United States v. Melvin Woodall

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
• Decided: June 28, 2024
• Docket: 23-5989
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION File Name: 24a0285n.06

Case No. 23-5989

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT FILED Jun 28, 2024 KELLY L. STEPHENS, Clerk ) UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ) Plaintiff - Appellee, ) ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED ) STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR v. ) ) THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF ) TENNESSEE MELVIN WOODALL, ) OPINION Defendant - Appellant. )

Before: CLAY, THAPAR, and MATHIS, Circuit Judges.

THAPAR, J., delivered the opinion of the court in which MATHIS, J., joined. CLAY, J. (pp. 6–15), delivered a separate dissenting opinion.

THAPAR, Circuit Judge. Memphis police executed a search warrant at Melvin Woodall’s

house, where they found narcotics and a handgun. The United States then indicted Woodall for

drug and firearm offenses. Woodall moved to suppress evidence from the house, arguing there

was no probable cause connecting the house to his suspected crimes. He also sought to suppress

a statement he allegedly made to detectives following the search, arguing it was fruit of the

poisonous tree. After the district court denied his motion, Woodall pled guilty but reserved the

right to appeal the suppression ruling. He now appeals, and we affirm.

I.

Police generally need a warrant to search someone’s house. Brigham City v. Stuart, 547

U.S. 398, 403 (2006). And to obtain a warrant, police need probable cause: “a fair probability No. 23-5989, United States v. Woodall

that contraband or evidence of a crime will be found in a particular place.” Illinois v. Gates, 462

U.S. 213, 238 (1983); U.S. Const. amend. IV. The Supreme Court has told us that courts must

exclude evidence that police obtain in violation of these rules. Elkins v. United States, 364 U.S.

206, 209 (1960). But the exclusionary rule applies only if a defendant has a privacy interest in the

house that was searched—i.e., the defendant lived there. United States v. Salvucci, 448 U.S. 83,

95 (1980). Additionally, there’s a carveout for when police rely on a warrant in good faith. United

States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 909, 922 (1984). Since the officers here relied on the warrant in

good faith, we need not decide whether there was probable cause. See, e.g., id. at 905 (finding

good faith without resolving probable cause); United States v. Washington, 380 F.3d 236, 240–44

(6th Cir. 2004) (same).

The good-faith exception applies unless (1) the warrant was facially deficient, (2) the

affidavit supporting the warrant was knowingly or recklessly false, (3) the magistrate judge failed

to act in a neutral and detached manner, or (4) the warrant lacked probable cause to such an extent

that it was unreasonable for officers to rely on it. United States v. Helton, 314 F.3d 812, 819, 824

(6th Cir. 2003). Woodall doesn’t dispute the first three. So the only question is whether the

officers acted unreasonably in relying on the warrant.

That bar is low: a warrant affidavit needs to show only a “modicum of evidence, however

slight, between the criminal activity at issue and the place to be searched.” United States v. White,

874 F.3d 490, 497 (6th Cir. 2017) (cleaned up). Here, the affidavit provided the following details:

• A confidential informant told police that Woodall was storing and dealing large quantities of drugs in the house; • The confidential informant bought fentanyl from Woodall at a monitored, controlled buy within five days of the warrant application;

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• Police observed Woodall leave the house wearing a backpack, spend a short time with others, and return. Based on their experience and training, police determined this behavior suggested drug sales; • Woodall would repeatedly exit his house with a backpack on, walk to a nearby pond, and return two to three minutes later—consistent with the behavior of drug dealers who store contraband “in fields, ponds, [and] woods in order to conceal from law enforcement,” R. 63, Pg. ID 449; and • Woodall had past convictions for narcotics-distribution crimes.

This suffices for good faith. First, police corroborated the informant’s tip that Woodall

dealt drugs and stored them at the house. Police arranged a controlled buy at which Woodall sold

the informant drugs. And they observed behavior supporting the informant’s claim that Woodall

stored drugs at the house.

Second, the affiant-officer’s experience and training suggested Woodall was transporting

drugs from the house to drug deals and outdoor storage locations. This led the officer to conclude

the house would contain tools of the trade, such as drug ledgers, address books, computers, and

cell phones. See United States v. Reed, 993 F.3d 441, 447 (6th Cir. 2021).

Third, police observed Woodall deal drugs. And they saw Woodall leave the house

wearing a backpack, meet with people for a short time, and then return. This court has previously

upheld a probable-cause finding when “police watched the suspect leave a home, undertake a drug

deal, and return there.” Id. at 448 (citing United States v. Ellison, 632 F.3d 347, 349 (6th Cir.

2011)). So such evidence suffices for good faith.

To be sure, the affidavit suggests Woodall stored at least some of his drugs at a nearby

pond. But that makes no difference here. Even if Woodall stored his drugs off-site, police could

reasonably infer that the house contained evidence of his crimes, like the backpack, a scale, or a

drug ledger. Reed, 993 F.3d at 447.

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Fourth, binding circuit precedent holds that “[w]hen an officer identifies recent, reliable

evidence of drug activity, that activity can provide a reason to believe that drugs or other evidence

of crime [will] be found in the suspect’s home.” Id. at 448–49 (internal quotations omitted).

And the Supreme Court has told us that when an officer’s search complies with “binding appellate

precedent,” the good-faith exception applies. Davis v. United States, 564 U.S. 229, 232 (2011).

Here, police arranged a controlled buy within five days of the search. The recency and reliability

of Woodall’s drug activity thus provided a good-faith basis for police to search the house.

II.

The dissent raises several counterarguments, but none affects the outcome here. First, the

dissent points out that police directly corroborated only the first part of the informant’s tip: that

Woodall dealt drugs. To be sure, the affidavit presented only circumstantial corroboration for the

second part of the tip: that Woodall stored evidence of the crime in the house. But police don’t

need to corroborate every part of a tip before obtaining a warrant. See, e.g., Gates, 462 U.S. at

242–43 (noting that when officers verified part of an informant’s tip, there were “reasonable

grounds to believe that the remaining, unverified bit of information . . . was likewise true,” even

when informant “gave no indication of the basis for his information” (internal quotation omitted));

id. at 244 (“Because an informant is right about some things, he is more probably right about other

facts.” (internal quotation omitted)).

The dissent also takes issue with our assumption that the house in question was Woodall’s.

But we didn’t assume this. Both the record and Woodall’s brief indicate the house was his.

Moreover, Woodall never disputes this fact in his brief. And if he had tried to argue the house

wasn’t his, he’d have needed to “establish that [he] had a legitimate expectation of privacy there”

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in order to have standing. Salvucci, 448 U.S. at 95. He hasn’t attempted to make this showing.

So regardless of whether the house is his, the evidence is admissible.

Lastly, the dissent highlights that the affidavit didn’t indicate that Woodall lived at the

house. Again, Woodall never raised this argument in his brief. For good reason: the first page of

the affidavit described the house as “the premises . . . of . . . Melvin Woodall.” R. 63, Pg. ID 448.

From this, police could reasonably infer Woodall lived at the house.

* * *

The police had a good-faith basis to rely on the warrant. Since they did so, Woodall’s

statement is also admissible.1

We affirm.

1 In the attenuation portion of his brief, Woodall makes a passing claim that his statement was involuntary. That’s because, he argues, his statement came after he was confronted with evidence seized during the search. But on appeal, Woodall doesn’t argue that the statement was either un-Mirandized or the product of “coercive police conduct.” See Colorado v. Connelly, 479 U.S. 157, 164 (1986). He therefore fails to show involuntariness.

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CLAY, Circuit Judge, dissenting. Police invaded a Memphis house based on a tip that

Melvin Woodall was dealing drugs at that address. But, contrary to the majority’s contentions, the

search warrant affidavit never indicated that Woodall lived there. Had the majority accurately

recounted the facts in the affidavit, it would have correctly held that there was no probable cause

to support the affidavit, and that the good faith exception cannot rescue this search. I therefore

respectfully dissent.

The Fourth Amendment requires a warrant supported by probable cause to search

someone’s home. Probable cause, in turn, requires “a nexus between the place to be searched and

the evidence sought.” United States v. Carpenter, 360 F.3d 591, 594 (6th Cir. 2004). And when

evaluating whether an affidavit based on a confidential informant’s (“CI”) tip furnishes such

probable cause, courts are to consider “the (1) veracity; (2) reliability; and (3) basis of knowledge

of the tipster or informant” as part of the totality of the circumstances inquiry. United States v.

Gunter, 551 F.3d 472, 479 (6th Cir. 2009). Where an affidavit fails to set out a CI’s reliability or

basis of knowledge, corroboration of the tip by law enforcement is required. United States v.

Woosley, 361 F.3d 924, 927 (6th Cir. 2004).

By these standards, the affidavit in this case lacked probable cause.1 The affidavit notes

that a “reliable confidential informant” stated that “fentanyl is being stored and sold out of 2247

Oldfield Dr.” by Woodall. R. 63, Page ID #449. The affidavit also stated that the CI had purchased

fentanyl from Woodall, but notably did not state that the purchase occurred in the residence. Id.

Further, the affidavit stated that Detective Baker “conducted a controlled buy of fentanyl from

1 The majority disregards our precedent and affirms the district court’s denial of Woodall’s motion to suppress under the good faith exception, without ever reaching a conclusion on probable cause. Cf. United States v. Reed, 993 F.3d 441, 451 (6th Cir. 2021) (“Leon’s exception applies only when an affidavit falls short of probable cause.”). -6- No. 23-5989, United States v. Woodall

Melvin Woodall,” but, again, did not state whether that controlled buy occurred in or near the

residence. Id. Instead, the affidavit states that officers arranged for a controlled by “at a specific

location,” but did not specify where that location was or its relation to the residence. Id. Officer

Baker later testified at the suppression hearing that the controlled buy occurred outside the

residence, but that information does not appear in the affidavit and the magistrate judge would

have no way of knowing whether the controlled buy happened close to the residence. Cf. United

States v. Frazier, 423 F.3d 526, 535 (6th Cir. 2005) (noting that a judge’s probable cause

determination is confined to the four corners of the affidavit). The four corners of the affidavit do

not establish that drug-dealing occurred in the residence, and do not include the required indicia

that evidence of criminal activity can be found there. Cf. United States v. Helton, 35 F.4th 511,

521 (6th Cir. 2022) (defendant’s presence somewhere near his home with a baggie of unidentified

residue failed to connect his home with drug trafficking); Brown, 828 F.3d at 382 (no sufficient

nexus where “the search warrant affidavit contained no evidence that [the defendant] distributed

narcotics from his home, that he used it to store narcotics, or that any suspicious activity had taken

place there”).

The confidential tip was also lacking in the required veracity, reliability, and basis of

knowledge. Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 233 (1983). There is no information in the affidavit

that establishes the CI’s basis of knowledge as to the presence of drugs and drug-dealing in the

Oldfield Drive residence. This Court has found similar affidavits lacking in this regard where, as

in this case, the affidavit does not assert that the informant has been in the place to be searched or

bought drugs at the place to be searched. See, e.g., United States v. Higgins, 557 F.3d 381, 390

(6th Cir. 2009); Brown, 828 F.3d 382–83. And while the affidavit notes that the confidential

informant has participated in controlled buys in the past, the affidavit fails to set forth further

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information about the informant’s record of cooperation with the police, as in cases where we have

found that the confidential tip was reliable enough to confer probable cause. See, e.g., United

States v. Allen, 211 F.3d 970, 976 (6th Cir. 2000) (finding sufficient reliability where the affiant

officer stated that he had worked with the informant for five years and the informant had provided

reliable information in the past). Given the sliding-scale approach to analyzing the sufficiency of

a tip, Alabama v. White, 496 U.S. 325, 330 (1990), this weak showing of reliability is insufficient

to make up for the lack of any showing of the informant’s basis of knowledge. Under the totality

of the circumstances, the informant’s tip cannot support a probable cause determination. United

States v. Helton, 314 F.3d 812, 821–22 (6th Cir. 2003); Higgins, 557 F.3d at 390.

When a tip fails to sufficiently indicate its reliability or basis of knowledge, officers have

to corroborate it. United States v. Woosley, 361 F.3d 924, 927 (6th Cir. 2004); United States v.

Howard, 632 F. App’x 795, 804 (6th Cir. 2015) (“What an informant and her tip lack in intrinsic

indicia of credibility, however, police must make up for in corroboration.”). The affidavit states

that detectives “conducted surveillance” at the residence and “observed Melvin Woodall leave the

residence carrying a backpack.” R. 63, Page ID #449. But this corroboration—if one can call it

that—did little to verify the informant’s tip that Woodall dealt drugs inside the house. To the

contrary, the officer’s corroboration undermined the veracity of the tip, in two distinct ways. First,

officers observing a controlled buy at “specific location” that was not the Oldfield residence

contradicts the claim that Woodall sold drugs from the house itself. Id. Second, officers observing

Woodall carry a backpack to and from a pond, and inferring from that action that Woodall was

storing illegal controlled substances in the pond “in order to conceal from law enforcement” also

contradicts the informant’s statement that Woodall stored drugs at the Oldfield residence. Id.

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Thus, officers actively undermined the veracity of the informant’s information, rendering its

inclusion in the affidavit insufficient for probable cause.

Lastly, and perhaps most crucially, the affidavit contains no information or indication that

Woodall lived at the place to be searched. As a result, and contrary to the majority’s holding, law

enforcement cannot rely on the dubious inference that “evidence is likely to be found where the

dealers live.” United States v. Crawford, 943 F.3d 297, 308 (6th Cir. 2019) (quotation omitted).

The affidavit never established that Woodall was selling drugs out of his own home, or that that

home was Oldfield Drive. Rather, it stated only that the CI reported that Woodall stored drugs at

Oldfield Drive, and that officers observed Woodall leaving from and returning to Oldfield Drive

on some occasions. R. 63, Page ID #449. Therefore, the government cannot rely on the

questionable assertion that it need not establish the probable cause nexus when the place to be

searched is the defendant’s residence and the defendant is suspected of drug-dealing.

The majority misunderstands this crucial point by consistently assuming, without

explanation, that the residence was Woodall’s. To the contrary, the affidavit mentions only that

an uncorroborated tip accused Woodall of storing drugs in the Oldfield Drive residence and that

Woodall participated in one controlled buy at an undisclosed location, presumably away from the

residence. The majority’s reliance on cases where the defendant lived in the searched residence is

therefore not just inapposite but misleading. Neither judges nor law enforcement can justify a

search based on the inference that criminal evidence is found at the homes of drug dealers when

no one ever alleged that this home belonged to a drug dealer. The magistrate judge could not

reasonably conclude there was evidence of drug-dealing in the house. As discussed, there was no

evidence in the affidavit that Woodall lived in the house on Oldfield Drive. And inferential leaps

cannot suffice for the showing that the government is required, by the Fourth Amendment, to

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make. See United States v. Laughton, 409 F.3d 744, 750 (6th Cir. 2005) (disfavoring “filling the

gaps” in an affidavit by drawing “inferences”). If the magistrate judge could merely infer the very

facts that probable cause requires, then the Fourth Amendment could be circumvented by judicial

fiat.

The majority’s response completely misses the point. It does not matter whether the record

or Woodall’s brief indicate that the house was his. What matters is whether the affidavit suggested

that the house was his. The magistrate reads the affidavit, not property records or post-hoc

briefing, to determine whether probable cause exists to search a place. United States v. Weaver,

99 F.3d 1372, 1378 (6th Cir. 1996) (“In determining whether an affidavit is ‘bare bones,’ the

reviewing court is concerned exclusively with the statements contained within the affidavit itself.”

(citation omitted)). Yet the majority today holds that there was a nexus between the house and

criminal activity because of the dubious maxim that, once the police establish a suspect is a drug

dealer, “drugs or other evidence of crime [will] be found in the suspect’s home.” Maj Op. at 4

(quoting Reed, 933 F.3d at 447). But if the affidavit did not suggest that the house was

Woodall’s—and it did not—then the magistrate judge had no basis to assume that evidence of

criminal activity would be found there based only on the questionable assumption that officers can

expect to find drugs where drug dealers live. The key piece of information necessary to employ

that dubious maxim—that Woodall lived in the house—was absent from the affidavit.

The majority grasps at straws when it reaches for the warrant application’s vague

description of the house as “the premises . . . of . . . Melvin Woodall.” Not only is this brief,

unclear statement separate and apart from the activity officers detailed as sufficient for probable

cause, but the word “premises” hardly proves that the police believed they were searching

Woodall’s home as opposed to a different building with some association to him. Cf. Premises,

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Merriam Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/premise (last visited June 26,

2024) (defining premises as “a tract of land with the buildings thereon”). In generously stretching

the plain language of the warrant application, the majority blessed this search by assuming a key

fact that the affidavit did not establish. But this Court cannot fill the numerous gaps that law

enforcement left in the warrant—gaps that are incompatible with the Fourth Amendment probable

cause requirement. Helton, 35 F.4th at 521 (disfavoring applying the good faith exception to

situations that require filling gaps by “inferences drawn upon inferences”). If the mere mention

that officers seek to search a “premises” associated with a suspect is sufficient to establish that the

residence belonged to a suspect, and therefore sufficient to invoke the dubious maxim that

“evidence is likely to be found where drug dealers live,” then officers need only fill in the blanks

of form affidavits, claim they have observed a single drug deal, without confirming that the suspect

actually resides at the premises, and rest assured that this Court will uphold the search under the

good-faith exception.

But even the good faith exception cannot salvage this affidavit. For the exception to apply,

“the officer’s reliance on the magistrate’s probable-cause determination . . . must be objectively

reasonable.” United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 922 (1984). But some affidavits, like this one,

are so deficient that a reasonable officer would not have relied on it. Those are called “bare bones”

affidavits, and they “state[] only ‘suspicions, beliefs, or conclusions, without providing some

underlying factual circumstances regarding veracity, reliability, and basis of knowledge.’” United

States v. White, 874 F.3d 490, 496 (6th Cir. 2017) (quoting Laughton, 409 F.3d at 748).

This affidavit, because it lacks even the “minimally sufficient nexus” required by the good

faith exception, meets this definition. The majority’s arguments to the contrary are unavailing.

The majority opinion states that “police corroborated the informant’s tip that Woodall dealt drugs

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and stored them at the house.” Maj. Op. at 3. But, as discussed above, law enforcement did not

verify the informant’s tip that Woodall stored drugs in the house. Police observed only that

Woodall carried a backpack from the residence to a nearby pond. And this observation led the

affiant officer to invoke his experience “that drug traffickers store illegal controlled substances in

fields, ponds, woods, in order to conceal from law enforcement.” R. 63, Page ID #449. Thus the

modicum of surveillance conducted by the police in this case did nothing to corroborate the tip

that Woodall stored drugs in the house itself, as opposed to another area like the pond, meaning

the police did not properly corroborate the informant’s tip that sought to connect the residence to

criminal activity. Helton, 314 F.3d at 824 (“[A]t a minimum, a reasonable officer would have

sought to corroborate [the tip] further.”)

In this case, the affidavit boils down to: (1) an uncorroborated tip that Woodall stored and

sold drugs in his home without a statement as to the location of his home, (2) a controlled buy in

an unspecified other location, and (3) officer surveillance of Woodall bringing a backpack to a

local pond. A reasonable officer would not have found these discordant facts to constitute the

“minimally-sufficient nexus” between criminal activity and the Oldfield residence. When we have

applied the good faith exception to rescue deficient warrants in the past, those cases have involved

far more of a connection between the criminal activity and the place to be searched. See, e.g.,

Higgins, 557 F.3d at 385, 391 (applying the good faith exception to a search of defendant’s home

address where the informant told the officers that he had personally purchased drugs from the

defendant at the defendant’s address earlier the same day, and the tip was corroborated in multiple

ways); United States v. Washington, 380 F.3d 236, 242–43 (6th Cir. 2004) (applying the good faith

exception where the defendant’s car was registered to the address of the house, and affiant

described his training and experience and why that caused him to believe that evidence would be

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found at the house); cf. United States v. Savoca, 761 F.2d 292, 297 (6th Cir. 1985) (“[A] suspect’s

mere presence or arrest at a residence is too insignificant a connection with that residence to

establish that relationship necessary to a finding of probable cause.” (internal quotation marks and

citation omitted)). Because this case has even less indicia of probable cause than those cases,

faithful application of this Court’s precedent demands that this Court decline to apply the good

faith exception and reverse the district court’s denial of Woodall’s motion to suppress.

The majority disagrees, largely based on its wrongful assumption that Woodall lived at

Oldfield Drive and that law enforcement sufficiently demonstrated that fact in the affidavit. Again,

the majority ignores that the affidavit failed to set forth this fact, but that is not the last of the

majority’s mistakes. The majority also errs in concluding that police observed sufficient drug

activity on Woodall’s part such that there was “reason to believe that drugs or other evidence of

crime will be found in the suspect’s home.” Maj. Op. at 4 (citing Reed, 993 F.3d at 448–49). But

law enforcement observed Woodall conduct one controlled buy, and did not even bother to detail

where that controlled buy occurred. Our precedent has typically required evidence of continued,

large-scale drug-trafficking, significantly more than just one drug transaction, to invoke the maxim

that drugs are likely to be found where a drug dealer lives. See, e.g., United States v. Sheckles,

996 F.3d 330, 342 (6th Cir. 2021) (“When we have used a drug dealer’s drug activities alone to

find probable cause to search the dealer’s home, the dealer was engaged in ‘continual and ongoing

operations’ typically involving large amounts of drugs. . . . When, by contrast, we have found that

drug distribution alone did not suffice, the police had evidence only of a single instance of drug

possession or distribution.” (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)); United States v.

Gunter, 551 F.3d 472, 481 (6th Cir. 2009) (holding that the “quantity of drugs [in the one to four

kilogram range] and the repeated nature of the transactions” made it “reasonable to infer” that

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evidence of criminal activity would be found in the defendant’s residence); United States v.

Goward, 188 F. App’x 355, 359 (6th Cir. 2006) (affirming the denial of a motion to suppress where

the defendant was involved in a “marijuana smuggling operation” and police conducted several

controlled buys).

To hold, as the majority does today, that one drug deal, away from the house, is enough to

search a suspect’s alleged home further erodes the difference between probable cause to arrest

someone for a crime and probable cause to search his home. But we have previously held,

consistent with the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on general warrants based on mere suspicion,

“it cannot follow simply from the existence of probable cause to believe a suspect guilty, that there

is also probable cause to search his residence.” United States v. Savoca, 761 F.2d 292, 297 (6th

Cir. 1985) (cleaned up); see also Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 761 (1969) (“The

Amendment was in large part a reaction to the general warrants and warrantless searches that had

so alienated the colonists and had helped speed the movement for independence.”). The majority

eschews this precedent in favor of a new regime in which the police can apparently search the

home of anyone suspected of engaging in even a modicum of drug-dealing activity—including

just one buy away from the home—without any showing that that home is connected to a crime.

Our case law, not to mention the Fourth Amendment, demands a different result that properly

protects individuals from the disproportionate power of the state. And, most importantly, all of

this analysis is inapplicable where, as in this case, the police failed to show that Woodall lived in

the residence in question.

The Oldfield Drive residence should never have been searched based on this affidavit. As

an appropriate remedy, the evidence from the search should have been suppressed. And because

the government concedes that Woodall’s statement to the police was not sufficiently attenuated

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from his illegal search, I would also reverse the district court’s denial of Woodall’s motion to

suppress as it applies to his confession. I therefore respectfully dissent.

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