Published United States Court of Appeals For The Fourth Circuit
Published United States Court of Appeals For The Fourth Circuit
Published United States Court of Appeals For The Fourth Circuit
No. 94-5764
OPINION
ERVIN, Circuit Judge:
Appellant Lauren Eric Wilhelm appeals the district court's denial
of his motion to suppress evidence seized under a search warrant.
State police obtained the warrant based only on a vague tip from an
anonymous, unproven informant. We conclude that the warrant was
not supported by probable cause and that the constitutionality of the
search may not be established by the good faith exception set forth
in United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897 (1984). Therefore, we reverse
the district court decision and remand for further proceedings.
I.
The facts of this case, as set forth in the appellant's brief and "accept[ed] and adopt[ed]" by the government, are as follows:
On March 7, 1994, Detective Sandy Proctor of the Iredell
County Sheriff's Office applied for a search warrant to
search the home of the Appellant, Lauren Eric Wilhelm. On
that same day, Proctor had received a telephone call from an
individual who stated that he or she had observed marijuana
in Wilhelm's home. In the affidavit for the warrant, Proctor
stated the following:
On 3-7-94 applicant received information from a
reliable source who is a concerned citizen, a resident of Iredell County, a mature person with personal connections with the suspects and has
projected a truthfull [sic] demeanor to this applicant. Informant stated to applicant the directions to
this residence and the directions have been confirmed to be true by the applicant through surveillance on this date. The informant described the
substance he/she believed to be marijuana and the
informants [sic] description is consistent with the
applicants [sic] knowledge of marijuana. Informant described transactions between residents and
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II.
Issues of law are reviewed de novo. Bose Corp. v. Consumers
Union of the United States, Inc., 466 U.S. 485 (1984); Rawl v. United
States, 778 F.2d 1009 (4th Cir. 1985), cert. denied, 479 U.S. 814
(1986). A district court's determination of probable cause under the
Fourth Amendment is an issue of law, and is thus reviewed de novo.
United States v. Miller, 925 F.2d 695, 698 (4th Cir. 1991).
When reviewing the probable cause supporting a warrant, a reviewing court must consider only the information presented to the magistrate who issued the warrant. United States v. Blackwood, 913 F.2d
139, 142 (4th Cir. 1990).
A.
Search warrants must be supported by probable cause to satisfy the
dictates of the Fourth Amendment. United States v. Harris, 403 U.S.
573, 577 (1971). The Supreme Court addressed "the application of the
Fourth Amendment to a magistrate's issuance of a search warrant on
the basis of a partially corroborated anonymous informant's tip" in
Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 217 (1983). An Illinois police department received an anonymous letter alleging that a Bloomington couple was involved in drug dealing; the letter specifically detailed how
the couple travelled to Florida to buy drugs. Id . at 225. The police surveilled the couple and substantially corroborated the information in
the letter. Id. at 225-27.
The Supreme Court agreed with the Illinois Supreme Court that the
letter standing alone could not provide probable cause to believe that
drugs could be found in the couple's car and home:"The letter provides virtually nothing from which one might conclude that its author
is either honest or his information reliable; likewise, the letter gives
absolutely no indication of the basis for the writer's predictions
regarding the Gateses' criminal activities." Id. at 227; see also United
States v. Miller, 925 F.2d 695, 698 (4th Cir.) ("An informant's tip is
rarely adequate on its own to support a finding of probable cause."),
cert. denied, 502 U.S. 833 (1991).
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("`physical entry of the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed'" (quoting United States v.
United States Dist. Court, 407 U.S. 297, 313 (1972))); United States
v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543, 561 (1976) (the right to "sanctity
of private dwellings," has been held to be the right "ordinarily
afforded the most stringent Fourth Amendment protection");
Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505, 511 (1961) ("At the very
core [of the Fourth Amendment] stands the right of a man to retreat
into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental
intrusion.").
The minimal corroboration provided in this case simply was insufficient. The conclusion that an informant is reliable and mature based
only on brief telephone conversations is dubious, and the affidavit
does not disclose any basis for Proctor's conclusion that her tipster
was a "concerned citizen." Moreover, the only corroboration Proctor
provided was that the informant's directions to Wilhelm's home were
correct. Almost anyone can give directions to a particular house without knowing anything of substance about what goes on inside that
house, and anyone who occasionally watches the evening news can
make generalizations about what marijuana looks like and how it is
packaged and sold.
Because we conclude that the search warrant in this case was
unsupported by probable cause as required by federal law, we need
not reach Wilhelm's alternative argument that "the evidence in question must be suppressed because it was seized in contravention of
North Carolina law by state agents."
B.
In United States v. Leon, the Supreme Court held that evidence
obtained by "officers reasonably relying on a warrant issued by a
detached and neutral magistrate" is admissible. 468 U.S. 897, 913
(1984). The officers--and the Court emphasized that "officers"
should be read broadly to include those who obtain the warrant as
well as those who conduct the search--must act based on an "objectively reasonable" reliance; "in some circumstances the officer will
have no reasonable grounds for believing that the warrant was properly issued." Id. at 922-23 & n.24. In footnote 24, the Court noted that
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its Leon opinion should not be read to suggest that "an officer could
obtain a warrant on the basis of a `bare bones' affidavit and then rely
on colleagues who are ignorant of the circumstances under which the
warrant was obtained to conduct the search." 468 U.S. at 923 n.24.
The good-faith exception does not apply in four situations: first,
when the warrant is based on an affidavit containing"knowing or
reckless falsity"; second, when the magistrate has simply acted as a
"rubber stamp" for the police; third, when the affidavit does not "provide the magistrate with a substantial basis for determining the existence of probable cause"; and finally, when the warrant is so "facially
deficient" that an officer could not reasonably rely on it. Id. at 923.
We find that the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule
should not apply in this case due to the "bare bones" nature of the
affidavit, and because the state magistrate could not have acted as
other than a "rubber stamp" in approving such an affidavit. See United
States v. Laury, 985 F.2d 1293, 1311 n.23 (5th Cir. 1993) (defining
"bare bones affidavit" as one that contains"wholly conclusory statements, which lack the facts and circumstances from which a magistrate can independently determine probable cause"). Proctor's use of
phrases such as "concerned citizen," "mature person" and "truthful
demeanor" to describe someone with whom she had had only limited
telephone conversations and no face-to-face contact cannot transform
this into anything other than a bare bones affidavit. This conclusion
is buttressed by her failure to provide any meaningful corroboration.
Although the United States argues that Proctor in fact took a number
of steps to corroborate the information in the tip, the Government
conceded at oral argument that because the only evidence presented
to the state magistrate was contained in Proctor's affidavit, Proctor's
additional efforts at corroboration--such as checking motor vehicles
records and using the Police Information Network to determine Wilhelm's prior drug activity--were irrelevant.
We follow the lead of two other Courts of Appeals in holding that
the Leon good-faith exception does not apply in the case of a bare
bones affidavit. In United States v. Leake, the Sixth Circuit, after finding that a warrant based only on an anonymous tip with scanty police
corroboration was unsupported by probable cause, declined to rely on
the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule. 998 F.2d 1359, 1367
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(6th Cir. 1993). The court found that the detective who sought the
search warrant did not act in good faith, because he knew that he
needed to provide corroboration of the tip, but did not. Id. The court
held that "[j]udged on objective criteria, a reasonably well-trained
officer `would have known that the search was illegal despite the
magistrate's authorization.'" Id.; see also United States v. Baxter, 889
F.2d 731, 734 (6th Cir. 1989) (refusing to apply the good faith exception where "the officer involved . . . had to realize that the source of
the information against defendant was an unknown party who was
unavailable and could not be demonstrated to be`reliable'").
The Fifth Circuit similarly found that Leon did not save a bare
bones affidavit unsupported by probable cause. United States v.
Barrington, 806 F.2d 529, 532 (5th Cir. 1986). A Mississippi police
officer obtained a search warrant by using an affidavit stating that he
had "received information from a confidential informant," known to
him, who had "provided information in the past that . . . led to arrest
and convictions." Id. at 531. The court found this warrant defective
because it failed to provide sufficient information to allow a neutral
determination of probable cause, and the police officer "had no good
faith reason to believe the magistrate had made a probable cause
determination." Id. at 532. The Fifth Circuit cited Leon's footnote 24,
and noted that "[i]f one cannot use a bare bones affidavit and then rely
on an ignorant colleague to conduct the search, he cannot himself
conduct the search based on his own bare bones affidavit." Id.; see
also United States v. Jackson, 818 F.2d 345, 350 n.8 (5th Cir. 1987)
(noting that although in that particular case the government offered no
evidence of police officers' good faith, "the good-faith exception to
the exclusionary rule is not available" in the case of a bare bones affidavit).
United States v. Edwards, 798 F.2d 686 (4th Cir. 1986), where we
applied the good-faith exception, is not to the contrary. The affidavit
in Edwards provided:
On Jan 21, 1985 an informant told Tony Dimeo and Jack
Elkins that he had been in the residence of Donald Leo
Edwards located near Gulf, N.C. within 24 hrs. of 1-21-85
and had seen a large quanity [sic] of a vegetable substance
know [sic] to him as marijuana. He has the ability to recon10