United States v. Michael Wright

NOT PRECEDENTIAL
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
_____________
No. 10-3552
_____________
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Appellant
v.
MICHAEL WRIGHT and
RANDALL WRIGHT
__________
On Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
(D.C. Nos. 5-09-cr00270-001 & 5-09-cr0027-0002)
District Judge: Honorable Lawrence F. Stengel
__________
Argued on September 20, 2011
Before: AMBRO, CHAGARES and ALDISERT, Circuit Judges.
(Filed: August 16, 2012)
Zane David Memeger, United States Attorney
Robert A. Zauzmer, Assistant United States Attorney (Argued)
Seth Weber, Assistant United States Attorney
Office of the United States Attorney
615 Chestnut Street, Suite 1250
Philadelphia, PA 19106
Counsel for Appellant United States of America
Mark S. Greenberg (Argued)
1429 Walnut Street, Suite 1301
Philadelphia, PA 19102
Counsel for Appellee Michael Wright
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Michael N. Huff
1333 Race Street
Philadelphia, PA 19107
Counsel for Appellee Randall Wright
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OPINION OF THE COURT
__________
ALDISERT, Circuit Judge.
The government appeals from the District Court for the Eastern District of
Pennsylvania‟s grant of Appellees‟ motions to suppress evidence seized from their
apartments after the execution of two search warrants. The District Court held that the
warrants ran afoul of the Fourth Amendment‟s particularity requirement by failing to
“describe . . . the things to be seized,” U.S. Const. amend. IV. Construing our precedent,
the District Court concluded that the warrants‟ facial deficiencies obviated the need to
“consider[][the] [o]fficer[‟s] . . . level of responsibility for the error in this case,” App.
035, and instead, triggered an automatic application of the exclusionary rule.
Although the government concedes that the executed warrants were facially
invalid, it nonetheless challenges the District Court‟s decision to suppress the evidence.
We conclude that the District Court—although its ultimate conclusion may prove to be
correct—erred in holding that the warrants‟ “facial[] invalid[ity]” necessarily required
suppression of the evidence, id., without first engaging in the Supreme Court‟s prescribed
exclusionary rule analysis. We will therefore vacate and remand the case to permit the
District Court to make findings of fact and to perform the requisite analysis.
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I.
Because we write primarily for the parties, who are familiar with the facts and the
proceedings in the District Court, we will revisit them only briefly.
A.
The Wright brothers (Michael and Randall, not the historically famous aviators)
live in apartments one block apart in Allentown, Pennsylvania. In 2008 and 2009, the
Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) suspected the brothers of using the apartments to sell
marijuana. Its suspicions were confirmed in January 2009, when a DEA informant twice
bought a pound of marijuana from Michael Wright. The informant also reported seeing
Randall Wright with large amounts of cash. Swearing to these facts in an affidavit of
probable cause, DEA Agent Jeffrey Taylor sought warrants for the search of the Wrights‟
apartments. A Magistrate Judge issued the warrants on January 27, 2009, and they were
executed the same day.
During the search of Randall Wright‟s apartment, DEA agents recovered four
guns, several boxes of ammunition, about $7,900 in cash, 50 pounds of marijuana, and
assorted drug paraphernalia. In Michael Wright‟s apartment, they found approximately
$1,000 in cash, 43 pounds of marijuana, and assorted drug paraphernalia.
B.
A grand jury indicted the Wrights for violations of various drug and firearms
statutes. Before trial, the Wrights moved to suppress the evidence found, arguing that the
warrants were invalid. The District Court held a suppression hearing, during which Agent
Taylor testified that an ordinary warrant request begins with three documents: an affidavit
of probable cause, a warrant application, and a face sheet. The affidavit of probable cause
sets forth the facts justifying the warrant. The warrant application and face sheet are both
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preprinted forms with blank spaces in which the applicant is instructed to describe the
person or property to be seized. It is common for applicants to fill in these sections by
writing, “See ATTACHMENT A” or “See ATTACHMENT B.” Attachment A is
normally a description of the property to be searched, and Attachment B is normally a
listing of the items to be searched for or seized.
In Agent Taylor‟s experience, a DEA agent ordinarily completes the affidavit of
probable cause, and the United States Attorney‟s Office ordinarily prepares the warrant
application and face sheet. The U.S. Attorney‟s Office then attaches the warrant
application and face sheet to the DEA agent‟s affidavit of probable cause and submits the
entire package to a Magistrate Judge for evaluation. Upon approval, the Magistrate Judge
signs the face sheet, and the face sheet becomes the warrant. The appurtenant documents
(e.g., the affidavit of probable cause, warrant application, and any other supporting
documents) may or may not remain attached to the warrant when it is executed.
Those appear to be the procedures followed in this case: Agent Taylor prepared an
affidavit of probable cause to search the Wrights‟ apartments, and an Assistant United
States Attorney prepared two warrant applications and face sheets and submitted the
entire package to a Magistrate Judge. In this case, however, the Assistant United States
Attorney filled out the items-to-be-seized section of each face sheet with the words, “SEE
ATTACHED AFFIDAVIT OF PROBABLE CAUSE,” and the items-to-be-seized
section of the warrant application with the words, “SEE ATTACHMENT A.”
The problem in this case is that ATTACHMENT A describes the properties to be
searched and not the items to be seized. Although the AFFIDAVIT OF PROBABLE
CAUSE does state the items to be seized, it was removed from the warrants at the
government‟s request, impounded, and sealed before the warrants were executed. As a
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result, although complete when signed by the Magistrate Judge, the final warrants lacked
any description of the items to be seized at the time they were executed.
When asked at the suppression hearing whether he noticed that the warrants lacked
an ATTACHMENT B or any other description of the items to be seized, Agent Taylor
explained that he had been very busy organizing the raids upon the Wrights‟ apartments
and had not noticed the deficiency. He testified that he was “intimately familiar” with the
Fourth Amendment‟s requirement that warrants state with particularity the items to be
seized during a search, but in this case he had relied upon the United States Attorney‟s
office to complete the warrant process properly. App. 105. Although he knew that the
warrants should have included a list of items to be seized, Agent Taylor testified that he
“didn‟t take notice” of the list, or lack thereof, and “just assumed everything that was
supposed to be there was there.” App. 112.
After hearing this evidence, the District Court granted the Wrights‟ suppression
motions. It held that the warrants were invalid because they failed to meet the Fourth
Amendment‟s explicit directive to describe with particularity the items to be seized, and
it rejected the government‟s argument that a good faith exception to the exclusionary rule
should apply because, in the government‟s view, its constitutional violations stemmed
from a “clerical error” rather than police misconduct. The government timely appealed.
II.
The District Court had jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. § 3231. We have jurisdiction
under to 18 U.S.C. § 3731. We apply a mixed standard of review in the suppression
context, reviewing “findings of fact for clear error,” but exercising “plenary review over
its legal conclusions.” United States v. Tracey, 597 F.3d 140, 146 (3d Cir. 2010).
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III.
We agree with the District Court that the warrants in this case—neither of which
described any items to be seized—were invalid on their face. Whether the execution of
the invalid warrants required suppression, however, is a question that requires a more
thorough examination of law enforcement culpability than the inquiry undertaken by the
District Court here. Because we, as a court of review, are not equipped to now find facts
about culpability that would be needed for an exclusionary rule analysis, we will remand.
A government search of a private home presumptively violates the Fourth
Amendment absent exigent circumstances or a valid warrant. See Payton v. New York,
445 U.S. 573, 576 (1980). To be valid, the relevant portion of the Fourth Amendment
requires that a warrant “particularly describ[e] the place to be searched, and the persons
or things to be seized.” U.S. Const. amend. IV (emphases added). The particularity
requirement—“the touchstone of [the] warrant,” Doe v. Groody, 361 F.3d 232, 239 (3d
Cir. 2004)—is satisfied by expressly listing items to be seized or expressly incorporating
by reference an affidavit that lists such items. See Bartholomew v. Pennsylvania, 221
F.3d 425, 428-429 (3d Cir. 2000) (holding that if a warrant‟s particularity depends upon
incorporated documents, those documents must physically accompany the warrant). The
requirement that the warrant particularly describe—rather than imply or assume—the
items to be seized is critical to serving one of the Fourth Amendment‟s key purposes: “to
limit the [searching] agents‟ discretion as to what they are entitled to seize.” Id. at 429.
For that reason, we have imposed two requirements upon warrants that seek to
satisfy the particularity requirement through incorporation by reference to an affidavit.
First, “the warrant must expressly incorporate the affidavit, and the incorporation must be
clear.” Tracey, 597 F.3d at 147 (quotation omitted). Second, the affidavit must
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accompany the warrant; it cannot be impounded and sealed. See Bartholomew, 221 F.3d
at 429-430 (“[W]here the list of items to be seized does not appear on the face of the
warrant, sealing that list, even though it is „incorporated‟ in the warrant, would violate the
Fourth Amendment.”); cf. Groh v. Ramirez, 540 U.S. 551, 558 (2004) (refusing to
consider documents placed under seal because they did not “accompany the warrant”).
The District Court determined that the warrants here were invalid because they did
not particularize the items to be seized from the Wrights‟ apartments. Although the
warrants purported to incorporate by reference Agent Taylor‟s affidavit of probable
cause, that affidavit did not actually accompany the warrants when they were executed
because it was—at the government‟s request—impounded and filed under seal. The face
of each Wright warrant thus lacked any description of the items to be seized, and the
government did not properly incorporate into either warrant any document that satisfied
the Fourth Amendment‟s particularity requirement. As a result, the searches of the
Wrights‟ apartments were essentially “warrantless” within the meaning of the Fourth
Amendment—a fact the government conceded at oral argument.
Although the government concedes that the warrants were defective, it
nevertheless maintains that our holding in Bartholomew—that a warrant is invalid if it
depends entirely upon a sealed affidavit for particularity, 221 F.3d at 428-429—is
“subject to doubt,” Brief for United States 20, and asks us to reconsider whether a sealed
affidavit can satisfy the Fourth Amendment‟s particularity requirement after all.
In Groh, the Supreme Court considered a warrant that not only failed to describe
the items to be seized—like the warrants here—but also failed to incorporate any
document by reference. See 540 U.S. at 558. The Court rejected the argument that an
affidavit of probable cause, presented to the magistrate judge and then filed under seal,
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saved the warrant‟s validity: “The fact that the application adequately described the
„things to be seized‟ does not save the warrant from its facial invalidity. The Fourth
Amendment by its terms requires particularity in the warrant, not in the supporting
documents.” Id. at 557.
The government‟s position is that Groh is distinguishable because the warrant
there did not purport to incorporate other documents, unlike the warrants in this case,
which referred to sealed documents. Based upon this distinction, the government urges us
to reconsider Bartholomew, wherein we stated that if a warrant‟s particularity depends
upon an affidavit of probable cause, the affidavit cannot be filed under seal. 221 F.3d at
428-429. Because the warrant application here ultimately referred to the requisite
information, the government contends that we should view the misstep here as a “clerical
error,” and not a search pursuant to an invalid warrant. Reply Brief for United States 9.
We are not impressed by the government‟s position, for four reasons. First, the
government‟s arguments cannot be reconciled with the plain text of the Constitution.
Documents that do not include a particular description of items to be seized are so
facially deficient that they do not qualify as “warrants” at all. See Groh, 540 U.S. at 558(holding that when a “warrant did not describe the items to be seized at all,” it “was so
obviously deficient that we must regard the search as „warrantless‟”). Applying that rule,
we conclude that the searches here were warrantless within the meaning of the Fourth
Amendment and presumptively invalid. See Payton, 445 U.S. at 576.
Second, volumes of substantial authority support our conclusion. The Supreme
Court has explained that a search was unconstitutional because the warrant failed to
describe items to be seized and “did not incorporate other documents by reference, nor
did either the affidavit or the application (which had been placed under seal) accompany
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the warrant.” Groh, 540 U.S. at 558. Our Court has consistently ruled that a warrant
cannot satisfy the particularity requirement solely by relying upon a sealed affidavit. E.g.,
Bartholomew, 221 F.3d at 429; see also Tracey, 597 F.3d at 147 n.6 (observing that
“because [the incorporated affidavit] was sealed, the Court [in Bartholomew] concluded
that it could not be used to construe the scope of the warrant”). So have our sister Courts
of Appeals.1 All of this authority points to one conclusion: sealed affidavits cannot rescue
a warrant that otherwise lacks particularity.
Third, and contrary to the government‟s contentions, we conclude that Groh does
not support its position whatsoever. The government attempts to distinguish Groh on the
sole ground that the warrant there did not incorporate any documents by reference,
whether sealed or not. But the dispositive fact in Groh was not what documents the
warrant purported to incorporate; it was that the face of the warrant utterly “failed to
identify any of the items” to be seized. 540 U.S. at 554. The Court could not have more
clearly stated its view of that failure‟s effect: “The warrant was plainly invalid.” Id. at
557. The Court explained that a constitutional application for a warrant “does not save
1
See, e.g., United States v. McGrew, 122 F.3d 847, 849 (9th Cir. 1997) (holding that an
incorporated affidavit did not provide particularity because the government “offered no
evidence that the affidavit or any copies were ever attached to the warrant or were present
at the time of the search”); United States v. Dahlman, 13 F.3d 1391, 1395 (10th Cir.
1993) (holding that the government cannot rely upon affidavits not attached to the
warrant itself to satisfy the particularity requirement); United States v. Dale, 991 F.2d
819, 846 (D.C. Cir. 1993) (stating that incorporation of an affidavit provides particularity
only if the affidavit accompanies the warrant); United States v. Morris, 977 F.2d 677, 681
n.3 (1st Cir. 1992) (“An affidavit may be referred to for purposes of providing
particularity if the affidavit accompanies the warrant.”); United States v. Curry, 911 F.2d
72, 77 (8th Cir. 1990) (“[A] description in the supporting affidavit can supply the
requisite particularity” for a valid warrant if “the affidavit accompanies the warrant” and
“the warrant uses suitable words of reference which incorporate the affidavit therein.”)
(internal quotation marks and citations omitted).
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the warrant from its facial invalidity.” Id. We see no reason to reach a different
conclusion here.
Finally, we are not persuaded by the government‟s attempt to attribute the
warrants‟ defects to a “clerical error.” Reply Brief for United States 9. The requirement
that warrants state with particularity items to be seized is not merely clerical. Rather,
“[a]s the text of the Fourth Amendment itself denotes, a particular description is the
touchstone of a warrant.” Doe, 361 F.3d at 239. Indeed, Groh itself stated that a lack of
particularity cannot “be characterized as a mere technical mistake or typographical error.”
540 U.S. at 558. Simply put, there is no such thing as a broad “clerical error” exception to
the government‟s Fourth Amendment obligations.
The bottom line is this: in Groh, the Supreme Court held that if an affidavit of
probable cause that describes items to be seized is presented to a Magistrate Judge, who
authorizes a warrant, but the affidavit is not attached to the warrant and the warrant does
not otherwise list “items to be seized,” the warrant is so “plainly invalid” that a search
conducted pursuant to it is “warrantless.” 540 U.S. at 557-558. In Bartholomew, we held
that an affidavit of probable cause that is filed under seal cannot satisfy a warrant‟s
particularity requirement because such an affidavit is not attached to the warrant. 221
F.3d at 428-429. Nothing in Groh calls Bartholomew into question; each case applies
identical reasoning to similar facts, and each reaches an identical, unremarkable
conclusion: warrants must particularly describe items to be seized. We therefore decline
the government‟s invitation to depart from binding authority.
IV.
Having settled that the warrants were deficient, we turn to the issue of whether
their deficiencies, when coupled with the law enforcement conduct here, require
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suppression of the evidence found during the search. We conclude that the District
Court‟s decision to suppress evidence was premised on an insufficient evaluation of
police culpability and other facts crucial to a determination to exclude evidence. We will,
therefore, remand to the District Court for further analysis.
Although evidence seized pursuant to an invalid warrant may not usually be
admitted at trial, see Payton, 445 U.S. at 576; see also Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S.
383, 398 (1914), “[e]xclusion is not a personal constitutional right, nor is it designed to
redress the injury occasioned by an unconstitutional search,” Davis v. United States, 131
S. Ct. 2419, 2426 (2011). Instead, “[t]he rule‟s sole purpose . . . is to deter future Fourth
Amendment violations.” Id. (citing Herring v. United States, 555 U.S. 135, 141 & n.2
(2009), United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 909, 921, n.22 (1984)), and Elkins v. United
States, 364 U.S. 206, 217 (1960) (“calculated to prevent, not to repair”)).
In Davis, the Supreme Court clarified the two prerequisites for exclusion. First,
because “the sole purpose of the exclusionary rule is to deter misconduct by law
enforcement,” 131 S. Ct. at 2432 (citations omitted), we must determine whether
exclusion would have “[r]eal deterrent value,” id. at 2427. Second, because “exclusion
exacts a heavy toll on both the judicial system and society at large” by “requir[ing] courts
to ignore reliable, trustworthy evidence” and “in many cases . . . setting the criminal
loose in the community without punishment,” “the deterrence benefits of suppression
must outweigh its heavy costs.” Id. (internal citations omitted); see id. at 2436(Sotomayor, J., concurring) (“[T]he ultimate questions have always been, one, whether
exclusion would result in appreciable deterrence and, two, whether the benefits of
exclusion outweigh its costs.” (citations omitted)). Accordingly, “[p]olice practices
trigger the harsh sanction of exclusion only when they are deliberate enough to yield
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„meaningfu[l]‟ deterrence, and culpable enough to be „worth the price paid by the justice
system,‟” id. at 2428 (majority opinion) (quoting Herring, 555 U.S. at 144).
Whether to apply the exclusionary rule depends on an evaluation of the nature of
police conduct. When law enforcement officers “exhibit „deliberate,‟ „reckless,‟ or
„grossly negligent‟ disregard for Fourth Amendment rights, the deterrent value of
exclusion is strong and tends to outweigh the resulting costs.” Davis, 131 S. Ct. at 2427(quoting Herring, 555 U.S. at 144). On the other hand, “when police mistakes are the
result of negligence . . . rather than systemic error or reckless disregard of constitutional
requirements, any marginal deterrence does not „pay its way.‟” Herring, 555 U.S. at 147-
148 (quoting Leon, 468 U.S. at 907 n.6). A district court must assess all of the facts and
circumstances in determining whether the exclusionary rule should apply. See Murray v.
United States, 487 U.S. 533, 543 (1988) (“[I]t is the function of the District Court rather
than the Court of Appeals to determine the facts . . . .”); Pullman-Standard v. Swint, 456
U.S. 273, 291 (1982) (“When an appellate court discerns that a district court has failed to
make a finding because of an erroneous view of the law, the usual rule is that there
should be a remand for further proceedings to permit the trial court to make the missing
findings.”); Myers v. Am. Dental Ass‟n, 695 F.2d 716, 738 (3d Cir. 1982) (“As we have
said innumerable times, it is not the proper role of this court to make findings of fact in
the first instance.”).
Here, the District Court did not undertake this assessment of the facts and
circumstances with respect to the behavior of law enforcement. After recognizing that
exclusion is appropriate only when the level of police culpability is “deliberate, reckless,
or grossly negligent,” Davis, 131 S. Ct. at 2427 (quotations omitted), the District Court
“acknowledge[d] “that the level of „police culpability‟ in this case is low.” App. 035.
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Nevertheless, the Court then concluded the exclusion was required. Indeed, based on its
erroneous assumption that a facially invalid warrant automatically triggered a per se
application of the exclusionary rule, the District Court reasoned that no further
“consideration of Officer Taylor‟s level of responsibility” was necessary. Id.In failing to “consider[] . . . Officer Taylor‟s level of responsibility” and
incorrectly assuming that our precedents stand for the bright-line proposition that
exclusion is always required in instances of a facially invalid warrant, the District Court
erred. First, to the extent that its brief aside that “the level of „police culpability‟ in this
case [was] low” was a factual finding about culpability, id., that statement cannot be
squared with its decision to apply the exclusionary rule. As noted above, only police
behavior that can be characterized as “„deliberate,‟ „reckless,‟ or „grossly negligent‟”
merits exclusion. Davis, 131 S. Ct. at 2427 (quoting Herring, 555 U.S. at 144). Merely
negligent behavior does not. See Herring, 555 U.S. at 147-148. Wherever “low” might
fall on the culpability scale, it does not usually, if ever, refer to grossly negligent
behavior. Without a more thorough factual evaluation, though, we cannot conjecture as to
“low[‟s]” intended meaning here.
Second, the District Court‟s decision to not undertake a factual analysis of
culpability before applying the exclusionary rule seems to be driven, at least in part, by
its misplaced reliance on a statement in our opinion in United States v. Tracey, 597 F.3d
140 (3d Cir. 2010), and a conflation of the similar-but-separate good faith exception and
exclusionary rule doctrines. See App. 035 (citing Tracey). In Tracey and in subsequent
cases we have stated in dicta that the good faith exception will rarely be available in cases
in which “the warrant [is] so facially deficient that it fail[s] to particularize the place to be
searched or the things to be seized.” Virgin Islands v. John, 654 F.3d 412, 418 (3d Cir.
13
2011) (quoting Tracey, 597 F.3d at 151). But, as “the good-faith exception is a judicially
created exception to” the exclusionary rule, Davis, 131 S. Ct. at 2434, although
qualifying for the good faith exception may result in admitting evidence, not qualifying
for it does not mean that the evidence will be suppressed. Hence, the commonsense
acknowledgement that the good faith exception may prove unavailable in a certain set of
cases in no way relieves a court of its responsibility to undertake a culpability analysis
before applying the exclusionary rule.
Rather, a court must always analyze whether the exclusionary rule should apply
before suppressing evidence. Indeed, the exclusionary rule is not “a strict-liability
regime,” Davis, 131 S. Ct. at 2429, and “[n]ot every deficient warrant . . . will be so
deficient that an officer would lack an objectively reasonable basis for relying upon it. . . .
[and] [w]e must consider all of the circumstances, not only the text of the warrant.”
United States v. Otero, 563 F.3d 1127, 1134 (10th Cir. 2009) (quotations omitted).
Accordingly, whether to apply the remedy of exclusion or not ultimately “depend[s] on
the circumstances of the particular case.” Leon, 468 U.S. at 923; see id. at 922 n.23 (“In
making this determination, all of the circumstances . . . may be considered.”); id. at 924-
925 (“[C]ourts have considerable discretion in conforming their decisionmaking
processes to the exigencies of particular cases.”).
Given the tenor and detail of the District Court‟s 31-page opinion, and in light of
its ultimate decision to suppress the evidence, its characterization of the government‟s
misconduct here as exhibiting simply a “low” level of culpability is perplexing. Indeed,
we cannot readily reconcile that statement with the ratio decidendi of the Court‟s opinion
up to that point. Whatever its rationale may have been, though, the District Court simply
did not elaborate on its reasons for that statement, and it did not engage in the required
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analysis to determine whether the exclusionary rule should apply. On appeal, although
our review of the available facts might lead us to reach the same ultimate decision to
suppress the evidence, we are not in a position to reach out and undertake an analysis that
is better left to the District Court in the first instance. See United States v. Master, 614
F.3d 236, 243 (6th Cir. 2010) (“While it appears at first blush that suppression might be
inappropriate in this case, we will remand to the district court for the purpose of re-
examining the facts and balancing the interests as required by Herring.”); United States v.
Julius, 610 F.3d 60, 67, 68 (2d Cir. 2010) (“[O]n remand, the district court may consider
whether the circumstances of this search, considered in their totality, support application
of the exclusionary rule under Herring. . . . Herring requires careful consideration by
district courts of whether the goal of deterring violations of the Fourth Amendment
outweighs the costs to truth-seeking and law enforcement objectives in each case.”).
Accordingly, we will vacate the District Court‟s decision and remand to allow the District
Court to make further findings and to perform the required exclusionary rule analysis.
* * * * *
We have considered all of the arguments advanced by the parties and conclude
that no further discussion is necessary. The judgment of the District Court will be
VACATED and REMANDED for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
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