United States v. Pavulak - 700 F.3d 651 (3d Cir. 2012)

Rule:

Suppression is not justified when officers act in the reasonable belief that their conduct does not violate the Fourth Amendment. Ordinarily, the mere existence of a warrant suffices to prove that an officer conducted a search in good faith. Yet there are situations in which, although a neutral magistrate has found probable cause to search, a lay officer executing the warrant could not reasonably believe that the magistrate was correct. Those four rare circumstances occur when: (1) the magistrate issued the warrant in reliance on a deliberately or recklessly false affidavit; (2) the magistrate abandoned his judicial role and failed to perform his neutral and detached function; (3) the warrant was based on an affidavit so lacking in indicia of probable cause as to render official belief in its existence entirely unreasonable; or (4) the warrant was so facially deficient that it failed to particularize the place to be searched or the things to be seized.

Facts:

The Delaware State Police obtained search warrants for Defendant Paul Pavulak's email account and workplace after receiving information that he was viewing child pornography on his workplace computers. The search warrants were supported by an affidavit that pointed to Pavulak's prior child-molestation convictions and labeled the images, which had been reported by informants, simply as "child pornography." No further details concerning the images' content appeared in the affidavit. The evidence that was seized confirmed Pavulak's involvement in child pornography, and a jury subsequently convicted him of possessing and attempting to produce child pornography, attempting to entice a minor, and committing crimes related to his status as a sex offender. The District Court sentenced him to life imprisonment on the attempted-production conviction and to 120 months' imprisonment on the remaining counts. On appeal, Pavulak contended that the District Court should have suppressed the evidence obtained pursuant to the warrants since the magistrate lacked probable cause to issue the search warrants.

Issue:

1. Was the affidavit, which supported the search warrants in question, sufficient under the Fourth Amendment to establish probable cause?
2. Should the exclusionary rule apply on the items seized on the basis of the search warrants in question? 

Answer:

1) No. 2) No.

Conclusion:

The Court concluded that the affidavit was insufficient under the Fourth Amendment to establish probable cause to search for child pornography. However, because the officers reasonably relied on the warrants in good faith, the Court agreed that the district court properly denied suppression. Defendant's challenge to his conviction for knowingly possessing child pornography under 18 U.S.C.S. § 2252A(a)(5)(B), based on insufficiency of the evidence, fell short of its "extremely high" burden. The Court also ruled that, since defendant's mandatory life sentence under 18 U.S.C.S. § 3559(e) did not exceed his maximum statutory sentence of life under 18 U.S.C.S. § 2251(e), Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 494, 120 S. Ct. 2348, 147 L. Ed. 2d 435 was inapplicable.