CA6: Lack of minimal nexus is lack of PC and no GFE

The district court held the affidavit for drugs in defendant’s house was lacking nexus and probable cause for lack of good information and the good faith exception didn’t apply. Affirmed. United States v. Ward, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 23607 (6th Cir. July 27, 2020) (2-1):

The affidavit here provides that Ward received drugs and weapons charges but does not indicate when those offenses occurred or if they ever resulted in convictions. Undated charges, without further information, are not probative of whether Ward used his residence to traffic drugs at the time officers effected the search. Moreover, the lone trash pull here, six months after Moore’s death, does not compare to the three trash pulls in Harris and Gilbert. As for the unidentified males around Ward’s home, the affidavit does not indicate any suspicious activity by them, and the government does not rely on those facts in its brief, nor did it do so at oral argument. Perhaps it would be different if law enforcement here conducted the trash pull earlier, or if they searched Ward’s trash more than once. But those are not the facts before us.

. . .

The facts that bring Harris and Gilbert within the good faith exception are absent here. The controlled buys and trash pulls in those cases showed that the defendants continuously dealt drugs and used their residences for this purpose for several months leading up to the execution of the warrant. Although the trash searches in Gilbert began five months after the initial transaction, the police substantiated the first trash pull with another trash pull a few months later, which, as in Harris, allowed the inference that further drug-related evidence would be found in the defendant’s home. The affidavit in Gilbert also noted that the defendant had a “lengthy criminal history” which included eleven-year-old convictions for drugs and weapons offenses.

The affidavit here provides that Ward received drugs and weapons charges but does not indicate when those offenses occurred or if they ever resulted in convictions. Undated charges, without further information, are not probative of whether Ward used his residence to traffic drugs at the time officers effected the search. Moreover, the lone trash pull here, six months after Moore’s death, does not compare to the three trash pulls in Harris and Gilbert. As for the unidentified males around Ward’s home, the affidavit does not indicate any suspicious activity by them, and the government does not rely on those facts in its brief, nor did it do so at oral argument. Perhaps it would be different if law enforcement here conducted the trash pull earlier, or if they searched Ward’s trash more than once. But those are not the facts before us.