UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

August Term 2021

(Argued: September 17, 2021 Decided: August 1, 2022)

No. 20-3009

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Appellee,

-v.-

DAVID ROY JONES,

Defendant-Appellant.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Before: LIVINGSTON, Chief Judge, CHIN and NARDINI, Circuit Judges.

Defendant-Appellant David Roy Jones was indicted for knowingly produc- ing child pornography in violation of federal law. He moved to suppress evidence gathered from his electronic devices, arguing that the government’s search war- rants lacked probable cause and therefore violated his Fourth Amendment rights. The United States District Court for the Western District of New York (Feldman, M.J. & Larimer, J.) denied the motion. Jones then pleaded guilty but reserved the right to appeal the district court’s decision on his motion to suppress.

1 We disagree with the district court that Jones’s prior guilty plea to an earlier charge in Tennessee state court precludes him from challenging the search war- rants in this case. But we agree that, even assuming arguendo that the warrants are defective, the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies. We therefore AFFIRM the judgment of the district court. FOR APPELLEE: TIFFANY H. LEE, Assistant United States At- torney, for James P. Kennedy, Jr., United States Attorney for the Western District of New York, Buffalo, NY. FOR DEFENDANT-APPELLANT: JAY OVSIOVITCH, Assistant Federal Public Defender, Federal Public Defender’s Office, Western District of New York, Rochester, NY.

2 DEBRA ANN LIVINGSTON, Chief Judge:

Defendant-Appellant David Roy Jones (“Jones”) appeals from an August 31, 2020 judgment of the United States District Court for the Western District of New York (Larimer, J.), convicting him of the knowing production of child por- nography and sentencing him to a term of imprisonment of 240 months and a 10- year term of supervised release. Jones pleaded guilty pursuant to a plea agree- ment but reserved the right to appeal the district court’s denial of his suppression motion. On appeal, Jones challenges the district court’s determinations that (1) his earlier guilty plea in Tennessee state court precludes him from challenging the va- lidity of search warrants issued in Tennessee; and (2) even assuming the warrants are defective, the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies.

As explained below, we conclude that the district court erred by precluding Jones from challenging the Tennessee warrants and the use of any evidence de- rived from those warrants. At the same time, we agree with the district court that even assuming arguendo that the warrants are defective, the exclusionary rule does not apply here. We therefore affirm the district court’s judgment.

3 BACKGROUND

I. Factual Background 1

A. The Tennessee Investigation

The Hamblen County, Tennessee Sheriff’s Office (the “Sheriff’s Office”) be- gan investigating Jones in 2016 when it received information that he had taken pornographic photograph