United States v. Raymond M. Freitas Walter Freitas Jonny McClellan

This is the government’s second appeal from a pretrial suppression order entered by the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. On the first appeal, we affirmed the district court’s holding that a search warrant violated Fed.R.Crim.P. 41 and the fourth amendment to the U.S. Constitution, United States v. Freitas, 800 F.2d 1451, 1455-56 (9th Cir.1986), but reversed the court’s ruling that the conduct of the government agents who relied on the defective warrant did not satisfy the “good faith” exception to the exclusionary rule. Because the district court had not found, but merely had assumed, certain facts crucial to the “good faith” inquiry of United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897 , 104 S.Ct. 3405 , 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984), we remanded for findings on four specific issues: (1) whether the agents had heard of similar surreptitious entry warrants issued elsewhere; (2) whether the agents had consulted with the U.S. Attorney; (3) whether the agents discussed the surreptitious entry with the magistrate; and (4) whether similar warrants had issued in other districts. Freitas 1, 800 F.2d at 1457 .

The district court, after an evidentiary hearing, made the…