Whether the Fourth Amendment requires suppression of evidence obtained through a search warrant that lacks probable cause and particularity, despite the good-faith exception

No question identified. : To the Honorable Samuel A. Alito, Jr., Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States and Circuit Justice for the Fifth Circuit: 1. Applicant Kristopher Dean Putnam requests a 30-day extension of time, to and including March 12, 2024, to file his petition for certiorari in this Court. See 28 U.S.C. § 2101(c); Sup. Ct. R. 13.5, 22, 30. The final judgment of the Fifth Circuit was entered on November 13, 2023, and Applicant’s time to file a petition for certiorari in this Court expires February 11, 2024. This application is being filed more than 10 days before that date. Acopy of the unpublished opinion below is attached hereto. The jurisdiction of this Court will be invoked under 28 U.S.C. § 1254(1). 2. As shown by the opinion below, the case involves an important Fourth Amendment question about the scope of the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule. In April 2020, an accidental trailer fire killed one its occupants. Applicant was a witness to the fire, but provided inconsistent statements about his precise location on the property when he discovered the fire. Police officers took his cell phone on the night of the blaze. A week later, they applied for a search warrant to search the entirety of the cell phone’s contents, as well as information stored offsite, pursuant to a warrant. The search of the cell phone revealed images of child pornography. Applicant was indicted on two counts related to the child pornography discovered on his cellphone: distribution and possession, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 2252(a)(2) and 2252A(a)(5)(B), respectively. Applicant moved to suppress 1 the illicit images discovered on his cell phone, which the district court denied. Putnam conditionally pleaded guilty to both counts, and the court sentenced him to 188 months’ imprisonment for each count, to run concurrently, followed by concurrent terms of 10 years’ supervised release. On appeal, Applicant argued that the district court erroneously denied his motion to suppress because the search of his cell phone violated the Fourth Amendment. First, the good-faith exception did not apply. The warrant affidavit lacked indicia of probable cause that a crime was committed. Alternatively, the warrant affidavit lacked indicia of probable cause that would have connected Applicant’s cellphone to the alleged criminal activity. The warrant also lacked particularity because it failed to incorporate the affidavit, alleged a crime that can be committed in a variety of ways, provided no temporal scope by which to guide or narrow the search, and identified the entire, vast contents of the cellphone, as well as any offsite storage that could be accessed by the phone. There was no good faith by the detective in his reliance on such a deficient warrant that he himself had drafted. Second, there was no substantial basis on which the local magistrate judge could have found probable cause to issue the defective warrant. Because the search of Applicant’s cellphone was unconstitutional, its contents were poisonous fruits of the tainted search and must be suppressed. The court of appeals affirmed and held that the affidavit that accompanied the warrant application contained specific facts and circumstances that allowed for a probable-cause determination, and thus the good-faith exception 2 applied. This holding is contrary to the Fourth Amendment and this Court’s decisions, including Michigan v. Tyler, 436 U.S. 499, 506 (1978), Michigan v. Clifford, 464 U.S. 287, 294 (1984), Groh v. Ramirez, 540 U.S. 551 (2004), and Riley v. California, 134 S. Ct. 2473 (2014). 3. Applicant was represented in the district court and court of appeals by the Federal Public Defender for the Western District of Texas and is represented in this Court by Assistant Federal Public Defender Kristin L. Davidson, a member of the Bar of this Court. Since the Fifth Circuit handed down its decision on November 13, 2023, counsel has been engaged in many matters