{"id":6638,"date":"2009-08-18T11:30:12","date_gmt":"2009-08-18T16:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=6638"},"modified":"2009-08-18T11:31:55","modified_gmt":"2009-08-18T16:31:55","slug":"seventh-circuit-criminal-case-of-the-week-experience-and-confidence-count","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2009\/08\/seventh-circuit-criminal-case-of-the-week-experience-and-confidence-count\/","title":{"rendered":"Seventh Circuit Criminal Case of the Week: Experience and Confidence Count"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"seventh-circuit51\"Once a person comes under police suspicion for dealing drugs, does that person retain any constitutionally protected right to privacy in his own home?\u00a0 Of course, the answer is “not much” if the police have some specific reason to believe that the house has been used for storing or selling drugs.\u00a0 But what if the police have only general information that the home-owner is dealing drugs, without any specific information connecting the house to drug trafficking?\u00a0 Even then, the Seventh Circuit indicated last week, the police may have probable cause to search the house for\u00a0evidence of drug transactions.<\/p>\n

John Orozco was convicted of drug and gun offenses based, in part, on evidence found in his home while police executed a search warrant.\u00a0 On appeal, he argued that the evidence should have been suppressed because the warrant was issued without probable cause.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

In applying for the warrant,\u00a0the government\u00a0relied on an affidavit\u00a0from an FBI agent.\u00a0 The affidavit\u00a0recited information indicating that Orozco was involved in high-volume drug-dealing and asserted, based on the agent’s ten years of experience in narcotics investigations, that high-ranking gang members often keep drug transaction records and other evidence of drug- and gang-related activity in their homes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Prior to Orozco’s trial, the district court judge ruled that the search warrant was not supported by probable cause because police had no specific information\u00a0connecting Orozco’s house to his criminal activity, but the evidence obtained pursuant to the search was admitted anyway because the police acted in good faith.\u00a0 Both sides appealed, and the Seventh Circuit (per Judge Sykes) ruled that the district court erred in finding no probable cause.\u00a0 United States v. Orozco<\/em>, No. 06-4235, 2009 WL 2461341 (7th Cir. Aug. 13, 2009).<\/p>\n

Orozco relied on the Sixth Circuit’s decision in the factually similar case of\u00a0United States v. Schultz, <\/em>14 F.3d 1093 (6th Cir. 1994).\u00a0 In Schultz<\/em>, police obtained a warrant to search the defendant’s safe deposit boxes based on general information that the defendant was dealing drugs and an officer’s affidavit asserting that “[b]ased on his training and experience . . . it is not uncommon for the records, etc., of such [drug] distribution to be maintained in safe deposit boxes.”\u00a0 The Sixth Circuit held the affidavit insufficient to establish probable cause.<\/p>\n

The Seventh Circuit\u00a0distinguished Schultz <\/em>on the ground that the affidavit in Orozco <\/em>was stronger.\u00a0 More specifically, the Orozco <\/em>affidavit noted the affiant’s decade of experience in narcotics investigations and expressed a higher degree of confidence that evidence “will be found” (in contrast to the more guarded “it is not uncommon” language of Schultz<\/em>).\u00a0 This seems a rather muscular distinction, and one that may elevate form over substance in the probable cause analysis.\u00a0 I wonder how many narcotics investigation units there are\u00a0that\u00a0lack an officer with several years’ experience\u00a0who would be willing to state in an affidavit that drug-transaction records “will be found” in the home of a suspected high-volume drug dealer.\u00a0 Do we now in effect have a rule that automatically permits searches of drug-dealer homes — at least as long police officers remember to recite their experience and optimism?<\/p>\n

Brief summaries of last week’s other new Seventh Circuit criminal cases are here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once a person comes under police suspicion for dealing drugs, does that person retain any constitutionally protected right to privacy in his own home?\u00a0 Of course, the answer is “not much” if the police have some specific reason to believe that the house has been used for storing or selling drugs.\u00a0 But what if the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,28,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criminal-justice","category-criminal-law-process","category-seventh-circuit","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6638\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}