United States v. McIntosh

109 F. App'x 65
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedAugust 26, 2004
DocketNo. 03-1458
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 109 F. App'x 65 (United States v. McIntosh) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. McIntosh, 109 F. App'x 65 (6th Cir. 2004).

Opinion

OPINION

RICE, District Judge.

This is a criminal prosecution in which the Defendant is charged in a two count Indictment with being a felon in possession of a firearm, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g), and with possession with intent to deliver five grams or more of cocaine base, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1). The matter is currently before the Court on the Government’s appeal of the district court’s granting of Defendant’s motion to suppress evidence obtained during a search of his residence. For the reasons that follow, we conclude that the district court erred in granting Defendant’s motion to suppress, and its decision is thus reversed.

I. Background

On August 6, 2002, Officer Peter Gavalis of the Grand Rapids Police Department [67]*67obtained a search warrant from a state judge for a residence at 1055 Lafayette Avenue in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In his affidavit supporting the search warrant, Officer Gavalis stated:

In this regard, your affiant met with a rehable and credible informant who indicated from personal knowledge that cocaine could be purchased at the above-described premises. This informant from personal knowledge is familiar with the characteristics of cocaine, [and] the manner in which the cocaine is used and sold in the community. When your affiant met with the informant, the informant directed your affiant to the above-described premise[s]. The informant had been at the above-described premises within the last 86 hours and observed a quantity of cocaine being sold there. The cocaine as described by the informant is being sold for various amounts of U.S. currency.
The cocaine is easily concealed on or about the person. When the informant left the premise[s], there were additional amounts of cocaine on the premisefs] being offered for sale. The person(s) selling the cocaine is/are described as “P-Doody”, B/M 5'09/160, 33 yrs.

Further, Officer Gavalis’s affidavit described the basis for his belief that the informant was credible and reliable:

Your affiant has known the informant at least one year and has made at least ten controlled purchases of controlled substances: cocaine. All of these controlled purchases tested positive for the controlled substance cocaine. The informant has supplied information on at least fifteen drug traffickers in the community, said information having been verified by your affiant through police records, personal observations, other police officers, and other reliable informants. The said informant has supplied information for the issuance of at least ten prior search warrants. The information led to the arrests of ten subjects for violations of the controlled substance act.

The warrant was executed later that day. The residence belonged to Defendant, who was inside when the police arrived. The police found one ounce of crack cocaine in the living room and two loaded handguns in the bedroom, one of which was stolen. Defendant was carrying $3,159.00 on his person. Defendant made a number of incriminating statements during and after the search.

On April 7, 2003, the district court conducted a suppression hearing, at which time it entered an order suppressing the firearms and crack cocaine found in Defendant’s residence and the statements that Defendant made during the search. The court believed the “one glaring deficiency in the warrant affidavit” was its failure to connect P-Doody to 1055 Lafayette Avenue. The court indicated that, as far as one could tell from the affidavit, “this was a traveling show which presumably was somewhere else when the police arrived at [the address].” The court therefore found the warrant to be deficient because, it believed, granting warrants as to residences where a single drag sale has occurred, and where there is no reason to believe that the seller is a resident or frequent user of the house, will routinely trammel the rights of innocent persons residing in such places. The court also noted that its conclusion is all the more true when, as here, the information is based on the hearsay of an unidentified source.

For ostensibly the same reason, the district court concluded that the good faith exception to the exclusionary rale did not apply. Apparently believing that the affidavit was so lacking in any indicia of prob[68]*68able cause so as to render a police officer’s belief in its existence entirely unreasonable, the court held that the good faith exception was not applicable.

II. Standard of Review

The district court’s factual findings on a motion to suppress are reviewed for clear error and its legal determinations are reviewed de novo. United States v. Williams, 224 F.3d 530, 532 (6th Cir.2000), cert. denied, 531 U.S. 1095, 121 S.Ct. 821, 148 L.Ed.2d 704 (2001). However, the standard of review of a judge’s determination of probable cause in issuing a warrant is stricter, in that a court is to pay “great deference to a magistrate judge’s determination of probable cause and will not set it aside unless it is arbitrarily exercised.” Mays v. City of Dayton, 134 F.3d 809, 814 (6th Cir.1998).

III. Analysis

The Government raises two issues on appeal. First, it argues that the district erred in holding that the warrant lacked probable cause. Second, it argues that the district court erred in holding that, under the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule, the police officers did not have a reasonable basis to believe that the search warrant affidavit established probable cause. Each will be addressed in turn.

A. Probable Cause

Probable cause is defined as “reasonable grounds for belief, supported by less than prima facie proof but more than mere suspicion.” United States v. Smith, 182 F.3d 473, 477 (6th Cir.1999) (quoting United States v. Bennett, 905 F.2d 931, 934 (6th Cir.1990)). This ease involves an affiant’s use of a confidential informant (“Cl”) to supply probable cause for a warrant. The review of the sufficiency of such an affidavit underlying a search warrant follows the

principles established by the Supreme Court in Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983). There, the Court rejected the rigid tests that had evolved as lower courts attempted to implement earlier Supreme Court deci-

sions, in favor of a “totality of the circumstances” approach. Id. at 230-31, 462 U.S. 213, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (abandoning the inflexible two-part test developed in the light of Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 84 S.Ct. 1509, 12 L.Ed.2d 723 (1964), and Spinelli v.

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Related

United States v. Joe Louis McIntosh
484 F.3d 832 (Sixth Circuit, 2007)
McIntosh v. United States
543 U.S. 1077 (Supreme Court, 2005)

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Bluebook (online)
109 F. App'x 65, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-mcintosh-ca6-2004.