United States v. Santiago

135 F.4th 1235

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit
• Decided: April 30, 2025
• Docket: 24-6015
• Status: Published

Opinion

Appellate Case: 24-6015 Document: 71-1 Date Filed: 04/30/2025 Page: 1 FILED United States Court of Appeals PUBLISH Tenth Circuit

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS April 30, 2025

Christopher M. Wolpert FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT Clerk of Court _________________________________

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff - Appellee,

v. No. 24-6015

ALEXANDER WILLIAM SANTIAGO,

Defendant - Appellant. _________________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma (D.C. No. 5:22-CR-00253-PRW-1) _________________________________

Perrin Tourangeau, Assistant Federal Public Defender (Virginia L. Grady, Federal Public Defender with her on the briefs), Denver, Colorado, for Defendant-Appellant.

D.H. Dilbeck, Assistant U.S. Attorney (Robert J. Troester, United States Attorney with him on the brief), Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, for Plaintiff-Appellee. _________________________________

Before BACHARACH, SEYMOUR, and PHILLIPS, Circuit Judges. _________________________________

SEYMOUR, Circuit Judge. _________________________________

Defendant Alexander William Santiago appeals his conviction and sentence on

child pornography charges. At trial, Mr. Santiago was convicted of production and

possession of child pornography and sentenced to 240 months imprisonment on the

production count and 120 months imprisonment on the possession count, to run Appellate Case: 24-6015 Document: 71-1 Date Filed: 04/30/2025 Page: 2

consecutively. On appeal, he argues that the district court erred in denying his motion

to suppress evidence obtained from his iPhone, which was initially searched under an

impermissibly broad state search warrant and later searched under a federal search

warrant whose underlying affidavit relied on the results of the state search.

For the reasons explicated infra, we agree with Mr. Santiago. Accordingly,

exercising jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we reverse the district court’s denial

of Mr. Santiago’s suppression motion, vacate Mr. Santiago’s conviction and

sentence, and remand the case to the district court for further proceedings consistent

with this opinion.

I. Background1

In July 2021, an Oklahoma mother reported her 14-year-old daughter, G.P.,

missing. She suspected that G.P. was with Mr. Santiago because she had previously

seen Snapchat images sent from Mr. Santiago to G.P. showing the two together.

Police contacted Mr. Santiago, who was 24 years old at the time. He confirmed G.P.

was with him and agreed to bring her to law enforcement. While talking with a

forensic interviewer, G.P. said that Mr. Santiago was her boyfriend, that they were in

love, and that they had had sex on more than one occasion.

Without a warrant, police officers arrested Mr. Santiago outside of his home

and seized his iPhone. The subsequent affidavit of probable cause for the arrest

mentioned three charges: (1) rape, (2) lewd or lascivious acts or proposals to a minor,

1 The Court limits it recounting of the facts to the issues relevant on appeal. 2 Appellate Case: 24-6015 Document: 71-1 Date Filed: 04/30/2025 Page: 3

and (3) a violation of a state statute that prohibits using electronic devices to commit

a state crime. The state court judge reviewing the affidavit determined that the first

two charges supported Mr. Santiago’s continued detention.

Several weeks later, one of the arresting officers submitted an affidavit in

support of a warrant to search Mr. Santiago’s iPhone. A state court judge issued the

search warrant, which said that Mr. Santiago’s iPhone should be searched for:

All call information, including voice mail messages, all outgoing and incoming calls, missed calls, recent calls, call logs, text messages, including incoming and outgoing messages, multimedia messages, including incoming and outgoing, IMEI numbers, serial number and any other numbers used to identify cell phones as well as any other information within said phone that may be deemed evidence that a crime has been or is about to be committed.

Rec., vol. I at 42–43. The search warrant did not reference any particular crime.

State law enforcement officials searched Mr. Santiago’s iPhone. The search

led them to discover images of child pornography. They referred the case to federal

officials, who used the results of the state officials’ search to seek a federal warrant

to search Mr. Santiago’s iPhone for evidence of child pornography. A federal judge

granted the warrant. After the search, a federal grand jury indicted Mr. Santiago on

two counts, for receipt and for possession of child pornography. In a superseding

indictment, the charge of receipt of child pornography was exchanged for a charge of

production of child pornography, based on photos of G.P. found on Mr. Santiago’s

iPhone.

Mr. Santiago filed a motion to suppress the evidence found on his iPhone. He

contended that the federal search warrant’s probable cause was the result of the state

3 Appellate Case: 24-6015 Document: 71-1 Date Filed: 04/30/2025 Page: 4

search warrant and that the state search warrant was impermissibly broad, in

violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. The government argued (1) that the state

search warrant was not overbroad, (2) that even if it was, the good faith exception to

the Fourth Amendment’s exclusionary rule applied, and (3) that probable cause from

the federal warrant existed even in the absence of the results of the state search.

The district court held a hearing on the motion to suppress. Afterward, it

issued an order denying Mr. Santiago’s motion. The court concluded that the state

search warrant failed the Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirement. However, it

determined that the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule applied, which led it

to hold that there was no need to exclude evidence from either the state search or the

federal search. The court did not reach the question of whether there was probable

cause for the federal search warrant in the absence of the evidence discovered during

the state search.

Mr. Santiago proceeded to a jury trial, where he was found guilty on both

charges. He was sentenced to 240 months for production of child pornography under

18 U.S.C. § 2251(a) and (e) and 120 months for possession of child pornography

under 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(5)(B) and A(b)(2), to run consecutively. This timely

appeal followed.

II. Standard of Review and Analysis

Mr. Santiago’s appeal is relatively narrow. The parties now agree that the state

warrant was facially overbroad in a way that appears, at least on its surface, to violate

the Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirement. In the context of the district

4 Appellate Case: 24-6015 Document: 71-1 Date Filed: 04/30/2025 Page: 5

court’s denial of Mr. Santiago’s motion to suppress evidence found on his iPhone, the

parties agree that this Court reviews “the district court’s factual findings for clear

error,” United States v. Muhtorov, 20 F.4th 558, 592 (10th Cir. 2021), and reviews

the district court’s legal conclusions “relating to the sufficiency of a search warrant

and the applicability of the good-faith exception . . . de novo,” United States v.

Danhauer, 229 F.3d 1002, 1005 (10th Cir. 2000). There are two remaining issues:

(1) whether the good faith exception to the Fourth Amendment’s exclusionary rule

applies to the state warrant,2 and (2) whether there was sufficient probable cause to

issue the federal warrant if the results of the state search are excised from the

affidavit seeking the federal warrant.3 We address these issues in turn.

A. The State Warrant

We turn first to the state warrant. The Fourth Amendment’s warrant clause

specifies that warrants may only be issued if they “particularly describ[e] the place to

be searched and the persons or things to be seized.” U.S. CONST. amend. IV. “The

manifest purpose of this particularity requirement was to prevent general searches.”

Maryland v. Garrison, 480 U.S. 79, 84 (1987). The state search warrant in Mr.

2 The government does not argue that the good faith exception applies to the federal warrant. Mr. Santiago explicitly argues that the good faith exception does not apply to the federal warrant. “Tenth Circuit precedent dictates that the good faith exception does not apply at all when a warrant affidavit is based on tainted evidence from a prior, unlawful search.” United States v. Loera, 923 F.3d 907, 926 (10th Cir. 2019). 3 The government also argues that Mr. Santiago has not preserved his argument against applying the good faith exception to the state search of his iPhone. We disagree and decline to discuss this issue further. 5 Appellate Case: 24-6015 Document: 71-1 Date Filed: 04/30/2025 Page: 6

Santiago’s case is a classic example of the kind of general search the Fourth Amendment

is intended to prevent. It lists a variety of specific places within the iPhone that should be

searched but then says, “as well as any other information within said phone that may

be deemed evidence that a crime has been or is about to be committed.” Rec., vol. I

at 42–43. The state search warrant does not attempt to narrow this instruction by

mentioning the crimes with which Mr. Santiago has been charged.

Over the course of the last century, the Supreme Court has explained and refined

the contours of the exclusionary rule, which is a pathway by which courts exclude

evidence obtained in violation of a defendant’s constitutional rights. See, e.g., Weeks v.

United States, 232 U.S. 383, 392 (1914), overruled by Elkins v. United States, 364 U.S.

206 (1960); Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 654–55 (1961); Davis v. United States, 564

U.S. 229, 236 (2011). But the exclusionary rule is not absolute. “[W]hen officers execute

a search ‘in objectively reasonable reliance on a subsequently invalidated search

warrant,’ exclusion of the fruits of that search is generally not warranted.” United States

v. Little, 119 F.4th 750, 767 (10th Cir. 2024) (quoting United States v. Leon, 468 U.S.

897, 922 (1984)). This is referred to as the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule.

A key question, then, is what constitutes objectively reasonable reliance. “Given

that the particularity requirement is set forth in the text of the Constitution, no reasonable

officer could believe that a warrant that plainly did not comply with that requirement was

valid.” Groh v. Ramirez, 540 U.S. 551, 563 (2004). When a search warrant clearly fails to

comply with the Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirement, as the state search

warrant in Mr. Santiago’s case did, no objectively reasonable officer could rely on it. See

6 Appellate Case: 24-6015 Document: 71-1 Date Filed: 04/30/2025 Page: 7

Cassady v. Goering, 567 F.3d 628, 635 (10th Cir. 2009) (holding that the officers’

reliance on a warrant with the broad phrase “all other evidence of criminal activity” was

not reasonable).

As the district court correctly pointed out, and as the government reiterates on

appeal, one purpose of the exclusionary rule is “to deter police misconduct.” Utah v.

Strieff, 579 U.S. 232, 241 (2016). It is true that the overbroad warrant was signed and

issued by a judge, and judges are not police officers. However, we disagree with the

district court’s assertion that “[i]n this case, there is no police conduct to deter.” Rec.,

vol. I at 109. While the judge is the one who has the responsibility to issue a

sufficiently particular warrant, the overbroad language in the state search warrant

here was directly copied from the affidavit applying for the search warrant, which

was written by a police officer. Id. at 45. Additionally, police officers have a

responsibility to safeguard and respect the constitutional rights of everyone with

whom they come in contact. The execution of a plainly unconstitutional warrant is

included in the kind of police misconduct the exclusionary rule seeks to deter.

We therefore hold that the good faith exception does not apply. Because “the

presumptive rule against warrantless searches applies with equal force to searches whose

only defect is a lack of particularity in the warrant,” Groh, 540 U.S. at 559, the evidence

resulting from the state search of Mr. Santiago’s iPhone must be suppressed.

B. The Federal Warrant

We turn to the federal warrant. “[I]f a search warrant affidavit contains

information obtained through a prior, unlawful search, we must . . . excise that

7 Appellate Case: 24-6015 Document: 71-1 Date Filed: 04/30/2025 Page: 8

information and consider the adequacy of the affidavit anew.” United States v. Mora, 989

F.3d 794, 799 (10th Cir. 2021). Whether the federal affidavit sufficiently established

probable cause is a question of law. See United States v. Gonzales, 399 F.3d 1225, 1228

(10th Cir. 2005). In either their briefing or in oral argument, both parties indicated a

preference for us to address this question of law instead of remanding for the district

court to make this determination. We elect to resolve this question in the interest of

judicial efficiency.

In the affidavit in support of the federal search warrant, paragraphs 19 and 20

indicate that the state search of Mr. Santiago’s iPhone revealed images of child

pornography. Rec., vol. II at 12–13. For the reasons set forth above, those references to

the results of the state search must be excised from the affidavit.

Without the references to child pornography, the affidavit fails to establish

probable cause to issue a federal warrant authorizing federal agents to search Mr.

Santiago’s iPhone for child pornography. It describes a sexual relationship between a 24-

year-old and a 14-year-old. It alleges that there are images of Mr. Santiago and G.P.

together that were sent over Snapchat, but none of these are described as being sexually

explicit. Probable cause that a person had an inappropriate intimate relationship with a

minor, or even probable cause that a person committed statutory rape, does not

automatically create probable cause that the person in question possesses child

pornography. See generally United States v. Edwards, 813 F.3d 953, 960–69 (10th Cir.

2015) (holding that an affidavit describing a defendant’s online engagement with child

erotica did not establish probable cause to search his home for child pornography). In the

8 Appellate Case: 24-6015 Document: 71-1 Date Filed: 04/30/2025 Page: 9

federal affidavit in Mr. Santiago’s case, the affiant did not assert, with data or otherwise,

that there was a logical connection between Mr. Santiago’s sexual relationship with G.P.

and photos with G.P. and the probability of finding child pornography on his iPhone.

Paragraphs 19 and 20 of the affidavit are what justified the federal warrant. Because the

excised paragraphs no longer do so, the evidence resulting from the federal search of Mr.

Santiago’s iPhone must also be suppressed.

III. Conclusion

For the foregoing reasons, we REVERSE the district court’s denial of Mr.

Santiago’s motion to suppress the evidence from the state and federal searches of his

iPhone. Accordingly, we VACATE Mr. Santiago’s conviction and sentence and

REMAND the case to the district court for further proceedings consistent with this

opinion.