Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-03-04045/USCOURTS-ca8-03-04045-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Timothy W. Hines
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

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No. 03-4045

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United States of America,

Plaintiff–Appellee,

v.

Timothy W. Hines,

Defendant– Appellant.

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Appeal from the United States

District Court for the

Western District of Missouri

[PUBLISHED]

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Submitted: September 16, 2004

 Filed: November 1, 2004

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Before COLLOTON, HEANEY, and HANSEN, Circuit Judges. 

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HANSEN, Circuit Judge.

Timothy W. Hines was convicted of conspiracy to manufacture

methamphetamine in excess of 50 grams (Count One) and possession of

pseudoephedrine with the intent to manufacture a controlled substance (Count Two).

See 21 U.S.C. §§ 841 and 846 (2000). Because of his prior drug conviction, Hines

was sentenced to a mandatory statutory sentence of life in prison on Count One and

a concurrent sentence of 240 months in prison on Count Two. On appeal, Hines

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The Honorable Ortrie D. Smith, United States District Judge for the Western

District of Missouri, adopting the report and recommendation of the Honorable John

T. Maughmer, Chief Magistrate Judge, United States District Court for the Western

District of Missouri.

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argues that the district court1 erred when it denied his pretrial motions to suppress

evidence, statements, and a pre-trial identification. After careful review, we affirm

the judgment of the district court. 

On May 9, 2001, William Cummins, an employee of a Walgreens pharmacy in

Independence, Missouri, called the police. Mr. Cummins reported that a particular

customer had been in the store twice that day, each time purchasing ten boxes of cold

medicine containing pseudoephedrine, a compound used in the illicit manufacture of

methamphetamine. Mr. Cummins also reported that he had seen the customer in the

store on previous occasions making similar purchases. He described the customer as

a heavyset, balding white man, wearing an artificial leg with a Harley Davidson

emblem on it. From the description, Detective Bill Sweeney suspected Hines, who

had been named numerous times in other narcotics investigations as someone

involved in the manufacture of methamphetamine. Detective Sweeney interviewed

Mr. Cummins at Walgreens and showed him a single photograph of Hines, whom Mr.

Cummins immediately identified as the person who had purchased the cold medicine.

Mr. Cummins also gave a description of and the license plate number for the vehicle

that the customer had been driving. The vehicle was registered to Timothy Hines of

812 N. Woodland Road, Independence, Missouri. 

On June 12, 2001, officers from the Kansas City Metro Methamphetamine Task

Force and the Independence, Missouri, Police Department Drug Enforcement Unit

went to 812 N. Woodland. Hines shared the residence with 82-year-old Freda

Brummet, who owned the home. Hines did work on the property in exchange for a

room in the basement. Ms. Brummet signed a consent to search form giving the

officers permission to search the residence, listed on the form as “a single family

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Ms. Brummet did not testify because she passed away shortly before the

hearing. 

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dwelling and one attached single garage/outbuilding.” In fact, the garage was not

attached to the house.

Not long after the officers arrived, they seized a filled syringe from Hines’s

shirt pocket and placed Hines under arrest. Hines was given a written advisory of his

rights, pursuant to Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), which he initialed. The

officers then questioned Hines, and Hines made several statements. Upon searching

the house and the garage, the officers found and seized numerous items associated

with the manufacture of methamphetamine. 

On August 23, 2001, Detective Steve Cook, of the Jackson County Drug Task

Force, presented Mr. Cummins (the Independence, Missouri, Walgreens employee)

with a six-person photo lineup. Mr. Cummins again identified Hines's picture and

described Hines as a white male wearing a prosthetic leg with a Harley Davidson

emblem on it. 

Hines filed a motion to suppress statements, evidence, and the one-person

photo identification that took place on May 9, 2001. Because the government

indicated that it was not going to use the one-person photo identification at trial, the

issue on the motion became whether the May 9, 2001, procedure was so suggestive

as to taint any later identification. The magistrate judge held a hearing and filed a

report recommending that the district court deny all of Hines’s motions.2

 The district

court adopted the magistrate judge’s report and recommendation.

We first consider whether the one-person photo lineup presented to Mr.

Cummins was so unduly suggestive as to give rise to a very substantial likelihood of

irreparable misidentification that tainted the later photo identification on August 23,

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2001, and the in-court identification by Mr. Cummins. Because this claim implicates

a defendant’s constitutional right to procedural due process, we review de novo.

United States v. Williams, 340 F.3d 563, 567 (8th Cir. 2003); United States v. Davis,

103 F.3d 660, 669 (8th Cir. 1996).

In this case, we assume, as did the district court, that the first identification

procedure used was impermissibly suggestive. Thus, we go on to “examine the

totality of the circumstances to determine whether the suggestive procedure[] created

‘a very substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification.’” Williams, 340 F.3d

at 567 (quoting Simmons v. United States, 390 U.S. 377, 384 (1968)). We consider

“‘the opportunity of the witness to view the criminal at the time of the crime, the

witness’ degree of attention, the accuracy of his prior description of the criminal, the

level of certainty demonstrated at the confrontation, and the time between the crime

and the confrontation.’” Williams, 340 F.3d at 567 (quoting Manson v. Brathwaite,

432 U.S. 98, 114 (1977)). As the district court observed, the facts are undisputed that

Mr. Cummins saw Hines in the store twice on the day that the first identification was

made; Mr. Cummins remembered seeing Hines in the store previously; he was able

to give the police a reliable and distinct description of Hines; and he was able to

provide the police with a description of and a license plate number for Hines’s

vehicle. We agree with the magistrate judge and the district court that, even assuming

that the first identification procedure was impermissibly suggestive, the totality of the

circumstances indicate that it did not create a substantial likelihood of irreparable

misidentification that tainted any later identification. We hold that the district court

did not err in denying the motion to suppress based upon the one-photo identification

procedure used on May 9, 2001. 

We next consider Hines’s argument that the search violated the Fourth

Amendment because the officers did not obtain valid consent to search the 812 N.

Woodland residence. We will affirm a district court’s order denying a defendant’s

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motion to suppress “‘unless the decision is unsupported by substantial evidence, is

based on an erroneous view of the applicable law, or in light of the entire record, we

are left with a firm and definite conviction that a mistake has been made.’” United

States v. Welerford, 356 F.3d 932, 935 (8th Cir. 2004) (quoting United States v.

Vanhorn, 296 F.3d 713, 717 (8th Cir. 2002), cert. denied, 537 U.S. 1167 (2003)). We

review the district court’s factual findings for clear error and review de novo the

ultimate question of whether there was a Fourth Amendment violation. United States

v. White, 356 F.3d 865, 868 (8th Cir. 2004). We hold that the officers obtained valid

consent to search and that neither a warrant nor exigent circumstances were

necessary. It is undisputed that the officers obtained the signed consent of Ms.

Brummet, the owner and a common occupant of the property, to search the residence.

“The Fourth Amendment’s general prohibition against warrantless searches does not

apply when officers obtain voluntary consent from the person whose property is

searched or from a third party with common authority over the property.” United

States v. Esparza, 162 F.3d 978, 980 (8th Cir. 1998) (citing Illinois v. Rodriguez, 497

U.S. 177, 181 (1990)).

Hines argues that even if Ms. Brummet did consent, her consent was not

voluntary. “The voluntariness of a person’s consent to search is a question of fact

that we review under the clearly erroneous standard.” United States v. Carrate, 122

F.3d 666, 670 (8th Cir. 1997). The district court’s finding that Ms. Brummet’s

consent was voluntary was not clearly erroneous. The court weighed the hearsay

testimony of the defense counsel's investigator (who testified that Ms. Brummet had

told him shortly before her death that she felt that she had been coerced into signing

the consent form) against the direct testimony of the officers on the scene (that Ms.

Brummet had voluntarily signed the consent form, had not been coerced or

threatened, and that she never indicated that she did not understand her right to refuse

consent), and credited the police officers' recountings of the facts. “[W]hen a trial

judge’s finding is based on his decision to credit the testimony of one of two or more

witnesses, each of whom has told a coherent and facially plausible story that is not

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contradicted by extrinsic evidence, that finding, if not internally inconsistent, can

virtually never be clear error.” Welerford, 356 F.3d at 935-36 (internal quotations

omitted); see also United States v. Dupree, 202 F.3d 1046, 1049 (8th Cir. 2000).

Hines also argues that the search exceeded the scope of the consent because the

consent form referred to an attached garage, while the residence had only an

unattached garage. We disagree. “The standard for measuring the scope of consent

under the Fourth Amendment is that of ‘objective’ reasonableness-what would the

typical reasonable person have understood by the exchange between the officer and

the individual?” United States v. Adams, 346 F.3d 1165, 1171 (8th Cir. 2003).

Under this standard, the fact that the garage was not, in fact, attached does not

invalidate the consent. The residence had only one garage, and it is thus objectively

reasonable to assume that the parties understood the consent form to refer to the only

garage on the property. Likewise, we reject Hines’s argument that Ms. Brummet did

not have the authority to consent to a search of the garage. The district court clearly

adopted the magistrate judge’s finding that Ms. Brummet had mutual use of and joint

access to the garage. We will not disturb the district court’s factual finding absent

clear error, United States v. Hyatt, 207 F.3d 1036, 1038 (8th Cir. 2000), and we find

no clear error here, especially as Hines admitted at the hearing that Ms. Brummet had

the right to enter the garage when and if she chose.

Finally, we reject Hines’s argument that the district court erred in denying his

motion to suppress statements because the arresting officers failed to properly advise

him of his Miranda rights before questioning him. See United States v. Jones, 275

F.3d 673, 678-79 (8th Cir. 2001) (standard of review). At the suppression hearing,

the testimony indicated that Hines had read and initialed a written Miranda warning,

that the officers had also read the Miranda warning aloud, and that Hines did not say

anything to the officers to indicate that he did not understand his rights. The district

court determined that Hines was properly advised of his Miranda rights and that he

waived those rights intelligently and voluntarily. As it appears that “[t]here is nothing

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in the record before this Court to call into question the credibility determination made

by the district court,” Jones, 275 F.3d at 679, we affirm the district court's order

denying the motion to suppress Hines’s statements.

For the reasons stated, we affirm the judgment of the district court.

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