CA1: Getting SW for car doesn’t mean officers had doubts about PC

Defendant was stopped based on a CI’s providing police an exemplar of counterfeit money that he said came from defendant. While the CI later proved to be “eccentric” the information was sufficiently corroborated and believable to stop defendant. The police ultimately got a search warrant for the car, but that didn’t mean they had doubts about the PC for the search. The automobile exception would have applied. United States v. Silva, 742 F.3d 1 (1st Cir. 2014):

In this case, the record suggests that at the time the police seized Silva’s vehicle they had ample evidence supporting a finding of probable cause for a search. After the officers discovered Silva’s outstanding warrant, their search incident to arrest yielded several counterfeit bills and a counterfeit driver’s license in Silva’s wallet. The seized material corroborated Pelletier’s complaint, in which Pelletier had insisted that Silva was producing both counterfeit currency and counterfeit identification. Furthermore, the officers’ observations of Silva’s car, which suggested that the defendant was currently living out of the vehicle, gave them reason to believe that further evidence of counterfeiting might be found inside the vehicle. Together with Pelletier’s initial report, which alleged that Silva had an additional $300 of counterfeit bills in his glove compartment, this evidence more than sufficed to suggest there existed a “fair probability” that searching Silva’s car would lead officers to further contraband.

Silva insists that the officers’ decision to forestall searching his car until they had obtained a proper warrant reveals their own doubts as to whether they had probable cause at the time of seizure. Setting aside the fact that the officers’ procedural diligence in obtaining a warrant hardly proves their subjective uncertainty about the quality of their evidence, Silva’s argument misreads the law of probable cause. In evaluating probable cause, a court looks “at the objective facts, not at the actors’ subjective intent.” United States v. Sanchez, 612 F.3d 1, 6 (1st Cir. 2010). Consequently, an officer’s subjective belief that he or she lacked probable cause is not dispositive where the facts support an objective finding that the standard has been satisfied. See United States v. Pardue, 385 F.3d 101, 106 n.2 (1st Cir. 2004) (“Although [the police officer’s] testimony … calls into doubt whether he believed that the information about throwing the lighter amounted to probable cause, … an officer’s subjective belief is not dispositive of whether probable cause existed.”). The practice of awaiting a magistrate’s warrant prior to conducting a search, even where officers feel confident in their own assessment of probable cause, is one that should be commended, not punished with exclusion.