United States v. Adams

956 F. Supp. 2d 755, 2013 WL 3458074, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 95299
CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Kentucky
DecidedJuly 9, 2013
DocketCriminal Action No. 5:13-66-DCR
StatusPublished

This text of 956 F. Supp. 2d 755 (United States v. Adams) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. Kentucky primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Adams, 956 F. Supp. 2d 755, 2013 WL 3458074, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 95299 (E.D. Ky. 2013).

Opinion

[757]*757MEMORANDUM ORDER AND OPINION

DANNY C. REEVES, District Judge.

This matter is pending for consideration of Defendant Aliya Rae Adams’s motion to suppress evidence obtained from her residence pursuant to a state search warrant. [Record No. 49] The motion was referred to United States Magistrate Judge Robert E. Wier pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(A). The parties waived an evidentiary hearing. On July 3, 2013, the magistrate judge issued his report, recommending that the defendant’s motion be denied. [Record Nos. 53, 54, 73] The defendant filed objections to the Recommended Disposition on July 5, 2013. [Record No. 74] After reviewing all matters filed in this action, the Court will deny the defendant’s motion to suppress.1

I.

The relevant facts are not disputed. On March 14, 2013, Detective Jared Curtsinger of the Lexington Division of Police obtained and executed a search warrant for the person and residence of Robert Earl Jones, a co-defendant in this criminal action. Detective Curtsinger had been investigating Jones for heroin trafficking in Lexington. The previous day, after presenting affidavits in support to Fayette District Judge Joe Bouvier, Detective Curtsinger obtained warrants to search Jones’s home and his person, as well as for a GPS tracking device to placed on Jones’s vehicle. On the date the warrants were executed, Detective Curtsinger recovered an ounce of heroin from Jones’s person. Jones immediately cooperated with law enforcement and made inculpatory statements. In relevant part, Jones informed the officers that he had purchased the heroin from Defendant Adams at her residence in the Preakness Apartments on Versailles Road for $3,000.00. That same day, based on this information, along with other corroborating evidence, Detective Curtsinger submitted an application for a warrant to search Defendant Adams’s person and residence. [See Record Nos. 49-3, 58-2.] Judge Bouvier reviewed Detective Curtsinger’s affidavit, found that there was probable cause, and issued the requested search warrant.

Law enforcement officers executed the warrant in the late afternoon on March 14. During the search of Adams’s residence, officers located and seized various items of drug paraphernalia, heroin, and cutting agents. Adams made incriminating statements to Detective Curtsinger and was subsequently arrested.2 On June 17, 2013, Adams filed the current motion to sup[758]*758press, seeking to exclude the evidence obtained as a result of this search. [Record No. 49]

II.

Adams asserts that the search was illegal because the warrant was issued without a foundational basis to support a probable cause finding. [Record No. 49-1, p. 3] She also argues that, as a result of the illegal search, the incriminating statements she made to law enforcement following her arrest should be suppressed as fruit of the poisonous tree. She contends that the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule does not apply to her case. [Id., pp. 6-7] However, Magistrate Judge Wier concluded that Adams’s motion to suppress should be denied because a substantial factual basis supported the issuance of the warrant. And he further determined that the exclusionary rule should not be applied notwithstanding his initial conclusion. [Record No. 73, pp. 5-15]

Adams relies primarily on United States v. Higgins, 557 F.3d 381 (6th Cir.2009), in support of her claim that the search warrant pertaining to her residence was constitutionally deficient. [Record No. 74, p. 1] She argues that the affidavit supporting the search is a “carbon copy” of the Higgins affidavit which was found to be deficient. [Record No. 49-1, pp. 5-6] Specifically, Adams argues that the subject affidavit: (i) fails to attest to Jones’s reliability; (ii) lacks sufficient corroborating information regarding the informant’s statements; and (iii) fails to establish a sufficient nexus between the evidence sought and the place to be searched. [Id., pp. 4-6] The defendant asserts that the “two main differences between Higgins and the case sub judice are that the Defendant does not have pri- or felony convictions for trafficking and that Curtsinger observed Jones at the Defendant’s residence,” both of which she argues are “largely irrelevant.” [Id., p. 6] Magistrate Judge Wier found these arguments to be without merit. [Record No. 73]

In her objections, Adams reiterates her earlier arguments concerning Higgins, and rehashes issues previously addressed in Magistrate Judge Wier’s Recommended Disposition. [Record No. 74] Specifically, she contends that, “[w]hile there were facts present in Curtsinger’s affidavit which went to probable cause that were not present in Higgins, there were also facts present in Higgins which went to probable cause that were not present here.” [Id., p. 1] Adams relies on the fact that the informant in Higgins had two passengers who corroborated the information provided to police, and argues that, unlike Adams, the Higgins defendant had two prior felony convictions for narcotics trafficking. [Id. (citing Higgins, 557 F.3d at 385) ] She concedes that Curtsinger’s observation of Jones at her residence “obviously weighs towards a finding of probable cause.” However, she contends that it has no more probative force than the two sources of independent corroboration in Higgins,3 [Id., p. 2] Thus, she argues that [759]*759the distinctions between the affidavit here versus the affidavit submitted in Higgins are without a constitutional difference. Thus, the incriminating evidence and her inculpatory statements should be excluded. [Id.]

As noted above, Magistrate Judge Wier addressed these distinctions in his Recommended Disposition and correctly found that the subject affidavit provided a sufficient, objective factual basis to justify the issuance of the search warrant. [Record No. 73, pp. 8-9] The magistrate judge compared the Higgins affidavit with the subject affidavit and found that,- while there were some “credible parallels,” the subject affidavit is “clearly distinguishable.” [Record No. 73, pp. 9-11] Here, the affidavit averred that: (i) he actually observed Jones at Adams’s apartment complex, and that Jones only remained there for approximately five minutes; (ii) he observed Jones leave the apartment complex and travel directly to his residence where law enforcement were waiting for him and recovered an ounce of heroin from his person; (iii) Jones informed law enforcement officers that the drug transaction occurred immediately prior to his arrest and that this transaction took place inside the defendant’s apartment; and (iv) Jones provided law enforcement with a physical description of the defendant and positively identified Adams in a photograph. These facts provided the objective corroboration for Jones’s statements that was missing in Higgins.

Additionally, these facts establish a temporal proximity between the observation of Jones’s presence at Adams’s apartment and the recovery of drugs, as well as a sufficient nexus between the evidence sought and the place to be searched. See Higgins, 557 F.3d at 390. Jones credibly described the source and the source location of the drugs, both of which were corroborated through objective means.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
956 F. Supp. 2d 755, 2013 WL 3458074, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 95299, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-adams-kyed-2013.