UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 09-5032
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
DON THOMAS, JR.,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of
Maryland, at Baltimore. Benson Everett Legg, Chief District
Judge. (1:04-cr-00250-BEL-4)
Submitted: January 14, 2011 Decided: March 4, 2011
Before NIEMEYER, KEENAN, and WYNN, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Michael D. Montemarano, MICHAEL D. MONTEMARANO, P.A., Elkridge,
Maryland, for Appellant. Rod J. Rosenstein, United States
Attorney, Christopher J. Romano, Assistant United States
Attorney, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
Following the denial of his motion to suppress the
evidence seized from his home pursuant to a search warrant, Don
Thomas, Jr., entered a conditional guilty plea pursuant to which
he pled guilty to conspiracy to possess with intent to
distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine, in violation of 21
U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), 846 (2006), and possession of a firearm in
furtherance of a drug trafficking offense, in violation of 18
U.S.C. § 924(c) (2006). Thomas was sentenced to 300 months’
imprisonment. After he successfully obtained relief via a 28
U.S.C.A. § 2255 (West Supp. 2010) motion, the district court
entered an amended criminal judgment. Thomas timely noted this
appeal, challenging the denial of his motion to suppress. For
the reasons that follow, we affirm.
Thomas argues that the search warrant the police
obtained for his home was invalid because the warrant affidavit
failed to establish probable cause, and thus that the narcotics
and firearms seized upon execution of the warrant should have
been suppressed. We review the district court’s factual
findings underlying its resolution of a motion to suppress for
clear error and its legal determinations de novo. United States
v. Grossman, 400 F.3d 212, 216 (4th Cir. 2005).
In reviewing the validity of a search warrant, the
relevant inquiry is whether, under the totality of the
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circumstances, the issuing judge had a substantial basis for
concluding there was probable cause to issue the warrant.
Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 238 (1983); Grossman, 400 F.3d
at 217. “When reviewing the probable cause supporting a
warrant, a reviewing court must consider only the information
presented to the magistrate who issued the warrant.” United
States v. Wilhelm, 80 F.3d 116, 118 (4th Cir. 1996). This court
affords “great deference” to a judicial probable cause
determination. United States v. Hodge, 354 F.3d 305, 309 (4th
Cir. 2004). Further, we avoid applying “‘hypertechnical’
scrutiny of affidavits lest police officers be encouraged to
forgo the warrant application process altogether.” United
States v. Robinson, 275 F.3d 371, 380 (4th Cir. 2001) (quoting
Gates, 462 U.S. at 236).
We have opined that, under Gates, “affidavits in
support of search warrants should not be subject to [t]echnical
requirements of elaborate specificity, and that a magistrate has
the authority . . . to draw such reasonable inferences as he
will from the material supplied to him by applicants for a
warrant.” United States v. Bynum, 293 F.3d 192, 197 (4th Cir.
2002) (internal quotation marks omitted, alterations in
original). Here, the state court judge was presented a warrant
affidavit, signed by two Baltimore County Police Department
detectives, that detailed three conversations they had
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intercepted via a court-authorized wiretap. In these
conversations, Thomas and his co-conspirator repeatedly used the
words “jacket” and “zipper.” The detectives averred that they
understood these words to refer to cocaine and cocaine packaging
and offered their experiential familiarity with drug-related
jargon and code words as the basis for that opinion.
The state court judge was free to accept (or reject)
the detectives’ opinion that these words did not refer to a bona
fide jacket, but instead were code words for narcotics
distribution. See, e.g., United States v. Wilson, 484 F.3d 267,
274-76 (4th Cir. 2007) (acknowledging, in the context of
challenge to a police officer’s expert testimony regarding the
meaning of drug-related code words, that those involved in
illicit drug trafficking often use jargon and coded language “to
conceal the meaning of the conversation from outsiders through
deliberate obscurity” (internal quotation marks omitted)).
Based on our review of the record, we conclude the judge’s
decision to make such an inference was reasonable.
In response, Thomas asserts that the detective’s
testimony at the suppression hearing fatally undermined the
basis of knowledge set forth in the affidavit, which was
integral to the judge’s probable cause determination. This
argument fails, however, as it simultaneously puts too fine a
point on the detective’s testimony and demands the type of
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elaborate specificity disavowed in Bynum. Accordingly, we
reject this argument and defer to the judge’s probable cause
determination. * See Hodge, 354 F.3d at 309.
For these reasons, we affirm the district court’s
denial of Thomas’ motion to suppress and affirm the district
court’s amended criminal judgment. We dispense with oral
argument because the facts and legal contentions are adequately
presented in the materials before the court and argument would
not aid the decisional process.
AFFIRMED
*
In light of this ruling, we decline to consider Thomas’
alternative argument that the district court erred in concluding
that the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applied.
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