United States v. Louis Luk

Louis Luk, following the entry of a conditional plea of guilty, appeals the district court’s denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained from a search of his home. Luk argues that the search warrant was issued in violation of Rule 41(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and that the warrant was so overbroad as to preclude a good faith, objectively reasonable belief in its validity. We affirm.

I

Louis Luk was one of four persons indicted for conspiracy, illegally exporting high technology computer components to Hong Kong and the People’s Republic of China, and making false statements to United States government agents, under 18 U.S.C. § 371 , 50 U.S.C. App. § 2410(a), and 18 U.S.C. § 1001 , respectively. The indictment followed a lengthy investigation of Luk and his business, Mcall Resources, Inc., by Doris Koplik, an agent of the United States Department of Commerce, Office of Export Enforcement (“OEE”). Throughout the investigation, Koplik was in communication with Assistant United States Attorney Henry Rossbacher.

After Koplik ascertained that Mcall Resources operated out of Luk’s home in Irvine, California, she sought a search warrant. With Rossbacher’s…

dissenting:

I do not accept the majority’s rationale and therefore dissent from the court’s holding.

There was a time in the history of this country when judges — and especially judges of the United States courts — understood and were anxious to honor the epochal history out of which developed jealous strictures on the issuance of search warrants. There was a time, too, when judges did not feel the urge to weaken those dearly bought protections to which every citizen is entitled as against abuse by the government in both the issuance and execution of search warrants. Today’s decision is one more effort by which our personal freedoms are undermined and we are less secure. The majority opinion pushes off in that direction by the employment of such easy verbalisms as “fundamental/non-fundamental,” slip op. at 11, and pseudo aphoristic quotes lifted from a decision out of another circuit and involved with quite asymmetric fact mixes.

As to the historical facts of this case (distinguished from the inferences which the majority opinion has drawn from them), we are in substantial agreement. But in my view the treatment of that factual con *679 text should have resulted in a judgment…

859 F.2d 667 57 USLW 2318 UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Louis LUK, Defendant-Appellant. No. 86-5153. United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit. Argued and Submitted Jan. 7, 1987. Decided Oct. 6, 1988. William S. Wong, Florance and Wong, San Diego, Cal., for defendant-appellant. William F. Fahey, Asst. U.S. Atty., Chief, Public Corruption and Government Fraud Section, Los Angeles, Cal., for plaintiff-appellee. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California. Before POOLE and HALL, * Circuit Judges, and SCHWARZER, ** District Judge. CYNTHIA HOLCOMB HALL, Circuit Judge: 1 Louis Luk, following the entry of a conditional plea of guilty, appeals the district court's denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained from a search of his home. Luk argues that the search warrant was issued in violation of Rule 41(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and that the warrant was so overbroad as to preclude a good faith, objectively reasonable belief in its validity. We affirm. 2 * Louis Luk was one of four persons indicted for conspiracy, illegally exporting high technology computer components to Hong Kong and the People's…