Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca10-93-04184/USCOURTS-ca10-93-04184-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Gerard Anthony Greenfield
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

PUBLISH 

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 

TENTH CIRCUIT 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

VS. 

JUDY MELINDA BOONE I 

Defendant-Appellant. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

vs. 

GERARD ANTHONY GREENFIELD, 

Defendant-Appellant. 

FILED 

United States Court of Appeals 

Tenth Circuit 

JUL 3 1 1995 

PATRICK FISHER c:~r;; 

No. 93-4174 

No. 93-4184 

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 

FOR THE CENTRAL DISTRICT OF UTAH 

(D.C. No. 92-CR-219 S) 

Bruce C. Lubeck, Assistant United States Attorney (Scott Matheson, 

Jr., United States Attorney with him on the brief), Salt Lake 

City, Utah, for Plaintiff-Appellee. 

Dixon D. Hindley, Salt Lake City, Utah, for Defendant-Appellant, 

Judy Melinda Boone. 

Stephen R. McCaughey, Salt Lake City, Utah, for DefendantAppellant, Gerard Anthony Greenfield. 

Before KELLY and MCKAY, Circuit Judges, and COOK, District Judge.t 

t The Honorable H. Dale Cook, Senior United States District 

Judge for the Northern District of Oklahoma, sitting by 

designation. 

Appellate Case: 93-4184 Document: 01019279192 Date Filed: 07/31/1995 Page: 1 
KELLY, Circuit Judge. 

Defendants-appellants Ms. Boone and Mr. Greenfield appeal 

from the district court's denial of their motion to suppress 

evidence of PCP possession. Mr. Greenfield also appeals the 

court's denial of his 28 U.S.C. § 2255 ineffective assistance of 

counsel claim. Our jurisdiction arises under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1291, 

2253 and 2255. 

Background 

On August 18, 1992, Deputy Phil Barney stopped Defendants' 

car for travelling six miles over the speed limit. Officer Barney 

recorded the events that followed on audio and videotape. Upon 

request, the driver, Ms. Boone, handed the officer both of the 

Defendants' licenses and the registration. Officer Barney 

proceeded to write Ms. Boone a warning ticket for speeding, 

requested police backup, and ran checks on both Defendants and the 

vehicle. The registration check revealed that the vehicle 

belonged to a Mr. Buckman, whom Mr. Greenfield claimed to be his 

cousin. The vehicle had not been reported stolen. The other 

checks revealed that although Ms. Boone was wanted in Maryland for 

forgery and that she had a prior arrest for a firearm violation; 

she could only be extradited to Maryland from an adjoining state. 

Officer Barney asked the Defendants to step out of the car. 

According to Barney, Mr. Greenfield shrugged and hesitantly said 

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Appellate Case: 93-4184 Document: 01019279192 Date Filed: 07/31/1995 Page: 2 
"sure," but in a voice too soft to be recorded. Once the 

Defendants were outside the vehicle, officer Barney put their 

driver's licenses and the warning ticket on the front seat of the 

car and began his search. Upon looking under the backseat, he 

found a package that smelled like marijuana. At that point, the 

backup officer arrived. 

When officer Barney stepped away from the vehicle, the 

Defendants got into the car and prepared to drive away. Officer 

Barney twice ordered the Defendants to stop, but they paid no 

attention. He then drew his revolver and told them to stop or he 

would shoot. Despite this show of force, Mr. Greenfield drove 

off. Officer Barney fired two shots at Mr. Greenfield's left 

front tire and the backup officer fired three at the left rear. 

None of these shots found their mark. Officer Barney and his 

backup gave c~se at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour. During 

the case, officer Barney saw Ms. Boone throw five objects out the 

rear window. Finally, the Defendants' right rear tire was shot 

out and the car was stopped. After the officers arrested the 

Defendants, they went back to recover the discarded objects, which 

turned out to be remnants of glass bottles coated with 

phencyclidine ("PCP"). 

The district court concluded that officer Barney's original 

search of the Defendants' car was unlawful for lack of consent. 

Accordingly, the district court granted the Defendants' motion to 

suppress the five pounds of marijuana found in the vehicle and 

this ruling has not been appealed. The district court declined to 

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Appellate Case: 93-4184 Document: 01019279192 Date Filed: 07/31/1995 Page: 3 
suppress the PCP the officers had found on the road after the 

chase. 

Mr. Greenfield also raised a 28 U.S.C. § 2255 ineffective 

assistance of counsel claim. At the evidentiary hearing, he 

testified that his original attorney advised him of the Sentencing 

Guidelines. This attorney, however, died and Mr. Greenfield 

retained new counsel. At first, his new counsel instructed him to 

plead guilty, which he declined to do. On the morning of trial, 

counsel, realizing the lengthy sentence called for by the 

Sentencing Guidelines and the lack of advantage of a guilty plea, 

advised that Mr. Greenfield should go to trial. At that point, 

Mr. Greenfield asked if he could negotiate a plea with the 

government. Counsel contacted the prosecutor and was told that it 

was too late for a plea agreement. Mr. Greenfield was advised by 

his counsel to take the stand and testify that the owner of the 

drugs was his codefendant, Ms. Boone. Mr. Greenfield refused, but 

did agree to testify that he went to California only to obtain 

marijuana and did not know of the PCP's existence until they were 

stopped by Officer Barney. According to Mr. Greenfield, this 

testimony was false, but he gave it at the behest of counsel. 

Discussion 

Defendants contend that the district court erred by denying 

their motion to suppress the PCP as evidence because its discovery 

was irreparably tainted by the illegality of Officer Barney's car 

search. We review the factual findings underlying the district 

court's denial of Defendants' motion to suppress under a clearly 

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erroneous standard; Fourth Amendment reasonableness is a question 

of law reviewed de novo. United States v. McSwain, 29 F.3d 558, 

560-61 (lOth Cir. 1994). 

Generally, evidence that is acquired because of prior illegal 

activity must be excluded as the fruit of that illegality. Wong 

Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 484-85 (1963). In Wong Sun, 

the Supreme Court explained that the discovery of evidence 

subsequent to a primary illegality does not necessarily make the 

evidence the product of an "'exploitation of that illegality.'" 

The question to be answered is whether the evidence complained of 

has been obtained "'by means sufficiently distinguishable to be 

purged of the primary taint.'" Id. at 488 (citation omitted). 

Likewise, if the Defendants' abandonment of the evidence was the 

result of illegal police activity, its abandonment does not 

guarantee admissibility. See United States v. Ward, 961 F.2d 

1526, 1535 (lOth Cir. 1992). Yet, if the abandonment is 

sufficiently attenuated from Officer Barney's illegal car search, 

then the evidence may be admitted at trial. See United States v. 

King, 990 F.2d 1552, 1563-64 (lOth Cir. 1993); United States v. 

Colbert, 474 F.2d 174, 176 (5th Cir. 1973) (en bane). 

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

Supreme Court articulated three factors by which a court may 

determine if seized evidence has been purged of the taint of the 

original illegality. The first factor is the lapsed time between 

the illegality and the acquisition of the evidence. Id. at 603. 

In the case at hand, the lapsed time is not sufficient to 

attenuate. 

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The second factor is the purpose and flagrancy of the 

official misconduct. Id. at 604. Here, the police officer acted 

upon a mistaken belief that Mr. Greenfield had consented to the 

search. While this error rises to the level of a Fourth Amendment 

violation, it does not qualify as flagrant misconduct that would 

tilt the scales against attenuation. 

The third factor is the presence of intervening 

circumstances. Id. at 603-04. We find this factor to be 

determinative in this case. When officer Barney stepped away from 

the car, Defendants jumped in, ignored the officer's call to stop, 

fled the scene at a high speed, and voluntarily threw bottles of 

PCP out of the car. While it is true that a criminal defendant's 

voluntary abandonment of evidence can remove the taint of an 

illegal stop or arrest, it is equally true that for this to occur, 

the abandonment must be truly voluntary and not merely the product 

of police misconduct. See King, 990 F.2d at 1564-65; Colbert, 474 

F.2d at 176. 

Clearly, we do not condone officer Barney's original search, 

nor the shots fired at the Defendants, who, according to the 

officer's testimony, were free to leave the scene of the original 

search, but Defendants do not contend that they discarded the PCP 

as a result of any illegal action by the officers. In the absence 

of subsequent illegal conduct, we cannot find that the Defendants' 

decision to throw bottles of PCP out the window of their car was 

the product of officer Barney's illegal car search. To conclude 

otherwise would be to apply a "but for" test, which the Supreme 

Court has specifically rejected. See Brown, 422 U.S. at 603. 

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Instead, we view the Defendants' decision to discard evidence as 

independent and voluntary, and sufficient to cut the link to 

Officer Barney's car search. See United States v. Morgan, 936 

F.2d 1561, 1570-71 (lOth Cir. 1991) (defendant's decision to 

discard evidence without any mind to its protection from 

inspection qualifies as voluntary abandonment that is sufficient 

to attenuate), cert. denied, 502 U.S. 1102 (1992). As in Morgan, 

the evidence "would have been plainly visible to those passing by" 

and no one "was present at the scene to provide protection of the 

[evidence] or assist in its recovery." Id. at 1571. 

It is true that Defendants threw the bottles out of the 

vehicle and onto the road while being chased, but police pursuit 

alone is not enough to "render [an] abandonment involuntary." Id. 

at 1570. Certainly, officer Barney's initial illegal search did 

not cause the Defendants to flee at a high rate of speed or to 

throw bottles of PCP onto the highway. Had the Defendants left 

the PCP bottles in the car, we recognize that, under the 

unappealed decision of the district court, the police officers 

would not have had the right to search the car and the PCP may not 

have been admitted into evidence. But that is not what occurred. 

Under these circumstances, it would be nonsensical to hold that 

officer Barney had no right to collect the evidence of drug 

possession that Defendants voluntarily discarded onto the highway. 

The district court did not err by denying Defendants' motion to 

suppress the PCP. 

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B. Ineffective Assistance of Counsel 

Mr. Greenfield claims that he received ineffective assistance 

of counsel in violation of 28 U.S.C. § 2255. Ineffective 

assistance of counsel claims are mixed questions of law and fact 

which are reviewed de novo; the district court's factual findings, 

however, will be accepted unless clearly erroneous. Brewer v. 

Reynolds, 51 F.3d 1519, ____ (lOth Cir. 1995). 

In order to assess Mr. Greenfield's ineffective assistance of 

counsel claim, we must determine "whether counsel's conduct so 

undermined the proper functioning of the adversarial process that 

the trial cannot be relied on as having produced a just result." 

Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 686 (1984). In order to 

prove this, Mr. Greenfield must show that his counsel's 

performance was deficient and that this deficiency prejudiced the 

defense. United States v. Pena, 920 F.2d 1509, 1518 (lOth Cir. 

1990), cert. denied, 501 U.S. 1207 (1991). 

In analyzing the performance element, we must determine 

whether Mr. Greenfield's counsel acted reasonably considering all 

of the circumstances, or if, instead, counsel's conduct fell below 

an objective standard of reasonableness given prevailing norms. 

Strickland, 466 U.S. at 688. If Mr. Greenfield's testimony is 

true, the challenged conduct involves suborning perjury, see 18 

U.S.C. § 1622, which would fall well below an objective standard 

of reasonableness. 

The prejudice element of Strickland, however, requires the 

Defendant to prove a reasonable probability that the outcome of 

the proceeding would have been different had the deficient conduct 

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not occurred. Strickland, 466 U.S. at 694. Mr. Greenfield 

testified at the evidentiary hearing that he had advised counsel 

of the truth before trial, i.e. that he was stopped by officer 

Barney upon his return from California, where he had gone to 

purchase PCP. Thus, Mr. Greenfield has acknowledged that he is 

guilty, and the incriminating evidence presented by the government 

established guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. No arguments 

advanced by Mr. Greenfield cast doubt on that evidence, and he has 

not suggested any way in which he might have overcome the 

government's strong case against him. Counsel's encouragement to 

lie, while satisfying Strickland's first element of deficient 

performance, does not satisfy Strickland's second element of 

prejudice, the likelihood of a different outcome if counsel had 

not provided the deficient advice. 

Mr. Greenfield also claims that counsel was ineffective 

because he failed to negotiate a plea with the prosecutor. Even 

if we assume, without deciding, that counsel's failure to 

negotiate with the prosecutor amounted to deficient performance 

under Strickland, Mr. Greenfield fails to satisfy the prejudice 

requirement. Without any showing that the prosecution was willing 

to enter plea negotiations with Mr. Greenfield's counsel, or that 

such plea would have been acceptable to the court, or that the 

resulting sentence would have been different than that imposed 

under the Sentencing Guidelines, all that the Defendant urges is 

speculation, not a reasonable probability that the outcome would 

have been different. Accordingly, he cannot establish prejudice. 

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Finally, Mr. Greenfield claims that his counsel erred by 

originally instructing him to plead guilty and then changing his 

mind upon closer look at the Guidelines. When his counsel 

realized that pleading guilty would not be of any benefit, he 

advised him of the possible reduction for cooperation with the 

government under U.S.S.G. § SKl.l. Mr. Greenfield decided not to 

participate, indicating that he knew nothing of any value to the 

Drug Enforcement Agency. The fact that Mr. Greenfield's counsel 

misunderstood and miscommunicated the Defendant's possible 

sentence does not constitute ineffective assistance of counsel. 

See United States v. Estrada, 849 F.2d 1304, 1307 (lOth Cir. 

1988). Moreover, even if counsel had advised him of the correct 

range at an earlier stage, there is no evidence that this advice 

would have affected the outcome. Hence, the Defendant has not 

established prejudice under Strickland. 

AFFIRMED. 

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