Search & seizure; “Reasonable suspicion” to search a residence; Constitutional challenge to a FIP conviction; United States v Williams

[This appeal was from the WD-MI.] The court affirmed the denial of defendant-Hernandez’s motion to suppress, holding that the officers had a “particularized and objective basis” to suspect that he was engaging in firearm and drug activities at a residence that had not been reported to his probation officer. Hernandez violated his supervised release by living at an unreported residence (the Mahlon House), and a search of the house revealed three firearms and drugs. After the district court denied his motion to suppress, he entered a conditional guilty plea to FIP. On appeal, the court noted that, before the search was conducted, conditions had been added to his supervised release, which “allowed probation officers to monitor his location and search his ‘person, property, house, residence, . . . [and] papers’ whenever ‘reasonable suspicion’ existed that Hernandez ‘violated a condition of supervision and that the areas to be searched contain evidence of this violation.’” His probation officer had conducted surveillance and concluded that Hernandez had failed to report a change of residence. Hernandez argued that the officers could not have “reasonably suspected” that firearm or drug activities were occurring at the Mahlon House. But the court held that there was reasonable suspicion where “officers received a specific statement from a woman that Hernandez put a gun in her face at the Mahlon House and then removed” guns from the house. Even though the report indicated the guns had been removed, “his probation officer reasonably suspected that Hernandez had brought them back.” The court also noted that Hernandez had continually denied residing in that house even though there was evidence to the contrary, and his prior gun offenses were “‘particularly probative’” because they involved the same issue that concerned his probation officer. The court further concluded that the “facts, viewed together, gave officers reasonable suspicion that the residence contained evidence of drug activity.” Because reasonable suspicion existed that firearm and drug activities were occurring at the house, the officers “were entitled to search the house and seize the firearms discovered in the process.” The court also rejected Hernandez’s facial and as applied challenges to his FIP conviction. The facial challenge was foreclosed by Williams, and he failed to prove that he was “not dangerous.”