Search & seizure; Whether a warrant affidavit established probable cause to believe a crime was committed; Uncorroborated information; United States v Frazier; Obtaining a warrant to investigate the cause of a fire; Michigan v Tyler; The exclusionary rule; Applicability of the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine to evidence derived from the threatened use of an unlawful warrant; The “attenuation” & “inevitable discovery” exceptions to the doctrine; United States v Pearce; United States v Cooper; The good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule; United States v Leon; Comparing United States v Hython

The court held that the affidavit in support of the first search warrant in this case (the DVR warrant) did not establish probable cause to believe a crime was committed. It also held that the fruits of an unlawful search warrant, even if it was not actually executed, should be suppressed if the warrant was otherwise exploited. That was the case here. The attenuation and inevitable discovery exceptions to the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine did not apply, nor did the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule. Thus, the court reversed the district court’s judgment and remanded with instructions to suppress the evidence at issue. After defendant’s motions to suppress the evidence were denied, he entered a conditional guilty plea for possessing cocaine and heroin with the intent to distribute and a firearm in furtherance of a drug-trafficking crime. The court noted the only information in the affidavit in support of the DVR warrant that was “proffered to support a finding of probable cause is the statement of an unidentified person made to the unidentified property owner, and then communicated second-hand to” the officer who provided the affidavit, about “an unknown person entering the property and removing items from the shed around the unspecified time of the fire.” The affidavit lacked “any additional information that might support either source’s credibility[.]” Thus, the court determined the uncorroborated information was insufficiently reliable to support a probable cause finding. Further, the fact a fire occurred in the shed was “not itself evidence of a crime” and the existence of surveillance cameras attached to the duplex where defendant lived did not “add to a finding of probable cause.” Likewise irrelevant was his refusal to give the police access to the DVR equipment connected to the cameras. The government argued the exclusionary rule and the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine only apply when there is “‘an actual unlawful search, not simply the act of obtaining of a signed warrant that goes unexecuted.’” The court disagreed, holding that the “doctrine may be used to suppress evidence derived from the threatened use of an unlawful warrant.” As to the attenuation exception, all the events here occurred in one afternoon and there were no “intervening circumstances between the threatened execution of the unlawful DVR warrant and the discovery of the challenged evidence.” The court noted that defendant “confessed only because of the officials’ threat to execute the unlawful DVR warrant.”