U.S. v. Hallam

• Decision Date: 17 May 2005
• Docket Number: No. 03-3681.,03-3681.
• Citation: 407 F.3d 942
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Mark Allen HALLAM, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

407 F.3d 942

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Mark Allen HALLAM, Appellant.

No. 03-3681.

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

Submitted: May 12, 2004.

Filed: May 17, 2005.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

David R. Mercer, argued, Asst. Fed. Public Defender, Springfield, MO (Raymond C. Conrad, Jr., Fed. Public Defender, Kansas City, MO, on the brief), for appellant.

Michael A. Jones, argued, Deputy U.S. Atty., Springfield, MO (Philip M. Koppe, Asst. U.S. Atty., Todd P. Graves, U.S. Atty., Kansas City, MO, on the brief), for appellee.

Before MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD, MCMILLIAN, and MELLOY, Circuit Judges.

MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD, Circuit Judge.

Mark Hallam was convicted of two counts of possessing a firearm while being a felon and unlawful user of a controlled substance in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), (3). The firearms at issue were discovered and seized during two searches, separated by several months, that were conducted at Mr. Hallam's home pursuant to state search warrants. The district court¹ denied Mr. Hallam's motion to suppress the firearms, which was based on the alleged insufficiency of the affidavits supporting the two warrants. Mr. Hallam conditionally pleaded guilty to both counts, reserving the right to have this court review the denial of his suppression motion. He now appeals, contending that the district court erred in denying his motion to suppress and in determining his sentence. We affirm.

I.

A.

We first address the district court's refusal to suppress the guns seized from Mr Hallam's residence during the first search. The fourth amendment, applicable to the states through the fourteenth amendment, protects individuals' rights to be secure in their homes against "unreasonable" searches, and provides that "no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation." U.S. Const. amend. IV. It is uncontested that the first search warrant was invalid because the information contained in the affidavit in support of the warrant was insufficient to establish probable cause, and that the search thus violated Mr. Hallam's constitutional rights.

At issue is whether the district court correctly held that the illegally seized evidence was admissible against Mr. Hallam because the warrant, despite its invalidity, was executed in good faith. As a general matter, in the absence of a valid search warrant issued by a detached and neutral magistrate pursuant to his independent determination of probable cause, evidence discovered by the police during a non-consensual search of a defendant's home is not admissible at the defendant's trial, see Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 655-57, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961). The fourth amendment, however, does not itself "expressly preclud[e] the use of evidence obtained in violation of its commands," United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 906, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984), and the Supreme Court has held that evidence obtained by an officer pursuant to an invalid warrant need not be excluded from the prosecution's case-in-chief if the officer's reliance on a magistrate's erroneous probable-cause determination was "objectively reasonable" and manifested "objective good faith," id. at 922-23, 104 S.Ct. 3405. The reasonableness of the execution of the warrant at issue here is a mixed question of law and fact that we review de novo, considering all of the relevant circumstances. See, e.g., United States v. Marion, 238 F.3d 965, 968-69 (8th Cir.2001); United States v. Riedesel, 987 F.2d 1383, 1391 (8th Cir. 1993).

B.

The county prosecutor who applied for the warrant to search Mr. Hallam's residence presented an affidavit signed by Trooper Kelsey Rutledge in support of the application. The affidavit provided the following factual basis for Trooper Rutledge's information and belief that probable cause existed:

[W]ithin the last 6 hours, a cooperating individual advised me in person that he had seen methamphetamine on the dining room table of the Mark Hallam residence.... [T]he cooperating individual had been stopped by me in a traffic stop, and provided this information after I had arrested him for felony driving while revoked ... and had found marijuana on his person in the course of a search incident to arrest. The cooperating individual indicated he had seen the methamphetamine only minutes before, as he had just left the Mark Hallam residence prior to my stopping him.

The affidavit went on to describe the precise location of the "property where the methamphetamine was seen by the confidential informant." Based on this affidavit, a state magistrate signed a search warrant and Trooper Rutledge and other state officials executed the search, during which eight guns were seized.

The district court determined that Trooper Rutledge's affidavit failed to establish probable cause, as it did not include any information regarding the reliability of the unnamed "cooperating individual" or any corroborating information. The court concluded, however, that Mr. Hallam's motion to suppress the evidence obtained through the first search warrant should be denied because Trooper Rutledge had acted in good-faith reliance on the warrant in executing the search. The Supreme Court has noted that the so-called "good faith" exception to the exclusionary rule is broad, advising that "a warrant issued by a magistrate normally suffices to establish that a law enforcement officer has acted in good faith in conducting the search," and thus that exclusion of evidence discovered during the search is inappropriate. Leon, 468 U.S. at 922, 104 S.Ct. 3405 (internal quotations omitted). The Court has made clear, however, that suppression of the fruits of a search conducted pursuant to an invalid warrant remains the appropriate remedy "in cases where the issuing magistrate wholly abandoned his judicial role" or where the warrant is "based on an affidavit so lacking in indicia of probable cause as to render official belief in its existence entirely unreasonable," among other situations. Id. at 923, 104 S.Ct. 3405 (internal quotations omitted). Mr. Hallam contends that the first search warrant exhibits both of these infirmities, and that the district court thus erred in denying his motion to suppress.

C.

Mr. Hallam contends first that Trooper Rutledge's reliance on the warrant was objectively unreasonable because the magistrate abandoned his judicial role in issuing it. Trooper Rutledge met with a prosecutor at about 2:00 AM on the day of the search. They collectively prepared an affidavit and search warrant for the magistrate to sign, and then asked the magistrate to come to the prosecutor's office. Trooper Rutledge testified during the suppression hearing that the issuance of the warrant took place in a "pretty casual atmosphere," that the magistrate had no questions and made no statements about the search warrant or affidavit, and that the magistrate "was anxious to get back to bed."

While the magistrate's relative silence and his desire to return to his slumber might tend to show that he was acting as a mere "rubber stamp" instead of actively making an independent probable cause determination, such behavior is only to be expected from a man who has been rousted out of bed in the middle of the night. There is no indication that the magistrate was biased or impartial, nor is there any evidence of a pattern of passive, automatic issuance of warrants. The record provides only a very limited insight into the magistrate's internal mental processes, and we simply do not have sufficient information to conclude that he "wholly abandoned his judicial role."

D.

Mr. Hallam also contends that the firearms should be suppressed because Trooper Rutledge's affidavit, which provided the only factual basis for the magistrate's probable cause determination, was "so lacking in indicia of probable cause as to render official belief in its existence entirely unreasonable." Both parties agree that the affidavit failed to provide sufficient facts establishing the reliability of the statements of the "cooperating individual." It did, however, provide some fairly specific information in the form of the first-hand observation of the unnamed informant that methamphetamine would be found at the residence of Mr. Hallam; all that was missing was an additional factual basis to corroborate this evidence. We conclude that the affidavit, while scant, was not so utterly lacking in facts as to render Trooper Rutledge's belief that it established probable cause "entirely unreasonable."

E.

Background facts disclosed by Trooper Rutledge during his testimony at the suppression hearing also indicate that he was acting with good faith in relying on the magistrate's probable cause determination. Trooper Rutledge testified that this was the first search warrant that he had sought since beginning his job with the highway patrol. He executed the warrant after two attorneys, the prosecutor and the magistrate, represented to him that the affidavit established probable cause. Trooper Rutledge testified that he believed that he had probable cause to conduct the search, and that he relied upon the fact that the magistrate had signed the warrant. Due to his relative inexperience in dealing with search warrants and his limited legal knowledge, it was reasonable for him to give some deference to the judgment of the prosecutor and the magistrate, and there is no reason to presume that his reliance on their affirmations and on the magistrate's issuance of the warrant was in bad faith.

Prior to the preparation of the affidavit, Trooper Rutledge showed the prosecutor a statement signed by the informant mentioned in the affidavit (who turned out to be Mr. Hallam's brother), which stated that he "saw meth on the table of Mark Hallam tonight on the dinning [sic] room table in two separate bags," and described where Mr. Hallam lived. In addition, the trooper told the prosecutor about a conversation...