U.S. v. Mahoney

• Decision Date: 22 August 1983
• Docket Number: No. 82-1452,82-1452
• Citation: 712 F.2d 956
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Dennis Dean MAHONEY, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 956

712 F.2d 956

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Dennis Dean MAHONEY, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 82-1452.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

Aug. 22, 1983.

Daniel I. Small, Trial Atty., Organized Crime and Racketeering Section, William C. Bryson, Atty., Washington, D.C., for plaintiff-appellant.

Hugh Lowe, Austin, Tex., for defendant-appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas.

Before INGRAHAM, WILLIAMS and HIGGINBOTHAM, Circuit Judges.

PATRICK E. HIGGINBOTHAM, Circuit Judge:

The government appeals under 18 U.S.C. § 3731 from the district court's order suppressing Dennis Mahoney's post-arrest confession "as the fruit of an unlawful arrest." Finding that the actions of the state law enforcement agents, though assumed here to be illegal, were taken in a reasonable and good faith belief that they were legal, we apply the "good faith exception" to the exclusionary rule explicated in United States v. Williams, 622 F.2d 830 (5th Cir.1980) (en banc), and reverse.

On February 24, 1982, a federal grand jury in Austin, Texas, returned an indictment charging twelve defendants with violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1962(d). One of the defendants was named in the indictment as "JOHN DOE, a/k/a 'DENNIS' (last name unknown)." Although state and federal law enforcement officers and government prosecutors involved in the investigation had learned from a co-defendant of the race, height, weight, and hair color of "Dennis," an arrest warrant issued the next day pursuant to the order of a federal magistrate described its subject only as "JOHN DOE a/k/a DENNIS (LNU)." Later that day, law enforcement officers in El Paso arrested another co-defendant who told them that the "Dennis" named in the indictment was Dennis Mahoney and that he worked at a supermarket in Houston. Around 4 p.m., the El Paso officers relayed this information to the Houston Police Department Homicide Squad.

The Houston officers then called the supermarket and obtained Mahoney's home address. Using the same arrest warrant issued earlier that day, five plainclothes officers from the Houston Police Department Homicide Squad and the Texas Department of Public Safety proceeded to Mahoney's home at around 6 p.m. A friend of Mahoney, in response to a knock, opened the door and then stepped back. An officer stepped across the threshold and asked "Who is Dennis?" A man seated about fifteen feet from the door and in sight when the door was opened responded by rising from the sofa. That individual, who proved to be Mahoney, matched the description given before the warrant had been issued. The officers then arrested him without resistance, advised him of his constitutional rights, and drove him to the police station. At the station, the officers again advised him of his rights and began to interrogate him. Several hours later, Mahoney signed an eight-page statement, in which he described his role in a drug-dealing organization and confessed to participating in the execution and burial of two potential drug purchasers.

Mahoney moved before trial to suppress this confession, arguing that the arrest warrant was invalid, that the warrantless entry into Mahoney's apartment and the subsequent arrest violated the fourth amendment, and that the confession was the product of the illegal arrest. The district court granted this motion. It first held that the arrest warrant was invalid because it did not identify Mahoney with "sufficient particularity." Noting that the validity of the arrest by the state officers must be judged under Texas law, the court held that the officers' warrantless entry into the apartment to make the arrest violated both Texas law and the fourth amendment because the government had not shown either exigent circumstances or consensual entry. See Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 100 S.Ct. 1371, 63 L.Ed.2d 639 (1980). It also held that the confession was the "fruit" of the illegal arrest and therefore must be suppressed. Finally, it found that the officers "executed the arrest warrant in the belief that it was valid" but refused to apply a good faith exception to the exclusionary rule because "under Texas law, an arresting officer's good faith does not suffice to purge an unlawful arrest of its illegality insofar as the exclusion of evidence is concerned...."

The government now appeals from this decision. While it characterizes the questions regarding the warrant's validity and the arrest's legality as "close," it does not challenge the district court's conclusions on these points. Instead, it first argues that Mahoney's confession was not "obtained by the exploitation of the illegal police conduct" and thus was not a "fruit" of any fourth amendment violation in the sense of Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963). It also argues that the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule adopted in United States v. Williams, 622 F.2d 830 (5th Cir.1980) (en banc), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 1127, 101 S.Ct. 946, 67 L.Ed.2d 114 (1981), is applicable here. Because we agree that the exclusionary rule is not applicable, we need not and do not reach the question whether the confession was the "fruit" of the illegal arrest.

In arguing that the good faith exception of Williams is not applicable, Mahoney echoes the district court's conclusion that the involvement of state officers triggers the application of state law to this issue and that Texas recognizes no exception to the federal exclusionary rule. ¹ The source of this conclusion is United States v. Garcia, 676 F.2d 1086 (5th Cir.1982). In Garcia, this court noted that when state officers arrest for a federal crime, the legality of the arrest is determined by the law of the state in which the arrest takes place, subject to federal constitutional standards. Id. at 1089. See also United States v. Bowdach, 561 F.2d 1160, 1168 (5th Cir.1977). Because an arrest's legality depends on state law, it followed for the Garcia panel that application of the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule also depends on state law and that Texas, where the arrest occurred, recognizes no such exception. ²

That recent decisions of the Texas courts put in question whether Garcia 's interpretation reflects present Texas law does not require that we repair to an Erie -like exercise. The government's petition for certiorari in Garcia urged error in the application of Texas law to a federal prosecution. On June 21, 1983, the Supreme Court granted the petition, vacated the decision, and remanded to the panel for reconsideration in light of United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798, 102 S.Ct. 2157, 72 L.Ed.2d 572 (1982). See United States v. Garcia, 676 F.2d 1086 (5th Cir.1982), vacated and remanded, --- U.S. ----, 103 S.Ct. 3105, 76 L.Ed.2d ---- (1983). The relevance of Ross to Garcia is plain. Ross determined the scope of a warrantless search of a container in an automobile. In Garcia, a Texas game warden stopped a truck outside of a state park, searched its tank, arguably a container, found marijuana, and arrested its occupants. Bypassing the fourth amendment question, the Garcia panel had analyzed the validity of the game warden's warrantless arrest under state law and held that he lacked statutory authority to arrest for non-game law violations occurring outside of state parks. By remanding Garcia for reconsideration in light of the fourth amendment standards announced in Ross, the Court perforce instructed that state law did not control the case and that the admissibility of evidence depends on the legality of the search and seizure under federal law.

Even if the brevity of the Court's order vacating Garcia garbles its message, it frees this panel to question whether application of the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule in a federal criminal proceeding depends on state law and not federal law. Assuming the threshold proposition that the legality of a state officer's conduct may be measured by state law, a proposition that we do not here decide, ³ it does not follow that state law should govern a federal court's decision whether to admit evidence that is tainted by illegal conduct. In Garcia, the court applied the state's interpretation of the exclusionary rule because it seemed to regard the existence of good faith as integral to the legality of the arrest. We view the inquiry as a distinct inquiry into the utility in a given case of the remedial device of exclusion, a creature of the federal courts. As the Supreme Court recently stated in Illinois v. Gates, --- U.S. ----, ----, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 2324, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983), "The question whether the exclusionary rule's remedy is appropriate in a particular context has long been regarded as an issue separate from the question whether the Fourth Amendment rights of the party seeking to invoke the rule were violated by police conduct." Because it is a creature of the federal courts and because it ought to be applied in a manner that promotes uniformity in federal cases, federal law must guide our decision whether to apply the exclusionary rule whether or not the legality of the underlying arrest or search turns on state law.

Having determined that federal law is the source of any remedial response to an illegal arrest in a federal prosecution, we turn to that law. The en banc court in Williams held that "evidence is not to be suppressed under the exclusionary rule where it is discovered by officers in the course of actions that are taken in good faith and in the reasonable, though mistaken, belief that they are authorized." 622 F.2d at 840. We reasoned:

[T]he exclusionary rule exists to deter willful or flagrant actions by police, not reasonable, good-faith ones. Where the reason for the rule ceases, its application must cease also. The costs to society of applying the rule beyond the purposes it exists to...