United States v. Triplett

• Decision Date: 13 June 2012
• Docket Number: No. 11–60277.,11–60277.
• Citation: 684 F.3d 500
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. Robert Warren TRIPLETT, Jr., Defendant–Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

684 F.3d 500

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee,

v.Robert Warren TRIPLETT, Jr., Defendant–Appellant.

No. 11–60277.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

June 13, 2012.

Clyde McGee, IV (argued), William Chadwick Lamar, Asst. U.S. Attys., Oxford, MS, for Plaintiff–Appellee.

Robert Sneed Laher (argued), Laher Law Firm, Tupelo, MS, for Defendant–Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi.

Before SMITH, GARZA and SOUTHWICK, Circuit Judges.

LESLIE H. SOUTHWICK, Circuit Judge:

Robert Triplett, Jr. pled guilty under a plea agreement to possession of child pornography. His plea was conditioned on retaining the right to challenge the denial of his motion to suppress on appeal. Triplett claims the search warrant that led officers to the pornography violated the Fourth Amendment's particularity and probable cause requirements. We AFFIRM.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

On August 27, 2010, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi sentenced Triplett to 120 months in prison on a single count of knowing possession of a computer containing images of child pornography that had been shipped in interstate commerce. 18 U.S.C. §§ 2252A(a)(5)(B), 2256(8)(A). Before his plea, Triplett filed a motion to suppress. The district court granted that motion in part and denied it in part. Under the terms of his plea bargain, Triplett retained the right to appeal that denial to this court. He has timely exercised that right.

The evidence supporting Triplett's conviction resulted from what began as a state missing-person's investigation. Triplett reported to the Lowndes County Sheriff's Department that his stepdaughter Kaila Morris was missing. The report was made on September 18, 2009, after his wife Bonnie (who is Kaila Morris's mother) asked him to call. Morris was a student at Mississippi State University. The night before the sheriff was contacted, she had been visiting her parents' home in Columbus, Mississippi. At 3:44 p.m., Morris last used her cellular phone and Triplett reports that she left home at 8 p.m. in a dark colored vehicle he did not recognize. Supposedly she left to visit a friend in Alabama. Morris has not been heard from since.

Authorities obtained a search warrant from a Lowndes County Justice Court judge on September 23, 2009. It authorized the seizure at Triplett's house of “[a]ny and all articles of clothing of Kaila Morris, bed sheets, electronic devices, electronic memory devices, cell phones, DNA, hand digging and cutting tools, vehicles, and utility vehicles.” The warrant declared the “public interest to locate Kaila Morris” as its purpose, and incorporated an affidavit setting forth a factual basis titled “Underlying Facts and Circumstances.”

In addition to the information already discussed, this factual basis included other important information. Triplett was thought to have been convicted of rape in Louisiana and to be serving non-adjudicated probation in Mississippi for attempted sexual battery. He reported inappropriately touching Morris. ¹ Recently he had washed her bed sheets. Also included were details of a trip by Triplett to property in Pickens County, Alabama. He told the FBI that the day before her disappearance, Morris had asked him “to check some of her property” in Pickens County. Triplett said he traveled there with an ax and shovel, and that for two hours his four-wheel vehicle had been stuck. Because the property in Pickens County was on the route to Morris's friend's home, Triplett suggested that authorities might check there for her.

An additional fact was a statement from Triplett's wife that her husband “had recently changed the hard drive in his computer.” The affiant, Lowndes County Sheriff Investigator Ryan Rickert, also orally swore to the Justice Court judge that during the earlier investigation of the attempted sexual battery, a search of Triplett's computer had uncovered pornography that, while lawful to possess, depicted scenes of bondage.

The day after obtaining the warrant, on September 24, Rickert and other law enforcement officers executed it at the Triplett residence in Columbus. Among the items seized from the home were pill bottles, external computer storage drives, three laptops, a desktop computer, a Magellan GPS device, a Sony camcorder, a digital camera, three hard drives, a cellular phone, pieces of mattress, blankets and pillows, two shoes retrieved from vehicles, and axes. A forensic investigator at Triplett's residence copied the hard drive of one of the laptops, a Hewlett–Packard Pavilion DV 9000. During a preliminary examination on scene, several images thought to be child pornography were discovered. The computer search was discontinued at that point.

On October 2, a Lowndes County detective obtained a second warrant which authorized “the continuation of the search for information of Morris' whereabouts, other illegal images, and any other contraband” on the Pavilion computer. The warrant stated that the Pavilion was believed to “contain images of Child Pornography.” A search that day uncovered 403 suspected image files. Based on this evidence, a third warrant was obtained on November 9 authorizing that the cellular phone, the desktop, and two other laptops be fully searched. Approximately 375 additional such images were found. Between the second and third warrants, on October 3, Mississippi authorities arrested Triplett on the state charge of child exploitation, which criminalizes possession of child pornography. See Miss.Code Ann. § 97–5–33.

A federal grand jury indicted Triplett on November 5, 2009, on the child pornography offense. On February 2, 2010, Triplett filed a motion challenging the validity of the first warrant, the search and seizure of the Pavilion laptop, and the seizure of the other computers. He moved to suppress all the images recovered as the fruit of an unconstitutional search, on the ground that the first warrant lacked the probable cause and particularity the Fourth Amendment demands. The district court conducted a suppression hearing and heard from six witnesses.

The district court denied suppression as to the images. The only issue in this appeal is whether that determination was correct.²

DISCUSSION

In an appeal from the denial of a motion to suppress, we review fact-finding for clear error and conclusions of law de novo. United States v. Gray, 669 F.3d 556, 562 (5th Cir.2012). Whether the facts establish probable cause is a legal question. United States v. Hearn, 563 F.3d 95, 103 (5th Cir.2009). When, as here, officers rely on a duly authorized search warrant, we review “the district court's evaluation of officers' objective reasonableness de novo.” United States v. Payne, 341 F.3d 393, 399 (5th Cir.2003).

The issuance of a warrant by a non-biased magistrate is the “clearest indication” that officers proceeded “in an objectively reasonable manner, or as [courts] have sometimes put it, in ‘objective good faith,’ ” but the existence of such a warrant “does not end the inquiry into objective reasonableness.” Messerschmidt v. Millender, ––– U.S. ––––, 132 S.Ct. 1235, 1245, 182 L.Ed.2d 47 (2012); id. at 1245 n. 1. “If subjective good faith alone were the test, the protections of the Fourth Amendment would evaporate, and the people would be ‘secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,’ only in the discretion of the police.” United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 915 n. 13, 104 S.Ct. 3430, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984) (quotation marks and citation omitted).

The good-faith exception requires answering the question of “whether a reasonably well-trained officer would have known that the search was illegal despite the magistrate's authorization.” Id. at 922 n. 23, 104 S.Ct. 3430. We have held there is no good faith if one of four circumstances exists:

(1) If the issuing magistrate/judge was misled by information in an affidavit that the affiant knew was false or would have known except for reckless disregard of the truth; (2) where the issuing magistrate/judge wholly abandoned his or her judicial role; (3) 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; and (4) where the warrant is so facially deficient in failing to particularize the place to be searched or the things to be seized that the executing officers cannot reasonably presume it to be valid.

Payne, 341 F.3d at 399–400. Triplett initially challenged the search warrant on the basis that Investigator Rickert had made false statements in his sworn affidavit. The district court agreed there were inaccuracies but found none of those statements were made “with reckless disregard or intentional falsity.” Such a finding will not be set aside unless clearly erroneous. United States v. Looney, 532 F.3d 392, 395 (5th Cir.2008). Triplett has offered nothing in that respect. Because there were no intentionally or recklessly false statements by law enforcement, we “consider the entire affidavit—without any excision—under the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule.” Id. at 394.

I. Particularity

The Fourth Amendment requires that warrants “particularly describ [e] the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” U.S. Const. amend. IV. Some interpretation is unavoidable. Officers are “not obliged to interpret [the warrant] narrowly.” United States v. Hill, 19 F.3d 984, 987 (5th Cir.1994). Reasonable specificity is required, not “elaborate detail.” Id.

Triplett's challenge is that the terms “electronic devices,” and “electronic memory devices” in the warrant were too open-ended to limit officers' discretion to only those objects lawfully seized. See Williams v. Kaufman Cnty., 352 F.3d 994, 1005 (5th Cir.2003). To avoid fatal generality, the place and items to be seized must “be described with sufficient particularity so as to leave nothing to the discretion of...