People v. John

PRECEDENTIAL

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
_____________

No. 09-4185
_____________

PEOPLE OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS,
Petitioner
v.

TYDEL B. JOHN,
Respondent
_____________

On Writ of Certiorari from the Supreme Court
of the Virgin Islands
(S. Ct. Crim. No. 2008-091)
_____________

Argued December 14, 2010

BEFORE: McKEE, Chief Judge, FUENTES and SMITH,
Circuit Judges

(Filed: August 15, 2011)

Vincent F. Frazer, Esq.
Elliott M. Davis, Esq.
1
Paul J. Paguin, Esq. (Argued)
Department of Justice
34-38 Kronprindesens Gade
GERS Building, Second Floor
St. Thomas, VI 00802
Counsel for Petitioner Government of the Virgin
Islands

Martial A. Webster, Sr., Esq. (Argued)
116 Queen Cross Street
Frederiksted, St. Croix, VI 00840
Counsel for Respondent Tydel B. John
_____________

OPINION OF THE COURT
_____________

SMITH, Circuit Judge.

Detective Sergeant Naomi Joseph of the Virgin Islands
Police Department applied for a warrant to search Tydel
John’s home for child pornography, relying solely on an
affidavit that established only probable cause to believe that
she would find evidence that he had sexually assaulted
several children at the school where he taught. In her
affidavit, Joseph did not allege any direct evidence that John
possessed child pornography, did not aver the existence of
any connection between the two crimes, and did not claim
either a good faith belief in such a connection or any basis for
thinking that one had been established. In general, the
affidavit provided no reason to believe that a person who has
2
committed child sexual assault would be likely to possess
child pornography. Despite these deficiencies, a Virgin
Islands Superior Court judge issued the warrant, and Joseph’s
search turned up incriminating documents (but no child
pornography). We granted certiorari to determine whether
this evidence was properly suppressed.

I

On November 27, 2007, following a presentation by
the Virgin Islands Domestic Violence Sexual Assault
Council, several of John’s sixth-grade students told school
officials that John had touched them inappropriately. The
school passed this information on to the police, and Joseph
was tasked with investigating. She began by interviewing the
complaining witnesses, several of whom accused John of
sexually assaulting them in his classroom. The girls also
advised Joseph that John maintained two spiral notebooks,
one blue and one red, in which he routinely “ma[de] notations
. . . regarding his students.” One student reported that John
had written “inappropriate things about the female students of
his current class and previous classes” in the blue notebook.
According to the witnesses, John carried the notebooks with
him to and from school each day in his work bag.

With this information in hand, Joseph sought a warrant
authorizing her to search John’s home. Joseph’s affidavit set
forth the above facts in somewhat more detail, and averred
that “persons who commit sexual offense crimes involving
children customarily hide evidence of such offenses,
including notes, photographs, [and] computer files, in their
homes and on their computer[s].” In addition to the red and
3
blue notebooks, the warrant application sought permission to
collect from John’s home pornographic magazines,
pornographic photographs of children, and computer files
containing pornographic notes and photographs of children.
A Virgin Islands Superior Court judge issued the warrant, as
requested, on December 3, 2007, and Joseph led the law
enforcement team that executed it shortly thereafter.

According to Joseph’s testimony at John’s suppression
hearing, it was “[r]elatively early in the search” that the
officers located a black bag containing the red and blue spiral
notebooks mentioned in the affidavit. Joseph allowed the
search to continue, because she was still “[l]ooking for any
pornographic photos of children.” The officers under her
charge found no such photos, but they nevertheless carted
away several computers and ten black and white composition-
book-style journals, in addition to the two spiral notebooks
that the witnesses had identified. The journals (labeled
“Tydel John Journals,” with dates) were retrieved from John’s
bedroom closet and a bookshelf, and did not resemble the
spiral notebooks—which had already been seized by the time
the journals were found.

While there is nothing in the “Tydel John Journals”
that would constitute child pornography, they do contain
evidence germane to the charges of aggravated rape, unlawful
sexual contact, child abuse, and child neglect that John now
faces. He therefore moved to exclude them from trial,
arguing that Joseph’s search warrant was invalid and that the
search violated the Fourth Amendment. The Superior Court
granted the motion, and the Supreme Court of the Virgin
Islands affirmed in a per curiam opinion. 52 V.I. 247 (2009).
4
The Court held that the search for child pornography was not
supported by probable cause, id. at 256, and that any search
of the home that occurred after the blue and red spiral
notebooks had been found was thus beyond the permissible
scope of the warrant’s execution, id. at 260. It then addressed
the so-called “good faith” exception to the exclusionary rule,
observing that the exception does not apply in the case of a
warrant obtained on the basis of an affidavit that is “so
lacking in indicia of probable cause as to render official belief
in its existence entirely unreasonable.” Id. at 261 (quoting
United States v. Zimmerman, 277 F.3d 426, 436 (3d Cir.
2002)). Because an examination of Joseph’s affidavit
revealed “not a single assertion that John was in any way
associated with child pornography,” the court concluded that
“the officers executing the warrant blindly relied on the fact
that the warrant was issued by a judge and disregarded the
fact that their search was not supported by probable cause.”
Id. at 262. In the view of the Virgin Islands Supreme Court,
such “blind reliance” on a warrant issued in the complete
absence of probable cause “can and should be deterred by
excluding the fruits of the illegal search, and the deterrent
effect of suppression is substantial enough to outweigh any
harm to the justice system.” Id. at 263. The “good faith”
exception therefore did not save the evidence from
suppression. Id.

A panel of this court granted the Virgin Islands’
petition for a writ of certiorari, “limited to the question
whether the decision of the Supreme Court of the Virgin
Islands is inconsistent with Herring v. United States, 129 S.
Ct. 695 (2009), in its application of the good faith exception

5
to the exclusionary rule.” Our order also directed the parties
“to explain in their briefing the basis, if any, upon which this
Court has certiorari jurisdiction to review the decision of the
Supreme Court of the Virgin Islands as a ‘final decision’
within the meaning of 48 U.S.C. § 1613.”

II

We first address the jurisdictional question
propounded in our order granting certiorari, beginning with
the text of the relevant statute. Section 1613 defines the
relations between the courts of the United States and the
courts of the Virgin Islands. It provides that, for the time
being, “the United States Court of Appeals for the Third
Circuit shall have jurisdiction to review by writ of certiorari
all final decisions of the highest court of the Virgin Islands
from which a decision could be had.” The same section
elsewhere states:

The relations between the courts established by
the Constitution or laws of the United States
and the courts established by [Virgin Islands]
law with respect to appeals, certiorari, removal
of causes, the issuance of writs of habeas
corpus, and other matters or proceedings shall
be governed by the laws of the United States
pertaining to the relations between the courts of
the United States, including the Supreme Court
of the United States, and the courts of the
several States in such matters and proceedings.

6
Reading these sentences together, it is plain that Congress
intended for this court’s certiorari jurisdiction vis-à-vis the
Virgin Islands Supreme Court to mirror the United States
Supreme Court’s certiorari jurisdiction vis-à-vis any of the
fifty state courts of last resort. We can therefore review by
certiorari a decision of the Virgin Islands Supreme Court if
that decision is “final” within the meaning of the United
States Supreme Court’s certiorari jurisdiction statute, 28
U.S.C. § 1257.

A ruling on a suppression motion is interlocutory in
nature, and therefore does not obviously qualify as a “final
decision.” See Di Bella v. United States, 369 U.S. 121, 131
(1962). The federal Supreme Court has nevertheless held that
an order granting such a motion is reviewable:

Although respondent has yet to be tried in state
court, the suppression ruling challenged herein
is a “final judgment” within the meaning of 28
U.S.C. § 1257(3), and we have jurisdiction over
this case. In Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn,
420 U.S. 469, 477 (1975), we identified four
categories of cases where the Court will treat a
decision of the highest state court as final for §
1257 purposes even though further proceedings
are anticipated in the lower state courts. This
case . . . falls within the category which
includes “those situations where the federal
claim has been finally decided . . . but in which
later review of the federal issue cannot be had,
whatever the ultimate outcome of the case.” 420
U.S., at 481. In this case should the State
7
 convict respondent at trial, its claim that certain
evidence was wrongfully suppressed will be
moot. Should respondent be acquitted at trial,
the State will be precluded from pressing its
federal claim again on appeal.

New York v. Quarles, 467 U.S. 649, 651 n.1 (1984). This
logic is directly applicable here. The Virgin Islands Supreme
Court has “finally decided” John’s federal constitutional
claim, and re-examination of its decision on a later appeal
will prove impossible: A conviction would moot the issue,
and an acquittal would preclude the prosecution from
rearguing the point on appeal. See id.; United States v.
Carrillo-Bernal, 58 F.3d 1490, 1494–95 (10th Cir. 1995)
(detailing the historical development of the rule against
government appeals of not-guilty verdicts); Gov’t of the
Virgin Islands v. Christensen, 673 F.2d 713, 715 (3d Cir.
1982) (collecting cases). The Virgin Islands Supreme Court’s
decision is therefore “final” for purposes of certiorari
jurisdiction, and § 1613 gives us authority to review it.

The parties have raised the possibility that 18 U.S.C. §
3731 also serves as a basis for our jurisdiction. That section
provides, in pertinent part, that “[a]n appeal by the United
States shall lie to a court of appeals from a decision or order
of a district court suppressing or excluding evidence . . . , not
made after the defendant has been put in jeopardy.” We treat
the Government of the Virgin Islands as a prosecutorial arm
of the federal government, so § 3731 permits it to take certain
interlocutory appeals. Christensen, 673 F.3d at 716. Until
2004, the Appellate Division of the District Court of the
Virgin Islands heard appeals from the Virgin Islands Superior
8
Court; the Appellate Division’s decisions were then
appealable to this court. See Gov’t of the Virgin Islands v.
Rivera, 333 F.3d 143, 145–46 (3d Cir. 2003). Because the
Appellate Division was part of the District Court of the
Virgin Islands, appeals from its decisions were treated “no
differently than appeals taken from any other federal district
court.” 1 Id. at 146. Thus, in Gov’t of the Virgin Islands v.
Charleswell, 24 F.3d 571, 574 (3d Cir. 1994), we concluded
that § 3731 gave us jurisdiction over appeals from the
Appellate Division filed by the Government of the Virgin
Islands.

The Government argues that the establishment of the
Virgin Islands Supreme Court does not change anything. In
its view, § 3731 gives us jurisdiction over interlocutory
criminal appeals from the Virgin Islands Supreme Court filed
by the Government, just as it gave us jurisdiction over the
same appeals from the Appellate Division. This position is
inconsistent with the text of § 3731, which refers to “an
appeal” from a “district court.” With the change in the
organization of the Virgin Islands courts, the case we are
today asked to decide comes from the Virgin Islands Supreme
Court—which is not part of the District Court of the Virgin
Islands or any other “district court.” Just as importantly, our
authority to re-examine decisions of the courts of the Virgin
Islands (as distinct from the federally established courts with

1
The statute creating the Appellate Division was repealed
when the Virgin Islands created the Virgin Islands Supreme Court.
The Appellate Division will cease to exist when the last case
pending on its docket is decided. See Edwards v. HOVENSA, LLC,
497 F.3d 355, 359 n.2 (3d Cir. 2007).
9
jurisdiction over that territory) is limited to “review by writ of
certiorari [of] all final decisions of the highest court of the
Virgin Islands from which a decision could be had.” 48
U.S.C. § 1613 (emphasis added). Issuance of a writ of
certiorari and the “appeal” contemplated by § 3731 are
discrete forms of review: the former is discretionary in nature,
while the latter is generally available to a losing litigant as of
right. Our review of Virgin Islands Supreme Court cases by
certiorari is meant to permit correction of important errors
while preserving the territorial courts’ ability to develop local
law and institutional traditions, in advance of the eventual
goal of allowing direct United States Supreme Court
certiorari review (eliminating entirely any review by this
court). See Pichardo v. Virgin Islands Comm’r of Labor, 613
F.3d 87, 96–97 (3d Cir. 2010); 48 U.S.C. § 1613. Allowing
as-of-right appeals in a certain class of cases under § 3731
would obstruct this aim by hindering the development of
Virgin-Islands-specific case law and undercutting the
authority of the Virgin Islands Supreme Court. We therefore
review its decisions at our discretion rather than as a matter of
course: that is, by writ of certiorari rather than on appeal.

Because this is not an “appeal” and does not come to
us from a “district court,” § 3731 cannot apply. Section 1613
is the sole source of our authority to decide this case.

III

We granted certiorari to determine whether the Virgin
Islands Supreme Court’s ruling is inconsistent with Herring v.
United States, 129 S. Ct. 695 (2009), in which the Supreme
Court addressed the “good faith” exception to the
10
exclusionary rule that it had previously established in United
States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897 (1984). Because “the
exclusionary rule is not an individual right,” but is instead a
means of deterring Fourth Amendment violations, it “applies
only where it ‘result[s] in appreciable deterrence.’” Herring,
129 S. Ct. at 700 (quoting Leon, 468 U.S. at 909).
Suppression of valuable evidence imposes social costs by
hindering the courts’ truth-seeking function, but the Supreme
Court has determined that those costs are outweighed by the
need to prevent illegal and culpable law enforcement conduct.
But because some unconstitutional conduct is unlikely to be
deterred by the threat of sanctions, exclusion is not a blanket
remedy. Where, for instance, a reasonable officer cannot
have been expected to know that what he was doing was
unconstitutional, he is unlikely to be discouraged in his
actions by the knowledge that the fruits of unconstitutional
searches will be suppressed. There is no sense in suppressing
whatever evidence he may have uncovered in such a case, for
the limited or nonexistent deterrent value of exclusion does
not outweigh the cost. See Davis v. United States, 564 U.S. --
-, slip op. at 6–9 (2011). Accordingly, “[t]o trigger the
exclusionary rule, police conduct must be sufficiently
deliberate that exclusion can meaningfully deter it, and
sufficiently culpable that such deterrence is worth the price
paid by the justice system.” Herring, 129 S. Ct. at 702.

The Leon rule is a specific application of this general
principle. As Herring described it, Leon holds that “[w]hen
police act under a warrant that is invalid for lack of probable
cause, the exclusionary rule does not apply if the police acted
‘in objectively reasonable reliance’ on the subsequently

11
invalidated search warrant.” Id. at 701 (quoting Leon, 468
U.S. at 922). A warrant represents judicial authorization of a
particular search or seizure, and it is thought that exclusion
will not deter police from relying on an invalid warrant unless
the police should reasonably have known that the warrant’s
issuance would be found unconstitutional. We have
identified “four limited circumstances” in which a police
officer’s reliance on a warrant will not be considered
“objectively reasonable”:

1) where the magistrate judge issued the warrant in
reliance on a deliberately or recklessly false
affidavit;

2) where the magistrate judge abandoned his or
her judicial role and failed to perform his or her
neutral and detached function;

3) where 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) where the warrant was so facially deficient that
it failed to particularize the place to be searched
or the things to be seized.

United States v. Tracey, 597 F.3d 140, 151 (2010) (citing
Zimmerman, 277 F.3d at 436–37). “These limited exceptions
are consistent with the approach taken in Herring because
each of these circumstances involve[s] conduct that is
‘deliberate, reckless, or grossly negligent,’ and thus the
12
benefits of deterring future misconduct ‘outweigh the costs’
of excluding the evidence.” Id. (quoting Herring, 129 S. Ct.
at 700, 702).

John invokes the third of these exceptions to the Leon-
Herring rule, arguing that Joseph’s affidavit was “so lacking
in indicia of probable cause as to render official belief in its
existence entirely unreasonable.” 2 Tracey, 597 F.3d at 151.

2
John concedes that the warrant was valid insofar as it
authorized a search for the red and blue spiral notebooks that had
been specifically identified as containing evidence of his alleged
crimes. He seeks only to suppress the journals, which were found
after the search’s admittedly legal objects had been seized.
The panel is in agreement that Joseph’s affidavit did not
provide probable cause to believe that any evidence or contraband
other than the red and blue notebooks would be found in John’s
house. See infra, at 14–15; post, at 3, 5, 6–7. Generally, “where
the evidence authorized to be seized exceeds the underlying
probable cause justification, the proper course is for the court to
redact that information from the affidavit of probable cause.”
United States v. Yusuf, 461 F.3d 374, 389 (3d Cir. 2006). In this
context, “redaction” means:

[S]triking from a warrant those severable phrases
and clauses that are invalid for lack of probable
cause or generality and preserving those severable
phrases and clauses that satisfy the Fourth
Amendment. Each part of the search authorized by
the warrant is examined separately to determine
whether it is impermissibly general or unsupported
by probable cause. Materials seized under the
authority of those parts of the warrant struck for
13
We agree, because the catalogue of the affidavit’s “indicia of
probable cause” with respect to child pornography is
completely empty. The Virgin Islands Supreme Court was
correct in describing the affidavit as “wholly lacking in
probable cause,” because “[e]ven a cursory reading of Officer
Joseph’s affidavit reveals that there is not a single assertion
that John was in any way associated with child pornography.”
52 V.I. at 263, 262. To be sure, the affidavit provides reason
to believe that John had committed sex crimes against his
students on school property, and that he kept two particular
pieces of evidence of those crimes in his home. But those
allegations are not sufficient to establish—or even to hint at—
probable cause as to the wholly separate crime of possessing
child pornography.

A belief in the existence of probable cause in this case
requires believing that a person who has sexually assaulted a
child is also likely to collect child pornography. Putting aside
for the moment the reasonableness of such an assumed
connection, that latter belief is not stated anywhere in

invalidity must be suppressed, but the court need
not suppress materials seized pursuant to the valid
portions of the warrant.

Id. (quoting United States v. Christine, 687 F.2d 749, 753 (3d Cir.
1982)). Because there was no probable cause to justify continuing
to search John’s home for child pornography once the two
specifically identified notebooks had been discovered, all evidence
seized after that point—including the journals that are the subject
of this appeal—is subject to suppression unless some exception to
the exclusionary rule applies.
14
Joseph’s affidavit. The closest the affidavit comes is the
averment that “persons who commit sexual offense crimes
involving children customarily hide evidence of such
offenses, including notes, photographs, [and] computer files,
in their homes and on their computer[s].” But all this
statement can be read to allege is that John, who stands
accused of sexually abusing children, “customarily hide[s]”
evidence of that crime in his home and/or on his computer. It
does not allege that an individual in John’s position also
“customarily hide[s]” evidence of other crimes, in his home
or anywhere else. Without such an allegation, it was
unreasonable to conclude that there was probable cause to
believe that John possessed child pornography.

It should be clear that the existence of an assault-
pornography correlation is a question of fact that Joseph was
required to allege (and to support with averments stating the
basis for the allegation) if she desired to rely on it as the basis
for a probable cause determination. It is not a legal issue to
be entrusted to a magistrate’s judgment as a matter of abstract
doctrine. Either a correlation exists between the conduct
underlying one crime and the conduct underlying another, or
it does not. Forming a belief regarding the answer to that
question does not involve interpreting a statute, or analyzing a
Supreme Court decision, or applying some common law
doctrine. Because the question is one that can be resolved
only through the evaluation of evidence, it must be alleged on
the face of the affidavit in order to be considered for purposes
of determining probable cause.

As the Second Circuit wrote in a case quite similar to
our own, “‘[i]t is an inferential fallacy of ancient standing to
15
conclude that, because members of group A’ (those who
collect child pornography) ‘are likely to be members of group
B’ (those attracted to children), ‘then group B is entirely, or
even largely composed of, members of group A.’” United
States v. Falso, 544 F.3d 110, 122 (2d Cir. 2008) (quoting
United States v. Martin, 426 F.3d 68, 82 (2d Cir. 2005)
(Pooler, J., dissenting)). Then-Judge Sotomayor went on:

Although offenses relating to child pornography
and sexual abuse of minors both involve the
exploitation of children, that does not compel,
or even suggest, the correlation [that a person
who has committed one crime has likely
committed the other] drawn by the district
court. Perhaps it is true that all or most people
who are attracted to minors collect child
pornography. But that association is nowhere
stated or supported in the affidavit. See [Illinois
v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 238 (1983)] (probable
cause assessments are to be made from “all the
circumstances set forth in the affidavit”);
[United States v. Gourde, 440 F.3d 1065, 1067
(9th Cir. 2006)] (“All data necessary to show
probable cause for the issuance of a search
warrant must be contained within the four
corners of a written affidavit given under oath”
(internal marks and citation omitted)). . . . [A]n
individual’s Fourth Amendment right cannot be
vitiated based on fallacious inferences drawn
from facts not supported by the affidavit.

16
Id. (footnotes omitted). Similarly, in United States v.
Hodson, 543 F.3d 286, 293 (6th Cir. 2008), the Sixth Circuit
held that it was “entirely unreasonable” for Leon purposes
“for the officer executing the warrant either to infer that
nexus [between child molestation and possession of child
pornography] herself or to rely on her own subjective
knowledge [of the existence of such a nexus] to claim
reasonable reliance on the warrant.”

Just so in this case. We acknowledge the possibility
that studies might show that a correlation exists between one
crime and the other; or perhaps extensive investigatory
experience might reveal a pattern substantial enough to
support a reasonable belief on the part of a police detective.
But Joseph’s affidavit did not allege the existence of the
connection in question, let alone any evidentiary reason to
believe in it. She should not, therefore, be permitted either to
draw an inference from facts not stated in the affidavit or to
rely on her own personal knowledge. She was instead
required to state all the relevant facts in the warrant affidavit
and submit them to judicial scrutiny. See, e.g., United States
v. Stearn, 597 F.3d 540, 549 (3d Cir. 2009); United States v.
Olvey, 437 F.3d 804, 807 (8th Cir. 2006) (“Where there is no
evidentiary hearing before the magistrate judge, the probable
cause determination must be based upon only that
information which is found within the four corners of the
affidavit.”) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted);
Zimmerman, 277 F.3d at 431 n.3 (“We, of course, must
confine ourselves to the facts that were before the issuing
magistrate—in other words, the affidavit.”).

17
 Requiring that a warrant applicant state explicitly her
belief in the existence of a correlation like the one on which
Joseph apparently relied, as well as reasons justifying such a
belief, is not inconsistent with the fact that these affidavits are
typically drawn by laypersons rather than attorneys. Even
police officers who lack legal training are expected to know
of the requirement that the factual basis for a probable cause
determination must be stated in the affidavit. We demand
nothing more than that an officer seeking a warrant explain
why she is justified in entering a person’s home and searching
through his belongings. This insistence that law enforcement
comply with a bedrock principle of the Fourth Amendment
cannot be dismissed as the imposition of an unnecessary or
hypertechnical obligation.

Policing this requirement easily passes the cost-benefit
analysis set forth in Herring. Reliance on a warrant affidavit
that omits a fact critical to any reasonable belief in the
existence of probable cause is the sort of thing we can expect
the exclusionary rule to deter: all an investigator must do to
avoid exclusion is comply with the well-known duty to spell
out the complete factual basis for a finding of probable cause
within the affidavit’s four corners. And deterring police from
submitting (and magistrates from accepting) affidavits that
completely omit crucial factual allegations is a preeminently
worthy goal. Reckless or grossly negligent conduct is enough
to justify suppression, and Leon and its progeny establish that
an officer’s conduct is sufficiently deliberate and culpable
when she relies on a warrant that is as devoid of probable
cause as this one. See Herring, 129 S. Ct. at 702; Tracey, 597
F.3d at 151. Joseph’s reliance on the warrant was “entirely

18
unreasonable,” Tracey, 597 F.3d at 151; her behavior was, at
a minimum, grossly negligent. Moreover, applying Leon in
cases like the one at bar would risk encouraging police to
seek permission to search for evidence of crimes unrelated to
any known facts, based upon nothing more than unstated and
unsupported hunches. It would reward law enforcement for
grounding warrant applications in unexamined biases and
stereotypes rather than in conscientious assessment of the
facts and circumstances uncovered by the investigation. Leon
and its progeny were never intended to ratify such unjustified
intrusions into the privacy safeguarded by the Fourth
Amendment. The “good faith” exception does not shield
Joseph’s actions here. The evidence obtained pursuant to the
invalid portion of the warrant (i.e., the portion authorizing a
search for child pornography) must be suppressed.

We are not persuaded by the cases that may be cited in
support of the contrary conclusion. The prosecution relies on
United States v. Haynes, 160 F. App’x. 940 (11th Cir. 2005)
(per curiam) (unpublished), but that decision did not actually
decide the question whether probable cause or sufficient
indicia thereof existed. Haynes conceded that the warrant to
search his home was valid insofar as it pertained to evidence
of enticing a minor to engage in sexual conduct, but argued
that the police lacked probable cause to believe he possessed
child pornography. He did not, however, mount an argument
on appeal that any of the exceptions to the Leon doctrine
applied. The court therefore had no need to engage in serious
analysis of the question whether the executing officers had
acted in reasonable reliance on the warrant (though it noted
offhandedly that they “clearly” had). See id. at 944.

19
Moreover, the opinion leaves unclear whether the court was
even faced with the question we address today, because it
does not relate whether the warrant affidavit contained an
averment purporting to link the suspected crime of child
enticement to the search for child pornography. Haynes has
no bearing on this case.

The Eighth Circuit’s decision in United States v.
Colbert, 605 F.3d 573 (8th Cir. 2010), carries more force than
Haynes, but is distinct from the case now before us. A
witness called police after observing Colbert pushing a five-
year-old girl (whom he did not know) on a playground
swingset while talking to her “about movies and videos the
man had at his home.” Upon stopping Colbert’s car and
conducting a consensual search, police found a police
scanner, handcuffs, and a “New York PD” hat. The
defendant also admitted speaking to the girl about movies that
he kept at his apartment. Id. at 575. On this basis the police
obtained a warrant to search Colbert’s apartment for child
pornography, which they recovered and which Colbert moved
to suppress. See id. at 575–76.

A divided panel of the Eighth Circuit ruled that the
warrant was supported by probable cause. The majority
argued that a tendency to sexually abuse or exploit children is
relevant to the analysis of whether probable cause exists to
search for child pornography, asserting that “[t]here is an
intuitive relationship between acts such as child molestation
or enticement and possession of child pornography.” Id. A
suspected proclivity for child molestation was therefore a
factor that the magistrate could properly consider in making
his probable cause determination. Crucially for our purposes,
20
however, the court did not simply rely on the defendant’s
inappropriate interest in the little girl, but instead considered
it as one of several factors in its probable cause analysis. The
defendant had attempted to take the child home to watch
movies with him, and according to the court

it would strain credulity to believe that Colbert
was attempting to lure the child there to watch,
say, “Mary Poppins” or “The Sound of Music,”
or to engage in basket weaving or a game of
pickup sticks. The circumstances suggest that
Colbert intended to victimize the child in some
manner, and as the Supreme Court recognized
nearly twenty years ago, “evidence suggests
that pedophiles use child pornography to seduce
other children into sexual activity.”

Id. (quoting Osborne v. Ohio, 495 U.S. 103, 111 (1990)). The
implication is that combining the evidence of the defendant’s
suspected pedophilia with his specific desire to watch movies
at his home with an unrelated five-year-old girl provided
probable cause for thinking that the movies to be watched
were child pornography, intended for use in a seductive
manner. The specific reference to watching movies at the
defendant’s home was crucial to the court’s totality-of-the-
circumstances assessment that probable cause was present.
See id. at 577 (distinguishing Hodson and Falso on the basis
that “[n]either case involved an application for a search
warrant based on the defendant’s contemporaneous attempt to
entice a child”). Our case also does not involve a
“contemporaneous attempt to entice a child,” and there is no
suggestion that John had ever attempted to use child
21
pornography or other videos to ensnare his alleged victims.
Because all of the alleged assaults took place at school, it
makes no sense to suppose that he would have kept child
pornography in his home to aid him in his criminal endeavor.
And at all events, as we have noted, Joseph neither averred
the existence of a connection between the two types of
conduct nor alleged facts from which the Superior Court
judge could reasonably have inferred that such a nexus
existed.

Furthermore, for reasons explained above, the Eighth
Circuit’s assertion that there exists an “intuitive relationship”
between two distinct crimes is suspect. Notwithstanding its
own precedent requiring courts to confine themselves to the
“four corners of the affidavit,” Olvey, 437 F.3d at 807, the
court found probable cause in an affidavit that provided
neither evidence for nor an averment of the correlation in
question. We consider ourselves bound to refer only to the
contents of Joseph’s submission to the Superior Court judge
who issued the warrant, and (as we have explained) those
contents cannot reasonably have been read to establish the
requisite indicia of probable cause.

IV

It is settled law that a probable cause affidavit must set
forth all the facts upon which the affiant seeks to rely in
obtaining a warrant. The affidavit in this case omitted the
linchpin allegation on which any reasonable belief in the
existence of probable cause must have depended. Joseph
therefore cannot be regarded as having acted in “good faith”
within the meaning of Leon, and the Virgin Islands courts
22
were right to suppress the illegally-seized journals. We will
affirm their judgment.

23
 Gov’t of the Virgin Islands v. John
09-4185

Fuentes, Circuit Judge, Dissenting.
In Davis v. United States, The Supreme Court made it
clear that the sole purpose of the exclusionary rule is to deter
Fourth Amendment violations. 564 U.S. ---, slip op. at 6
(2011). We do not apply it to sanction errant magistrate
judges. Id. at 8. Nor do we apply it when a police officer
makes the same legal error as the judge who issued the
warrant. Rather, we apply the “extreme sanction of
exclusion” only as a “last resort” to deter police conduct that
is “deliberate, reckless or grossly negligent.” United States v.
Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 916, 926 (1984); Davis, 564 U.S. ---, slip
op. at 7, 8; Herring v. United States, 555 U.S. 135, 144
(2009). Here, the trial court made no finding that police
officer Naomi Joseph acted deliberately, recklessly, or with
gross negligence. Thus, I see no support for the proposition
that the Majority’s ruling will have a beneficial deterrent
effect. I respectfully dissent because excluding the evidence
in this case imposes great costs and “offends basic concepts
of the criminal justice system.” Leon, 468 U.S. at 908. 1
I.
Following a presentation to Tydel John’s sixth-grade
class on the difference between appropriate and inappropriate
touching, several students reported that John had engaged in
inappropriate contact with them. After interviewing some of
the students, police officer Naomi Joseph submitted an
affidavit and request for a warrant to search John’s home.
The affidavit stated that “persons who commit sexual
offenses involving children customarily hide evidence of such
offenses, including notes, photographs, computer files, in
their homes and on their computer.” (J.A. 108, 182). Based
on this belief, Joseph concluded that she would find
notebooks, pornographic photos of children and computer
files containing pornographic notes or photographs of
children. A Superior Court Judge determined there was
probable cause to believe evidence of sexual contact would be

1
I agree with my colleagues that we have jurisdiction over
this interlocutory appeal pursuant to 48 U.S.C. § 1613.

1
found in John’s home. Ultimately, police searched John’s
home and, while looking for evidence of child pornography,
they found notebooks containing chronicles of John’s
exploitation of young girls.
On John’s motion, a Virgin Islands superior court
judge, relying on the Sixth Circuit’s decision in United States
v. Hodson, 543 F.3d 286 (6th Cir. 2008), held that because a
warrant establishing probable cause for child molestation
does not necessarily provide probable cause to search for
child pornography, John’s notebooks must be suppressed. I
believe that the Majority decision affirming that suppression
to be wrong under the good faith exception to the
exclusionary rule and contrary to the Supreme Court’s most
recent pronouncement of that rule in Davis v. United States,
564 U.S. ---slip op. at 8-9 (2011). In short, “[b]ecause
suppression would do nothing to deter police misconduct in
these circumstances, and because it would come at a high cost
to both the truth and the public safety,” I respectfully dissent.
Id. at 1.
II.
My disagreement with the Majority is not that a
correlation between child abuse and child pornography was
not properly established. Indeed, there may be a nexus. As
then Circuit Judge Sotomayor, observed, “[p]erhaps it is true
that all or most people who are attracted to minors collect
child pornography.” United States v. Falso, 544 F.3d 110,
122 (2d Cir. 2008)(Sotomayor, J.). And perhaps it is not. 2 In

2
The literature is mixed. Most of the studies are concerned
with whether possession of child pornography causes the
possessor to actually commit a sexual offense against a child.
The reverse relationship—whether child molesters are more
likely to possess child pornography—has been of less interest
to scholars. It is clear that the “empirical literature is unable
to validate the assumption that there is a causal connection
between possession of child pornography and child sex
abuse.” Carissa Byrne Hessick, Disentangling Child
Pornography from Child Sex Abuse, 88 Wash. U. L. Rev.
853, 875(2011). But it is equally clear that the empirical data
shows a high correlation between general pornography
consumption and child molestation. See Neil Malamuth &

2
this case, I agree that the judge who issued the warrant should
have insisted on a more direct connection between child
abuse and child pornography. But, in my view, the failure to
allege the connection between the two does not support the
Majority’s view that Officer Joseph was “grossly negligent”
and that failure does not justify the extreme sanction of
exclusion.
The Supreme Court has articulated two principles that
limit the application of the exclusionary rule. The rule
applies “only where it result[s] in appreciable deterrence”
and, even when it does, “the benefits of deterrence must
outweigh the costs.” Herring, 555 U.S. at 141 (citing Leon,
468 U.S. at 909, 910) (internal quotation marks omitted); see
also Davis, 564 U.S. ---, slip op. at 6. There is likely to be
no appreciable deterrence “when an officer acting with
objective good faith has obtained a search warrant and acted
within its scope” because “[i]n most such cases, there is no
police illegality and thus nothing to deter.” Leon, 468 U.S. at
920-21. On the other hand, when an officer exhibits
“deliberate, reckless, or grossly negligent disregard for Fourth
Amendment rights, the deterrent value of exclusion is strong
and tends to outweigh the resulting costs.” Davis, 564 U.S. --
-, slip op. at 8 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
The Majority believes that its decision will have a
deterrent effect because Joseph’s behavior was, “at a
minimum, grossly negligent.” (Maj. Op. at 16.) This is a
factual determination that is not supported by the record. Cf.
Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154, 155 (1978) (concluding
that a defendant must prove by a preponderance of the
evidence at a factual hearing that an affiant knowingly,
intentionally, or with reckless disregard for the truth, included
a false statement in an affidavit). Moreover, we are not in a
position to make such a finding, depending as it does on
assessments of credibility and demeanor that are not readily
apparent in a transcript. Absent such a finding, “the
deterrence rationale loses much of its force and exclusion

Mark Huppin, Drawing the Line on Virtual Child
Pornography: Bringing the Law in Line with the Research
Evidence, 31 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 773, 794 (2007)
(“Overall, these data do indicate that child molesters have had
more pornography exposure than other groups.”).

3
cannot pay its way.” Davis, 564 U.S. ---, slip op. at 8
(internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
The Majority further concludes that the warrant was
“based on an affidavit so lacking in indicia of probable cause
as to render official belief in its existence entirely
unreasonable,” and hence culpable enough to be deterred by
applying the exclusionary rule. (Maj. Op. at 11 (quoting
United States v. Tracey, 597 F.3d 140, 151 (3d Cir. 2010)).
However, applicable precedent requires us to determine the
culpability of a police officer’s conduct in an objective
fashion, asking whether “a reasonably well trained officer
would have known that the search was illegal in light of all
the circumstances.” Herring, 555 U.S. at 145 (quoting Leon,
468 U.S. at 922 n.23).
In this light, the question is what a reasonably well
trained officer would have known when applying for a
warrant in December 2007. Such an officer would have
known that probable cause exists when there is a “fair
probability that contraband or evidence of a crime will be
found in a particular place,” Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213,
238 (1983), but little else. In December 2007, there were no
precedents applying this broad standard to analogous facts.
Under such circumstances, a reasonable police officer would
do exactly what Joseph did: she would submit a request to a
judge asking whether there is probable cause for a warrant.
And, lacking legal training herself, she would then rely on
that judicial determination to do her job. One might argue
that suppressing evidence obtained when a warrant is invalid
would encourage police officers to scrutinize the warrant
closely and point out legal errors. But police officers are not
lawyers and this argument was expressly rejected in Leon as
“speculative.” 468 U.S. at 918.
The reasonably well-trained officer would fare no
better today. While that officer would have the benefit of
several court of appeals opinions discussing the issue of
whether probable cause to believe that someone has molested
a child automatically provides probable cause to believe that
someone will possess photographic evidence of that crime (or
photos used to facilitate the crime—tools of a despicable
trade), those opinions provide conflicting guidance. Compare
Hodson, 543 F.3d at 292, 293 (concluding that there is no

4
probable cause in such circumstances and applying the
exclusionary rule), with Falso, 544 F.3d at 122, 125
(concluding that there was no probable cause, but refusing to
apply the exclusionary rule), and with United States v.
Colbert, 605 F.3d 573, 576, 578-79 (8th Cir. 2010)
(concluding that the relationship between child molestation
and child pornography is “intuitive,” thus providing probable
cause, and then holding in the alternative that the
exclusionary rule would not apply).
The split in the courts of appeals that have addressed
this issue shows that even judges, steeped in the law and
acting in the utmost good faith, can have different opinions on
the issue. If even the experts cannot agree on whether
probable cause to search for evidence of child molestation
provides probable cause to search for child pornography, it
was not objectively unreasonable—let alone, entirely
unreasonable—for Joseph to take one side of the controversy
over the other, even if we now disagree with that decision.
Cf. Leon, 468 U.S. at 926 (noting divided opinion among
judges as to the existence of probable cause in that case and
then observing that under such circumstances “the officers’
reliance on the magistrate’s determination of probable cause
was objectively reasonable, and application of the extreme
sanction of exclusion is inappropriate”); see also Falso, 544
F.3d at 128 (stating that this is an issue “upon which
reasonable minds can differ” before concluding that police
officers acted in good faith).
Even the Second Circuit, which quite correctly found
the supposed connection between child molestation and child
pornography to be nothing more than an “inferential fallacy
of ancient standing,” could not come to the conclusion that a
police officer acting on a warrant based on such an
assumption was entirely unreasonable. See Falso, 544 F.3d at
128 (“Once the district court rules on the legal sufficiency of
the facts alleged in the affidavit, the officers were justified in
executing the warrant.”). It is not difficult to see why.
Probable cause determinations are not, and never have been,
based on rigid logic. As the Supreme Court explained almost
thirty years ago, evidence must be “seen and weighed not in
terms of library analysis by scholars, but as understood by
those versed in the field of law enforcement. . . . [P]robable
cause is a fluid concept—turning on the assessment of

5
probabilities in particular factual contexts—not readily, or
even usefully, reduced to a neat set of legal rules.” Gates,
462 U.S. at 232. It was not unreasonable for Joseph to assess
the probability that John would have child pornography and
conclude that there was probable cause.
A comparison with the Supreme Court’s recent
decision in Davis makes this clear. In Davis, the Supreme
Court declined to apply the exclusionary rule where the police
followed a court of appeals precedent authorizing their search
of an automobile because “[a]bout all that exclusion would
deter in this case is conscientious police work. Responsible
law-enforcement officers will take care to learn ‘what is
required of them’ under Fourth Amendment precedent and
will conform their conduct to these rules.” 564 U.S. ---, slip
op. at 11 (quoting Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U.S. 586, 599
(2006)). This case is the other side of the Davis coin. Here,
there was no legal precedent to guide a responsible law
enforcement official’s judgment as to whether there was
probable cause for a particular search. As I’ve said, a
responsible law enforcement official in this position does
exactly what Joseph did and seeks a legal determination of
probable cause from a judge. The police officer then relies on
this judicial determination authorizing her conduct as a tool to
“fulfill [her] crime-detection and public-safety
responsibilities.” Id. Applying the exclusionary rule in such
circumstances would serve only to “discourage the officer
from doing [her] duty,” which is “not the kind of deterrence
the exclusionary rule seeks to foster.” Id. (internal quotation
marks and citation omitted).
Joseph’s mistake was not the error of culpably
omitting a crucial fact linking child molestation with child
pornography. Her mistake was in thinking that the facts she
did provide—that “persons who commit sexual offense
crimes involving children customarily hide evidence of such
offenses, including notes, photographs, [and] computer files,
in the homes and on their computer[s]”—were sufficient to
establish probable cause to search for child pornography. In
other words, she believed there was a fair probability that a
man accused of molesting children and recording his crimes
in one medium—a written journal—might also record them in
another—photographs. Although we might now wish that she
had provided more specific justifications for this belief,

6
Joseph’s conduct was not entirely unreasonable. She made a
mistake. But that mistake will not be undone by today’s
opinion.
Without a finding of deterrence, application of the
exclusionary rule carries substantial costs:
Exclusion exacts a heavy toll on both the
judicial system and society at large. It almost
always requires courts to ignore reliable,
trustworthy evidence bearing on guilt or
innocence. And its bottom-line effect, in many
cases, is to suppress the truth and set the
criminal loose in the community without
punishment.
Davis, 546 U.S. ---, slip op at 7 (citations omitted). For all of
these reasons, I respectfully dissent.

7