United States of America v. Payne T. Randle

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Argued March 4, 2025
Decided March 26, 2025
Before
MICHAEL B. BRENNAN, Circuit Judge
AMY J. ST. EVE, Circuit Judge
NANCY L. MALDONADO, Circuit Judge
No. 24-1969
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
PAYNE T. RANDLE,
Defendant-Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the Northern District of
Indiana, Fort Wayne Division.
No. 1:21-CR-32-HAB
Holly A. Brady,
Chief Judge.
O R D E R
Police officers in Fort Wayne, Indiana, executed a search warrant at Payne
Randle’s house and found drugs and guns. Randle soon faced federal charges for
attempting to possess methamphetamine with intent to distribute, 21 U.S.C. § 846,
possessing methamphetamine with intent to distribute, id. § 841(a)(1), possessing a gun
in furtherance of a drug-trafficking crime, 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), and possessing a gun as a
felon, id. § 922(g)(1). Randle moved to suppress the evidence because, he asserted, the
officer who supplied the warrant affidavit had lied about smelling raw marijuana
outdoors from 25 to 30 feet away. The district court held a hearing under Franks v.
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with FED. R. APP. P. 32.1

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No. 24-1969 Page 2
Delaware, 438 U.S. 154 (1978), and five other officers testified and corroborated the
affiant’s statements about the odor. The district court denied Randle’s motion to
suppress because he had not proved by a preponderance of the evidence that the
affidavit included false statements. A jury convicted Payne, and the district court
sentenced Payne to 240 months’ imprisonment. He appeals, seizing on some
improvident phrasing in the district court’s opinion to argue that the judge clearly erred
and misapplied the rules for assessing evidence at a Franks hearing. We affirm.
In February 2021, a FedEx worker told Detective Daniel Radecki about a
suspicious package addressed to a Fort Wayne home. Radecki suspected it contained
narcotics because it was heavily taped, shipped from a drop box, and addressed to
recipients not tied to the home (with invalid phone numbers listed). A drug-detecting
dog sniffed the package and alerted to it.
Radecki and other officers went to the address to investigate. Radecki described
this visit in a search-warrant affidavit. He stated that he parked 25 to 30 feet from the
house and immediately noticed an “overwhelming odor of raw/green marijuana” that
grew stronger as he approached the front of the house. Other officers smelled “a very
strong odor” at the rear of the house. Radecki knocked on the door, but no one
answered.
A few hours later, Radecki obtained a warrant to open the package and found
500 grams of marijuana and 391 grams of methamphetamine. He then sought a warrant
to search the house based on both the contents of the package and the purported smell
of raw marijuana nearby.
While Radecki awaited that warrant, another officer saw a car back into the
driveway and watched Randle come outside and place two buckets and a gym bag in
the trunk. Officers stopped the car. After a drug-detecting canine alerted to it, officers
searched it, finding 100 grams of methamphetamine, 280 grams of marijuana, some
other drugs, a handgun, ammunition, and scales. After the warrant for the house
arrived, a SWAT team executed it and found guns, methamphetamine, 3.5 grams of
marijuana, and drug paraphernalia.
Randle faced a variety of federal charges. He moved to suppress the evidence
from his house, arguing that Radecki had lied in the warrant affidavit about smelling
raw marijuana. (Although Randle also challenged the search of the car, he does not raise
that issue on appeal.) The district court granted Randle a hearing under Franks, voicing

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No. 24-1969 Page 3
“incredul[ity]” and “suspicions” about Detective Radecki’s ability to smell an
overwhelming odor of raw marijuana so far from the house.
At the Franks hearing, Randle needed to show by a preponderance of the
evidence that the warrant affidavit contained deliberately or recklessly false statements
whose correction would defeat probable cause. See United States v. Hueston, 90 F.4th 897,
902 (7th Cir. 2024). This was a tall order, because several officers testified consistent
with Randle’s representations about the smell, and no expert evidence reinforced the
district court’s initial concern about its plausibility. Detective Radecki testified first. He
explained that he had conducted “several thousand” investigations involving marijuana
and was trained to identify its smell. He also testified that the day of the search was
cold and that all windows and doors at the home were closed. Another witness testified
that the house was 100 years old and that windows on older houses tend to deteriorate
over time, letting odors through. Five other officers took the stand to reinforce
Radecki’s testimony about the strong smell of raw marijuana that day, which they said
intensified as they neared the house.
The district court denied Randle’s motion to suppress. On one hand, the court
was “deeply skeptical” of the witnesses’ story and asserted that it “conflict[ed] with the
physical characteristics” of the situation. The court even said the story “doesn’t make
sense.” Yet on the other hand, the court was not prepared to “conclude that all six
[officers] committed perjury” when they testified “consistently and credibly.” It
specifically found that “all six testified consistently and credibly.” Their narrative, the
court continued, was not “so untethered from reality to hold that the stories themselves
are evidence of perjury.” Lacking precise grounds to “call those law enforcement
officers liars”—aside from the court’s “own misgivings”—it was “bound” to credit
them and had “little choice” but to accept the testimony “as true.” In the end, Randle
had not “shown by a preponderance of the evidence that Radecki lied.”
On appeal, Randle argues that the district court clearly erred by crediting an
otherwise-implausible story based solely on the number of witnesses and their status as
law-enforcement officers. We review a district court’s factual findings on a motion to
suppress for clear error, see United States v. Hansmeier, 867 F.3d 807, 813 (7th Cir. 2017),
although we review related questions of law de novo. See United States v. Spears,
673 F.3d 598, 604 (7th Cir. 2012). This court must determine “whether, based on the
totality of the circumstances, it was reasonable for the [district] court to conclude that
law enforcement did not doubt the truth of the affidavit.” See United States v. Edwards,
34 F.4th 570, 580 (7th Cir. 2022) (citation omitted).

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Randle first argues that the district court placed undue weight on the number of
testifying officers and their status as police officers. We disagree. A trial court may
consider the mutually corroborating effect of officers’ testimony (not to mention the
number of officers providing corroboration), see United States v. Contreras, 820 F.3d 255,
267 (7th Cir. 2016), and evaluate the officers’ training and experience. See United States v.
Sweeney, 688 F.2d 1131, 1137–38 (7th Cir. 1982). That is precisely what happened here.
And Randle did not present any evidence to contradict the officers’ testimony. The
district court knew that police officers, like other witnesses, are capable of lying under
oath. At the same time, nothing required the district court to infer that these particular
officers were lying. The court was free to conclude that on balance, it was more likely
that these officers acted conscientiously and believed their own testimony.
Even so, Randle argues that the officers’ claim to have smelled raw marijuana
was too implausible on its face for any judge to credit. Again, we disagree. Our review
of a district court’s credibility determination is highly deferential, and we will not
reverse unless we are sure it was “physically impossible for the witness to have
observed that which he claims occurred, or impossible under the laws of nature for the
occurrence to have taken place at all.” Contreras, 820 F.3d at 264 (citation omitted). Here,
based on the full context of the Franks hearing, we are unable to say it was physically
impossible for the officers to have smelled the odor of raw marijuana from 25 to 30 feet
away. There was no expert testimony to rule it out. Further, when Radecki and the
other officers smelled the raw marijuana, Randle had yet to move a large quantity of it
from his house to the car. None of the cases or scientific studies cited in Randle’s
appellate briefs render these officers’ testimony incredible as a matter of law.
And Randle did not otherwise impeach the officers’ testimony, or identify
contradictions or omissions of the sort we discussed in United States v. Whitley, 249 F.3d
614, 621 (7th Cir. 2001). We will not disturb a district court’s credibility determination
where the “trial judge’s finding is based on [her] decision to credit the testimony of one
or two or more witnesses, each of whom has told a coherent and facially plausible story
that is not contradicted by extrinsic evidence.” Contreras, 820 F.3d at 264.
Still, we owe a word about some imprecise language in the district court’s
opinion. To be sure, we are confident that the court ultimately recognized both its duty
to make an independent credibility determination and its authority to reject police
testimony if the court disbelieved it by a preponderance of the evidence. The heart of
the district court’s ruling is that the officers testified “consistently and credibly,” and

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Randle did not show otherwise “by a preponderance of the evidence.” But some turns
of phrase—the court’s statements that it was “bound” to credit the officers and had
“little choice” in the matter—needlessly obscured that bottom line. So did the court’s
express reluctance to “call” police “liars,” which in isolation could be mistaken for a
thumb on the scale in favor of police testimony over that of other witnesses.
Cf. United States v. Alexander, 741 F.3d 866, 870 (7th Cir. 2014) (holding it improper for
prosecutor to imply to jurors that police officers’ professional oath and duties will
prevent lying). Yet despite some inapt word choices here, we are confident, based on
the full context of the Franks hearing and ruling, that the district court did not clearly err
in crediting the officers’ testimony.
AFFIRMED

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