UNITED STATES v. CARLSON (2019)

[Unpublished]

After his conditional guilty plea and sentencing on one count of production of child pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2251(a) and (e), Terry Lee Carlson, Sr., appeals the district court’s ¹ denial of his motion to suppress evidence. Carlson sought to suppress evidence gained through a warrant issued in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. We have previously held the same warrant was void ab initio because it violated the Fourth Amendment. See United States v. Horton, 863 F.3d 1041, 1049 (8th Cir. 2017), cert. denied, ––– U.S. ––––, 138 S. Ct. 1440, 200 L.Ed.2d 721 (2018). However, we also held the Leon good faith exception applied to Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) agents’ use of the warrant. See id. at 1052 (citing United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984)). We disagree that Carlson’s “new” arguments supporting suppression in this case are truly new because Horton previously addressed whether the FBI agents should have known the warrant was invalid. See id. As our sister circuit has stated, the Department of Justice training manual and the efforts to amend Fed. R. Civ. P. 41 do not change the applicability of the Leon good faith exception to this warrant. See United States v. Werdene, 883 F.3d. 204, 218–19 & n.12 (3d Cir. 2018). We see no error in the district court’s decision to follow Horton. Accordingly, we affirm. See 8th Cir. R. 47B.

FOOTNOTES

1.   The Honorable John R. Tunheim, Chief Judge, United States District Court for the District of Minnesota.

PER CURIAM.