Blight v. City of Manteca

• Decision Date: 11 December 2019
• Docket Number: No. 17-17334,17-17334
• Citation: 944 F.3d 1061
• Parties: Joanne BLIGHT, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CITY OF MANTECA, a municipal corporation; Armando Garcia, Manteca Police Department Detective; Ian Osborn, Manteca Police Department Detective; Chris S. Mraz, Manteca Police Department Sergeant; Paul Carmona, Manteca Police Department Sergeant, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

944 F.3d 1061

Joanne BLIGHT, Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.CITY OF MANTECA, a municipal corporation; Armando Garcia, Manteca Police Department Detective; Ian Osborn, Manteca Police Department Detective; Chris S. Mraz, Manteca Police Department Sergeant; Paul Carmona, Manteca Police Department Sergeant, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 17-17334

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted September 13, 2019 San Francisco, California

Filed December 11, 2019

Jeff Dominic Price (argued), Santa Monica, California, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Lori A. Sebransky (argued) and Kevin P. Allen, Allen Glaessner Hazelwood & Werth LLP, San Francisco, California, for Defendants-Appellees.

Before: Ronald M. Gould, Carlos T. Bea, and Michelle T. Friedland, Circuit Judges.

GOULD, Circuit Judge:

Plaintiff-Appellant Joanne Blight challenges the issuance and execution of a search warrant on her home and her detention incident to the search as unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment. The district court granted summary judgment to Defendants-Appellees City of Manteca and Manteca Police Department officials Armando Garcia, Ian Osborn, Chris S. Mraz, and Paul Carmona. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291, and we affirm.

I

A

In September 2014, Defendants Armando Garcia and Ian Osborn, detectives with the Manteca Police Department, met with a confidential informant¹ who had information on an illegal marijuana operation run by Marlin Lee Ford on his 4.26-acre rural property in Stockton, California. The informant had provided Garcia with truthful and reliable information on other marijuana operations in the past. The informant was not paid for the information, but there was a leniency arrangement related to whether other conduct would be treated as felonies or misdemeanors if the informant provided the Government information helpful to further drug investigations.

The informant provided the detectives with extensive firsthand knowledge of Ford’s operation: the informant had known Ford for more than ten years from the informant’s activities in the marijuana industry; the informant had helped Ford grow and process marijuana on Ford’s property; the informant knew where to find Ford’s property and could describe the property in detail; and the informant said there were guns and large dogs on the property. Detective Garcia checked a private database to which the Manteca Police Department subscribes and motor vehicle records to corroborate that Ford lived at the property the informant had described, which was located at 5858 E. Carpenter Road.

Detectives Garcia and Osborn drove with the informant to the property.² The informant identified 5858 E. Carpenter Road as the correct property. Garcia showed the informant Ford’s DMV photo, and the informant identified Ford.

From the road, Garcia observed a long driveway leading from the street to the property, a locked gate at the start of the driveway, and a tall fence surrounding the property. The fence extended up to ten feet high with an extension made of ad hoc materials, and it enclosed the entire property. Osborn testified that, in his training and experience, the character of the fence and its ad hoc extension were suggestive of an illegal marijuana grow.

The detectives could not see the interior of the property because of the fence, but someone in the car opened Google Maps on his or her cell phone and brought up an aerial image of the property. The informant identified the field where the marijuana was being grown and two residences. The informant explained that Ford and his family lived in the main house and Nicolas Serrano, who helped Ford with the marijuana operation, lived in the mobile home.³ It is disputed whether the informant told the detectives that Joanne and Dallas Blight, Ford’s mother and stepfather, also lived on the property. But resolving that dispute in the light most favorable to Blight, the informant told Garcia that the Blights lived somewhere on the property.

Detective Garcia filled out an application for a warrant to search Ford’s property. He attached to the application a Google Maps aerial view of the property, which he noted was consistent with the informant’s description that there were two modular homes on the property. The search warrant affidavit stated that the informant had told Garcia that Ford, his wife, and two adult children lived in one of the modular homes, and that Serrano lived in the other one. In the affidavit, Garcia explained that, in his knowledge, training, and experience, marijuana grown outside will typically be harvested and processed in garages or residences to avoid police detection, and that other types of evidence related to marijuana cultivation and sales also often can be found in residences. The premises to be searched included the "two modular homes, chicken coops and a small barn and various outbuildings."

A California superior court judge met with Garcia for about thirty minutes, reviewed the warrant application, and issued the warrant. Detective Garcia also requested and gained approval for SWAT officers to assist the police officers with executing the warrant because of the circumstances of the large property, its fence and gate fortification, and the expected presence of dogs and firearms.

B

At about 7:00am on October 23, 2014, Manteca police and SWAT officers executed the search warrant. SWAT officers drove down the driveway in two armored vehicles and breached the locked gate. Once on the property, SWAT officers made announcements over the PA system for the occupants to exit the residences. Serrano left the main house, followed by his two children; Serrano was promptly placed under arrest.

Serrano’s wife was not on the property at the beginning of the search, but she drove up to the driveway soon after the search began. She told Detective Garcia that an elderly woman, Joanne Blight, was inside the mobile home.⁴ SWAT officers again made announcements over the PA system, and also at the front door of the mobile home ordering Blight to exit. After there were six minutes with no response, SWAT officers breached the mobile home’s front door with a ram. After initially retreating to a back room, Blight exited her home three minutes after the officers breached the front door.

Once Blight was outside, officers told her that if she did not get into the police car she would be handcuffed. Blight got into the police car, and officers drove her to the street for the duration of the search. Blight was never physically searched or handcuffed. The dispatch transcription log recorded the total time of Blight’s detention as 20 to 30 minutes; Blight remembers being detained for almost an hour.

The police recovered 23 pounds of marijuana, 8 marijuana plants, 134 pounds of processed marijuana, 251 grams of loose marijuana shake, 78 grams of marijuana buds, measurement scales, currency, and 27 rounds of ammunition from various parts of the property. The police did not recover any evidence or contraband from the mobile home.

It later became known that the Blights had lived in and owned the mobile home since 1997. The mobile home had a dwelling use permit and an assigned address of 5846 E. Carpenter Road, but the land on which the mobile home was sited had the parcel’s address of 5858 E. Carpenter Road. Ford owns the property and lived with his immediate family in the main house from 1996 until 2012 but did not live there at the time of the search. Serrano lived in the main house from 2012 through the time of the search to help maintain the property for Ford.

C

Blight filed a complaint against the City of Manteca and individually named Manteca Police Department detectives and sergeants, asserting Fourth Amendment violations under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and state law violations. Following discovery, Defendants filed a motion for summary judgment. The district court granted the motion for summary judgment on Blight’s claims under § 1983 and declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over Blight’s state law claims. Blight appeals the grant of summary judgment.⁵

II

We review a district court’s grant of summary judgment de novo . Ewing v. City of Stockton , 588 F.3d 1218, 1223 (9th Cir. 2009). We affirm a district court’s grant of a motion for summary judgment "if the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a) ; see Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc. , 477 U.S. 242, 248–50, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986) ("If the evidence is merely colorable, or is not significantly probative, summary judgment may be granted." (internal citations omitted)).

III

A

Blight claims that the search warrant was overbroad because there was no probable cause to search her mobile home.⁶ The superordinate and controlling issue here is thus whether there was probable cause to search the mobile home. We hold that there was.

To be reasonable under the Fourth Amendment, a search warrant must not be overbroad; its breadth must be limited to the scope of the probable cause on which the warrant was based. In re Grand Jury Subpoenas , 926 F.2d 847, 856–57 (9th Cir. 1991). To determine whether a warrant was overbroad, we review, with deference, whether the issuing judge had a substantial basis to conclude that the affidavit supporting the search warrant established probable cause. United States v. Angulo-Lopez , 791 F.2d 1394, 1396 (9th Cir. 1986). Probable cause "is not a high bar." Kaley v. United States , 571 U.S. 320, 338, 134 S.Ct. 1090, 188 L.Ed.2d 46 (2014). A search warrant affidavit will demonstrate probable cause "if, under the totality of the circumstances, it reveals a fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime will be found in a particular place." United States v. Celestine , 324 F.3d 1095, 1102 (9th Cir. 2003). What is needed is only a fair probability, and not a certainty, that evidence of crime or contraband will be found. See Illinois v. Gates , 462...