David O'Berry Hearn v. State of Florida, Florida Attorney General

410 F. App'x 268
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
DecidedJanuary 21, 2011
Docket10-11976
StatusUnpublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 410 F. App'x 268 (David O'Berry Hearn v. State of Florida, Florida Attorney General) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
David O'Berry Hearn v. State of Florida, Florida Attorney General, 410 F. App'x 268 (11th Cir. 2011).

Opinion

PER CURIAM:

This appeal is the second time we have reviewed the denial of David Hearn’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus. 28 U.S.C. § 2254. Hearn alleged in his petition that the state court erred by denying his motion to suppress because there were false statements in the affidavit that provided probable cause for the warrant to search his property. The district court ruled that the issue was barred from review, under Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 465, 494, 96 S.Ct. 3037, 3052, 49 L.Ed.2d 1067 (1976), but we reversed and remanded because the state court had failed to make “explicit findings on matters essential to” Hearn’s argument under the Fourth Amendment, Hearn v. Fla., 326 Fed.Appx. 519, 522 (11th Cir.2009). On remand, the district court denied Hearn’s petition. The district court ruled that the officers had entered Hearn’s property in exigent circumstances and lawfully had observed evidence that Hearn had been manufacturing methamphetamine, which provided probable cause to obtain a warrant to search Hearn’s property. The district court also ruled that allegedly false statements in an affidavit that had supported the warrant were immaterial to a finding of probable cause and were not made deliberately or recklessly. We affirm.

A federal court may not grant a state prisoner a writ of habeas corpus when a claim has been adjudicated on the merits by a state court unless the decision is “contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States,” or “resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d); Suggs v. McNeil, 609 F.3d 1218, 1227 (11th Cir.2010). A decision is “contrary to” clearly established federal law if either the state court reached a conclusion opposite to that reached by the Supreme Court on a question of law or the state court was presented with facts that are “materially indistinguishable” from relevant Supreme Court precedent, but arrived at a contrary result. Suggs, 609 F.3d at 1227. A state court makes an “unreasonable application” of clearly established federal law if the court “ ‘identifies the correct legal rule from Supreme Court case law but unreasonably applies that rule to the facts of the petitioner’s case.’ ” Id. (quoting Rutherford v. Crosby, 385 F.3d 1300, 1306 (11th Cir.2004)).

The state court reasonably could have concluded that any misstatements in the affidavit about the reason that officers visited Hearn’s property did not invalidate the warrant to search Hearn’s property. Hearn was required to establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the affiant made false statements of fact either deliberately or recklessly. See Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154, 98 S.Ct. 2674, 57 L.Ed.2d 667 (1978). The affidavit stated that a suspect in an armed robbery, Wayne Land, received a telephone call from Hearn while Land was being inter *271 viewed inside the home of Mark Wade, and that officers had learned the telephone call came from Hearn’s residence. Although Hearn argued that the statements were irreconcilable with copies of records that no calls were made from his house to Wade’s house during or within a few hours of the time that the officers questioned Land inside Wade’s house, the statements in the affidavit can be reconciled with the evidence presented by the government during the hearing on Hearn’s motion to suppress. The affidavit was consistent with the testimonies of Wade and Darrell Smith that Smith called Wade from Hearn’s house around 5:30 a.m. and the testimony of Officer Jenny Mann that, later that day, she observed inside Wade’s house a caller identification machine displaying the telephone number for Hearn’s residence. Officer Mann testified that she could not recall whether she looked at the machine after hearing Wade’s telephone or a different telephone. A previous call from Hearn’s residence to Wade could have caused the caller identification machine to display Hearn’s number. Moreover, the state court could reasonably have concluded that the misstatement in the affidavit was not made deliberately or recklessly.

The state court also reasonably could have concluded that the affidavit contained sufficient information to provide probable cause to issue the warrant to search Hearn’s property. The affidavit stated that officers went to Hearn’s residence to search for Wade and, while the officers surrounded the property as part of their search for Wade, they observed evidence that Hearn was manufacturing methamphetamine. The affidavit, coupled with evidence presented in the state court during the hearing on Hearn’s motion to suppress, established that exigent circumstances allowed a warrantless entry onto Hearn’s property and that the location where the officers observed evidence of Hearn’s methamphetamine operation was outside the curtilage of Hearn’s home.

The state court reasonably could have concluded that exigent circumstances allowed the officers’ entry onto Hearn’s property without a warrant. Under the exigent circumstances exception, a “war-rantless entry by criminal law enforcement officials may be legal when there is compelling need for official action and no time to secure a warrant.” Michigan v. Tyler, 436 U.S. 499, 509, 98 S.Ct. 1942, 1949, 56 L.Ed.2d 486 (1978); see Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 14-15, 68 S.Ct. 367, 369, 92 L.Ed. 436 (1948) (exigent circumstances include a suspect “fleeing or likely to take flight”). The victim of an armed kidnaping had identified Wade as a perpetrator, and officers went to Wade’s house to investigate that crime. While at Wade’s house, Land, who also was a suspect in the armed kidnaping, told the officers that Wade “could be hiding out and was known to hang around Hearn.” The officers were in hot pursuit of Wade and, based on the possibility that he was still armed and might flee, were entitled to enter Hearn’s property without a warrant to search for Wade.

The state courts could reasonably have concluded that the officers, having lawfully entered Hearn’s property, observed incriminating evidence through the door of a shed left ajar. Under the open fields doctrine, officers may observe property outside the curtilage of a person’s home. See United States v. Dunn, 480 U.S. 294, 300, 107 S.Ct. 1134, 1139, 94 L.Ed.2d 326 (1987). To determine if property is within the curtilage of a home, courts must consider four factors: (1) the proximity of the property to the home; (2) whether the property is “included within an enclosure surrounding the home”; (3) *272

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

United States v. Garcia
853 F. Supp. 2d 1177 (M.D. Florida, 2011)
Hearn v. Florida
181 L. Ed. 2d 130 (Supreme Court, 2011)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
410 F. App'x 268, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/david-oberry-hearn-v-state-of-florida-florida-attorney-general-ca11-2011.