Case: 12-11994 Date Filed: 05/20/2014 Page: 1 of 5
[DO NOT PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
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No. 12-11994
Non-Argument Calendar
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D.C. Docket No. 3:11-cr-00027-MMH-JRK-1
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
versus
RAMON GARCIA,
Defendant - Appellant.
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Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Florida
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(May 20, 2014)
Before CARNES, Chief Judge, DUBINA and SILER,∗ Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
∗
Honorable Eugene E. Siler, Jr., United States Circuit Judge for the Sixth Circuit Court
of Appeals, sitting by designation.
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Ramon Garcia was convicted on one count of manufacturing 100 or more
marijuana plants, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1), (b)(1)(B)(vii). He appealed
his conviction, contending that the district court erred when it denied his motion to
suppress evidence seized from his house and a barn on his property. That appeal is
now before us for the second time. All of the relevant facts and procedural history
are set out in our earlier decision in this case, United States v. Garcia, No. 12-
11994, slip op. at 2–5 (11th Cir. June 6, 2013) (Garcia I), and we will assume the
reader’s familiarity with it.
In our earlier decision, we resolved several issues concerning Garcia’s
motion to suppress, and we are bound by those determinations here. See United
States v. Jordan, 429 F.3d 1032, 1035 (11th Cir. 2005) (“The law of the case
doctrine bars relitigation of issues that were decided, either explicitly or by
necessary implication, in an earlier appeal of the same case.”); Schiavo ex rel.
Schindler v. Schiavo, 403 F.3d 1289, 1291 (11th Cir. 2005) (“Law of the case
binds not only the trial court but this court as well.”); Burger King Corp. v.
Pilgrim’s Pride Corp., 15 F.3d 166, 169 (11th Cir. 1994). First, we held that
exigent circumstances did not support the warrantless search of Garcia’s home.
Garcia I, slip op. at 5–10. Second, we held that the district court did not clearly err
when it concluded that the barn on Garcia’s property was located beyond the
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curtilage of Garcia’s home. Id. at 11 n.2. That meant that the investigating
officers were permitted to include their observations of the barn’s surroundings
when applying for a warrant to search Garcia’s property. Id.
We also surmised that the evidence collected from Garcia’s property may
have still been admissible, despite the fact that the initial search of his home was
unlawful, because of the independent source exception to the Fourth Amendment’s
warrant requirement. Id. at 10–12. That exception has two requirements: (1) the
warrant affidavit must establish probable cause independent of any information
obtained during the initial illegal search, and (2) if the remaining information was
sufficient to establish probable cause, the officers’ decision to seek the warrant
must not have been “prompted by” what they saw during the illegal search. See
United States v. Noriega, 676 F.3d 1252, 1260–61 (11th Cir. 2012) (quotation
marks omitted). We held in Garcia I that the first prong of the independent source
exception was met. Garcia I, slip op. at 11–12. More specifically, we held that
probable cause existed to search the premises, even without the observations
Deputies Roe and Moody made inside Garcia’s home, because of the observations
officers made in the open fields surrounding the barn near the home. Id. We could
not resolve the second prong of the independent source test, however, because
there was an unresolved factual question as to whether the officers’ decision to
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seek a warrant was “prompted by” their initial illegal search of Garcia’s home. Id.
at 12. We therefore remanded this case to the district court for resolution of that
factual issue.
On remand, the district court held two hearings in which it heard testimony
from Officer Roe and Sergeant Joshua Lee. Officer Roe, who had participated in
the initial illegal search of Garcia’s home and had also observed outside the home
evidence that Garcia’s barn was being used to cultivate marijuana, testified at the
first hearing that he would have searched the area surrounding Garcia’s barn even
if he had not smelled marijuana in Garcia’s home when he illegally searched the
residence. He further testified that, based solely on his observations near the barn,
he would have contacted narcotics officers so they could obtain a search warrant
for the premises. The district court credited Sergeant Roe’s testimony and found
that (1) he would have searched the area surrounding Garcia’s barn even if he had
not entered Garcia’s home beforehand, and (2) he would have contacted narcotics
officers based on his observations of the barn’s exterior, even if he had not entered
Garcia’s home beforehand. Those findings are not clearly erroneous.
Sergeant Lee, the officer who applied for the warrant to search Garcia’s
property, testified at the second hearing that he would have sought a search warrant
to search the property, even if Officer Roe “hadn’t gone into the house . . . and
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made the observations that he did inside the residence.” Sergeant Lee testified that
he would have applied for the search warrant based on all the other evidence
observed in the open area surrounding the barn on Garcia’s property. The district
court credited Sergeant Lee’s testimony and found that his decision to seek a
search warrant was “based primarily on his and other officers’ observations of the
area around [Garcia’s] barn” and that he would have sought a warrant to search the
premises based solely on the observations of the outbuilding, even if the illegal
search of Garcia’s residence had not occurred. We see no clear error in those
findings as well.
The district court’s factfindings lead us to conclude that the second prong of
the independent source exception is met in this case. As a result, the evidence
seized from Garcia’s property was admissible under the independent source
exception, and the district court did not err when it denied Garcia’s motion to
suppress. See Noriega, 676 F.3d at 1260–61.
AFFIRMED. 1
1
This appeal was originally scheduled for oral argument but was removed from the oral
argument calendar by unanimous agreement of the panel under 11th Cir. R. 34-3(f).
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