People v. John

654 F.3d 412, 55 V.I. 1324, 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 16833, 2011 WL 3559933
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Third Circuit
DecidedAugust 15, 2011
Docket09-4185
StatusPublished
Cited by55 cases

This text of 654 F.3d 412 (People v. John) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
People v. John, 654 F.3d 412, 55 V.I. 1324, 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 16833, 2011 WL 3559933 (3d Cir. 2011).

Opinions

OPINION OF THE COURT

(August 15, 2011)

SMITH, Circuit Judge

Detective Sergeant Naomi Joseph of the Virgin Islands Police Department applied for a warrant to search Tydel John’s home for child pornography, relying solely on an affidavit that established only probable cause to believe that she would find evidence that he had sexually assaulted several children at the school where he taught. In her affidavit, Joseph did not allege any direct evidence that John possessed child pornography, did not aver the existence of any connection between the two crimes, and did not claim either a good faith belief in such a connection or any basis for thinking that one had been established. In general, the affidavit provided no reason to believe that a person who has committed child sexual assault would be likely to possess child pornography. Despite these deficiencies, a Virgin Islands Superior Court judge issued the warrant, and Joseph’s search turned up incriminating documents (but no child pornography). We granted certiorari to determine whether this evidence was properly suppressed.

I

On November 27, 2007, following a presentation by the Virgin Islands Domestic Violence Sexual Assault Council, several of John’s sixth-grade students told school officials that John had touched them inappropriately. The school passed this information on to the police, and Joseph was tasked with investigating. She began by interviewing the complaining witnesses, several of whom accused John of sexually assaulting them in his classroom. The girls also advised Joseph that John maintained two spiral notebooks, one blue and one red, in which he routinely “ma[de] notations .. . regarding his students.” One student reported that John had written “inappropriate things about the female students of his current class and previous classes” in the blue notebook. According to the [1330]*1330witnesses, John carried the notebooks with him to and from school each day in his work bag.

With this information in hand, Joseph sought a warrant authorizing her to search John’s home. Joseph’s affidavit set forth the above facts in somewhat more detail, and averred that “persons who commit sexual offense crimes involving children customarily hide evidence of such offenses, including notes, photographs, [and] computer files, in their homes and on their computers].” In addition to the red and blue notebooks, the warrant application sought permission to collect from John’s home pornographic magazines, pornographic photographs of children, and computer files containing pornographic notes and photographs of children. A Virgin Islands Superior Court judge issued the warrant, as requested, on December 3, 2007, and Joseph led the law enforcement team that executed it shortly thereafter.

According to Joseph’s testimony at John’s suppression hearing, it was “[Relatively early in the search” that the officers located a black bag containing the red and blue spiral notebooks mentioned in the affidavit. Joseph allowed the search to continue, because she was still “[Rooking for any pornographic photos of children.” The officers under her charge found no such photos, but they nevertheless carted away several computers and ten black and white composition-book-style journals, in addition to the two spiral notebooks that the witnesses had identified. The journals (labeled “Tydel John Journals,” with dates) were retrieved from John’s bedroom closet and a bookshelf, and did not resemble the spiral notebooks • — ■ which had already been seized by the time the journals were found.

While there is nothing in the “Tydel John Journals” that would constitute child pornography, they do contain evidence germane to the charges of aggravated rape, unlawful sexual contact, child abuse, and child neglect that John now faces. He therefore moved to exclude them from trial, arguing that Joseph’s search warrant was invalid and that the search violated the Fourth Amendment. The Superior Court granted the motion, and the Supreme Court of the Virgin Islands affirmed in a per curiam opinion. 52 V.I. 247 (2009). The Court held that the search for child pornography was not supported by probable cause, id. at 256, and that any search of the home that occurred after the blue and red spiral notebooks had been found was thus beyond the permissible scope of the warrant’s execution, id. at 260. It then addressed the so-called “good [1331]*1331faith” exception to the exclusionary rule,-observing that the exception does not apply in the case of a warrant obtained on the basis of an affidavit that is “so lacking in indicia of probable cause as to render official belief in its existence entirely unreasonable.” Id. at 261 (quoting United States v. Zimmerman, 277 F.3d 426, 436 (3d Cir. 2002)). Because an examination of Joseph’s affidavit revealed “not a single assertion that John was in any way associated with child pornography,” the court concluded that “the officers executing the warrant blindly relied on the fact that the warrant was issued by a judge and disregarded the fact that their search was not supported by probable cause.” Id. at 262. In the view of the Virgin Islands Supreme Court, such “blind reliance” on a warrant issued in the complete absence of probable cause “can and should be deterred by excluding the fruits of the illegal search, and the deterrent effect of suppression is substantial enough to outweigh any harm to the justice system.” Id. at 263. The “good faith” exception therefore did not save the evidence from suppression. Id.

A panel of this court granted the Virgin Islands’ petition for a writ of certiorari, “limited to the question whether the decision of the Supreme Court of the Virgin Islands is inconsistent with Herring v. United States, 555 U.S. 135, 129 S. Ct. 695, 172 L. Ed. 2d 496 (2009), in its application of the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule.” Our order also directed the parties “to explain in their briefing the basis, if any, upon which this Court has certiorari jurisdiction to review the decision of the Supreme Court of the Virgin Islands as a ‘final decision’ within the meaning of 48 U.S.C. § 1613.”

II

We first address the jurisdictional question propounded in our order granting certiorari, beginning with the text of the relevant statute. Section 1613 defines the relations between the courts of the United States and the courts of the Virgin Islands. It provides that, for the time being, “the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit shall have jurisdiction to review by writ of certiorari all final decisions of the highest court of the Virgin Islands from which a decision could be had.” The same section elsewhere states:

The relations between the courts established by the Constitution or laws of the United States and the courts established by [Virgin Islands] [1332]*1332law with respect to appeals, certiorari, removal of causes, the issuance of writs of habeas corpus, and other matters or proceedings shall be governed by the laws of the United States pertaining to the relations between the courts of the United States, including the Supreme Court of the United States, and the courts of the several States in such matters and proceedings.

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

Related

United States v. Sam Zema
Third Circuit, 2024
United States v. Robert Caesar
2 F.4th 160 (Third Circuit, 2021)
Randall Stephen Landers v. State
Court of Appeals of Georgia, 2020
United States v. Nikolai Bosyk
933 F.3d 319 (Fourth Circuit, 2019)
United States v. Brooks
358 F. Supp. 3d 440 (W.D. Pennsylvania, 2018)
United States v. Mark Scott
Seventh Circuit, 2018
United States v. Hopson
643 F. App'x 694 (Tenth Circuit, 2016)
United States v. Edwards
813 F.3d 953 (Tenth Circuit, 2015)
John v. People
63 V.I. 629 (Supreme Court of The Virgin Islands, 2015)
Hodge v. Bluebeard's Castle, Inc.
62 V.I. 671 (Supreme Court of The Virgin Islands, 2015)
United States v. Lacey Graves
613 F. App'x 157 (Third Circuit, 2015)
United States v. Michael Wright
777 F.3d 635 (Third Circuit, 2015)
United States v. Hoffmann
74 M.J. 542 (Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals, 2014)
United States v. Robert Franz
772 F.3d 134 (Third Circuit, 2014)
Thomas v. People
60 V.I. 688 (Supreme Court of The Virgin Islands, 2014)
Joseph v. People
60 V.I. 285 (Supreme Court of The Virgin Islands, 2013)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
654 F.3d 412, 55 V.I. 1324, 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 16833, 2011 WL 3559933, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-john-ca3-2011.