Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-15-02994/USCOURTS-ca8-15-02994-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
United States of America
Appellee
Jorge Alberto Zamora-Garcia
Appellant

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

For the Eighth Circuit

___________________________

No. 15-2994

___________________________

United States of America

Plaintiff - Appellee

v.

Jorge Alberto Zamora-Garcia

Defendant - Appellant

____________

Appeal from United States District Court 

for the Eastern District of Arkansas - Little Rock

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 Submitted: June 14, 2016

 Filed: August 2, 2016

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Before SMITH and GRUENDER, Circuit Judges, and KETCHMARK, District 1

Judge.

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GRUENDER, Circuit Judge.

Jorge Alberto Zamora-Garcia was charged with possession with intent to

distribute more than 500 grams of a mixture or substance containing a detectable

The Honorable Roseann A. Ketchmark, United States District Judge for the

1

Western District of Missouri, sitting by designation.

Appellate Case: 15-2994 Page: 1 Date Filed: 08/02/2016 Entry ID: 4432871 
amount of methamphetamine, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1). The district

court denied his motion to suppress the packages of methamphetamine gathered 2

during the search of his vehicle. Zamora-Garcia entered a conditional guilty plea,

preserving the right to appeal the court’s denial of his motion to suppress. He now

appeals, and we affirm.

I.

On July 23, 2012, Corporal Lowry Astin of the Arkansas State Police noticed

that a car driving on Interstate 40 had something dragging underneath it. Corporal

Astin stopped the car and informed its driver, Zamora-Garcia, of the dragging part. 

According to Corporal Astin, Zamora-Garcia was extremely nervous during this

interaction, and Zamora-Garcia’s hands shook as he retrieved his driver’s license.

After speaking briefly with Corporal Astin, Zamora-Garcia stepped out of the car to

examine the underbody of the vehicle while his two passengers, his sister and niece,

remained inside. Corporal Astin then invited Zamora-Garcia to join him in the patrol

car while he checked Zamora-Garcia’s license. While the two men were sitting in the

car, Corporal Astin asked Zamora-Garcia where he lived and where he was going.

Zamora-Garcia responded that he was from California and that he was traveling

cross-country to visit family in Atlanta.

After verifying Zamora-Garcia’s license, Corporal Astin asked if the vehicle

contained anything illegal. Zamora-Garcia replied, “No, sir.” Corporal Astin then

said, “Do you mind if I search it? Can I?” Zamora-Garcia responded, “Yeah, if you

want to.” Zamora-Garcia opened the trunk, and Corporal Astin conducted a roadside

search.

The Honorable J. Leon Holmes, United States District Judge for the Eastern 2

District of Arkansas.

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Corporal Astin noticed that the trunk’s carpet had been glued to the floor. As

a former automobile mechanic, he knew that car manufacturers typically do not

adhere carpets to a vehicle’s trunk in this manner, and he suspected that the car had

been altered to contain a hidden compartment. He asked Zamora-Garcia if the car had

been in a wreck, and Zamora-Garcia said no. Corporal Astin also noticed a large sum

of cash, later inventoried as more than $1,600, in a bag under the luggage in the trunk. 

When Corporal Astin commented on the cash, Zamora-Garcia quickly said that it

belonged to his sister. Corporal Astin then crawled underneath the vehicle with his

flashlight and saw that a metal box had been welded to the underbody of the car,

spanning the car’s entire width. Corporal Astin searched for a trapdoor to gain entry

into this compartment. As he was doing so, an Arkansas state trooper stopped to

assist. When Corporal Astin was unable to gain entry into the compartment, he

decided to move the search to police headquarters. Corporal Astin told ZamoraGarcia, “What I need you to do is follow me back to headquarters. We need to pull

this wheel off and look.” He explained that the wheel area did not “look right” to

him. Zamora-Garcia responded, “Okay” and “That’s fine.” After asking which

officer he should follow, Zamora-Garcia drove his car to headquarters.

Upon their arrival at headquarters, Corporal Astin and other law-enforcement

officers continued to search for the compartment’s trapdoor whileZamora-Garcia and

his passengers waited inside the headquarters building approximately fifty feet from

the car. Eventually, one of the officers drilled a hole through the trunk floor into the

hidden compartment. When he removed the drill bit, it was covered with green

cellophane and a white, crystal-like powder. The officers located the trapdoor in the

frame of the car shortly thereafter and pried it open. Inside the compartment, they

found fourteen one-pound cellophane bags of methamphetamine. Officers arrested

Zamora-Garcia, and he wasindicted for possession with intent to distribute more than

500 grams of a mixture or substance containing a detectable amount of

methamphetamine. See 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1).

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Zamora-Garcia moved to suppress the packages of methamphetamine found in

his vehicle, arguing that the officers’ search violated the Fourth Amendment. The

district court denied his motion, and Zamora-Garcia entered a conditional guilty plea. 

He now appeals, renewing his argument that the search was illegal and that the

evidence should have been suppressed.

II.

Zamora-Garcia contends that the district court should have granted his motion

to suppress because Corporal Astin and the other officers unlawfully searched his

vehicle. “In an appeal of a denied motion to suppress, ‘we review the district court’s

factual findings for clear error and its ultimate determination of whether those facts

amounted to a constitutional violation de novo.’” United States v. Santana-Aguirre,

537 F.3d 929, 932 (8th Cir. 2008) (quoting United States v. Valencia, 499 F.3d 813,

815 (8th Cir. 2007)).

The Fourth Amendment permits the warrantless search of an automobile for

contraband if an officer has obtained voluntary consent to search, as long as the

search stays within the scope of the consent. United States v. Guevara, 731 F.3d 824,

829 (8th Cir. 2013). Significant here, Corporal Astin did not begin searching

Zamora-Garcia’s vehicle until after he obtained Zamora-Garcia’s express consent. 

Corporal Astin asked Zamora-Garcia if he could search the car, and Zamora-Garcia

responded “Yeah, if you want to.” At no time during the subsequent search did

Zamora-Garcia attempt to withdraw this consent. Indeed, after observing Corporal

Astin move luggage around the trunk to search the entire interior space, ZamoraGarcia offered to take—and subsequently took—one ofthe large bags out ofthe trunk

to give Corporal Astin a better view. See United States v. Saenz, 474 F.3d 1132, 1137

(8th Cir. 2007) (finding consent was voluntary because the defendant gave consent

to search the truck to two officers and he did not complain or question officers during

the search).

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On appeal, Zamora-Garcia argues that the officers exceeded the scope of his

initial consent when Corporal Astin instructed Zamora-Garcia to bring the car to

headquarters in order to continue the search. However, we see no constitutional

problem associated with this change of location. As the district court noted, ZamoraGarcia gaveCorporal Astin unqualified consent to the search, and Zamora-Garcia did

not object or otherwise withdraw his consent when Corporal Astin indicated that the

search would continue at a second location or that the car wheel would be removed. 

See United States v. Lopez-Vargas, 457 F.3d 828, 830-31 (8th Cir. 2006) (finding no

clear error in the district court’s determination that a defendant’s consent identifying

one location permitted a subsequent search at a second location); United States v.

Martel-Martines, 988 F.2d 855, 857 (8th Cir. 1993) (finding no Fourth Amendment

violation related to a search conducted at two locations where an officer told the

defendant that his truck would be taken to a second location and the defendant agreed

to drive his truck to that location). Zamora-Garcia instead asked which officer he

should follow and then drove his car to headquarters. “The standard for measuring

the scope of a suspect’s consent under the Fourth Amendment is that of ‘objective’

reasonableness,” an inquiry that asks what “the typical reasonable person [would]

have understood by the exchange between the officer and the suspect.” United States

v. Sanders, 424 F.3d 768, 774 (8th Cir. 2005) (quoting Florida v. Jimeno, 500 U.S.

248, 251 (1991)). “[W]hether or not the suspect has actually consented to a search,

the Fourth Amendment requires only that the police reasonably believe the search to

be consensual.” United States v. Sanchez, 156 F.3d 875, 878 (8th Cir. 1998). Given

the circumstances here, we think the officers reasonably could have concluded that

Zamora-Garcia’s consent extended to the continued search at headquarters. 

Moreover, even if Zamora-Garcia’s initial consent were somehow limited to the

roadside search, we see no clear error in the district court’s determination that

Corporal Astin requested, rather than demanded, that Zamora-Garcia allow officers

to conduct a more thorough search at headquarters. Because Zamora-Garcia

responded “Okay” and “That’s fine” and then asked, without prompting, which

officer he should follow, we find no clear error in the court’s factual determination

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that Zamora-Garcia’s consent to the continued search was voluntary. See United

States v. Quintero, 648 F.3d 660, 665 (8th Cir. 2011) (noting that voluntariness of

consent is a factual issue).

Our inquiry does not end with Zamora-Garcia’s consent, however, because

general consent to a search does not give law enforcement officers license to destroy

property. Guevara, 731 F.3d at 830. “Cutting or destroying an object during a search

requires either explicit consent for the destructive search or articulable suspicion that

supports a finding that probable cause exists to do the destructive search.” Id.

(quoting Santana-Aguirre, 537 F.3d at 932). The Government does not contend that

Zamora-Garcia explicitly consented to drilling into the car’s trunk. Accordingly, our

determination turns on whether the officers had probable cause to drill into the trunk

to reach the hidden compartment.

“A police officer has probable cause to conduct a search when the facts

available to him would warrant a person of reasonable caution in the belief that

contraband or evidence of a crime is present.” Id. (quoting Florida v. Harris, 568

U.S. ---, 133 S. Ct. 1050, 1055 (2013)). “[T]his practical and common-sensical

standard” is based on “the totality of the circumstances.” Harris, 133 S. Ct. at 1055. 

“The test for probable cause is not reducible to precise definition or quantification,”

and “[f]inely tuned standards such as proof beyond a reasonable doubt or by a

preponderance of the evidence have no place in the probable-cause decision.” Id.

(internal alterations, citations, and quotations omitted). “All [that is] required is the

kind of fair probability on which reasonable and prudent people, not legal

technicians, act.” Id. (internal alterations and quotations omitted).

At the time police drilled into the trunk floor, several facts supported the

reasonable belief that contraband would be present in the hidden compartment. The

existence ofthe welded metal compartment itself suggested the car was used for some

illegal activity. The Supreme Court has instructed appellate courts to give “due

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weight” to a trial court’s conclusion that an officer may infer the presence of

contraband from the existence of such compartments. Ornelas v. United States, 517

U.S. 690, 700 (1996). In Ornelas, the Supreme Court stated:

To a layman the sort of loose panel below the back seat armrest in the

automobile involved in this case may suggest only wear and tear, but to

[the officer], who had searched roughly 2,000 cars for narcotics, it

suggested that drugs may be secreted inside the panel. An appeals court

should give due weight to a trial court’s finding that the officer was

credible and the inference was reasonable.

Id. Here, Corporal Astin drew from his twenty-eight years of patrol experience and

his prior work as an automobile mechanic to conclude that the compartment served

no licit purpose and was instead used to transport drugs.

Our court repeatedly has cited the existence of a hidden compartment in a

vehicle as a significant factor supporting probable cause to conduct a destructive

search. In Guevara, for example, we held that the presence of a hidden

compartment—when combined with inconsistent answers from the car’s passengers

about which relative they were going to visit, their failure to give a destination

address, the car’s open title, and evidence suggesting the engine compartment had

been manipulated—gave the officers probable cause to destructively search the car’s

engine compartment for drugs. 731 F.3d at 830-31. We explained: “After finding

the compartment, the troopers had more than enough information such that a

reasonable person, particularly with their training and experience, would believe there

was a ‘fair probability’ that drugs were hidden in the engine compartment.” Id. at

831. Similarly, in Martel-Martines, we stated that the presence of auto-body

modifications and the existence of a hidden compartment, when combined with a

defendant’s “evasive and inconsistent responses to routine questions,” provided

probable cause to support a warrantless, minimally destructive search of the vehicle’s

concealed compartment. 988 F.2d at 858-59. At least one circuit has gone so far as

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to say that “because it is difficult to imagine a licit purpose for a large hidden

compartment in a vehicle the size of a Chevy van, the[] signs of a hidden

compartment strongly suggest—and perhaps even singlehandedly

establish—probable cause to search” the van’s covert cavity. United States v.

Ledesma, 447 F.3d 1307, 1318 (10th Cir. 2006) (emphasis added).

Although we agree that the existence of the concealed compartment provided

the strongest indicator of probable cause, we need not decide whether the existence

of a hidden compartment was independently sufficient because additional facts also

supported the reasonable belief that contraband was present in the hidden

compartment. For example, Corporal Astin observed that Zamora-Garcia was

extremely nervous during their initial interaction; indeed, Zamora-Garcia’s hands

shook as he retrieved his driver’s license fromhis wallet. See United States v. Mayo,

3

627 F.3d 709, 714 (8th Cir. 2010) (citing the defendant’s nervous behavior as a factor

supporting probable cause). Zamora-Garcia also stated that he was making the long,

cross-country journey from California, which our court has recognized as a “drug

source state.” United States v. $141,770.00 in U.S. Currency, 157 F.3d 600, 604 (8th

Cir. 1998); see also United States v. Kelly, 329 F.3d 624, 628-29 (8th Cir. 2003)

(finding that probable cause supported a warrantless arrest in part because the

defendant was traveling from a drug-source state); but see United States v. Beck, 140

F.3d 1129, 1138 (8th Cir. 1998) (stating that geography is at best a weak factor

supporting suspicion of criminal activity). In addition, Corporal Astin found a large

Zamora-Garcia argues that the district court clearly erred by finding that he

3

was nervous because Corporal Astin said at the same suppression hearing that

Zamora-Garcia wasrelaxed as he observed the subsequentroadside search. We reject

this argument. The district court chose to credit Corporal Astin’s assessment of

Zamora-Garcia’s demeanor and his viewthat Zamora-Garcia was nervous initially but

later relaxed. As we often note, determinations of credibility are “virtually

unassailable on appeal.” United States v. Freeman, 625 F.3d 1049, 1052 (8th Cir.

2010) (quoting United States v. Guel-Contreras, 468 F.3d 517, 521 (8th Cir. 2006)).

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sum of cash in a bag underneath the luggage in Zamora-Garcia’s trunk: an amount

in excess of $1,600. We previously have found probable cause to search for

4

contraband based in part on the presence of a large sum of cash in a vehicle’s console. 

See United States v. Patterson, 140 F.3d 767, 773 (8th Cir. 1998). As the Sixth

Circuit recognized in United States v. Brooks, such “large sums of cash are indicative

of the drug trade.” 594 F.3d 488, 495 (6th Cir. 2010) (finding probable cause in part

because the defendant was carrying $1,000 in cash); cf. United States v. Chhien, 266

F.3d 1, 8-9 (1st Cir. 2001) (concluding that the discovery of $2,000 in cash in a

defendant’s pocket during a traffic stop supported reasonable suspicion and justified

a brief period of further detention). Finally, Zamora-Garcia offered no legitimate

explanation for the car’s modifications to dispel the officer’s suspicion, even after

Corporal Astin said the rear wheel area did not “look right.” These facts, taken

together with the presence of the large metal compartment welded to the bottom of

the car, supported the reasonable belief that this hidden compartment contained

contraband. See United States v. Tyler, 238 F.3d 1036, 1038 (8th Cir. 2001) (stating

that, when assessing probable cause, “we do not evaluate each piece of information

independently; rather, we consider all of the facts for their cumulative meaning”).

Based on the totality of circumstances, we conclude that the facts at issue

would warrant a person of reasonable caution to believe that contraband was present

in the concealed compartment under the car. See Harris, 133 S. Ct. at 1055. 

Probable cause therefore justified drilling into the floor of Zamora-Garcia’s trunk to

search for drugs. The district court properly denied Zamora-Garcia’s motion to

suppress.

On appeal, Zamora-Garcia raises no challenge to Corporal Astin’s search of 4

this bag. See Jimeno, 500 U.S. at 251 (holding that it was objectively reasonable for

the police to conclude that the general consent to search the respondent’s car included

consent to search a bag within that car).

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III.

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm.

______________________________

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