Even without an adequate showing of nexus, search warrants have been sustained under the good faith exception. This is one of those cases where the inference is close enough. United States v. Mayweather, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 10208 (8th Cir. Apr. 8, 2021):
Mayweather argues that the affidavit lacked sufficient indicia of probable cause because it provided no connection between Mayweather’s drug distribution activities and his home. Thus, he asserts that McLouden’s belief that the search was legal, was “entirely unreasonable.” See id. (emphasis omitted) (quotation omitted).
Contrary to Mayweather’s assertions, we have applied the good-faith exception in controlled-substance cases even when an affidavit did not establish a nexus between the search location and the suspected contraband. In those cases, we concluded that the facts enabled an officer and the issuing judge to logically infer that a drug dealer would store contraband at his residence. See id. at 671-72 (stating it was not “entirely unreasonable” for an officer to rely on the warrant because, “[a]s a matter of common sense, it is logical to infer that someone in possession of valuable contraband would store that contraband in a safe, accessible location such as his or her residence”); see also Moya, 690 F.3d at 948-49 (holding that the good-faith exception applied because it was not unreasonable for the issuing judge to infer evidence would be at a suspect’s house when the affidavit indicated the suspect was distributing methamphetamine in the area, making the officer’s reliance objectively reasonable).
Here, the good-faith exception similarly applies because the issuing judge could have logically inferred that Mayweather stored contraband at his residence. As in Moya, law enforcement possessed information that Mayweather was distributing cocaine. The issuing judge could reasonably infer that evidence of cocaine distribution would be at Mayweather’s residence. Therefore, McLouden’s “[r]eliance on the search warrant was objectively reasonable, and there is no evidence [he] acted in bad faith.” See Moya, 690 F.3d at 949; see also United States v. Ross, 487 F.3d 1120, 1123-24 (8th Cir. 2007) (emphasizing that the issuing state judge, federal magistrate judge, and federal district court judge all found sufficient indicia of probable cause); cf. United States v. Herron, 215 F.3d 812, 814-15 (8th Cir. 2000) (finding that the good-faith exception could not apply, even when a state judge issued the warrant, because the only evidence connecting the suspect or his house to a farm containing marijuana plants was the suspect’s prior marijuana convictions and his familial relationship to the farm owners).
In Ross, the good-faith exception applied because (1) we previously held that probable cause to arrest a drug dealer supported an inference that evidence exists at his residence when officers stated that in their experience such an inference is appropriate; (2) the issuing judge, reviewing magistrate judge, and reviewing district court judge all found sufficient indicia of probable cause within the affidavit; and (3) the affidavit actually connected the drug transaction to the suspect’s home by way of his truck. Ross, 487 F.3d at 1123-24; see also United States v. Luloff, 15 F.3d 763, 768 (8th Cir. 1994) (reversing a district court’s grant of a motion to suppress when an affidavit supporting a search warrant showed that the defendant “had engaged in a continuous course of drug trafficking” and the affiant “aver[red] based upon his experience that drug traffickers often keep in their residences records of their illicit activity”).
by John Wesley Hall
Criminal Defense Lawyer and
Search and seizure law consultant
Little Rock, Arkansas
Contact: forhall @ aol.com / The Book www.johnwesleyhall.com
"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't." —Me
"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well." –Josh Billings (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things (1868) (erroneously attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, among others)
“I am still learning.” —Domenico Giuntalodi (but misattributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (common phrase throughout 1500's)).
"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government."
—Shemaya, in the Thalmud
"It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
—Charles Dickens, “The Old Curiosity Shop ... With a Frontispiece. From a Painting by Geo. Cattermole, Etc.” 255 (1848)
"A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect results, especially if one's attention is confined to the particular case at bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced."
—Williams
v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold,
J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984).
"The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws,
or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence." —Mapp
v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961).
"Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment."
—Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987).
"There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that
bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the
police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater
than it is today."
— Terry
v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting).
"The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their
property."
—Entick
v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765)
"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have
frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And
so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his
case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth
Amendment."
—United
States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting)
"The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated
here, has not–to put it mildly–run smooth."
—Chapman
v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).
"A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the
bottom of a turntable."
—Arizona
v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987)
"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly
exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth
Amendment protection. ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in
an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected."
—Katz
v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967)
“Experience should teach us to be most on guard to
protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born
to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded
rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men
of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
—United
States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)
“Liberty—the freedom from unwarranted
intrusion by government—is as easily lost through insistent nibbles by
government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose
it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark.”
—United
States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989)
"You can't always get what you want /
But if you try sometimes / You just might find / You get what you need."
—Mick Jagger & Keith Richards
"In Germany, they first came for the communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for
the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came
for me–and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
—Martin Niemöller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration
camp]
“You know, most men would get discouraged by
now. Fortunately for you, I am not most men!”
---Pepé Le Pew
"The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers,
is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which
reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that
those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being
judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting
out crime."
—Johnson
v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14 (1948)