Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-13-01788/USCOURTS-ca7-13-01788-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Charles Gary
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 13-1788

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee.

v.

CHARLES GARY,

Defendant-Appellant.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Illinois, Western Division.

No. 09 CR 50041-7—Frederick J. Kapala, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED DECEMBER 3, 2014 — DECIDED JUNE 19, 2015

Before MANION, ROVNER, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.

HAMILTON, Circuit Judge. Defendant Charles Gary appeals 

from his conviction for conspiracy to distribute heroin after a 

jury trial. He appeals, challenging only the district court’s 

denial of a motion to suppress evidence obtained as a result 

of his arrest. Gary argues that he was seized without probable cause following a traffic stop and that the cell phone 

and drug evidence obtained as a result of his arrest was obtained unlawfully. He also argues that even if the arrest was 

valid, the search of his cell phone exceeded the scope of a 

lawful search incident to arrest. For both reasons, Gary arCase: 13-1788 Document: 59 Filed: 06/19/2015 Pages: 15
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gues, the district court should have suppressed evidence 

linking a cell phone he was carrying at the time of arrest to a 

drug-trafficking organization.

We affirm the district court’s decision to deny the motion 

to suppress. The police had probable cause to arrest Gary. 

An undercover agent saw Gary talking on the phone in the 

passenger seat of a car when the agent bought heroin from 

the driver of the car. The driver made no attempt to conceal 

the drug transaction from Gary. For purposes of probable 

cause (quite apart from guilt or innocence), the agent could 

reasonably infer from the circumstances that Gary was probably involved in a common and unlawful drug enterprise 

with the driver.

We also hold that the evidence obtained from the search 

of Gary’s cell phone after his arrest should not be excluded. 

The Supreme Court ruled in 2014 that the warrantless search 

of a cell phone is not a permissible search incident to arrest. 

Riley v. California, 134 S. Ct. 2473, 2495. But the search of 

Gary’s phone took place five years earlier, in 2009. In 2009, 

the cell phone search was lawful under binding circuit precedent that allowed the search of personal effects immediately associated with an arrestee even if the search was not contemporaneous with the arrest. Because the officer who conducted the search complied with then-binding precedent, 

the evidence obtained from the search should not be excluded because the search was conducted with the objectively 

reasonable good-faith belief that it was lawful. See Davis v. 

United States, 564 U.S. —, 131 S. Ct. 2419, 2428–29 (2011).

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No. 13-1788 3

I. Gary’s Arrest

Gary first argues that the district court erred in finding 

that there was probable cause for his arrest following a traffic stop. The relevant facts are not in dispute. We review de 

novo questions of law presented by a district court’s decision 

on a motion to suppress. United States v. Nicksion, 628 F.3d 

368, 376 (7th Cir. 2010).

Gary was seized by two officers following a traffic stop of 

a car in which Gary was a passenger. The officers stopped 

the car because a narcotics detective gave them the license 

plate number and told them to make a stop if they observed 

any violations. During the stop, the officers discovered heroin on the driver of the car during a frisk for weapons. Gary 

was also patted down. One of the officers making the traffic 

stop spoke with Gary’s parole officer, who asked to see Gary. 

The police officer at the scene then handcuffed Gary and 

searched him—turning up two cell phones, one black and 

one blue. Gary was placed in the back of the squad car and 

transported to the police station. The arresting officer admitted that the sole reason he seized Gary was to bring him to 

speak with his parole officer at the police station. The government concedes that this seizure of Gary amounted to an 

arrest.

Gary argues that the police did not have probable cause 

to seize him for two reasons. First, the arresting officer admitted that the sole reason he was seized was to bring him to 

speak with his parole officer. Second, he argues, his mere 

presence in the car with a driver who was observed selling 

drugs was not enough to find probable cause.

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The district court was correct to find that this seizure was 

a lawful arrest. The district court rightly dismissed Gary’s 

argument that the arrest lacked probable cause because the 

arresting officer stated that he seized Gary to bring him to 

speak with his parole officer. As the district court recognized, the arresting officer’s subjective justification is irrelevant as long as there was objective probable cause for the arrest. United States v. Mosby, 541 F.3d 764, 768 (7th Cir. 2008), 

citing Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 812–13 (1996).

Evaluating objectively the facts and circumstances known 

to the police at the time of the arrest, we agree there was 

probable cause to believe that Gary was committing a crime. 

The facts supporting probable cause came from events earlier that day when narcotics detectives were investigating the 

Hollis Daniels drug-trafficking organization. The officers 

who pulled over the car had no personal knowledge of that 

investigation. They stopped the vehicle at the direction of a 

narcotics detective. But knowledge of the investigation can 

be imputed to the arresting officers through the collective 

knowledge doctrine, under which the court will consider the 

information known to the officers collectively to determine if 

there was probable cause for the arrest. See United States v. 

Nafzger, 974 F.2d 906, 912–13 (7th Cir. 1992) (officer who was 

told the defendant was a suspect could rely on collective 

knowledge of investigative team to supply facts supporting 

reasonable suspicion for stop); United States v. Randall, 947 

F.2d 1314, 1319 (1991) (“The police who actually make the 

arrest need not personally know all the facts that constitute 

probable cause if they reasonably are acting at the direction 

of another officer or police agency. In that case, the arrest is 

proper so long as the knowledge of the officer directing the 

arrest, or the collective knowledge of the agency he works 

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No. 13-1788 5

for, is sufficient to constitute probable cause.”), quoting 

United States v. Valencia, 913 F.2d 378, 382–83 (7th Cir. 1990) 

(internal quotation marks omitted).

The morning of Gary’s arrest, a narcotics detective working undercover called a phone number known as the Hollis 

Daniels drug line to order heroin. The person who answered 

the phone told the detective to go to the area of Bruce Street 

and Ridge Avenue. The detective rode a bicycle to that location and saw a blue Buick pull up with two men inside. The 

driver motioned to him to come over. The detective handed 

the driver $200 and said he needed “twenty,” meaning twenty ten-dollar bags of heroin. The driver made no effort to 

conceal his words from Gary, the passenger, who was talking 

intermittently on a cell phone. The driver gave the detective 

two ten-dollar bags of heroin and motioned him to follow 

the car around the corner. The detective followed, but the 

Buick drove away. The detective was in contact with other 

officers conducting surveillance and relayed a description of 

the blue Buick.

The detective called the drug line again after the Buick 

drove away. The person who answered said that there were 

“undercovers” around and told the detective to go to the area of Main Street and John Street. The detective went to that 

location but no one was there to meet him. The detective 

kept calling the drug line but the person who answered kept 

putting him off, saying for example “we were out of town or 

we were here, we were there.” At one point, the person told 

the detective that “we’re getting our stuff together,” meaning 

they were preparing an order of heroin.

These facts support a finding of probable cause. Gary 

was a passenger sitting right next to the driver when the 

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driver sold the detective heroin without any attempt to conceal the transaction. In such close quarters, it was reasonable 

to infer that Gary and the driver were probably engaged in a 

common enterprise. The police here relied on more than the 

“mere propinquity to others independently suspected of 

criminal activity.” Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U.S. 85, 91 (1979), citing Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40, 62–63 (1968).

A passenger in a car “will often be engaged in a common 

enterprise with the driver, and have the same interest in concealing the fruits or evidence of their wrongdoing.” Maryland v. Pringle, 540 U.S. 366, 373 (2003) (finding probable 

cause for the arrest of the front-seat passenger in a car with 

drugs and cash hidden throughout the passenger compartment), quoting Wyoming v. Houghton, 526 U.S. 295, 304–05 

(1999) (internal quotation marks omitted). This is particularly true when the driver is engaged in drug dealing, “an enterprise to which a dealer would be unlikely to admit an innocent person with the potential to furnish evidence against 

him.” Id.

Given the reasonable inference that Gary was engaged in 

a common and unlawful enterprise with the driver, he was 

not arrested due to his mere presence in the car. Cf. United 

States v. Di Re, 332 U.S. 581, 593 (1948) (no probable cause to 

arrest passenger due solely to presence in a car with another 

person independently suspected of a crime). In contrast to Di 

Re, where the passenger would not necessarily have known 

about the illegal nature of the contraband the driver was selling (counterfeit ration coupons) and had not been present 

when the driver sold the contraband, the illegality of the 

driver’s conduct here was apparent. The sale of heroin is 

unmistakably illegal, and Gary was very close by when the 

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No. 13-1788 7

driver sold heroin to an undercover agent. It is hard to imagine that the driver would have made no attempt to hide this 

from Gary unless he was involved in the drug-dealing enterprise.

In addition, the person who answered the drug line repeatedly used the pronoun “we,” implying that one or more 

other persons were involved. That provided an additional 

indication that Gary could be the person answering the drug 

line when he was seen talking on the phone in the passenger 

seat while the driver sold the heroin. There could have been 

innocent explanations for Gary’s phone use, of course, but 

the inference of the criminal activity was reasonable for purposes of probable cause. See United States v. Funches, 327 F.3d 

582, 587 (7th Cir. 2003) (finding probable cause where “the 

inference of illegal conduct by trained and experienced officers is at least as probable as any innocent inference”). The 

district court correctly denied Gary’s motion to quash the 

arrest.

II. Search of the Cell Phone

Gary also challenges the warrantless search of his cell 

phone after he was arrested. He was brought to the police 

station only to speak to his parole officer, but drugs fell from 

his pants as he was walking through the station. He was 

then formally arrested and placed in a holding cell. The two 

cell phones found in his pocket in the initial arrest were then 

placed on a table outside the cell. Sometime later that day, a 

detective involved in the Hollis Daniels investigation picked 

up the phones and started pushing buttons. He quickly discovered that one of the phones—the black phone—was assigned to the drug line number that the undercover detective 

had called that morning to order heroin. He also verified 

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that the phone’s log of received calls contained the detective’s cell phone number.

Gary argues that this warrantless search of the cell 

phones violated his Fourth Amendment rights so that the 

evidence linking the phone to the drug line must be suppressed as the fruit of the unlawful search. Gary cites the 

Supreme Court’s recent decision in Riley v. California, 134 S. 

Ct. 2473 (2014), which held that the police must generally get

a warrant before searching a cell phone seized incident to an 

arrest.

After Riley, the search of Gary’s phone can no longer be 

upheld as a lawful search incident to arrest. The Court was 

unequivocal in announcing its new rule: “Our answer to the 

question of what police must do before searching a cell 

phone seized incident to an arrest is accordingly simple—get 

a warrant.” Id. at 2495. Though the search took place before 

Riley was decided, we apply the new constitutional rule announced in Riley because this is the direct appeal of a criminal conviction. See Griffith v. Kentucky, 479 U.S. 314, 328 

(1987). Applying Riley, the warrantless search of the cell 

phone cannot be justified as a search incident to arrest and 

therefore violated the Fourth Amendment absent some other 

justification for the search.1

This conclusion does not require, however, that we reverse the district court and order the evidence suppressed. 

The Supreme Court has held that unlawfully obtained evi1 In the district court, the government argued the search of the cell 

phone was justified by exigent circumstances, but that justification for 

the search was not pressed on appeal.

 

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dence should not be suppressed “when the police act with 

an objectively ‘reasonable good-faith belief’ that their conduct is lawful.” Davis v. United States, 131 S. Ct. 2419, 2427 

(2011), quoting United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 909 (1984). 

Davis explained: “Police practices trigger the harsh sanction 

of exclusion only when they are deliberate enough to yield 

meaningfu[l] deterrence, and culpable enough to be ‘worth 

the price paid by the justice system.’” Id. at 2428 (alteration 

in original), quoting United States v. Herring, 555 U.S. 135, 144

(2009). Davis held that when “binding appellate precedent 

specifically authorizes a particular police practice,” officers 

should use that tool without facing later suppression of evidence if that precedent is later overruled by the Supreme 

Court. Id. at 2429.

Under Leon and Davis, evidence obtained from an unlawful search is not always excluded. The evidence can still be 

used against a defendant in a criminal trial if the search was 

lawful under binding appellate precedent at the time of the 

search. Id. at 2429 (“An officer who conducts a search in reliance on binding appellate precedent does no more than ac[t] 

as a reasonable officer would and should act under the circumstances.”) (alteration in original), quoting Leon, 468 U.S. 

at 920 (internal quotation marks omitted).

The government argues that the evidence from Gary’s 

cell phone should not be excluded because the search, which 

took place on May 14, 2009, was a lawful search incident to 

arrest under then-binding appellate precedent. We agree that 

the search of Gary’s cell phone was conducted in objectively 

reasonable good faith because the search was authorized 

under our precedent at the time of the search.

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As of 2009, the Supreme Court had long recognized a 

categorical rule allowing the police to conduct a search of a 

person incident to a lawful arrest. The Court acknowledged 

two primary functions of a search incident to arrest: first, 

removing weapons to protect the officers making the arrest, 

and second, seizing evidence to prevent the arrestee from 

concealing or destroying it. United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 

218, 251 (1973), citing Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 763 

(1969). The Court expressly rejected the need for “case-bycase adjudication” to determine if a particular search served 

those functions and instead held without qualification that a 

search of an arrestee’s person was per se reasonable under the 

Fourth Amendment. Id. at 235. The Court held:

A custodial arrest of a suspect based on probable cause is a reasonable intrusion under the 

Fourth Amendment; that intrusion being lawful, a search incident to the arrest requires no 

additional justification. It is the fact of the lawful arrest which establishes the authority to 

search, and we hold that in the case of a lawful 

custodial arrest a full search of the person is 

not only an exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment, but is also a 

‘reasonable’ search under that Amendment. 

Id.

This rule extends to personal effects found on the arrestee’s person at the time of arrest. Robinson itself upheld 

not only the search of the arrestee’s body incident to the arrest but also the search of a crumpled cigarette package 

found in the arrestee’s pocket that revealed heroin capsules 

that were seized as evidence. Id. at 236. And United States v. 

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Edwards, 415 U.S. 800 (1974), found lawful the search of an 

arrestee’s clothes taken from him while he was in custody 

and the seizure of incriminating evidence that was found. 

The Court held the clothes were plainly searchable incident 

to the arrest: “This was no more than taking from respondent the effects in his immediate possession that constituted 

evidence of crime. This was and is a normal incident of a 

custodial arrest ... .” Id. at 805. 

Gary objects that the cell phone found in his pocket is a 

type of personal effect different from the cigarette package 

or clothes. Quoting extensively from the Supreme Court’s 

reasoning in Riley, 134 S. Ct. at 2488–90, Gary argues that a 

cell phone cannot be searched without a warrant incident to 

arrest because it can contain vast amounts of private information. But even the Riley Court recognized that its holding—excepting cell phones from Robinson’s categorical rule 

allowing searches of a person (and effects in their immediate 

possession) incident to arrest given the unique privacy concerns posed by digital data—was a novel approach. The 

Court acknowledged that “a mechanical application of Robinson might well support the warrantless searches at issue 

here.” 134 S. Ct. at 2484. 

And as of 2009, without the benefit of Riley, this court 

had refused to differentiate between physical items and digital data in searches incident to arrest. United States v. Ortiz, 

84 F.3d 977, 984 (7th Cir. 1996). The facts of Ortiz are remarkably similar to those found here. An electronic pager was 

searched to discover precisely the same limited information 

sought by the police in this case—recent history of received 

calls to confirm the identity of the phone and the phone 

number assigned to it. In Ortiz, the police called a pager 

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number that a cooperator said belonged to his heroin supplier (who was later identified as Ortiz). The cooperator arranged a meeting with Ortiz. When Ortiz arrived, the police 

arrested him. The police seized an electronic pager found on 

Ortiz during a search. While still at the scene of the arrest, an 

officer pushed a button on the pager that revealed previously transmitted numeric messages. One of those messages 

showed the phone number from which the police had called 

earlier that day. Id. at 982–83. We affirmed the denial of 

Ortiz’s motion to suppress that evidence because we concluded the “the information from the pager was admissible 

because the officers conducted the search of its contents incident to the arrest.” Id. at 984. The force of Ortiz was strong 

enough that we applied it in 2012 to uphold a warrantless 

search of a cell phone to identify its number. United States v. 

Flores-Lopez, 670 F.3d 803 (7th Cir. 2012). That decision was 

issued after the search in this case but before the Supreme 

Court decided Riley, and it was a strong indication that the 

police could rely on Ortiz as binding circuit precedent to 

search Gary’s cell phones incident to his arrest.

Gary argues that Ortiz is distinguishable because the 

search there was conducted at the scene of and immediately 

after the arrest, whereas Gary’s phone was searched sometime later that day when the phone was left on a table by his 

cell at the police station. Gary’s argument is undermined by 

Edwards, which held that the search of the arrestee’s clothes 

was lawful even though it was not contemporaneous with 

the arrest: “Indeed, it is difficult to perceive what is unreasonable about the police's examining and holding as evidence those personal effects of the accused that they already 

have in their lawful custody as the result of a lawful arrest.” 

415 U.S. at 806. The Court explained that most courts of apCase: 13-1788 Document: 59 Filed: 06/19/2015 Pages: 15
No. 13-1788 13

peals had “long since concluded” that it is a lawful search 

“where the clothing or effects are immediately seized upon 

arrival at the jail, held under the defendant’s name in the 

‘property room’ of the jail, and at a later time searched and 

taken for use at the subsequent criminal trial.” Id. at 807.

It is true that Ortiz considered the immediacy of the 

search in upholding it as incident to the arrest. 84 F.3d at 984. 

But Ortiz referred to immediacy only to distinguish United 

States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1 (1977), abrogated on other 

grounds by California v. Acevedo, 500 U.S. 565 (1991). In 

Chadwick, the Court held that a warrant was required for the 

police to search a locked 200-pound footlocker over an hour 

after it was seized. Id. at 4–5, 15. In so holding, the Court rejected the argument that the police were authorized to conduct later in time any search they could have conducted at 

the time of the arrest. But Chadwick concerned a search incident to arrest of an item not on the arrestee’s person but in 

the immediate control area surrounding an arrestee. Id. at 15. 

Chadwick held that a warrant is required for searches “remote in time or place from the arrest” and precluded the police from searching “luggage or other personal property not 

immediately associated with the person of the arrestee.” Id. at 

15 (emphasis added) (citation and internal quotation marks 

omitted). 

Chadwick did not disturb the earlier rule that items immediately associated with the arrested person can be 

searched at any time—whether at the scene of the arrest or 

later at the station house. In fact, it recognized the key difference that justifies more extensive searches of items found 

on the person: “Unlike searches of the person, United States 

v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218 (1973), United States v. Edwards, 415 

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U.S. 800 (1974), searches of possessions within an arrestee’s 

immediate control cannot be justified by any reduced expectations of privacy caused by the arrest.” Chadwick, 433 U.S. at 

16 n.10.

As explained above, the search of items found on the 

person of an arrestee does not require a warrant even if the 

search is not immediately after the arrest. Edwards, 415 U.S. 

at 803 (citing favorably the rule developed by courts of appeals that “both the person and the property in his immediate possession may be searched at the station house after the 

arrest has occurred at another place and if evidence of crime 

is discovered, it may be seized and admitted in evidence”). 

Riley may signal that we should revisit whether particularly 

private personal effects can be searched many hours after an 

arrest without a warrant, but as of 2009, the later search of 

the phone in Gary’s pocket seized at the time of arrest was a 

lawful search of an arrestee’s person and immediately associated property. 

And even if what police behavior is permitted by Robinson and Edwards is ambiguous, there can be no doubt that a 

later search of an object in an arrestee’s pocket was lawful in 

2009 because of our decision in United States v. Rodriguez, 995 

F.2d 776 (7th Cir. 1993). Rodriguez sought to exclude evidence the police obtained by photocopying an address book 

found in his wallet. Id. at 777–78. Rodriguez argued that the 

search was not a lawful search incident to his arrest because 

it was conducted at the sheriff’s department rather than at 

the scene of the arrest. Id. The Rodriguez decision squarely 

rejected that distinction and upheld the search because of 

Edwards. Id.

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Finally, Gary argues that there is no evidence in the record that the officer who conducted the search relied on Ortiz

or was even aware of it. But the Davis good-faith exception 

applies if the officer’s conduct is in objectively reasonable reliance on precedent: exclusion of the evidence is not appropriate if “the officers’ conduct was in strict compliance with 

then-binding Circuit law and was not culpable in any way.” 

Davis, 131 S. Ct. at 2428. Absent some showing of culpable 

misconduct, the officer’s subjective motivations are not relevant to this inquiry. Objectively, the officer’s search of the cell 

phone was lawful under then-binding precedent, so under 

Davis the district court did not err by denying the motion to 

suppress.

The judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.

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