrant
is a factual finding that we review for clear error. See United States v. Sanchez, 608
F.3d 685, 692 (10th Cir. 2010). “Findings of fact are clearly erroneous when they are
unsupported in the record, or if after our review of the record we have the definite
and firm conviction that a mistake has been made.” La Resolana Architects, PA v.
Reno, Inc., 555 F.3d 1171, 1177 (10th Cir. 2009) (quoting TransWestern Publ’g Co.
LP v. Multimedia Mktg. Assocs., Inc., 133 F.3d 773, 775 (10th Cir. 1998)).
b.
On appeal, Logan argues that the district court erred by only analyzing
whether probable cause supported a warrant application and ignoring whether the
mushroom evidence would have been discovered without the initial sweep. He
contends that the government “made no effort to establish that the evidence would
still have been in the same location to be discovered at the time the warrant was
executed.” Aplt. Br. at 33. He emphasizes that the warrant process had not begun
when police officers checked the home for additional victims, and further argues that
the government did not offer any evidence about the investigation’s timeline or
whether the home was secured. Logan also suggests that the district court’s decision,
if affirmed, “impermissibly creates a crime scene exception for inevitable discovery.”
Aplt. Br. at 34.
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The government responds that the district court’s finding that law enforcement
inevitably would have discovered the mushroom evidence was not clearly erroneous.
The same is true, in the government’s view, of Logan’s suggestion that the
mushrooms may not have remained in the home while the government sought a
warrant, which the government would ask us to review for plain error. Additionally,
the government contends that the district court did not focus solely on probable cause
and that it did not create any exception for crime scenes.
c.
The factual findings that supported the district court’s application of the
inevitable discovery exception were not clearly erroneous. First, the district court did
not clearly err in finding that officers would have obtained a valid warrant to search
Logan’s mobile home, even if they had not observed the mushrooms while looking
for additional victims of the shooting. Second, the district court did not clearly err in
implicitly finding that officers executing such a warrant would have found the
mushroom evidence. Finally, we reject Logan’s argument about a so-called crime
scene exception to the Fourth Amendment.
The district court did not clearly err by finding that, “[e]xtracting the evidence
of a mushroom grow operation from the search warrant, . . . investigators would have
nevertheless . . . execut[ed] a warrant to discover further evidence of the shooting.”
R. Vol. I at 58. Testimony at the suppression hearing provided a reasonable basis for
that finding. Officer Carson testified that after checking the mobile home for
additional victims, he “knew that there was going to be a warrant regardless . . . for
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evidentiary purposes in relation to the shooting.” R. Vol. III at 63. Asked,
hypothetically, whether law enforcement would have still sought a warrant without
finding the mushroom evidence, he responded in the affirmative, indicating that
officers would have been looking for “any evidence” of the shooting. Id. The
district court did not commit clear error by crediting Officer Carson’s uncontradicted,
sworn testimony, and concluding that law enforcement would have sought a warrant
to search Logan’s residence even if the mushrooms had not been found.
The district court likewise did not commit clear error by finding that officers
would have obtained and executed the warrant they would have sought. That is so
even though the warrant process had not started when officers checked the mobile
home for additional victims. See Christy, 739 F.3d at 543 (“[A]n effort to obtain a
warrant is but one factor of the inevitable discovery doctrine in this circuit.”). After
all, a warrant—albeit one reflecting a warrant application that also covered the
mushrooms and marijuana—was obtained and executed within a few hours of the
shooting. Even without the mushroom and marijuana component of the warrant, it
was essentially a certainty that evidence of the shooting would be found if the mobile
home were searched. See Cunningham, 413 F.3d at 1204. It also does not appear
that “law enforcement agents ‘jumped the gun’ because they lacked confidence in
their showing of probable cause.” Id. (quoting Souza, 223 F.3d at 1204). Rather,
they pursued a warrant on multiple grounds, and to the extent we are assuming two of
those grounds were invalid, the district court still had adequate support for its
conclusion that a warrant would have issued in due course with respect to solely the
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shooting. The court’s finding that law enforcement would have obtained and
executed a valid warrant to search the mobile home for evidence of the shooting was
not clearly erroneous.
Before turning to the second factual finding required to apply the inevitable
discovery exception here—that the evidence at issue would have been found pursuant
to the lawful warrant—we reject Logan’s legal argument that the district court failed
to find that the mushroom evidence would have still been found in the north bedroom
if officers executed a warrant limited to the shooting. We review this argument de
novo. See Christy, 739 F.3d at 540. It is true, as Logan contends, that probable
cause alone is insufficient to apply inevitable discovery. See Souza, 223 F.3d at
1204. However, the district court covered more ground in its findings than Logan
suggests. The district court stated that, “while executing a warrant to discover
further evidence of the shooting,” the officers “would have nevertheless discovered
evidence of the mushroom grow operation.” R. Vol. I at 58. That statement
contained the very factual finding that inevitable discovery requires—that the
evidence would have been found on a valid warrant. Logan’s legal argument
therefore fails because the district court made the findings that it needed to make to
hold that the inevitable discovery exception applied. Although the district court did
not make an explicit finding that the mushroom evidence would have been in the
same spot, at the same time, if a valid warrant were executed, we think that finding is
implicit within the factual finding that we have excerpted. That only leaves the
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question whether the finding had enough support in the record to withstand clear
error review. It did.
The district court did not commit clear error by finding that the mushroom
evidence likely would have been found if officers executed a warrant limited to the
shooting. Unlike in some inevitable discovery cases, this district court had detailed
evidence of a warrant execution process that would have been remarkably similar, in
both scope and timing, to the process associated with the hypothetical, more limited
warrant that, as we have explained, the district court did not clearly err in finding law
enforcement would have sought, obtained, and executed. As far as scope, officers
testified at the suppression hearing that bullet holes and shell casings indicated that
evidence of the shooting would be found in the north bedroom. A hypothetical
warrant would have thus led officers into that bedroom, where they would have
located the mushroom evidence. 1 As far as timing, nothing suggests a warrant
limited to evidence of the shooting would have been obtained on a slower timeline.
The comparable warrant process in this case provided the district court with
“demonstrated historical facts capable of ready verification,” Shrum, 908 F.3d at
1235 (quoting Nix, 467 U.S. at 444 n.5), that directly supported the court’s finding
that the mushroom evidence would have inevitably been located by police.
1
Although the mushrooms would fall outside the scope of the hypothetical
search warrant, the plain view doctrine would likely apply. See United States v.
Muhtorov, 20 F.4th 558, 597–98 (10th Cir. 2021).
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The district court also did not commit clear error by its related, implicit
finding that the mushrooms would not have been moved by the time law enforcement
officers executing a lawful warrant reached the north bedroom. 2 Testimony at the
suppression hearing supported the district court’s finding that law enforcement
officers “secured” the scene while waiting for the warrant to issue. R. Vol. I at 53.
Specifically, Officer McKenna testified that while Logan was being treated for his
wounds, other officers remained at the mobile home. Officer Carson also testified
that it would be “standard procedure” to stand over shell casings “to preserve the
evidence.” R. Vol. III at 58. When Officer Carson arrived at Logan’s mobile home,
that is exactly what officers were doing. Notably, this testimony suggests that
officers were motivated to secure the scene because of the shooting, not because of
the mushrooms. Moreover, video evidence showed police officers preventing
individuals unrelated to the investigation from approaching the mobile home. The
district court did not clearly err by finding that the mushroom evidence would not
have been moved in a hypothetical timeline where officers were executing a warrant
to search for evidence of the shooting.
Finally, we are unpersuaded by Logan’s argument that affirming the inevitable
discovery issue would create a crime scene exception to the Fourth Amendment.
Here, the district court did not apply the inevitable discovery exception “just because
2
The government suggests that Logan forfeited this specific argument, so we
should review for plain error. Logan disagrees and seeks de novo review. We need
not determine which position prevails because the argument fails under any standard.
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a crime had occurred,” as Logan suggests on appeal. Aplt. Br. at 34. Instead, the
district court’s inevitable discovery holding was based on factual findings that law
enforcement would have obtained a valid warrant and uncovered the mushroom
evidence while executing that warrant.
In sum, it is undisputed that law enforcement officers executing a warrant to
search Logan’s mobile home for mushroom, marijuana, and shooting evidence found
the mushroom evidence in the north bedroom. The district court thus had abundant
factual support, rooted in the real-life execution of essentially the same warrant, for
its finding that officers executing a hypothetical warrant to search the mobile home
for solely shooting evidence would have done so on the same timeline and found the
mushroom evidence in the north bedroom. The court did not err by applying the
inevitable discovery exception.
III.
We AFFIRM the district court’s denial of Logan’s motion to suppress.
Entered for the Court
Allison H. Eid
Circuit Judge
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