United States v. Perkins, No. 15-30035 (9th Cir. 2017)
Annotate this CaseDefendant plead guilty to receipt of child pornography and then appealed the denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained from his home computers pursuant to a search warrant. The district court concluded that the investigating agent did not deliberately or recklessly mislead the magistrate judge by omitting material information from the warrant application. The court concluded that the district court clearly erred in finding that the agent did not act with at least reckless disregard for the truth because he omitted facts required to prevent technically true statements in the affidavit from being misleading, and had the omitted information been included, the application would not have supported probable cause. Accordingly, the court reversed, vacated, and remanded.
Court Description: Criminal Law. The panel reversed the district court’s denial of a motion to suppress evidence obtained from the defendant’s computers pursuant to a search warrant, vacated his conviction for receipt of child pornography, and remanded for further proceedings. The panel held that (1) the district court clearly erred in finding that a DHS special agent did not omit relevant information with at least reckless disregard for whether the omissions would render the warrant application misleading; and (2) had the omitted information been included, the application would not have supported probable cause. Dissenting, Judge Murguia wrote that the majority fails to afford the district court its due deference, retroactively applies a new rule that is likely unsupported by case law, and improperly weighs the totality of circumstances in a probable cause determination.
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