U.S. v. Riley

• Decision Date: 22 June 1990
• Docket Number: D,No. 575,575
• Citation: U.S. v. Riley, 906 F.2d 841 (2nd Cir. 1990)
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellant, v. William RILEY, Defendant-Appellee, Norman Burnett, Jeffrey Sizemore, Vincent Mazza, Defendants. ocket 89-1387.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

Page 841

906 F.2d 841

UNITED STATES of America, Appellant, v.William RILEY, Defendant-AppelleeNorman Burnett, Jeffrey Sizemore, Vincent Mazza, Defendants.

No. 575, Docket 89-1387.

United States Court of Appeals Second Circuit.

Argued Jan. 8, 1990.

Decided June 22, 1990.

Thomas D. Anderson, Asst. U.S. Atty., Burlington, Vt. (George J. Terwilliger, III, U.S. Atty., David J. Kirby, Chief, Criminal Div., Burlington, Vt., on the brief), for appellant.

Stephen Stein, Las Vegas, Nev. (David Z. Chesnoff, Las Vegas, Nev., on the brief), for defendant-appellee.

Before MESKILL and NEWMAN, Circuit Judges, and WEINSTEIN, District Judge.^*

JON O. NEWMAN, Circuit Judge:

The United States appeals from the August 1, 1989, order of the District Court for the District of Vermont(Franklin S. Billings, Jr., Chief Judge), suppressing items seized pursuant to two search warrants.See18 U.S.C. Sec. 3731(1988).The warrants, issued by a magistrate, authorized searches of the home of defendantWilliam Riley and of a storage locker that Riley had rented.Among the items suppressed were financial records, firearms, and a rental agreement for the storage locker, all seized from the residence, and three kilograms of cocaine, seized from the storage locker.The District Court held the residence warrant partially unsupported by probable cause and insufficiently particularized, and the locker warrant unsupported by probable cause and tainted as a product of the invalid residence search.We reverse.

Background

Riley, a Vermont resident, and Vincent Mazza, a Florida resident, had been the subjects of a narcotics investigation since September 1988.Based on evidence from informants, surveillance, telephone toll records, and court-authorized wiretaps, agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration determined that Riley and Mazza had previously brought multi-kilogram quantities of cocaine into Vermont and were planning a 1,200 pound marijuana deal.In December, Riley and Mazza were arrested in a Vermont hotel room; in plain view was a large amount of money paid by Riley for the first 200 pounds of the planned marijuana shipment.

At the time of Riley's arrest, agents applied for a warrant to search his home in Underhill, Vermont.In a detailed 25-page affidavit, a DEA agent recounted the investigation of Riley and Mazza, including information that in August 1988 Mazza had sold 20 kilograms of cocaine to contacts in Vermont, including Riley, that in September and October Riley had negotiated with Mazza for an additional 30 to 50 kilograms of cocaine, and that in December Riley had received a large quantity of marijuana from Mazza.The affidavit also reported that in connection with the recent marijuana shipment, Riley received an out-of-state rental vehicle from Mazza, drove it to his home in Underhill, Vermont, and later the same night returned the vehicle, along with a cash payment, to Mazza's hotel.In addition to facts specific to the Riley/Mazza investigation, the affidavit also recounted the agent's unsurprising knowledge that drug traffickers often maintain records of their transactions, launder the proceeds of drug transactions, and secrete drugs, drug proceeds, drug records, and firearms at their homes and stash houses.

Based on the affidavit, the magistrate issued a warrant authorizing a search of Riley's home and the seizure of

evidence of the offense of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, namely cocaine, and marihuana, firearms, instrumentalities of cocaine and marihuana distribution such as scales, dilution or "cut" materials, packaging materials, telephone and/or address books and lists, telephone toll records,

and the following items, which were deemed insufficiently particularized by the District Court:

records of the distribution of cocaine including records of distribution made and/or payments given or received, the investment of proceeds of drug trafficking in tangible or intangible objects and things, including but not limited to, bank records, brokerage house records, business records, safety deposit box keys or records and other items that constitute evidence of the offenses of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances and distribution of the same[.]

Upon executing the warrant, agents found 36 pounds of marijuana, firearms, and an agreement between Riley and a Burlington, Vermont, storage company for rental of a storage locker.The agents also found 96 pounds of marijuana in the rental car that Riley had received from Mazza.The agents then applied to the magistrate for a warrant to search the storage locker.The affidavit in support of this warrant incorporated the allegations of the first affidavit and added the discovery of the marijuana and the locker rental agreement, and information that Riley had been at the locker three weeks prior to his arrest.The magistrate issued a warrant to search the locker and to seize items described in the same language as that used in the warrant for the search of Riley's home.A search of the locker resulted in the seizure of three kilograms of cocaine.

District Court Ruling.With respect to the home warrant, the District Court ruled that there was no probable cause to believe that firearms were located in Riley's home.The Court also ruled that part of the language of the warrant was insufficiently particularized, especially the phrase authorizing seizure of "evidence of ... the investment of proceeds of drug trafficking in tangible or intangible objects and things, including but not limited to, bank records, brokerage house records, business records[, and] safety deposit box keys and records."However, the Court found that some of the language describing items to be seized was sufficiently particularized, including the phrase "other items that constitute evidence of the offenses of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances and distribution of the same."Concluding that the defects in the warrant should have been apparent to a reasonably well-trained agent, the Court ruled that the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule for seizures pursuant to warrants was unavailable, seeUnited States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 82 L.Ed.2d 677(1984), and suppressed the firearms and the storage locker rental agreement.

With respect to the storage locker warrant, the Court ruled that seizure of the rental agreement was not called for by any valid portion of the home warrant, that the storage locker warrant was therefore the fruit of the partially invalid search of the home, that, even with the rental agreement, there was no probable cause to believe that drugs were located in the storage locker, and that the good-faith exception of Leon was inapplicable to this search as well.The Court therefore suppressed the cocaine found in the locker.

On appeal, the Government does not seek review of the conclusion that probable cause to search the home for firearms was lacking, but defends seizure of the firearms from the home on the basis of the Leon good-faith exception and on the further ground that the firearms were in plain view.To support seizure of the cocaine from the storage locker, the Government contends that the rental agreement was in plain view, that the "records" language of the home warrant was sufficiently particularized, that there was probable cause to believe that cocaine was in the storage locker, and that the Leon good-faith exception is applicable.

Discussion

We consider first the particularity issue, to which the parties have devoted primary attention.As the District Court noted, the particularity requirement guards against general searches that leave to the unguided discretion of the officers executing the warrant the decision as to what items may be seized.SeeAndresen v. Maryland, 427 U.S. 463, 480, 96 S.Ct. 2737, 2748, 49 L.Ed.2d 627(1976);Marron v. United States, 275 U.S. 192, 195-96, 48 S.Ct. 74, 75-76, 72 L.Ed. 231(1927).

In considering the District Court's application of this requirement to the language of the warrant to search Riley's home, we encounter two puzzling aspects of the Court's opinion.First, the Court appears to have misread one portion of the warrant.Focusing on the phrase authorizing seizure of "records of ... the investment of proceeds of drug trafficking in tangible or intangible objects and things,"¹the Court concluded that this phrase left the officers free to search through all of Riley's papers "trying to determine--without any guidance--whether or not any particular paper constitutes 'tangible or intangible' evidence of the investment of drug proceeds."Whatever the uncertainty confronting the officers, a matter we consider below, it did not concern determining whether a piece of paper constitutes tangible or intangible evidence of invested drug proceeds.The warrant did not call for seizure of tangible or intangible evidence of investments; the phrase "tangible or intangible" described the objects or things in which the drug proceeds were invested.

Second, the Court's view that the language describing investment proceeds records was too broad appears unrelated to its conclusion that the storage locker rental agreement was improperly seized.This agreement was within a category of items that the Court ruled was sufficiently described in the warrant--namely, "items that constitute evidence of the offenses of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances."With respect to a person who has negotiated for the acquisition of, and accepted delivery of large quantities of narcotics, a rental agreement for a storage locker in a nearby town is evidence of a conspiracy to distribute drugs.

In any event, we disagree with the District Court that the warrant's description of the category of records that could be seized was insufficiently particularized.In upholding broadly worded categories of items available for seizure, we have noted that the language of a warrant is to be construed in...