FOR PUBLICATION UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, No. 19-10073 Plaintiff-Appellee, D.C. No. v. 5:15-cr-00288-BLF-1 JAVIER GARCIA, Defendant-Appellant. OPINION Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California Beth Labson Freeman, District Judge, Presiding Argued and Submitted March 2, 2020 San Francisco, California Filed September 10, 2020 Before: Eugene E. Siler, * Kim McLane Wardlaw, and Milan D. Smith, Jr., Circuit Judges. Opinion by Judge Wardlaw * The Honorable Eugene E. Siler, United States Circuit Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, sitting by designation. 2 UNITED STATES V. GARCIA SUMMARY ** Criminal Law The panel vacated a conviction and sentence for possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine, and remanded with instructions to suppress evidence found in the defendant’s home and on his person, as well as statements he made at the police station following his arrest. In a prior appeal, this court held that officers violated the Fourth Amendment when they entered the defendant’s home without a warrant, ostensibly to determine whether someone inside posed a threat to their safety or required emergency assistance. Though the officers knew nothing about the defendant before entering his home, they discovered him inside, detained him at gunpoint, took him outside in handcuffs, and ran a records check that revealed he was subject to a supervised release condition authorizing suspicionless searches of his residence. After discovering this condition, the same officers who had conducted the initial unlawful entry reentered the home to conduct a full search, during which they found methamphetamine and other incriminating evidence. The panel considered whether, under the attenuation doctrine, the discovery of the suspicionless search condition was an intervening circumstance that broke the causal chain between the initial unlawful entry and the discovery of the evidence supporting the conviction. The Government ** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader. UNITED STATES V. GARCIA 3 conceded that the first factor, the temporal proximity between the unconstitutional conduct and the discovery of evidence, weighs in favor of suppression. As to the second factor, intervening circumstances, the panel concluded that the officers’ discretionary decision to conduct a full investigatory search of the defendants’ home, combined with the lack of evidence for why the officers decided to avail themselves of the search condition, leads to the conclusion that the discovery of the defendant’s suspicionless search condition was not a sufficient intervening circumstance. As to the third factor, the purpose and flagrancy of the violation, the panel found particularly significant that the officers entered the defendant’s home without cause, detained him at gunpoint, and removed him from the premises in handcuffs; and concluded that whatever role the officers’ subjective good faith should play in the attenuation analysis, it is not enough to outweigh the other two factors, which both favor suppression. COUNSEL Jamie Lee Moore (argued), San Rafael, California, for Defendant-Appellant. Briggs ...
Original document
Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals