FILED United States Court of Appeals PUBLISH Tenth Circuit UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS February 24, 2021 Christopher M. Wolpert FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT Clerk of Court _________________________________ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. No. 19-2097 MATHIAS MORA, Defendant - Appellant. _________________________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of New Mexico (D.C. No. 1:16-CR-04358-MV-1) _________________________________ Devon M. Fooks, Assistant Federal Public Defender, Office of the Federal Public Defender, Albuquerque, New Mexico, for Appellant. Tiffany L. Walters, Assistant United States Attorney (John C. Anderson, United States Attorney, with her on the brief), Office of the United States Attorney, Albuquerque, New Mexico, for Appellee. _________________________________ Before TYMKOVICH, Chief Judge, BALDOCK, and CARSON, Circuit Judges. _________________________________ CARSON, Circuit Judge. _________________________________ In our Republic, the Constitution imposes important limitations on the government to protect the rights of the governed. The Founders recognized that those limitations may, at times, hinder government efficiency. But they decided that the incremental burden constitutional obligations place on the government’s exercise of power is worth the benefit to individual liberty. The Fourth Amendment generally requires the government to obtain a valid warrant to search a person’s home. Although this obligation may hinder law enforcement efficiency, it protects the people from unreasonable intrusions. Indeed, the Fourth Amendment stems from the bedrock principle that intrusion into the home is “subversive of all the comforts of society.” Berger v. New York, 388 U.S. 41, 49 (1967) (quoting Entick v. Carrington, 19 How. St. Tr. 1029, 1066 (C.P. 1765)). If courts stray from that long-standing principle, we forget “the very essence of constitutional liberty and security.” Id. Today we consider whether officers’ search of Defendant Mathias Mora’s home violated the Fourth Amendment. We hold that no exigent circumstances justified the officers’ nonconsensual, warrantless search (protective sweep) of Defendant’s home. We also hold that the excised search warrant affidavit failed to provide probable cause to search Defendant’s home. Exercising jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we reverse the district court’s suppression order. I. Officers responded to a 911 call reporting that dozens of people exited the back of a tractor trailer behind a supermarket. When officers arrived at the scene a few minutes later, the tractor trailer was gone. But officers found fourteen people lacking identification, some of whom admitted that a driver smuggled them across the border in 2 the back of a tractor trailer. None of the captured passengers suggested that the driver, or anyone else, took any passengers to another location. Officers soon discovered a tractor trailer matching the 911 caller’s description in a nearby Walmart parking lot. Officers opened the tractor trailer’s rear doors to find it empty, except for a bottle apparently containing urine and the smell of body odor. Officers did not open the locked cab door. Video footage revealed that the tractor trailer entered the Walmart parking lot about ten minutes after it left the supermarket, showing that the driver—Defendant— drove directly between the two stores. The tractor trailer did not move, ...
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