U.S. v. Maggitt

• Decision Date: 16 December 1985
• Docket Number: No. 85-4205,85-4205
• Citation: 778 F.2d 1029
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Willie B. MAGGITT, a/k/a Willie B. Madgett, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 1029

778 F.2d 1029

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Willie B. MAGGITT, a/k/a Willie B. Madgett, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 85-4205.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

Dec. 16, 1985.

Robert McDuff, University, Miss. (Court Appointed), for defendant-appellant.

Glen H. Davidson, U.S. Atty., John R. Hailman, Asst. U.S. Atty., Oxford, Miss., for plaintiff-appellee.

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

Before GOLDBERG, RANDALL and JOHNSON, Circuit Judges.

RANDALL, Circuit Judge.

Willie B. Maggitt appeals from an order of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi denying his motion to suppress tangible evidence seized on authority of a search warrant. He asserts that the warrant was flawed because the affidavit on which it was based was insufficient. Even if Maggitt is correct that police violated his fourth amendment rights, however, suppression of the evidence would not be appropriate in light of the principles set forth in United States v. Leon, --- U.S. ----, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984). Therefore, we affirm.

I.

The following facts were developed from testimony and exhibits introduced during an evidentiary hearing. On August 30, 1984, a man with a pistol robbed a bank in Oakland, Mississippi. Witnesses inside and outside the bank provided police with a detailed description of the robber. The man wore tan work clothes and a blue ski mask (which he discarded upon leaving the bank) and carried a blue gym bag with yellow trim. He fired the weapon once into the ceiling of the bank during the robbery. He escaped with about $12,000 in cash in a blue or black car driven by another individual. Some of the bills were marked.

State and federal law enforcement officials immediately began an investigation of the crime. The next day, on August 31, 1984, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents Kenneth Hughes and Wayne Tichenor, Mississippi Highway Patrol Investigator Jay Clark, and Yalobusha County Sheriff Lloyd Defer jointly sought a search warrant from a Grenada, Mississippi, city judge, Sam Waits. The affidavit in support of the warrant, hand-written on a standard form used to secure state warrants in Mississippi, sought permission to search a house in Grenada occupied by Willie Maggitt and his sister Shirley Maggitt. The full text of the "underlying facts and circumstances" represented by the officers to be true is reproduced in the margin. ¹

In short, paragraph two of the affidavit stated "[i]nvestigation at Grenada, Mississippi determined that" Maggitt fit the physical description of the robber, that he had a record for armed robbery, and that his brother was in a local jail that issued clothes that matched those used by the robber. Further, paragraph three stated "investigation determined that" Maggitt had about $1,000 in $100 bills on the afternoon of August 30, and on that afternoon he bought a diamond ring and took out of a pawn shop several gold chains, including one that he had pawned the previous day. The affidavit stated in its fourth paragraph "investigation determined that" on August 30, Maggitt counted out about $9,000 in cash at his sister's house, and he gave his sister $500. The fifth paragraph stated "investigation determined that" a witness to the robbery, Kenneth Leland, saw on August 31 the automobile used in the getaway and reported its license plate number to police. The sixth paragraph states that "witnesses" saw the robber "prior to the robbery," and "one witness" picked Maggitt's picture out of an array. Finally, the seventh paragraph states that on August 30, Maggitt's brother, Tommy, was bailed out of county jail by Tommy's wife after earlier unsuccessful attempts. She paid $1,000 in cash, in $100 and $50 bills. Apart from the witness named Leland, no other witnesses are identified. The affidvait does not disclose sources for much of the information.

The meeting between the officers and Judge Waits at about 5:30 p.m. on August 31 was not recorded. Judge Waits testified at the suppression hearing as to what transpired at the meeting. According to his testimony, Judge Waits read the affidavit, and "noticed where they kept saying 'investigation revealed, investigation determined.' " He asked the officers several questions about the sources of the information in order to "get them down into specifics." The officers identified bank employees as sources for some of the information, and they told Judge Waits that they had talked directly to the individual who saw cash being counted out at Maggitt's sister's house. In short, Judge Waits "made them go into much more detail on what they did, parties they talked to. They didn't name names, but just the people they got the information from, like employees at the bank or people on the scene." After the police "[went] into much more detail on what they did," Judge Waits concluded that there was probable cause to search Maggitt's house, and he signed a search warrant.

State and federal law enforcement officials executed the warrant later in the day on August 31. The return states that, among other things, they seized $8,355 in cash. Maggitt subsequently was arrested, and a federal indictment was handed down charging him with conspiracy to commit armed bank robbery, 18 U.S.C. Secs. 371, 2113; unlawful possession of a handgun by a convicted felon, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 922(h); and armed bank robbery, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2113.

Maggitt's able counsel filed a motion to suppress the fruits of the search, contending that the affidavit was flawed in that it did not name the sources of its information. The government responded that the affidavit provided ample probable cause, but that even if it did not, under the Supreme Court's decision in Leon, suppression was not mandated. The district judge determined in a written order after an evidentiary hearing that the affidavit "fails constitutional muster" under the test set forth in Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983). The district judge ruled that "the conclusory phrase 'investigation revealed' which was not supplemented by sworn oral testimony before the magistrate revealing the 'basis of knowledge' and its 'reliability' was simply inadequate," and probable cause to issue the warrant therefore was absent. Nevertheless, the district judge declined to suppress the evidence, because "the officers who executed the warrant in question had an objectively reasonable good-faith reliance on the warrant."

Maggitt subsequently entered a conditional guilty plea to counts one and three of the indictment, preserving his right to appeal the adverse ruling on his motion to suppress. Fed.R.Crim.P. 11(a)(2). The district court sentenced him to three years incarceration on count one and fifteen years incarceration on count three, the sentences to run concurrently.

II.

The first issue briefed by the parties is whether the city judge properly issued the search warrant under the standard of Illinois v. Gates. Maggitt argues that the affidavit failed on its face to establish probable cause, ² because the affidavit did not disclose the sources of some of the information set forth in it. See generally Giordenello v. United States, 357 U.S. 480, 486, 78 S.Ct. 1245, 1250, 2 L.Ed.2d 1503 (1958); United States v. Holmes, 521 F.2d 859, 871-72 (5th Cir.1975), aff'd en banc in pertinent part, 537 F.2d 227, 228 & n. 2 (5th Cir.1976).

A determination that probable cause is lacking is not always necessary before reaching the issue of the objective good-faith exception of Leon. United States v. Gant, 759 F.2d 484, 486 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 106 S.Ct. 149, 88 L.Ed.2d 123 (1985). However, bypassing a review of the probable cause determination may not be appropriate in certain cases, because reviewing courts should provide guidance on the limits of the fourth amendment. Justice White, who later authored the Leon majority opinion, advanced in a concurring opinion in Illinois v. Gates considerations that reviewing courts should take into account in deciding the objective good faith issue without addressing the question of whether a fourth amendment violation has occurred:

When a Fourth Amendment case presents a novel question of law whose resolution is necessary to guide future action by law enforcement officers and magistrates, there is sufficient reason for the Court to decide the violation issue before turning to the good-faith question. Indeed, it may be difficult to determine whether the officers acted reasonably until the Fourth Amendment issue is resolved. In other circumstances, however, a suppression motion poses no Fourth Amendment question of broad import--the issue is simply whether the facts in a given case amounted to probable cause--in these cases, it would be prudent for a reviewing court to immediately turn to the question of whether the officers acted in good faith. Upon finding that they had, there would generally be no need to consider the probable cause question.

462 U.S. at 264-65, 103 S.Ct. at 2346 (White, J., concurring in the judgment).

This case raises only relatively well-settled fourth amendment principles. It does not raise a question of "broad import." Rather, the fourth amendment issue is whether the attributed facts set forth in the affidavit rise to the level of probable cause. Under these circumstances, it is appropriate to turn to the issue of the law enforcement officials' objective good-faith reliance on the warrant without deciding whether the warrant was issued on a showing of probable cause.

III.

Even if Maggitt's fourth amendment right to have his house searched only upon a valid determination of probable cause was violated, whether to exclude the evidence from Maggitt's trial is an entirely separate issue. In United States v. Leon, the Supreme Court created what has come to be known as the "good-faith exception" to the exclusionary...