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Parties Involved:
Jerome Wendell Maple
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

Notice: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the

Federal Reporter or U.S.App.D.C. Reports. Users are requested to notify

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued April 7, 2003 Decided November 10, 2003

No. 01-3109

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

APPELLEE

v.

JEROME WENDELL MAPLE, A/K/A WILLIAM LEE JOHNSON,

APPELLANT

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 00cr00364–01)

–————

On Appellant’s Petition for Rehearing En Banc

–————

Before: SENTELLE and ROGERS, Circuit Judges, and

SILBERMAN, Senior Circuit Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge ROGERS.

ROGERS, Circuit Judge: This case comes before the court

on Jerome Maple’s petition for rehearing and rehearing en

banc (‘‘Petition’’) of the court’s rejection of his Fourth

Amendment challenges to his convictions of possessing co-

 Bills of costs must be filed within 14 days after entry of judgment.

The court looks with disfavor upon motions to file bills of costs out

of time.

USCA Case #01-3109 Document #783812 Filed: 11/10/2003 Page 1 of 9
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caine base in excess of five grams, see 21 U.S.C. § 844(a), and

carrying a pistol without a license, see D.C. CODE ANN. § 22–

3204(a) (1981) (now codified at D.C. CODE ANN. § 22–4504(a)

(2001)). See United States v. Maple, 334 F.3d 15 (D.C. Cir.

2003); but see id. at 21-26 (Rogers, J., dissenting in part).

We grant rehearing and we vacate Part II of our opinion.

See id. at 17-20. As the United States now acknowledges in

its response to the Petition (‘‘Response’’), ‘‘the officer’s conduct in this case was a search within the meaning of the

Fourth Amendment.’’ Response at 2. We hold that the

district court erred in denying Maple’s motion to suppress a

silver pistol seized by a Metropolitan Police Department

(‘‘MPD’’) officer from the closed compartment in the console

of Maple’s car. The warrantless search of the car console

was without Maple’s consent, lacked probable cause, and was

not in accordance with the MPD’s established procedures for

securing a defendant’s property. Accordingly, because Maple

did not preserve his Second Amendment claim, see Maple,

334 F.3d at 21, and because the drugs were in plain view on

top of the console, see id. at 17, we reverse the judgment of

conviction and remand the case for the retrial that Maple

seeks, Appellant’s Br. at 22, on the drug charge.

The Fourth Amendment protects ‘‘[t]he right of the people

to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,

against unreasonable searches and seizuresTTTT’’ U.S. CONST.

amend. IV. These protected ‘‘effects’’ include automobiles,

Preston v. United States, 376 U.S. 364, 366-67 (1964), and

although a person ‘‘ ‘has a lesser expectation of privacy in a

motor vehicle because TTT [i]t travels public thoroughfares

where both its occupants and its contents are in plain view,’ ’’

New York v. Class, 475 U.S. 106, 112-13 (1986) (quoting

Cardwell v. Lewis, 417 U.S. 583, 590 (1974) (plurality opinion)), ‘‘a car’s interior TTT is nonetheless subject to Fourth

Amendment protection from unreasonable intrusions by the

police,’’ Class, 475 U.S. at 114-15. The government’s ‘‘intrusion into a particular area, whether in an automobile or

elsewhere,’’ violates the Fourth Amendment if ‘‘the area is

one in which there is a ‘constitutionally protected reasonable

expectation of privacy.’ ’’ Id. at 112 (citing Katz v. United

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States, 389 U.S. 347, 360 (1967) (Harlan, J., concurring)).

Because the government failed to offer evidence that Maple,

upon his arrest for traffic violations, had waived a reasonable

expectation of privacy in the closed console of his car, which

had not been impounded by the police, the warrantless search

of that compartment was impermissible under the Fourth

Amendment.

It is long settled that ‘‘ ‘[a] search occurs when an expectation of privacy that society is prepared to consider reasonable

is infringed.’ ’’ Soldal v. Cook County, 506 U.S. 56, 63 (1992)

(quoting United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109, 113 (1984)

(internal quotations omitted)). Or stated conversely, ‘‘a

Fourth Amendment search does not occur TTT unless ‘the

individual manifested a subjective expectation of privacy in

the object of the challenged search,’ and ‘society [is] willing to

recognize that expectation as reasonable.’ ’’ Kyllo v. United

States, 533 U.S. 27, 33 (2001) (quoting California v. Ciraolo,

476 U.S. 207, 211 (1986)). In Kyllo, after explaining that the

scope of a search is defined by privacy expectations, the

Supreme Court held that information obtained through thermal imaging of a private home ‘‘was the product of a search,’’

id. at 35, rejecting the view that information was not obtained

regarding the interior of the home, id. at 35 n.2. Kyllo thus

reenforces the importance of privacy expectations in Fourth

Amendment analysis even when a search occurs other than

by sight. As such, it hardly exempts, as here, an ‘‘inadvertent’’ discovery in the course of caretaking from the Fourth

Amendment’s protections. The United States concedes that

any deliberate governmental intrusion into a closed space —

opening a door or a closed compartment — is a search

regardless of the reasons for the intrusion. Cf. Horton v.

California, 496 U.S. 128, 141 (1990).

A closed, opaque compartment by its nature secures its

contents from public view — as the officer indicated was his

intention with respect to Maple’s cell phone — and when

Maple was arrested, the console in his car was closed. The

government, which has the burden of proving the lawfulness

of the search, Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385, 390-91 (1978),

offered no evidence that Maple did not have a privacy interest

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in the contents of the console or had waived that interest, and

the district court made no finding that the closed console was

not a repository of Maple’s personal effects or that Maple had

no expectation of privacy, much less that the officer had

probable cause to open it. See Class, 475 U.S. at 118–19;

Cardwell, 417 U.S. at 591; cf. California v. Acevedo, 500 U.S.

565, 579 (1991); United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798, 800, 825

(1982).

Although the United States relied during oral argument on

Harris v. United States, 390 U.S. 234 (1968) (per curiam), to

argue that no search occurred, it now acknowledges that

Harris’ ‘‘limited holding [does not] support[ ] the conclusion

that there was no search at all in this case,’’ Response at 10.

As it concedes, id. at 9-10, Harris involved an inventory

search of an impounded car that did not present the question

of the legality of the search pursuant to police regulations,

Harris, 390 U.S. at 235-36. Moreover, the officer in Harris

discovered the robbery victim’s car registration while taking

measures ‘‘to protect the [defendant’s] car while it was in

police custody,’’ in accordance with MPD regulations. Id.

Maple’s car, by contrast, had not been impounded, and the

officer was not acting pursuant to standardized departmental

procedures in opening the console. Further, the registration

card in Harris ‘‘was plainly visible,’’ and ‘‘[i]t has long been

settled that objects falling in the plain view of an officer who

has a right to be in the position to have that view are subject

to seizure and may be introduced in evidence.’’ Id. at 236

(citations omitted). But Maple’s gun, unlike his cell phone,

was not in plain view; it was located in a closed compartment

and was discovered only after the officer opened the compartment without Maple’s authorization. Thus, acting pursuant

to established police procedures, as the police did in Harris,

id., goes to the reasonableness of the officer’s conduct not to

whether or not there was a search.

‘‘In determining whether a TTT search is reasonable under

the Fourth Amendment, courts look to objective evidence, not

subjective intentions.’’ United States v. Magnum, 100 F.3d

164, 170 (D.C. Cir. 1996) (citing Whren v. United States, 517

U.S. 806, 812-13 (1996)). In other words, ‘‘the issue is not’’

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the law enforcement officer’s ‘‘state of mind’’ — whether he

was intentionally rummaging about for contraband or wished

to find something in particular — ‘‘but the objective effect of

his actions’’ — whether a reasonable expectation of privacy

was infringed. Bond v. United States, 529 U.S. 334, 338 n.2

(2000). For instance, in holding in Class that the search of

the inside of a car (to remove papers on the dashboard

obscuring the vehicle identification number that would otherwise be in plain view) was ‘‘sufficiently unintrusive to be

constitutionally permissible,’’ Class, 475 U.S. at 119, the Supreme Court found significant that the officer ‘‘did not reach

into any compartments or open any containers,’’ id. at 118.

That finding contrasts sharply with the officer’s opening of

the closed console in Maple’s car, which upset Maple’s reasonable expectation of privacy, regardless of the officer’s purpose.

Under the Supreme Court’s precedents, then, the officer’s

opening of the closed compartment in Maple’s car constituted

a search, and a warrantless search of private property is per

se unreasonable unless it falls within one of the ‘‘ ‘few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions’ ’’ to the warrant requirement. Mincey, 437 U.S. at 390 (quoting Katz,

389 U.S. at 357). In determining whether the officer’s search

of the closed console was lawful under the Fourth Amendment, the Supreme Court’s decision in Cady v. Dombrowski,

413 U.S. 433 (1973), is instructive. In Cady, the Supreme

Court held that a warrantless search of the trunk of a car was

not unreasonable under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments because the police had reason to believe that the trunk

contained a gun, the car was vulnerable to intrusion by

vandals, and public safety could have been endangered had an

intruder removed a gun from the trunk of the vehicle. Id. at

447-48. The court observed that ‘‘local police officers TTT

frequently investigate vehicle accidents in which there is no

claim of criminal liability and engage in what TTT may be

described as community caretaking functions, totally divorced

from the detection, investigation, or acquisition of evidence

relating to the violation of a criminal statute.’’ Id. at 441.

The Supreme Court in Cady emphasized, however, that the

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police had (1) exercised a form of control over the car, and (2)

acted under ‘‘standard procedure in (that police) department.’’

Id. at 442-43. In other words, because the police had taken

temporary custody of the car, the search was not merely the

subjective choice of the officer conducting the search. See

also Harris, 390 U.S. at 235.

Here, the police officer exercised a form of control over

Maple’s car, but the district court made no finding that the

officer acted pursuant to established MPD procedures when

he opened the console to secure the cell phone and, thereby,

the car. The officer testified that he routinely relocates cars

to legal parking spaces following traffic arrests, but he did

not claim that MPD officers routinely open closed compartments in private automobiles to secure a defendant’s personal

property. Nor did the government, which has the burden,

Mincey, 437 U.S. at 390-91, introduce such evidence.

Absent personal property found inside a car that might

pose a danger to the officer or to the public, thus affording

probable cause for the officer to secure the weapon and

prevent it from falling into the wrong hands, see Cady, 413

U.S. at 447-48, Cady required the officer to act in accordance

with the MPD’s established procedures for protecting personal property in a car that is in temporary police custody, see

id. at 445-46. Doing so ensures that any police intrusion into

private property is limited in scope to the extent necessary to

carry out the caretaking function, South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U.S. 364, 374-75 (1976), thereby preventing warrantless searches, such as inventories, id. at 367-76, from

becoming ‘‘a ruse for a general rummaging in order to

discover incriminating evidence,’’ Florida v. Wells, 495 U.S. 1,

4 (1990).

Whether or not the officer’s search of the console inside of

Maple’s unimpounded car in order to secure a cell phone

violated MPD’s policy and procedures governing Automobile

Searches and Inventories, it clearly was not expressly authorized. See generally MPD Gen. Order 602(I) (May 26, 1972),

reprinted in Joint Appendix at 37-52. MPD policy limits

warrantless searches to particular circumstances. If, for

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example, a prisoner’s car is not taken to a location at or near

a police facility, ‘‘it shall not be inventoried in any way,’’ id. at

602(I)(B)(3)(b), an ‘‘inventory’’ being defined as ‘‘an administrative process by which items of property are listed and

secured,’’ id. at 602(I)(B) (emphasis added). Further, such

car shall not be searched unless: (1) the arresting officer does

so in the presence of the defendant at the time of his arrest,

in which case the officer may search ‘‘only those areas within

the immediate control of the defendant (the area from which

the arrested person might gain possession of weapons or

destructible evidence),’’ id. at 602(I)(A)(1)(a)(1); or (2) a

police officer has probable cause to believe that the car

contains the fruits, instrumentalities, contraband, or evidence

of the crime for which the defendant was arrested — exceptions not relevant in this case. Id. at 602(I)(A)(1)(a)(1) &

(b)(1). Neither of the above circumstances apply: the search

did not occur in Maple’s presence at the time of his arrest,

MPD Gen. Order 602(I)(A)(1)(a)(1), and the officer did not

testify, nor did the district court find, that the search was

conducted with probable cause associated with the crime for

which Maple was arrested, id. at 602(I)(A)(1)(b)(1).

Even if Maple’s car had been taken to a location at or near

a police facility, MPD policy only authorizes the officer to

remove ‘‘personal property which can easily be seen from

outside the vehicle and which reasonably has a value in excess

of $25,’’ to take the property to the police facility, and to enter

it on a property log for later return to the defendant. Id. at

602(I)(B)(3)(b). Instead, the officer decided to open a closed

compartment in Maple’s car. Nothing since Cady suggests

that the Supreme Court has abandoned its emphasis on the

need for the police to act pursuant to ‘‘standardized criteria’’

or ‘‘established routine’’ when opening containers. See Wells,

495 U.S. at 4-5; cf. Colorado v. Bertine, 479 U.S. 367, 375-76

(1987); Illinois v. Lafayette, 462 U.S. 640, 648 (1983); Opperman, 428 U.S. at 375-76.

Because the officer’s opening of the console does not fall

within one of the ‘‘few specifically established and welldelineated exceptions’’ to the warrant requirement, Mincey,

437 U.S. at 390, the reasonableness of the officer’s conduct is

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to be determined by reference to whether he followed the

MPD’s procedures. See Wells, 495 U.S. at 3-4; Opperman,

428 U.S. at 376; United States v. Duguay, 93 F.3d 346, 351-

52 (7th Cir. 1996); United States v. Marshall, 986 F.2d 1171,

1174-76 (8th Cir. 1993); United States v. Johnson, 936 F.2d

1082, 1084 (9th Cir. 1991). Otherwise, there is no limit to the

officer’s discretion or to the scope of the intrusion into private

property under the guise of securing the defendant’s belongings. See Wells, 495 U.S. at 4; Opperman, 428 U.S. at 375;

Marshall, 986 F.2d at 1174. Here, MPD General Order 602

established, and thus restricted, the manner in which a police

officer can protect a defendant’s property. Moreover, the

record fails to show inadvertent conduct under the plain view

doctrine; the officer spotted the gun only after he opened the

closed console. Even assuming that the privacy interest in

an unlocked, closed compartment is of a lesser order than the

privacy interest in a locked glove compartment or, as in

Wells, 495 U.S. at 2, in a locked trunk, the salient point is that

whatever his good intentions, the officer failed to follow

established police policy and procedures for securing a defendant’s property.

In sum, ‘‘there is a well settled definition of ‘search’ in the

Fourth Amendment context, and that definition does not

require that the police be ‘looking for something,’ but rather

focuses on whether the actions of ‘the government violate[ ] a

subjective expectation of privacy that society recognizes as

reasonable’.’’ Response at 4-5 (citations omitted). ‘‘[I]t also

is well settled that police conduct can amount to a search

even if the conduct was not motivated by a desire to look for

evidence of crime.’’ Id. at 5. Otherwise, contrary to Supreme Court precedent, ‘‘warrantless and suspicionless intrusions into closed containers, automobiles, and even homes are

not searches so long as the police do not intend to look for

something inside.’’ Id. at 7; see id. at 8. Accordingly,

because the district court erred in denying Maple’s motion to

suppress the evidence found inside the closed console in his

car, we grant rehearing and we reverse the judgment of

conviction. Because Maple did not preserve his Second

Amendment claim, and because the drugs were in plain view

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on top of the console, see Harris, 390 U.S. at 236, we remand

the case for the retrial on the drug charge.

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