Thus, “the totality of the information in the affidavit provides ‘some modicum of evidence’ that” Mr. Barbour was selling methamphetamine at the Helen Street residence. Consequently, we cannot say that the district court erred in concluding that the affidavit was not bare bones.
U.S. v. Barbour
Sixth Circuit Appellate Court
June 4, 2026
Why is this case important?
U.S. v. Barbour is another significant post-Sanders Sixth Circuit decision demonstrating how difficult it has become to defeat the good-faith exception. Even though the government conceded the warrant lacked probable cause, the court still admitted the evidence because the affidavit contained a minimally sufficient nexus between the suspected drug activity and the residence. Barbour underscores the importance of documenting informant reliability, timelines, and corroboration while also illustrating the substantial protection that the Leon good-faith doctrine continues to provide.
Background
Two Warrants – One Judge
In late 2022, both the City of Tullahoma Police Department and the Coffee County Sheriff’s Department began investigating Mr. Johnny Barbour for drug-related offenses. In December, a Coffee County officer, Blake Simmons, and a Tullahoma officer, Jason Maloney, separately but contemporaneously applied for a search warrant for Mr. Barbour’s Helen Street residence. The state court judge first met with the officers from Coffee County. But upon looking at the warrant affidavit, the judge realized that the Tullahoma officers were waiting to apply for the same search warrant. The judge gathered the officers from both departments, “flipped through” both affidavits, and asked the officers to decide which search warrant he should sign. After a brief discussion, the officers decided that Coffee County was best positioned to quickly execute the warrant. So, the judge signed Coffee County’s search warrant.
Mr. Barbour resided at 308 Helen Street in Tullahoma, Tennessee and was operating a narcotics operations. All courts agree that the warrant lacked probable cause but did that inhibit the admissibility of evidence?
Indicted
Coffee County officers searched Mr. Barbour’s residence and seized drugs, drug paraphernalia, firearms, ammunition, and cash. They arrested Mr. Barbour, and a grand jury indicted him on charges of possession of a firearm by a felon, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §922(g)(1), possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute, in violation of 21 U.S.C. §841(a)(1), (b)(1)(C), and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug crime, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §924(c)(1)(A)(i).
Warrant ‘May’ Have Lacked Probable Cause – But Officers Relied in Good Faith
Mr. Barbour moved to suppress all evidence seized in his home, arguing that the search warrant lacked probable cause. The government opposed the motion, conceding that the affidavit may have lacked probable cause, but arguing that the officers relied on the warrant in good faith. The magistrate judge held a suppression hearing. Officers Maloney, Simmons, and another officer from Coffee County testified, and the magistrate judge admitted into evidence both search warrant affidavits.
District Court Determined Warrant Lacked Probable Cause
The magistrate judge recommended the district court grant the motion, finding the search warrant lacked probable cause and the good-faith exception did not apply. The government objected, and the district court sustained the objections in part. The district court agreed with the magistrate judge that the warrant lacked probable cause but concluded the officers acted in good faith when they relied on it. It therefore denied Mr. Barbour’s motion to suppress.
Mr. Barbour Pled Guilty and Sentenced to Twenty-Five Years in Prison
Mr. Barbour pleaded guilty to possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug crime, and the government agreed to move to dismiss the remaining felon in possession charge. The district court accepted the plea agreement and sentenced Mr. Barbour to 300 months’ imprisonment. Mr. Barbour appeals.
Fourth Amendment and the Good Faith Doctrine
The Fourth Amendment guarantees the “right of the people to be secure in their . . . houses” against “unreasonable searches and seizures” U.S. Const. amend. IV. It also requires law enforcement officers to have “probable cause” to obtain a search warrant. Id. The exclusionary rule, therefore, prohibits the government from using evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment at trial. Herring v. United States, 555 U.S. 135, 139 (2009). But courts will not exclude evidence where police rely in good faith on a search warrant that is not supported by probable cause so long as their reliance is objectively reasonable. United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 922–24 (1984).
Good Faith Exception
The good-faith exception, however, is not without limits. Id. at 923. As relevant here, it does not apply when an officer relies on a search warrant affidavit “so lacking in indicia of probable cause as to render official belief in its existence entirely unreasonable,” id. (quoting Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 611 (1975) (Powell, J., concurring in part)), or when suppression is necessary to deter “recurring or systemic negligence,” United States v. Sanders, 106 F.4th 455, 467 (6th Cir. 2024) (en banc) (citation modified).
[N]o dispute that the search of Mr. Barbour’s home lacked probable cause.
There is no dispute that the search of Mr. Barbour’s home lacked probable cause. The only question on appeal is whether the district court correctly applied the good faith exception in denying Mr. Barbour’s motion to suppress.
Was the Warrant ‘Bare Bones’?
First, Mr. Barbour argues no reasonable officer could have viewed the search warrant as valid because it so obviously lacked probable cause. We refer to such an affidavit as “bare bones.” Sanders, 106 F.4th at 468.
Established Case Law – Minimally Sufficient Nexus
An affidavit is bare bones if it is “conclusory” and contains only a guess that evidence of a crime would be found. United States v. White, 874 F.3d 490, 496 (6th Cir. 2017). An affidavit is not bare bones, however, when it falls short of establishing probable cause but contains a “minimally sufficient nexus” between the criminal activity and the place to be searched. United States v. Carpenter, 360 F.3d 591, 596 (6th Cir. 2004). When there is a “modicum of evidence, however slight” showing “some connection, regardless of how remote,” a “minimally sufficient nexus” exists. Sanders, 106 F.4th at 469 (citation modified).
Coffee County Warrant Contained a Minimally Sufficient Nexus
Though it lacked probable cause, the affidavit supporting Coffee County’s search warrant passes this less demanding test when viewed in the light most favorable to the district court’s decision. See Frazier, 423 F.3d at 531, 536. The affidavit detailed the investigation into Mr. Barbour’s suspected drug dealing: a confidential informant told officers that “a black male subject named Johnny” was selling methamphetamine out of the Helen Street residence, and a confidential informant subsequently twice observed drug transactions inside the Helen Street residence. This information, taken together, shows at least a “minimally sufficient nexus” connecting Mr. Barbour’s drug trafficking activity and the Helen Street residence. See Sanders, 106 F.4th at 469 (citation modified).
Mr. Barbour’s Unpersuasive Arguments
Mr. Barbour’s arguments to the contrary are unpersuasive. First, Mr. Barbour asserts the search warrant affidavit relied on stale information because it did not date the confidential informant’s observations of the drug transactions. Although Simmons could have stated the applicable dates more clearly in his affidavit, the dates he provided were sufficient to support a “reasonable, albeit not airtight, inference” that the confidential informant had recently seen the sale of drugs in Mr. Barbour’s home. See White, 874 F.3d at 500. The affidavit provided a date range for each of the three meetings with the confidential informant. The second and third dates preceded a description of the confidential informant’s observations of drug transactions at the Helen Street residence. And the date ranges spanned in time from two months to 24-72 hours before the state court judge signed the affidavit.
Established Case Law – ‘Some Connection’
These dates, taken in context of the totality of the affidavit, demonstrate at least “some connection” chronologically between the informant’s observations and the dates stated in the affidavit. See Sanders, 106 F.4th at 469 (citation modified). They also distinguish this case from United States v. Hython, 443 F.3d 480, 486 (6th Cir. 2006), in which we held that a search warrant affidavit lacked probable cause because it did not have “at least some temporal reference point” from which to gauge the existence of probable cause.
Must Informants Establish a History of Corroborated Information?
Second, Mr. Barbour argues the affidavit was bare bones because it did not explain whether the confidential informant was reliable or whether the officers had corroborated the informant’s reports. For an officer to rely on an affidavit in good faith, the affidavit need not meet the more demanding probable cause standard, but it must nonetheless include “particularized facts that indicate veracity, reliability, and basis of knowledge.” United States v. McCoy, 905 F.3d 409, 416 (6th Cir. 2018) (citation omitted).
[W]e cannot say that the district court erred in concluding that the affidavit was not bare bones.
The affidavit “provide[d] underlying factual circumstances regarding the basis of the informant’s knowledge.” See United States v. Helton, 35 F.4th 511, 522 (6th Cir. 2022). The informant claimed to have twice personally observed the sale of methamphetamine inside the Helen Street residence. And while the affidavit provided little evidence of reliability outside of referring to the source as “reliable,” it stated that the informant had “previous experiences” with methamphetamine and that the officers had met with the informant three times. Thus, “the totality of the information in the affidavit provides ‘some modicum of evidence’ that” Mr. Barbour was selling methamphetamine at the Helen Street residence. See Helton, 35 F.4th at 522 (quoting White, 874 F.3d at 497). Consequently, we cannot say that the district court erred in concluding that the affidavit was not bare bones.
Mr. Barbour Alleges Systemic Negligence by Coffee County
Alternatively, Mr. Barbour contends that the district court erred by applying the good-faith exception because Coffee County engaged in systemic negligence by maintaining “an intentional policy of skirting the line on probable cause.” Specifically, Mr. Barbour argues that Coffee County officers usually omit information about controlled drug buys from their search warrant affidavits.
A single, isolated instance of negligence, however, cannot establish a systemic issue.
In factual circumstances evidencing the need to deter recurring or systemic negligence, the good faith exception does not apply. See Sanders, 106 F.4th at 467 (quoting Herring, 555 U.S. at 144); see also United States v. Booker, 728 F.3d 535, 548 (6th Cir. 2013) (applying the exclusionary rule to deter officers’ recurring unlawful behavior where evidence established three incidences in three years). A single, isolated instance of negligence, however, cannot establish a systemic issue. See Herring, 555 U.S. at 137. We acknowledge that Officer Simmons’s testimony suggests that to protect informants’ identities Coffee County officers commonly omit information describing controlled buys from affidavits. But, viewed in the light most favorable to the district court’s decision, the record lacks sufficient evidence that Coffee County officers’ omissions have repeatedly resulted in warrants lacking probable cause. At most, the record establishes only this one instance where the omission of controlled buy information resulted in a warrant affidavit lacking probable cause.
Officer Simmons testified that Coffee County officers are “looking for probable cause” to search a residence. Maloney testified that Tullahoma officers also typically omitted controlled buy information to protect the safety of informants and that “those search warrants would have been upheld in federal court as well as state court.” Presumably, in other cases, Coffee County officers are similarly able to establish probable cause without including controlled buy information by providing other details in their warrant affidavits.
Conclusion and Holding
On reply, Mr. Barbour expands his argument by briefly arguing that even if there is no systemic malfunction, Officer Simmons’s individual conduct was “reckless.” But although Mr. Barbour made a passing reference to reckless conduct in his opening brief, he described the alleged “policy,” not Officer Simmons’s individual conduct, as reckless. He thus forfeited this argument by not developing it in his opening brief. See United States v. Simpson, 138 F.4th 438, 454 (6th Cir. 2025) (“But [the defendant] forfeited this argument too, in this instance by failing to develop it in his opening brief on appeal.”).
Based on this record, the district court did not err by finding no systemic issue.
Information for this article was obtained from U.S. v. Barbour, No. 25 – 5577 (6th Cir., 2026).
U.S. v. Barbour, No. 25 – 5577 (6th Cir., 2026) was issued by the Sixth Circuit Appellate Court on June 4, 2026 and is binding in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee.
Lessons Learned
What is the Good Faith Doctrine? On July 5, 1984 the U.S. Supreme Court established the Good Faith Doctrine “[W]e believe, when an officer acting with objective good faith has obtained a search warrant from a judge or magistrate and acted within its scope an officer cannot be expected to question the magistrate’s probable – cause determination or his judgment that the form of the warrant is technically sufficient. Once the warrant issues, there is literally nothing more the policeman can do in seeking to comply with the law. Penalizing the officer for the magistrate’s error, rather than his own, cannot logically contribute to the deterrence of Fourth Amendment violations.” U.S. v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897 (1984)
Bare Bones Exception to the Good Faith Doctrine – There are four exceptions to the Good Faith Doctrine and the one challenged in this Barbour case is “Where the affidavit was nothing more than a ‘bare bones’ affidavit that did not provide the magistrate with a substantial basis for determining the existence of probable cause.” U.S. v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897 (1984). In this case the court determined that the Coffee County warrant was not bare bones “Thus, “the totality of the information in the affidavit provides ‘some modicum of evidence’ that” Mr. Barbour was selling methamphetamine at the Helen Street residence. See Helton, 35 F.4th at 522 (quoting White, 874 F.3d at 497). Consequently, we cannot say that the district court erred in concluding that the affidavit was not bare bones.”.
Fourth Amendment Particularity Requirement – On Thursday December 15, 1791 the Fourth Amendment was ratified. The fourth part of the Fourth Amendment states in pertinent part “…and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.”. In this case the Coffee County detectives did well to particularly describe the confidential informant’s information on Mr. Barbour selling methamphetamine, twice, from his residence. Though, the specificity of the dates of occurrence could have been more accurate. However, all of the information combined led the court to conclude “Thus, “the totality of the information in the affidavit provides ‘some modicum of evidence’ that” Mr. Barbour was selling methamphetamine at the Helen Street residence.”.
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