United States of America v. Alonzo Hampton

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Argued April 23, 2024
Decided May 31, 2024
Before
FRANK H. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge
MICHAEL Y. SCUDDER, Circuit Judge
THOMAS L. KIRSCH II, Circuit Judge
No. 23-1505
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
ALONZO HAMPTON,
Defendant-Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the Central District of Illinois.
No. 20-30010-001
Sue E. Myerscough,
Judge.
O R D E R
A January 2020 search of two homes associated with Alonzo Hampton in
Springfield, Illinois, resulted in the police finding narcotics, drug paraphernalia, and a
semi-automatic handgun. Federal drug and firearm charges followed, with Hampton
then challenging the two search warrants by moving for a hearing under Franks v.
Delaware, 438 U.S. 154 (1978), contending that the officer who sought the warrants
omitted from his affidavits facts that undermined the existence of probable cause for the
searches. The district court denied the motion. Hampton later pleaded guilty, reserving
his right to appeal that ruling. Because the facts omitted from the affidavits were not
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with FED. R. A PP. P. 32.1

-- 1 of 4 --

No. 23-1505 Page 2
material to probable cause, the district court committed no error in denying a Franks
hearing. So we affirm.
I
The Springfield police used three controlled purchases of heroin from Hampton
to build their case against him. All three purchases entailed the use of an informant and
followed a common pattern.
The first controlled buy occurred on January 6. Before the transaction, Officer
Benjamin McGill searched the informant for contraband or money and equipped him
with a covert video recorder and $80. The informant drove to a house on North 3rd
Street. Hampton emerged from the house and entered the informant’s car, and the pair
drove to a second residence where two women were present. The informant then met
up with the police, underwent a pat down, and gave Officer McGill 0.57 grams of
heroin that the informant said he had just bought from Hampton for $80 in the car
outside North 3rd Street.
A second transaction followed on January 10. This time around the informant
met Hampton inside a home on North Peoria Road in Springfield and, in exchange for
$80, returned to Officer McGill with 0.26 grams of heroin.
The final purchase occurred on January 21 and followed the same protocol. This
time officers surveilling the houses observed Hampton and a driver travel back and
forth between and enter the houses on both North Peoria Road and North 3rd Street,
only then for the informant to enter the Peoria house with $80 and return with 0.52
grams of heroin.
Officer McGill used these three controlled buys to seek warrants from the local
state court to search both the North Peoria Road and North 3rd Street houses. The
affidavits described each controlled buy in detail. The state court judge issued both
warrants, and the searches took place the following day, January 23, 2020. The searches
uncovered heroin, drug-dealing supplies, and a firearm and led to a federal grand jury
indicting Hampton for possessing both heroin with an intent to distribute (21 U.S.C.
§ 841(a)(1), (b)(1)(C)) and a firearm as a convicted felon (18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1)).
In moving for a Franks hearing and to suppress the evidence from the searches,
Hampton argued that Officer McGill omitted material information from both warrant
affidavits. First, he contended, the affidavits made no mention that other people were
present for the transactions on January 6 and 21, creating the possibility that the
informant could have bought the heroin from someone other than Hampton. Second,
because of the unexplained disparity in the smaller quantity of heroin purchased at the

-- 2 of 4 --

No. 23-1505 Page 3
second transaction (0.26 grams compared with 0.57 and 0.52 grams in the first and third
buys), Hampton argued that the informant likely pocketed one half of the heroin
bought in the second sale, thereby rendering the informant’s account of that supposed
transaction not believable.
The district court did not see the omissions as material and therefore denied
Hampton’s motion to suppress and request for a Franks hearing. As for Hampton’s first
contention, Officer McGill did in fact disclose that another person—Hampton’s driver—
was present in the Peoria residence for the January 21 transaction. Hampton’s second
argument fared no better, as the district court likewise found that Officer McGill
expressly disclosed the different quantities of heroin that the informant bought in the
three transactions. Finally, even if the informant had obtained drugs from someone
other than Hampton on January 6 (the day when two women were present), the
information about the other two transactions sufficed to establish probable cause to
support the search warrants.
Hampton reacted to these rulings by pleading guilty to the heroin and firearms
charges, for which he received a sentence of 84 months’ imprisonment. In pleading
guilty, Hampton reserved his right to challenge the district court’s Franks ruling on
appeal.
II
To obtain a Franks hearing, Hampton had to make a “substantial preliminary
showing” that, with intent or reckless disregard for the truth, Officer McGill
misleadingly omitted material facts from his affidavits. See Franks, 438 U.S. at 155–56
(1978); United States v. Roland, 60 F.4th 1061, 1064 (7th Cir. 2023) (applying Franks to
material omissions). Only if Hampton has made that preliminary showing must the
district court hold a hearing to determine if the warrant is invalid and the court should
suppress the evidence obtained from its execution. See United States v. Woodfork,
999 F.3d 511, 516 (7th Cir. 2021).
The district court got its ruling exactly right, as the asserted omissions from the
affidavits were not material to the existence of probable cause to search each house. In
the affidavits, Officer McGill stated that each transaction occurred pursuant to tight
police oversight and control: the police searched the informant’s person before and after
each transaction, supplied the cash, recorded the purchases on video, and documented
everything in detail, including the exact locations of the purchases. Officer McGill also
included the informant’s statements that he bought the heroin from Hampton each
time.

-- 3 of 4 --

No. 23-1505 Page 4
Hampton sees the proper analysis differently, emphasizing that the unexplained
discrepancy in the quantity of heroin the informant returned from the second sale is
material. On this score, Hampton invokes the Fourth Circuit’s decision in United States
v. Lull, 824 F.3d 109, 116–17 (2016). In Lull, a source’s purchase yielded fewer drugs than
expected, and the Fourth Circuit deemed the source too unreliable. Id. at 116–18.
Hampton concludes that, because the informant brought back a lower quantity of
heroin in the second sale, he may have pocketed the extra drugs and is thus unreliable.
But in Lull the police knew that the source lied to them: when the source returned with
an unexpectedly small drug quantity, the police caught him hiding unspent money in
his underwear. See id. at 112. Yet they omitted this fact from their search warrant
application. See id. at 113. Here, by contrast, the post-sale searches of the informant
yielded nothing to suggest that he hid either money or drugs, let alone lied about it.
And, to be thorough, Officer McGill included in his affidavit the fact about the drug-
quantity disparity. Lull’s rationale for distrusting the informant is thus not present here.
Hampton also contends that by omitting from the affidavits the presence of
others at the first and third transactions, Officer McGill overstated the informant’s
credibility. But the presence of others during these transactions does not in itself
suggest that the informant lied to Officer McGill in saying that it was Hampton who
sold him the heroin from the two homes. In any case, as the district court observed,
Officer McGill stated in his affidavits that a driver entered the Peoria house with
Hampton for one of these two sales. This inclusion enabled the state judge to recognize
the possibility that someone other than Hampton had sold the drugs to the informant at
the homes. In short, Officer McGill excluded nothing material from his affidavits.
One final point warrants underscoring. Even if we assume that the warrant
affidavits contained material omissions, Hampton’s contentions would still fail because
he comes nowhere close to showing, as he must under Franks, that Officer McGill
intentionally or recklessly excluded information from his affidavits. See 438 U.S. at 155–
56. Hampton does no more than speculate that the omissions must have been
intentional. Our case law is clear that conclusory allegations do not suffice, however.
Woodfork, 999 F.3d at 518.
AFFIRMED

-- 4 of 4 --