Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-10-03099/USCOURTS-caDC-10-03099-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Davon Peyton
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued September 11, 2013 Decided March 21, 2014

No. 10-3099

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

APPELLEE

v.

DAVON PEYTON,

APPELLANT

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:10-cr-00015-1)

Lisa B. Wright, Assistant Federal Public Defender, 

argued the cause for appellant. With her on the briefs was 

A. J. Kramer, Federal Public Defender.

 

Anne Y. Park, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the cause 

for appellee. With her on the brief were Ronald C. Machen 

Jr., U.S. Attorney, and Elizabeth Trosman, John P. 

Mannarino, Matthew M. Graves, and Steven B. Wasserman,

Assistant U.S. Attorneys.

Before: HENDERSON, GRIFFITH, and SRINIVASAN, Circuit 

Judges.

USCA Case #10-3099 Document #1484735 Filed: 03/21/2014 Page 1 of 29
2

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge GRIFFITH.

Dissenting opinion filed by Circuit Judge HENDERSON.

GRIFFITH, Circuit Judge: Appellant Davon Peyton 

challenges the district court’s ruling that evidence the police 

gathered from his apartment during two warrantless searches 

could be used against him at trial. For the reasons set forth 

below, we reverse in part, vacate in part, and remand the case 

to the district court.

I

Peyton and his 85-year-old great-great-grandmother, 

Martha Mae Hicks, shared a small, one-bedroom apartment in 

a complex at 401 K St. NW, Washington, D.C. Both were 

named as residents on the lease. Hicks used the bedroom, and 

Peyton kept his bed and belongings in the living room. On

June 21, 2009, police officers arrested Peyton in the parking 

lot outside the apartment complex for possession of crack 

cocaine. Five days later, the police obtained and executed a 

search warrant for the apartment. The search yielded no 

evidence against Peyton, but resulted in the arrest of several 

people who were in the apartment at the time with drugs and 

drug paraphernalia.

Shortly thereafter, the police received a tip that Peyton 

was using the apartment to deal drugs. Four officers,

including one who had participated in the earlier warrant 

search, returned to the apartment on July 14, this time without 

a warrant. The officers knew Peyton had recently been 

arrested yet again (the record is not clear why) and would not 

be there. They hoped that Hicks would consent to the search.

When the police knocked on the door, Peyton’s girlfriend,

Tyra Harvey, answered. They asked to speak with Hicks, and 

USCA Case #10-3099 Document #1484735 Filed: 03/21/2014 Page 2 of 29
3

Harvey told them that she was in the bedroom. While two 

officers waited just inside the entryway, two others entered 

the bedroom through its open door only a few steps away and 

found Hicks sitting on the bed.

The officers told Hicks that they believed there might be

drugs in the apartment and wanted her permission to conduct 

a search. They presented Hicks with a consent form, which 

she signed, that stated she was freely agreeing to let the police 

search the entire apartment. The search began in the living 

room. According to one of the officers, as they came near 

Peyton’s bed, Hicks told them that that part of the living room

was “the area where [Peyton] keeps his personal property.”

Def.’s Ex. 6, Aff. ¶ 7, United States v. Peyton, Crim. No. 10-

15 (D.D.C. July 22, 2010) (search warrant affidavit). One of 

the officers saw a closed shoebox next to Peyton’s bed and

picked it up. When he opened the shoebox, he smelled 

marijuana. Inside the shoebox, he found more than 25 grams 

of marijuana, 70 grams of crack cocaine, and $4000 in cash.

The officers then searched the adjoining kitchen, where they

discovered two plates and a razor blade covered with a white 

residue in the cabinets.

Relying on the evidence found in the shoebox during the 

July search, a grand jury issued an indictment against Peyton

on January 12, 2010, for possession with intent to distribute 

50 grams or more of crack cocaine and a detectable amount of 

marijuana. On January 20, four police officers returned to the 

apartment with an arrest warrant in hand. Peyton answered the 

door and was immediately handcuffed. A protective sweep of 

the apartment found Hicks in the bedroom and Harvey and an 

unidentified male in the living room. Smelling a strong odor 

of marijuana, the officers asked Hicks for permission to 

conduct a full search of the apartment. She agreed and signed 

a consent form. Present throughout the search, Peyton did not 

USCA Case #10-3099 Document #1484735 Filed: 03/21/2014 Page 3 of 29
4

object. The officers found crack cocaine, marijuana, and a 

handgun in the kitchen cabinets.

Armed with this new evidence, on January 26, 2010, the

grand jury issued a superseding indictment against Peyton that

restated the original charges but also added three more:

possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine, possession 

with intent to distribute marijuana, and possession of a 

firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking offense.

In the district court, Peyton moved to suppress all of the 

evidence discovered during the warrantless searches in July 

2009 and January 2010. Hicks testified for Peyton at the 

hearing on his motion. The government put on one police 

officer to testify about the July search and another to address 

the January search. Hicks and the officer gave slightly 

different accounts of the scope of the search Hicks authorized 

in July. Although Hicks did not dispute that she freely signed 

the form, her memory was that the police had asked to search 

only the living room. The officer remembered that Hicks had 

agreed to their search of the entire apartment. Hicks and the 

other officer gave consistent accounts of the scope of the

January search. They both remembered that Hicks had read 

and signed the consent form, and neither said that Hicks had 

limited the search’s scope.

Peyton challenged both searches on the ground that “Ms. 

Hicks did not have common authority over the area to be 

searched.” Transcript of Motions Hearing at 95, United States

v. Peyton, Crim. No. 10-15 (D.D.C. July 22, 2010) (7/22/2010 

Hr’g Tr.). The district court rejected this argument, 

concluding, as to the July search, that Hicks had authority to 

consent to the search of the entire apartment and that she

voluntarily agreed to a search of the living room but not the 

kitchen. Accordingly, the district court ruled all the evidence 

USCA Case #10-3099 Document #1484735 Filed: 03/21/2014 Page 4 of 29
5

seized admissible except for that found in the kitchen. As to 

the January search, the district court found that Hicks’s 

consent was voluntary and covered the entire apartment. All 

the evidence found in January was held admissible.

In the wake of the district court’s decision, Peyton pled 

guilty to possession with intent to distribute a detectable 

amount of cocaine base (a lesser included offense of the 

charge based on the crack found in the shoebox) and the 

weapons charge, but he reserved the right to appeal the denial 

of his motion to suppress. Peyton and the government agreed 

to a sentence of 84 months, and the district court accepted the 

deal.

We have jurisdiction over Peyton’s appeal under 28 

U.S.C. § 1291. We review the district court’s legal rulings de 

novo and its factual findings for clear error. Ornelas v. United 

States, 517 U.S. 690, 699 (1996); United States v. Holmes, 

505 F.3d 1288, 1292 (D.C. Cir. 2007).

II

As to the July 2009 search, we agree with Peyton that 

Hicks could not lawfully permit the police to search his closed

shoebox. Concluding the search was unlawful on this ground, 

we need not take up Peyton’s other arguments that Harvey 

lacked authority to let the police enter in the first place and 

that Hicks did not voluntarily agree to the search.

A

The government contends that Peyton has waived his

argument about the shoebox because he did not raise it at the 

suppression hearing.

USCA Case #10-3099 Document #1484735 Filed: 03/21/2014 Page 5 of 29
6

An argument to suppress evidence not made before trial 

is waived, which means that absent good reason for not 

raising the argument at the district court, the appellant cannot 

ask us to consider the matter. FED. R. CRIM. P. 12(b)(3), (e);

cf. United States v. Weathers, 186 F.3d 948, 957 (D.C. Cir. 

1999). Given the serious consequence of waiver in a criminal 

proceeding, it is fitting that defendants are able to preserve a 

suppression argument simply by “stat[ing] the basis of their 

objection to the admission of the evidence” before the district 

court. United States v. Mitchell, 951 F.2d 1291, 1297 (D.C. 

Cir. 1991). In doing so, they “need not articulate the entire 

body of law relevant to their claim,” id., or expound their 

argument as “fulsomely” as they might in an appellate brief, 

United States v. Hutchinson, 268 F.3d 1117, 1121-22 (D.C. 

Cir. 2001).

The government acknowledges that Peyton disputed 

Hicks’s authority to allow a search of the living room, but 

contends that his failure to raise the “separate issue” of 

Hicks’s authority over the shoebox means he waived that 

point. Appellee’s Br. 30. Our dissenting colleague agrees, see

Dissenting Op. at 7 n.5, but we think this is too stingy a 

reading of what Peyton argued. At the suppression hearing, 

his counsel maintained that “for both searches Ms. Hicks did 

not have common authority over the area to be searched and 

therefore her consent was invalid.” 7/22/2010 Hr’g Tr. 95.

When asked to elaborate, his counsel explained “that that area 

that was searched or that the officers requested permission to 

search was Davon’s—the Defendant’s area of where he slept 

and kept his belongings, and it’s more than that. It’s—that’s 

his home as well.” Id. Peyton’s argument was not only about 

the living room in its entirety. It was also about the portion of 

the living room that Peyton claimed and Hicks acknowledged 

was uniquely his. The district court recognized that Peyton’s 

argument raised the issue of “whether [Hicks] had authority to 

USCA Case #10-3099 Document #1484735 Filed: 03/21/2014 Page 6 of 29
7

consent to the search of the area where the Defendant’s 

belongings were located.” Transcript of Motions Hearing at 

11, United States v. Peyton, Crim. No. 10-15 (D.D.C. July 27, 

2010) (emphasis added). Peyton did not need to emphasize 

that the evidence was inside the shoebox; that fact was 

obvious and undisputed.

In the end, Peyton presses the same legal theory on 

appeal that he raised below: Hicks lacked authority to allow 

the search of the place the evidence was found. The cases 

where we have found waiver of arguments under Rule 12, by 

contrast, involved defendants raising wholly new claims or 

switching legal theories on appeal. See, e.g., United States v. 

Hewlett, 395 F.3d 458, 460 (D.C. Cir. 2005) (defendant who 

argued below that police lacked probable cause for 

warrantless arrest could not argue on appeal that arrest 

warrant was defective); Mitchell, 951 F.2d at 1297 (defendant 

who argued below that police lacked probable cause to search 

could not argue on appeal that police lacked warrant); United 

States v. Bailey, 675 F.2d 1292, 1294 (D.C. Cir. 1982)

(defendants who argued below that joinder was impermissibly 

prejudicial could not argue on appeal that joinder violated 

Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 8(b)); see also 6 WAYNE 

R. LAFAVE, SEARCH AND SEIZURE § 11.1(a), at 12-13 & n.29 

(5th ed. 2012) (collecting cases). Finding no waiver of 

Peyton’s argument, we turn to its merits.

B

“At the very core [of the Fourth Amendment] stands the 

right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free 

from unreasonable governmental intrusion.” Silverman v. 

United States, 365 U.S. 505, 511 (1961). A warrantless search 

is the quintessential intrusion and is presumptively 

unreasonable. The government can rebut that presumption by 

USCA Case #10-3099 Document #1484735 Filed: 03/21/2014 Page 7 of 29
8

showing that the police, despite lacking a warrant, were 

permitted to undertake the search by someone with authority. 

See Illinois v. Rodriguez, 497 U.S. 177, 181 (1990). Such 

consent need not come from the target of the search. It may 

come from “a third party who possesse[s] common authority 

over . . . the premises or effects sought to be inspected.” 

United States v. Matlock, 415 U.S. 164, 171 (1974). 

“Common authority” does not refer to some kind of 

“technical property interest.” Georgia v. Randolph, 547 U.S. 

103, 110 (2006). It arises simply from

mutual use of the property by persons generally having 

joint access or control for most purposes, so that it is 

reasonable to recognize that any of the co-inhabitants has 

the right to permit the inspection in his own right and that 

the others have assumed the risk that one of their number 

might permit the common area to be searched.

Matlock, 415 U.S. at 171 n.7. Even a person who does not 

actually use the property can authorize a search if it is 

reasonable for the police to believe she uses it. See Rodriguez, 

497 U.S. at 186. Such “apparent authority” is sufficient to 

sustain a search because the Fourth Amendment requires only 

that officers’ factual determinations in such situations “always 

be reasonable,” “not that they always be correct.” Id. at 185.

We review de novo whether an officer’s belief that a 

consenting individual has actual authority is reasonable. 

United States v. Law, 528 F.3d 888, 904 (D.C. Cir. 2008) (per 

curiam).

The fact that a person has common authority over a 

house, an apartment, or a particular room, does not mean that 

she can authorize a search of anything and everything within 

that area. As we held in Donovan v. A.A. Beiro Construction

Co., “While authority to consent to search of a common area 

USCA Case #10-3099 Document #1484735 Filed: 03/21/2014 Page 8 of 29
9

extends to most objects in plain view, it does not 

automatically extend to the interiors of every enclosed space 

within the area.” 746 F.2d 894, 901-02 (D.C. Cir. 1984); see 

also United States v. Karo, 468 U.S. 705, 725 (1984)

(O’Connor, J., concurring in part and concurring in the 

judgment) (“A homeowner’s consent to a search of the home 

may not be effective consent to a search of a closed object 

inside the home.”). This principle flows logically from the

way people live in shared spaces. Two may agree to share a 

room, such that neither could object to the other allowing a 

third party to enter, but they often retain private interior 

spaces—a closet, a footlocker, a dresser drawer—that they do 

not let the other use and that they do not assume the other will 

allow a third party to inspect. See United States v. Davis, 332 

F.3d 1163, 1169 n.4 (9th Cir. 2003) (“By staying in a shared 

house, one does not assume the risk that a housemate will 

snoop under one’s bed, much less permit others to do so.”).

At first, this limitation on the scope of common authority 

might seem to put the police in a bind. Must an officer, having 

determined that a person has common authority over an 

apartment, separately confirm her authority over every closed 

container in the apartment before relying on her consent to 

conduct a search? No, for in many instances the person’s 

common authority over the larger area (say, the living room) 

will make it reasonable for the police to believe that she

shares use of its closed containers (say, the drawers of the 

television stand). She will have apparent authority over those 

spaces. This is the same point we made in Donovan, where 

we explained how to identify the types of containers over 

which common authority appears to extend: “The rule has to 

be one of reason that assesses the critical circumstances 

indicating the presence or absence of a discrete expectation of 

privacy with respect to the particular object: whether it is 

secured, whether it is commonly used for preserving privacy, 

USCA Case #10-3099 Document #1484735 Filed: 03/21/2014 Page 9 of 29
10

etc.” 746 F.2d at 902 (quoting United States v. Block, 590 

F.2d 535, 541 n.8 (4th Cir. 1978)); see also United States v. 

Basinski, 226 F.3d 829, 834-35 (7th Cir. 2000) (using similar 

factors in analyzing apparent authority over closed 

containers).

The district court’s conclusion that Hicks had common 

authority over the living room generally does not answer the 

critical question here: Did she have authority over the 

shoebox?1 There is no evidence that Hicks either shared use 

of the shoebox with Peyton or had permission to do so, and 

the government does not argue that she had actual authority.

Instead, the government invokes Donovan to suggest that 

Hicks had apparent authority, emphasizing three 

circumstances that suggest Peyton did not retain a privacy 

interest in the shoebox. The living room where he slept 

remained a common area, with a diminished expectation of 

privacy for things left there. Peyton took no special steps to 

hide or protect the shoebox. And a shoebox is not “the type of 

container that has historically been accorded the highest 

privacy expectations.” Appellee’s Br. 34.

 1 The fact that the district court thought it was sufficient to 

address only the room as a whole does not mean Peyton’s argument 

below must have concerned only the room as a whole. See supra at 

6-7; cf. Block, 590 F.2d at 540 & n.7 (“Our review of the district 

court’s order makes it apparent that the court concluded that once 

authority to search the room itself was found, that authority 

extended to the interior of the footlocker in the room. . . . The 

decisive error, of course, and the one precisely under review here, is 

the ultimate conclusion that authority existed to consent to search of 

the footlocker, by whatever intermediate steps of reasoning it was 

reached.”).

USCA Case #10-3099 Document #1484735 Filed: 03/21/2014 Page 10 of 29
11

Standing alone, these circumstances might suggest that 

the shoebox was not a private space and that it was reasonable 

for the police to believe that Hicks’s authority over the living

room also encompassed the shoebox. But these were not the 

only circumstances the police were aware of. They knew that 

Hicks and Peyton both lived in the small apartment, and they

were thus on notice that some spaces in the apartment might 

be used exclusively by Peyton. Indeed, the officer who 

opened the shoebox had been inside the apartment during the 

earlier warrant search and knew that Peyton’s bed was in the 

living room. But most critically, according to the sworn 

account of that very officer, Hicks told the police that Peyton 

kept his “personal property” in the area around the bed, where 

the shoebox was found. In light of this clear statement that

there was an area of the room that was not hers, it was not 

reasonable for the police to believe that Hicks shared use of 

the closed shoebox. Hicks lacked apparent authority to 

consent to its search. Cf. United States v. James, 353 F.3d 

606, 615 (8th Cir. 2003) (“It cannot be reasonable to rely on a 

certain theory of apparent authority, when the police 

themselves know what the consenting party’s actual authority 

is . . . .”).

Our decision in United States v. Whitfield, 939 F.2d 1071 

(D.C. Cir. 1991), bolsters our conclusion. In Whitfield, FBI 

agents investigating a bank robbery sought a mother’s 

permission to search her adult son’s bedroom in the family 

home. Id. at 1072-73. The district court ruled that the mother 

had apparent authority to allow the search. We reversed, 

holding that the mother had not told the agents enough about 

her use of the son’s room for them reasonably to believe she 

had common authority:

[T]he government’s burden to establish that a third party 

had authority to consent to a search . . . cannot be met if 

USCA Case #10-3099 Document #1484735 Filed: 03/21/2014 Page 11 of 29
12

agents, faced with an ambiguous situation, nevertheless 

proceed without making further inquiry. If the agents do 

not learn enough, if the circumstances make it unclear 

whether the property about to be searched is subject to 

“mutual use” by the person giving consent, “then 

warrantless entry is unlawful without further inquiry.”

Id. at 1075 (quoting Rodriguez, 497 U.S. at 188-89) 

(emphasis added in Whitfield). Apparent authority does not 

exist where it is uncertain that the property is in fact subject to 

mutual use.2 Hicks’s statement that Peyton kept his personal 

property in the area around the bed did more than create such 

uncertainty: it strongly suggested she did not use the shoebox

or have permission to do so. The police should not have 

searched the shoebox without first making further inquiry to 

determine whether Hicks had authority. See United States v. 

Taylor, 600 F.3d 678, 680-85 (6th Cir. 2010) (concluding that 

resident did not have apparent authority to consent to search 

of shoebox in spare-bedroom closet where circumstances 

created ambiguity regarding mutual use).

Some circuits have not followed Whitfield’s logic that 

ambiguity is enough to defeat apparent authority in cases 

involving closed containers in shared spaces. See Taylor, 600 

F.3d at 685-86 (Kethledge, J., dissenting) (noting divergent 

approaches to consent searches of closed containers). The 

Seventh Circuit, for instance, has concluded that the risk of 

uncertainty in these situations should be borne by the 

defendant, not the police. A person with common authority 

over the premises is presumed to have authority over closed 

containers found there unless the police receive “positive 

information” to the contrary. United States v. Melgar, 227 

 2 It is this principle that makes Whitfield so important, not its 

factual similarity to this case. Cf. Dissenting Op. at 4-5.

USCA Case #10-3099 Document #1484735 Filed: 03/21/2014 Page 12 of 29
13

F.3d 1038, 1041 (7th Cir. 2000). Similarly, the Second Circuit 

has held that a lessee has authority to consent to the search of 

all closed containers within an apartment except those that 

“obviously” belong to someone else. United States v. Snype, 

441 F.3d 119, 136 (2d Cir. 2006). But even these standards

would not compel a different outcome here. Hicks’s statement 

to the officers, combined with their knowledge of the shared 

living arrangement between Peyton and Hicks, was “positive 

information” that arguably made it “obvious” that the closed 

shoebox belonged specifically to Peyton.

Nor is our conclusion that Hicks lacked authority 

undermined by United States v. Harrison, 679 F.2d 942 (D.C. 

Cir. 1982). In Harrison, the defendant’s wife discovered 

boxes of marijuana in an area of their basement that both used 

to store personal items. She called the police and asked them 

to remove the marijuana, which they did without a warrant. 

Id. at 945, 947. When the defendant sought to suppress the 

evidence, we held that, under the Supreme Court’s reasoning 

in Matlock, the wife’s common authority over the basement 

storage area gave her “full authority to release the boxes of 

marijuana into police custody.” Id. at 947. Harrison’s 

reasoning on this point is not entirely clear, in part because 

the opinion does not distinguish between actual and apparent 

authority, but Whitfield viewed Harrison as turning on the 

notion that it was reasonable for officers to assume that a 

husband and wife would share use of the storage area. See

Whitfield, 939 F.2d at 1074-75 (citing Harrison). But just as a 

comparable assumption of mutual use was not warranted in 

Whitfield itself, so it is not warranted here. The closed 

shoebox was not located in a storage area shared by a husband 

and wife; it was next to the defendant’s bed,3 in an area his 

 3 Unlike our dissenting colleague, we consider this an 

important fact that makes the case for apparent authority much 

USCA Case #10-3099 Document #1484735 Filed: 03/21/2014 Page 13 of 29
14

great-great-grandmother described as containing his “personal 

property.” Under these very different circumstances, it was 

not reasonable for the police to believe that Hicks had the 

necessary authority. Accordingly, the evidence recovered 

from the shoebox must be suppressed.

Our dissenting colleague argues that under Matlock, 

Peyton assumed the risk of this search. See Dissenting Op. at 

9-10. We take a narrower view of the risk he assumed. To be 

sure, Peyton assumed the risk that Hicks would permit 

outsiders (including the police) into the room where he slept, 

and he thereby also assumed the risk that those outsiders 

would see any of his possessions left in plain view. Thus, had 

Peyton left a handgun lying atop his bed, we would not 

require its suppression. But it does not follow that Peyton also 

assumed the risk of Hicks’s permitting outsiders to rummage 

through his closed containers to discover items not in plain 

view. The dissent suggests that, under Donovan, it is enough 

that the shoebox itself was in plain view. See Dissenting Op. 

at 9. We think that misreads the key sentence of Donovan—

quoted in full above, at 8-9—which distinguishes between 

“objects in plain view” and “the interiors of . . . enclosed 

space[s].” Donovan, 746 F.2d at 901-02; see also United 

States v. Rodriguez, 888 F.2d 519, 523-24 (7th Cir. 1989)

(“Many a closed container is accessible; [but] opening it 

requires justification . . . . Why a lack of privacy in the room 

implies a lack of a privacy interest in the contents of the 

containers remains a mystery.”).

The dissent also contends we have put cotenants like 

Hicks, who want the police to remove any contraband in a 

shared dwelling, in an untenable position. See Dissenting Op. 

 

weaker than if the shoebox had been, say, sitting by itself in the 

middle of the room.

USCA Case #10-3099 Document #1484735 Filed: 03/21/2014 Page 14 of 29
15

at 8-9. We respectfully disagree. It cannot be that a cotenant’s 

desire that the police remove any contraband creates in her 

common authority that does not otherwise exist. The mother 

in Whitfield would not have had the necessary authority 

simply by telling the agents that she ardently wished them to 

confiscate any evidence of her son’s wrongdoing. Moreover, 

our ruling does not leave cotenants like Hicks helpless: “The 

co-tenant acting on his own initiative may be able to deliver 

evidence to the police, Coolidge [v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 

443, 487-489 (1971)] (suspect’s wife retrieved his guns from 

the couple’s house and turned them over to the police), and 

can tell the police what he knows, for use before a magistrate 

in getting a warrant.” Georgia v. Randolph, 547 U.S. 103, 116 

(2006).

Finally, there is nothing in the Supreme Court’s recent 

decision in Fernandez v. California, 134 S. Ct. 1126 (2014),

that is inconsistent with our ruling. In that case, police sought 

to enter an apartment shared by Fernandez and his girlfriend, 

Roxanne Rojas, but Fernandez objected. The police then 

removed Fernandez and lawfully arrested him. Roughly an 

hour later, the police returned, obtained Rojas’s consent to 

search the apartment, and discovered various pieces of 

evidence later used against Fernandez. Id. at 1130-31. 

Fernandez challenged the search solely on the ground that, 

under Georgia v. Randolph, his earlier objection barred the 

subsequent consent search. Id. at 1131. The Court disagreed, 

holding that Randolph is limited to cases where, earlier 

objections notwithstanding, an objecting cotenant is 

physically present at the time police ask to search. Id. at 1134-

37. That holding has no bearing on our case, which does not 

involve an objecting cotenant. Our case concerns the scope of 

a cotenant’s common authority, an issue not addressed in 

Fernandez for a simple reason: Fernandez never disputed that 

Rojas had the necessary common authority. Id. at 1138

USCA Case #10-3099 Document #1484735 Filed: 03/21/2014 Page 15 of 29
16

(Thomas, J., concurring) (“[P]etitioner does not contest that 

Rojas had common authority over the premises.”); see also

People v. Fernandez, 145 Cal. Rptr. 3d 51, 58 (Cal. Ct. App. 

2012) (no challenge to Rojas’s authority). Fernandez thus 

says nothing that undermines our analysis of Hicks’s 

authority.

III

As to the January 2010 search, Peyton asserts that the 

drugs and gun seized from the kitchen should have been 

suppressed because they are “fruit of the poisonous tree” of 

the July searches of the kitchen and shoebox. Under this 

venerable doctrine, evidence that would likely not have been 

found but for a Fourth Amendment violation must usually be 

suppressed. See generally United States v. Holmes, 505 F.3d 

1288, 1292-94 (D.C. Cir. 2007). First, as Peyton sees it, the 

police would not have sought Hicks’s consent to conduct a 

search of the kitchen in January without first having 

discovered the plates and razor blades in the kitchen cabinets

during the portion of the July search that the district court 

found unlawful. Although we can understand why Peyton 

would try to take advantage of this finding (which the 

government did not appeal), we reject this argument, for we

agree with the government that it strains credulity to think this

was the reason for the January search of the kitchen. It seems 

far more likely, simply as a matter of sound police work, that 

the officers would have wanted to search the kitchen of a 

suspected drug dealer regardless of whether they had 

discovered evidence there before.

Peyton’s better argument is that the evidence seized in 

January is tainted by the illegal search of the shoebox in July. 

The causal chain seems direct: the evidence discovered in the 

shoebox was the basis for Peyton’s indictment; the indictment

USCA Case #10-3099 Document #1484735 Filed: 03/21/2014 Page 16 of 29
17

led to the arrest warrant; and it was during the execution of 

the warrant that the officers sought and received Hicks’s 

consent to search the kitchen. Even so, we decline to decide in 

the first instance whether the evidence seized in January is the 

fruit of the unlawful search of the shoebox. We are a court of 

review, not of first view, and the district court, having

concluded that the July search of the shoebox was legal, had 

no occasion to address this issue. We therefore vacate the 

portion of the district court’s order relating to the evidence

seized in January and remand to let the district court have the 

first opportunity to address the matter, and, if it deems 

appropriate, to conduct additional fact-finding to supplement 

the record. See, e.g., United States v. Hill, 649 F.3d 258, 270 

(4th Cir. 2011); United States v. Valentine, 539 F.3d 88, 96 & 

n.10 (2d Cir. 2008). Our decision to remand is bolstered by 

how little space the parties devoted to this issue in their briefs. 

Both parties should have the opportunity to develop their 

arguments more fully before the district court.

If, on remand, the district court concludes there is a 

causal connection, it will likely need to address whether

Hicks’s consent to the January search was “an act prior to 

discovery of the challenged evidence sufficient ‘to purge the 

primary taint’ and break the causal chain between the illegal 

government conduct and the evidence’s ultimate discovery.” 

Holmes, 505 F.3d at 1294. The district court should be guided 

by Holmes. There we noted that consent can purge the taint 

of police misconduct only if it is voluntary and not the 

product of “exploitation” of the earlier illegality. Id.; see also

4 LAFAVE, supra, § 8.2(d), at 101-04 & n.133. In determining 

whether the police exploited the illegal shoebox search, the 

district court should consider the temporal proximity between 

that search in July and the discovery of the evidence in 

January, the presence of intervening circumstances, and, most 

importantly, the “purpose and flagrancy” of the illegal

USCA Case #10-3099 Document #1484735 Filed: 03/21/2014 Page 17 of 29
18

shoebox search. See Holmes, 505 F.3d at 1294 (citing Brown 

v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 603-04 (1975)).

IV

Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11 permits a 

defendant who has entered a conditional guilty plea to 

withdraw that plea if he “prevails on appeal.” FED. R. CRIM.

P. 11(a)(2). Our decision to suppress the evidence in the 

shoebox undermines the first two charges in the superseding

indictment, possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine 

and marijuana, respectively. The former was one of the two 

charges to which Peyton pled guilty. As such, we think there 

is a high “probability that the excluded evidence would have 

had a material effect on [Peyton’s] decision to plead guilty” 

and therefore conclude that he is entitled to withdraw his plea. 

United States v. Leake, 95 F.3d 409, 420 n.21 (6th Cir. 1996); 

accord United States v. Latz, 162 F. App’x 113, 121 (3d Cir. 

2005) (“[A] defendant ‘prevails on appeal’ only when he

persuades the Court of Appeals to exclude a piece of evidence 

that is material to his case.”). Accordingly, upon the district 

court’s resolution of the remaining suppression issue, Peyton 

may choose whether to withdraw his guilty plea. If he does 

so, the government remains free to reinstate the charges it 

dismissed pursuant to the plea agreement as that agreement

allows.

So ordered.

USCA Case #10-3099 Document #1484735 Filed: 03/21/2014 Page 18 of 29
KAREN LECRAFT HENDERSON, Circuit Judge, dissenting: 

 I disagree with the majority’s conclusion that Davon 

Peyton’s great-grandmother Martha Mae Hicks lacked 

authority to consent to the July 14, 2009 search of the 

shoebox found lying on the living room floor of the apartment 

she and Peyton shared.1 Hicks plainly had not only apparent 

but actual authority to consent to a search of the common 

living room and its contents, including the shoebox. 

Accordingly, I dissent from the majority’s decision and would 

affirm the district court’s judgment.2

I believe the district court correctly concluded that 

Hicks’s consent to search the apartment, including the living 

room, was valid because “she possessed common authority 

over the entire apartment.” Transcript of Motions Hearing 

100, United States v. Peyton, Crim. No. 10-15 (D.D.C. July 

22, 2010) (7/22/2010 Hr’g Tr.) (citing United States v. 

Matlock, 415 U.S. 164 (1974)); see Georgia v. Randolph, 547 

U.S. 103, 106 (2006) (“The Fourth Amendment recognizes a 

valid warrantless entry and search of premises when police 

obtain the voluntary consent of an occupant who shares, or is 

 1

In district court, Hicks was referred to as Peyton’s 

“grandmother” or great-grandmother, although he now 

characterizes her as his great-great-grandmother. See Br. for 

Appellant at 4 n.2. 

2

I thus see no need to address Peyton’s argument that the 

January 2010 search was unlawful as tainted by the July 14, 2009 

search. See Majority Opinion (Maj. Op.) at 16-18. I would also 

affirm the district court’s other holdings regarding the July 14, 2009 

search because Peyton’s girlfriend Tyra Harvey, as a guest, had 

authority to open the apartment door to the police and the district 

court did not clearly err in finding Hicks’s consent to the apartment 

search was voluntary. See 4 Wayne R. LaFave, Search and Seizure

§ 8.5(e) (5th ed. 2012) (authority of guest to open door to police); 

United States v. Wilson, 605 F.3d 985, 1027 (D.C. Cir. 2010) (clear 

error standard for voluntariness of consent). 

USCA Case #10-3099 Document #1484735 Filed: 03/21/2014 Page 19 of 29
2 

reasonably believed to share, authority over the area in 

common with a co-occupant who later objects to the use of 

evidence so obtained.” (citing Illinois v. Rodriguez, 497 U.S. 

177 (1990); United States v. Matlock, supra)). Regarding the 

living room in particular, the court found that “[t]he fact that 

it could be said that [Peyton] used the living room as a 

bedroom doesn’t detract from the fact that it was also the 

living room in the apartment and that they shared common 

authority over both the living room and the kitchen and the 

single bathroom.” 7/22/2010 Hr’g Tr. 100. This finding—

which the majority does not gainsay—is not clearly 

erroneous. See United States v. Wilson, 605 F.3d 985, 1027 

(D.C. Cir. 2010). The living room was to all appearances a 

common area (as a “living room” by customary usage 

generally is) notwithstanding Peyton used it “as a place for 

sleeping, at least on occasion,” 7/22/2010 Hr’g Tr. 43 

(stipulation by parties); it offered the only access to the 

kitchen and Peyton’s purported personal living area within the 

living room was not specifically demarcated. The particular 

“circumstances” the government cited to support the room’s 

common nature (as the majority recites them)—that the living 

room “remained a common area, with a diminished 

expectation of privacy for things left there” and that Peyton 

“took no special steps to hide or protect the shoebox[, which] 

is not ‘the type of container that has historically been 

accorded the highest privacy expectations’ ”—do indeed 

“suggest that the shoebox was not a private space and that it 

was reasonable for the police to believe that Hicks’s authority 

over the living room also encompassed the shoebox.” 

Majority Opinion (Maj. Op.) at 10-11 (quoting Br. for 

Appellee at 34). 

As the majority correctly recites, the officers searching 

the apartment “knew that Hicks and Peyton both lived in the 

small apartment”—this is precisely the circumstance that gave 

each of them shared authority over the common areas—and, 

USCA Case #10-3099 Document #1484735 Filed: 03/21/2014 Page 20 of 29
3 

in light of Peyton’s age and relationship to Hicks, that the 

police “were thus on notice that some spaces in the apartment 

might be used exclusively by Peyton.” Id. at 11 (emphases 

added); cf. United States v. Whitfield, 939 F.2d 1071, 1075 

(D.C. Cir. 1991) (noting parents may (or may not) “permit 

their adult sons and daughters to have exclusive use of the 

rooms they occupy”). 

Where the majority strays, however, is in its assertion 

that Hicks made a “clear statement that there was an area of 

the [living] room that was not hers.” Maj. Op. at 11. The sole 

evidence the majority offers of the “clear statement” that 

Hicks had ceded authority over some amorphous “area of the 

room” is the recital in a later search warrant affidavit signed 

by one of the searching officers that the officer “went to a bed 

in the apartment’s living room”3

 and “Hicks identified this as 

the area where Mr. Peyton keeps his personal property.” 

Def.’s Ex. 6, Aff. ¶ 7, United States v. Peyton, Crim. No. 10-

15 (D.D.C. July 22, 2009) (JA 60). To derive from this 

simple (yet vague) account of Hicks’s words that there was 

some “portion of the living room that Peyton claimed and 

Hicks acknowledged was uniquely his,” Maj. Op. at 6 

(emphasis added)—and from which Hicks herself was 

therefore excluded (or at least deprived of authority 

thereover)—is a stretch too far. Moreover, Hicks herself 

asserted authority over the entire apartment. The consent 

form she signed authorized the officers “to conduct a 

 3

Although the search warrant affidavit refers to a “bed,” the 

officer who testified at the evidentiary hearing “d[id not] recall if 

there was a bed or couch” but “ believe[d] there was a couch that 

was there.” 7/22/2010 Hr’g Tr. 42. The government referred to it 

below as a “daybed.” Gov’t’s Opp’n to Def.’s Mot. to Suppress 

Tangible Evidence 1, Transcript of Motions Hearing at 8, United 

States v. Peyton, Crim. No. 10-15 (D.D.C. July 27, 2010) 

(7/27/2010 Hr’g Tr.). 

USCA Case #10-3099 Document #1484735 Filed: 03/21/2014 Page 21 of 29
4 

complete search of [her] premises” and, after signing the 

form, Hicks instructed the officers: “This is my house and if 

Davon has anything illegal in here I want you to take it.” 

Gov’t Ex. 6 (signed consent form); Def.’s Ex. 6 ¶ 6 (search 

warrant affidavit) (emphasis added), United States v. Peyton, 

Crim. No. 10-15 (D.D.C. July 22, 2009) (JA 55, 60). None of 

these circumstances makes it even “arguably . . . 

‘obvious’ that the closed shoebox belonged specifically to 

Peyton.” Maj. Op. at 13 (emphasis added). 

Nor is the precedent the majority cites convincing. In 

United States v. Whitfield, 939 F.2d 1071 (D.C. Cir. 1991), 

the majority’s principal authority, the court faced a far 

different factual situation. There, government agents had 

seized evidence (stolen cash) from the pockets of four coats 

hanging in the clothes closet opening off the defendant’s 

second floor bedroom in his mother’s house, after they 

obtained the mother’s consent to search the bedroom. The 

court concluded that “[a]s a factual matter, the agents could 

not reasonably have believed Mrs. Whitfield had authority to 

consent to th[e] search” because they “simply did not have 

enough information to make that judgment.” 939 F.2d at 

1074. The court explained that, assuming the agents had 

reason to believe the mother, as a resident of the house, 

“ ‘generally’ had ‘joint access’ ” to her son’s unlocked 

bedroom, her “ability, or even legal right, to enter simply 

qualified her as a person who . . . could give consent to a 

search of property subject to her ‘mutual use,’ ”—“whether 

she had ‘mutual use’ of the room or the closet containing the 

defendant’s clothing could not be determined” given “[t]he 

bedroom itself was not a ‘common area’ and the agents had 

no grounds for believing otherwise.” Id. (quoting Matlock, 

415 U.S. at 171 n.7, q.v. (“The authority which justifies the 

third-party consent . . . rests . . . on mutual use of the property 

by persons generally having joint access or control for most 

purposes, so that it is reasonable to recognize that any of the 

USCA Case #10-3099 Document #1484735 Filed: 03/21/2014 Page 22 of 29
5 

co-inhabitants has the right to permit the inspection in his own 

right and that the others have assumed the risk that one of 

their number might permit the common area to be 

searched.”)). The “ambiguous situation” in Whitfield was 

whether the adult son’s separate bedroom, which was plainly 

“not a ‘common area,’ ” and the adjoining closet—accessible 

only through the bedroom and containing the son’s clothing 

in which the contraband was found—constituted “his private 

enclave.” Id. at 1075. There was no such ambiguity 

regarding the common living room here; the disputed area 

was indeed indistinguishable from the rest of the open living 

room space which was “common” not only because it was the 

“living room” but also because it constituted the sole pathway 

to the kitchen. That Peyton slept in the room “on occasion” 

and “ke[pt] his personal property” there did not transform the 

room—or some unmarked and undefined area within it—into 

his personal preserve to the exclusion of Hicks and her 

belongings. Without some indication from Hicks that the 

shoebox was off-limits to her, the officers were not “faced 

with an ambigu[ity]” different from that attaching to any 

property in any common area shared by more than one 

resident.4

 

The situation here more closely resembles United States 

v. Harrison, 679 F.2d 942 (D.C. Cir. 1982). In Harrison, the 

defendant’s wife (Mrs. Harrison) had invited police officers to 

the house she shared with the defendant and asked them to 

remove “two large unsealed boxes containing seventeen 

packages of marijuana” she had found “in a storage area used 

by both her and [the defendant] under the basement stairwell.” 

Id. at 945. We affirmed the district court’s denial of the 

defendant’s motion to suppress the marijuana because Mrs. 

 4

Indeed, the majority makes Hicks’s guiding the officers to the 

area of the living room where Peyton slept and “kept his stuff” 

tantamount to a declaration that she surrendered her use thereof. 

USCA Case #10-3099 Document #1484735 Filed: 03/21/2014 Page 23 of 29
6 

Harrison “had full authority to release the boxes of marijuana 

into police custody, viz., she fit[] fully within the ‘common 

authority’ criteria enunciated in Matlock.” Id. at 947. The 

court explained: 

Mrs. Harrison had full “common authority” to the 

storage area in the basement. That area was unlocked 

and open, and contained personal items that 

belonged to both appellant and his wife. The boxes 

were not sealed or taped and were closed only by 

“criss-crossed” flaps. Moreover, the record provides 

no indication that the boxes were marked in any way 

indicating appellant’s ownership. Nor is there 

anything in the record to indicate that appellant ever 

asserted that the boxes were exclusively in his 

control or even that they were his personal effects. 

Id. Like the boxes in Harrison, the shoebox here was found 

in plain sight, unsealed and unmarked, within a shared 

common area. Nothing about the box itself suggested it was 

private, much less exclusive to Peyton. Nor does the record 

indicate that Hicks’s “common authority” over the living 

room had been partitioned to exclude the box or the area of 

the floor where it was found. Armed with the consent of coresident Hicks to search the entire living room—without any 

express reservation—the searching officers could reasonably 

believe, at a minimum, that her authority to consent reached 

the shoebox lying in plain view on the living room floor. See

Illinois v. Rodriguez, 497 U.S. 177, 186 (1990) (“Whether the 

basis for [the authority to consent to a search] exists is the sort 

of recurring factual question to which law enforcement 

officials must be expected to apply their judgment; and all the 

Fourth Amendment requires is that they answer it 

reasonably.”). They were entitled to “proceed on the basis of 

the ‘factual and practical considerations of everyday life on 

which reasonable and prudent men, not legal technicians, 

USCA Case #10-3099 Document #1484735 Filed: 03/21/2014 Page 24 of 29
7 

act.’ ” Whitfield, 939 F.2d at 1074 (quoting Brinegar v. 

United States, 338 U.S. 160, 175 (1949)). Thus, they could 

“assume” that co-residents great-grandmother and greatgrandson, like husband and wife in Harrison, “mutually use 

the living areas in their residence and have joint access to 

them so that either may consent to a search.” Whitfield, 939 

F.2d at 1074-75 (citing Harrison, 679 F.2d at 946-47). The 

officers were not required to engage in “metaphysical 

subtleties” to carve out a separate but undefined room-withina-room that was reserved to Peyton’s exclusive use and 

dominion. See Frazier v. Cupp, 394 U.S. 731, 740 (1969) 

(declining to “engage in such metaphysical subtleties in 

judging the efficacy of [defendant’s cousin’s] consent” to 

search duffel bag as would be required under defendant’s 

theory that cousin “only had actual permission to use one 

compartment of the bag and that he had no authority to 

consent to a search of the other compartments”).5

 

One fact the majority completely ignores is to me critical 

to a common sense review of the challenged search. 

 5

Even were Peyton’s room-within-a-room theory persuasive, I 

would find it forfeited because he failed to articulate it to the 

district court. See United States v. Vinton, 594 F.3d 14, 24 (D.C. 

Cir. 2010); United States v. Redman, 331 F.3d 982, 986 (D.C. Cir. 

2003). The argument Peyton offered below—that Hicks lacked 

authority to consent to the search of the living room as a whole, 

which is a discrete, albeit common unit of the apartment—is quite 

different from the more complex argument he raises now—that she 

lacked authority to consent to a search of some specific area within 

the room—where Peyton slept and kept his belongings or the 

contents of that area. Cf. Vinton, 594 F.3d at 24 (appellant who 

argued in district court that officer lacked probable cause based on 

facts uncovered during investigative stop waived argument on 

appeal challenging probable cause finding based on supporting 

facts having been obtained only after investigative stop was 

extended beyond reasonable duration). 

USCA Case #10-3099 Document #1484735 Filed: 03/21/2014 Page 25 of 29
8 

According to the record, the 85-year-old Hicks, shaking her 

head, told the officers: “This is my house and if Davon has 

anything illegal in here I want you to take it.” Def.’s Ex. 6 

¶ 6, supra, p. 4. When a law abiding citizen, especially an 

elderly one, asks the police to remove contraband from her 

home, what would my colleagues have the police do? Wait 

until the undesirables who inevitably show up where drugs 

are kept do her some harm? Or until Peyton himself, high on 

cocaine, sets fire to the apartment? The notion that a citizen 

cannot rid her home of contraband by asking the police to do 

so and, in aid thereof, helping the officers in their search by 

indicating a likely location—but instead must be told: “Sorry, 

Ma’am, we can’t do that without your establishing that you 

have use and control of every inch of the living room.”—is on 

its face senseless. It also flies in the face of Fourth 

Amendment jurisprudence as most recently expounded by the 

United States Supreme Court in Fernandez v. California, 134 

S. Ct. 1126 (2014). 

In Fernandez, the Supreme Court affirmed the rule that 

“consent by one resident of jointly occupied premises is 

generally sufficient to justify a warrantless search.” Id. at 

1133. Following this rule, the Court upheld the search of an 

apartment to which resident Roxanne Rojas consented 

approximately one hour after co-resident Walter Fernandez 

expressly refused the police entry to search, whereupon he 

was arrested on suspicion of domestic assault and taken to the 

police station for booking. The Court narrowly construed the 

exception to the co-resident consent rule carved out in 

Georgia v. Randolph, which prohibits a search if a second coresident objects thereto—“accept[ing] Randolph on its own 

terms” to “unequivocally require[] the presence of the 

objecting occupant.” Id. at 1134-35. “Putting the exception 

the Court adopted in Randolph to one side,” the Court 

instructed, “the lawful occupant of a house or apartment 

should have the right to invite the police to enter the dwelling 

USCA Case #10-3099 Document #1484735 Filed: 03/21/2014 Page 26 of 29
9 

and conduct a search.” Id. at 1137. “Any other rule would 

trample on the rights of the occupant.” Id. In particular, the 

Court advised, “an occupant may want the police to conduct a 

thorough search so that any dangerous contraband can be 

found and removed,” noting that in Fernandez “the search 

resulted in the discovery and removal of a sawed-off shotgun 

to which Rojas’ 4-year-old son had access.” Id. at 15. In this 

case, Hicks consented to the police search of the living room 

for the express purpose of removing contraband from her 

apartment—a reasonable request the majority would have the 

police—and this court—ignore. Her guidance to the police, 

as I note below, did not affect the scope of her authority to 

consent to the search. 

 It is true, as the Majority observes, that the mere “desire” 

to remove contraband “cannot . . . create[] . . . common 

authority that does not otherwise exist.” Maj. Op. at 15. The 

majority does not dispute, however, that Hicks had authority, 

as the district court found, to consent to a search of the 

common living room, see supra p. 2, which authority 

“extends to most objects in plain view”—including the seized 

shoebox. Donovan v. A.A. Beiro Constr. Co., 746 F.2d 894, 

901-02 (D.C. Cir. 1984). “The touchstone of Matlock’s third 

party consent analysis is that any reasonable expectation of 

privacy in common areas is lost once joint occupants assume 

the risk that a co-occupant will allow access to the common 

areas.” Id. at 899. Peyton assumed just such a risk and, 

accordingly, had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the 

shoebox that he left lying unmarked and unsecured on the 

floor, visible and accessible to Hicks and to anyone Hicks 

might invite into their shared living room—including the 

police. See id. at 902 (To determine whether a reasonable 

expectation of privacy exists, we apply a “rule . . . of reason 

that assesses the critical circumstances indicating the presence 

or absence of a discrete expectation of privacy with respect to 

the particular object: whether it is secured, whether it is 

USCA Case #10-3099 Document #1484735 Filed: 03/21/2014 Page 27 of 29
10 

commonly used for preserving privacy, etc.” (quoting United 

States v. Block, 590 F.2d 535, 541 n.8 (4th Cir. 1978) (noting: 

“Obviously not every ‘enclosed space’ within a room or other 

area—e.g. pockets in clothes, unsecured shoeboxes, and the 

like—can claim independent status as objects capable of 

search not within reach of the authorized area search.”))). I 

do not see how Peyton’s privacy expectation could possibly 

be revived by anything that Hicks said to the officers. The 

Supreme Court’s concern expressed in Fernandez only 

highlights Hicks’s right, as a lawful occupant of the 

apartment, to enlist police assistance to remove illegal drugs 

from the living room she and Peyton shared. She should not, 

as the majority suggests, be reduced to self-help to evict from 

her home the drug trafficking culture Peyton has invited in. 

Such a rule would “trample on [her] rights.” Fernandez, 134 

S. Ct. at 1137.6

The majority and I have together written almost 30 

pages—not only to decide this case but also to guide a 

constituency made up in large part of police officers, trial 

judges and the bar. My colleagues rely on the common sense 

language of Whitfield that an officer “faced with an 

ambiguous situation” must make further inquiry before 

concluding that “the property about to be searched is subject 

to ‘mutual use’ by the person giving consent.” Maj. Op. at 12 

(quoting 939 F.2d at 1075 (quoting Rodriguez, 497 U.S. at 

 6

In Fernandez, the Court rejected the petitioner’s argument 

that his objection to the search should remain effective until 

withdrawn in part because such a rule “would create the very sort of 

practical complications that Randolph sought to avoid,” noting that 

Randolph “adopt[ed] a ‘formalis[tic]’ rule, but it did so in the 

interests of ‘simple clarity’ and administrability.” 134 S. Ct. at 

1135 (quoting Randolph, 547 U.S. at 121, 122). 

USCA Case #10-3099 Document #1484735 Filed: 03/21/2014 Page 28 of 29
11 

188-89)).7

 At the same time, they appear to recognize that 

“this limitation on the scope of common authority might seem 

to put the police in a bind.” Id. at 9. But then, distinguishing 

between the shoebox and “say, the drawers of the television 

stand,” id., both of which are located in a mutual use living 

room, they conclude that the officers’ search of the drawers 

would be reasonable but that the shoebox is verboten. On the 

basis of a distance of no more than a few feet, then, they have 

decided whether or not property is subject to mutual use. 

How this measuring-stick jurisprudence is supposed to assist 

those who look to us for guidance wholly escapes me. 

Accordingly, I respectfully dissent. 

 

 7

As already noted, supra p. 5, there was no ambiguity 

surrounding Hicks’s authority to consent. 

USCA Case #10-3099 Document #1484735 Filed: 03/21/2014 Page 29 of 29