D.R.I.: Another staleness case; no time, no good faith

Another staleness case: No reference to time in a 2012 drug search warrant application except that defendant was driving a 2006 car. So, it had to be between 2006 and 2012. Even the continuing course of conduct that can usually overcome staleness doesn’t work here. Thus, the court finds it stale and not saved by the good faith exception. United States v. Santiago, 950 F. Supp. 2d 361 (D. R.I. 2013):

The evidence in this case has a longer lifespan because it demonstrates an established trend that supports the assumption that the drug-trafficking activity will continue. However, even in light of the Morales-Aldahondo balancing, this Court finds that in this case a six year lapse in time is too long to support a reasonable finding by the State Court Judge of a “fair probability” that the nexus between the commission and the specific location existed “at about the time the search warrant would [have] issue[d].” Zayas-Diaz, 95 F.3d at 113 (emphasis added). Because of the dearth of temporal information, this Court finds that the evidence presented in the affidavit was stale at the time the warrant was issued and that it therefore cannot support a probable cause determination. Without a reasonable inference of probable cause no valid warrant can be issued. The warrant in this case was invalid and therefore it did not justify the search of Mr. Santiago’s person or his King Street residence.

. . .

The good faith exception does not apply here. This Court finds that based on its review of the warrant affidavit, Det. Kantorski could not have had objective “reasonable grounds” for believing that the warrant was properly issued. Leon, 468 U.S. at 922, n.24. Det. Kantorski presumably knew the dates of the controlled buys but nonetheless omitted those dates from the warrant application. This Court has found that Det. Kantorski’s omission rendered the warrant invalid. A “reasonably well trained officer” would have known that without this temporal information in the supporting affidavit, the issued warrant would be invalid. Because Det. Kantorski omitted these key ingredients and because that omission subsequently led to the invalidation of the warrant itself, the Government fails to overcome the high hurdle in demonstrating Det. Kantorski’s objective “good faith” in applying for and executing the warrant. See Ricciardelli, 998 F.2d at 16-17.

One of the purposes of the exclusionary rule is to encourage improvements to the standard of police work practiced by the departments involved in the illegal search, and the good faith exception only applies where it does not obstruct that goal. See United States v. Peltier, 422 U.S. 531, 539, 95 S. Ct. 2313, 45 L. Ed. 2d 374 (1975) (quoting Michigan v. Tucker, 417 U.S. 433, 446, 94 S. Ct. 2357, 41 L. Ed. 2d 182 (1974)). This Court will not admit the evidence in question because to do so would not only ignore but explicitly undercut this express purpose. In this case, the warrant application was submitted without fundamentally important pieces of information which, based on the level of detail surrounding these controlled buys, was readily available to Det. Kantorski and the police departments involved. While this Court could not find that the police department recklessly or intentionally withheld the relevant dates from the issuing Magistrate Judge, this does not mean that the officers acted in good faith such that the Leon exception should apply. The correct standard to apply in a good faith determination is that of a reasonably well-trained officer. For this Court to find that this standard was met in this case would at best discourage affidavits containing the necessary factual predicate for the issuing court to make a determination of probable cause. At worst such a decision would create a massive hole in the protections guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment and could encourage future police departments to obscure the staleness of critical information by excerpting times and dates from their applications for warrants.