Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-15-02930/USCOURTS-ca8-15-02930-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Laquince T. Hogan
Appellant
Wendy Kelley
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

For the Eighth Circuit

___________________________

No. 15-2930

___________________________

Laquince T. Hogan

lllllllllllllllllllll Plaintiff - Appellant

v.

Wendy Kelley, Director, Arkansas Department of Correction (originally named as

Ray Hobbs)

lllllllllllllllllllll Defendant - Appellee

____________

Appeal from United States District Court 

for the Eastern District of Arkansas - Pine Bluff

____________

 Submitted: March 18, 2016

 Filed: June 20, 2016

____________

Before WOLLMAN, ARNOLD, and SHEPHERD, Circuit Judges.

____________

WOLLMAN, Circuit Judge.

Appellate Case: 15-2930 Page: 1 Date Filed: 06/20/2016 Entry ID: 4414359 
Laquince Hogan appeals from the district court’s1

 denial of his petition for a

writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. We affirm.

On three occasions in June and July 2008, a confidential informant for the

Ashdown, Arkansas, police department bought drugs from Hogan. On August 5,

Officer Tommy Stuard obtained a warrant for Hogan’s arrest based on the controlled

buys. The same day, Officer Doyle Couch applied for and was issued a warrant to

search Hogan’s home for a “dark colored handgun with a long barrel” that had been

used in a homicide four days earlier. With the arrest and search warrants in hand,

Stuard, Couch, and other officers proceeded to Hogan’s residence, where they found

him in the front yard. Hogan was arrested, $4,000 was seized from his pants pocket,

and the officers entered Hogan’s residence to execute the search warrant. During the

search, officers opened a kitchen cabinet and found a bag of marijuana, 1.5 grams of

cocaine, a digital scale, a credit card, and a Crown Royal bag. Officer Stuard opened

the Crown Royal bag, which contained 37 grams of powder cocaine and 29 grams of

crack cocaine. The long-barreled handgun was not located. 

Hogan was charged with possession with intent to deliver cocaine and

possession of marijuana, in violation of state law. At a pretrial hearing, Hogan’s

counsel orally moved to suppress the evidence seized from Hogan’s residence on the

sole ground that the search was an unlawful search incident to arrest. The motion was

denied, following which Hogan was found guilty by a jury and sentenced to 125

years’ imprisonment as a habitual offender. Hogan’s conviction and sentence were

affirmed on direct appeal. Hogan v. State, 2010 Ark. App. 434 (2010). Hogan then

filed a pro se petition for state post-conviction relief under Arkansas Rule 37, raising

several ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims. After a hearing, the state circuit

1

The Honorable Beth Deere, United States Magistrate Judge for the Eastern

District of Arkansas, to whom the case was referred for final disposition by consent

of the parties under 28 U.S.C. § 636(c).

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Appellate Case: 15-2930 Page: 2 Date Filed: 06/20/2016 Entry ID: 4414359 
court denied relief, and the Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed. Hogan v. State, 2013

Ark. 223 (2013). 

Hogan then petitioned for federal habeas relief under § 2254 and again asserted

several claims of ineffective assistance of trial counsel. The government moved to

dismiss the petition, arguing that Hogan had procedurally defaulted his claims and that

they lacked merit. The district court appointed counsel for Hogan and, after

supplemental briefing and an evidentiary hearing, denied relief, concluding that

Hogan had procedurally defaulted all of his ineffective-assistance claims by not

raising and exhausting them in the state courts. The district court addressed Hogan’s

claim that his trial counsel was ineffective by failing to file a motion to suppress the

evidence in the Crown Royal bag, concluding that it might have sufficient merit to

excuse his procedural default. The court ultimately concluded that although counsel’s

performance was deficient, Hogan suffered no prejudice, because the contents of the

Crown Royal bag would inevitably have been discovered. Reasoning that Hogan’s

ineffective-assistance claim was not sufficiently meritorious to excuse his procedural

default, the court nevertheless granted Hogan a certificate of appealability on a single

issue: “[W]hether . . . Hogan was prejudiced by his counsel’s failure to file a motion

to suppress the contents of the Crown Royal bag on grounds [that] the search

exceeded the scope of the warrant.”

A district court is generally barred from considering a habeas petitioner’s

procedurally defaulted claims unless the petitioner can demonstrate cause for the

default and resulting prejudice. See Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 750 (1991). 

As relevant here, a procedural default does not bar a district court from considering

a petitioner’s “substantial claim” of ineffective assistance of trial counsel if such a

claim must be raised in a state initial-review collateral proceeding and “if, in the

initial-review collateral proceeding, there was no counsel or counsel in that

proceeding was ineffective.” Martinez v. Ryan, 132 S. Ct. 1309, 1315, 1320 (2012)

(“Inadequate assistance of counsel at initial-review collateral proceedings may

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Appellate Case: 15-2930 Page: 3 Date Filed: 06/20/2016 Entry ID: 4414359 
establish cause for a prisoner’s procedural default of a claim of ineffective assistance

at trial.”); see also Trevino v. Thaler, 133 S. Ct. 1911, 1921 (2013) (expanding

Martinez to encompass circumstances where “state procedural framework . . . makes

it highly unlikely in a typical case that the [petitioner] will have a meaningful

opportunity to raise a claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel on direct

appeal”); Sasser v. Hobbs, 735 F.3d 833, 853 (8th Cir. 2013) (applying Martinez and

Trevino to Arkansas proceedings in capital case and concluding, “as a systematic

matter,” that they did not afford indigent prisoner “a meaningful review of a claim of

ineffective assistance of trial counsel”). A “substantial” claim of ineffective assistance

for these purposes is one that has “some merit.” Martinez, 132 S. Ct. at 1318.

To prevail on a claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel, a habeas

petitioner must show that his trial counsel’s performance was deficient and that there

is a reasonable probability that the outcome of his trial would have been different but

for counsel’s deficient performance. Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 687

(1984). Where counsel’s failure to competently litigate a suppression issue is the

focus of the ineffective-assistance claim, to demonstrate prejudice, the petitioner must

“also prove that his Fourth Amendment claim is meritorious and that there is a

reasonable probability that the verdict would have been different absent the excludable

evidence.” Kimmelman v. Morrison, 477 U.S. 365, 375 (1986). 

It is well-settled law that when a search is authorized by a valid warrant, “the

scope of the search is limited by the terms of its authorization.” Walter v. United

States, 447 U.S. 649, 656 (1980); United States v. Schmitz, 181 F.3d 981, 988 (8th

Cir. 1999) (“A lawful search extends to all areas and containers in which the object

of the search may be found.” (citation omitted)). Thus, “evidence obtained as a direct

result of an illegal search or seizure, [and] evidence later discovered and found to be

derivative of an illegality” will be suppressed unless an exception to the exclusionary

rule permits admission of such evidence. United States v. McManaman, 673 F.3d

841, 846 (8th Cir.) (citations omitted), cert. denied, 133 S. Ct. 647 (2012). Under the

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Appellate Case: 15-2930 Page: 4 Date Filed: 06/20/2016 Entry ID: 4414359 
inevitable-discovery exception, evidence that “ultimately or inevitably would have

been discovered by lawful means” need not be suppressed. Nix v. Williams, 467 U.S.

431, 444 (1984). For this exception to apply, the government must prove by a

preponderance that there was a reasonable probability that the evidence would have

been discovered by lawful means in the absence of police misconduct and that the

government was actively pursuing a substantial, alternative line of investigation at the

time of the constitutional violation. McManaman, 673 F.3d at 846. 

The warrant authorized officers to search Hogan’s home for a long-barreled

handgun. Because the handgun could have been hidden in a kitchen cabinet, officers

lawfully opened the cabinet in Hogan’s kitchen and discovered in plain view the

illegal drugs, the drug scales, and the Crown Royal bag. See id. at 848 (noting that

officers may seize incriminating evidence in plain view during execution of valid

search warrant). The contents of the Crown Royal bag, however, were not in plain

view. Because a long-barreled handgun—the only item described in the search

warrant—could not have been hidden inside the Crown Royal bag and because there

was nothing obviously incriminating about the bag itself, we will assume that the

officers exceeded the scope of the search warrant by opening the bag and seizing the

drugs therein. 

Nevertheless, there was no “reasonable probability” that the contents of the

Crown Royal bag would have been suppressed had trial counsel filed such a motion,

because the inevitable-discovery exception would have rendered the bag’s contents

admissible. See Kimmelman, 477 U.S. at 375. Given the officers’ discovery of the

cocaine, marijuana, and drug scales in plain view in Hogan’s kitchen cabinet near the

Crown Royal bag, there was a reasonable probability that officers could have secured

a warrant to search the contents of the bag. See, e.g., United States v. Pennington, 287

F.3d 739, 746 (8th Cir. 2002) (noting that Crown Royal bags are “commonly used to

carry or conceal illegal drugs”); United States v. Hernandez Leon, 379 F.3d 1024,

1028 (8th Cir. 2004) (stating that the presence of drugs and drug paraphernalia “in or

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Appellate Case: 15-2930 Page: 5 Date Filed: 06/20/2016 Entry ID: 4414359 
around a suspect’s house is significant on the issue of probable cause” to obtain a

search warrant). Indeed, even Hogan’s expert agreed that in these circumstances,

officers would have had “probable cause based upon the initial discovery of

contraband in [the kitchen] cabinet” to obtain a warrant to search the Crown Royal

bag.

Moreover, in addition to its investigation into the presence of the long-barreled

handgun at Hogan’s residence, the Ashdown police department was also pursuing a

separate drug-trafficking investigation involving Hogan. As noted above, a

confidential informant had made three controlled drug buys from Hogan, which led

to the warrant for Hogan’s arrest. Hogan argues that the officers were no longer

actively pursuing the drug-trafficking investigation when they illegally seized the

contents of the Crown Royal bag because that investigation concluded at the moment

officers arrested him on those charges. We do not agree that the drug-trafficking

investigation necessarily ended with Hogan’s arrest, because upon executing the

warrant for Hogan’s arrest, the officers recovered $4,000 from Hogan’s pants

pocket—a strong indication that Hogan’s drug-trafficking activity was ongoing and

that it went far beyond the three controlled buys set forth in the warrant affidavit. The

lawfully discovered drugs and drug paraphernalia in plain view in Hogan’s residence

made it virtually certain that the investigation into Hogan’s drug-trafficking activity

would continue. In these circumstances, it was not clear error for the district court to

conclude that police were actively pursuing a substantial, alternative line of

investigation at the time they seized the contents of the Crown Royal bag. 

Hogan cites United States v. James, 353 F.3d 606, 617 (8th Cir. 2003), in

support of his contention that his arrest ended the drug-trafficking investigation, but

that case is distinguishable. In James the defendant had been arrested and was

detained awaiting extradition on charges of sexual misconduct with a child when

officers seized evidence of possession of child pornography. We observed that the

alleged alternative investigation into sexual-misconduct charges “appear[ed] to be

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Appellate Case: 15-2930 Page: 6 Date Filed: 06/20/2016 Entry ID: 4414359 
over,” and we concluded that “[i]n any event,” there was “no evidence at all of any

then-existing alternative investigation.” Id. at 617. Here, by contrast, Hogan’s arrest

occurred only minutes before the search of his residence, followed by the lawful

recovery of additional evidence of drug-trafficking during the search of his residence,

rendering implausible any suggestion that the investigation into Hogan’s drugtrafficking activity had ended.

In sum, Hogan suffered no Strickland prejudice as a result of his trial counsel’s

failure to file a motion to suppress the contents of the Crown Royal bag on the ground

that the search exceeded the scope of the warrant, because application of the

inevitable-discovery exception to the exclusionary rule would have resulted in the

denial of such a motion. Hogan has thus failed to demonstrate a substantial claim of

ineffective assistance of trial counsel sufficient to excuse his procedural default. 

The judgment is affirmed.

______________________________

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