In United States v. Malik, --- F.3d ---, No. 19-10166 (9th Cir. 2020), the Court reversed the district court's grant of a suppression motion. The opinion does not break new ground.
The Court held the district court’s failure to
include the driver’s contradictory statements about when he
had smoked a marijuana cigarette in its totality of the
circumstances analysis was error, and that the district court’s
failure to analyze the totality of the circumstances known to
the trooper is part and parcel of its broader error; its
focus on the trooper’s subjective motivations for performing
the search.
The Court clarified, the test is an objective one. And under the facts of the case, there was probable cause for the search.
In United States v. Many White Horses, --- F.3d ---, No. 19-30018 (9th Cir. 2020), the Court affirmed the district court’s imposition of a
special condition of supervised release upon the defendant,
an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Indian Nation.
"Special Condition 11 is not a de facto
banishment or exclusion from the Blackfeet Reservation.
The condition allows Many White Horses to freely travel or
reside in all but one quarter square mile of the 1.5 million
acres of reservation land, restricting only his access to
Browning itself. He is also free to visit his family, to
participate in tribal life, and to receive tribal services in
Browning—he simply must seek advance approval from his
probation officer so that the officer knows his location and
can evaluate the potential risks of his visit."
The Court also found the condition was substantively reasonable.
