United States Court of Appeals

For the First Circuit

No. 08-1787

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Appellee,

v.

MAURICE J. FAGAN,

Defendant, Appellant.

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS

[Hon. Rya W. Zobel, U.S. District Judge]

Before

 Boudin, Selya and Dyk,* Circuit Judges.

Ryan M. Schiff, with whom Salsberg & Schneider was on brief,

for appellant. 

F. Thompson Reece, Special Assistant United States Attorney,

with whom Michael J. Sullivan, United States Attorney, Anthony E.

Fuller and George W. Vien, Assistant United Attorneys, were on

brief, for appellee. 

August 13, 2009

_______________

*Of the Federal Circuit, sitting by designation.
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SELYA, Circuit Judge. The Warrant Clause of the Fourth

Amendment has been interpreted to permit searches not only of the

premises specified in a warrant but also of structures

"appurtenant" to those premises. The case law, however, provides

very little guidance as to how courts should determine whether or

not a given structure is appurtenant to described premises. This

case offers us an opportunity to shed some light on this shadowy

corner of Fourth Amendment law.

The matter comes to us in the form of an appeal of the

denial of a motion to suppress evidence seized from a storage

closet by local law enforcement officers armed with a search

warrant for the neighboring apartment. The district court ruled

that the closet, although not itself within the apartment or

separately specified in the warrant, was appurtenant to the

apartment and, therefore, validly searched. United States v.

Fagan, No. 06-10023, 2006 WL 3210060, at *5 (D. Mass. Oct. 26,

2006). Discerning no error, we affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

We rehearse the facts as found by the district court,

consistent with record support. See United States v. Lee, 317 F.3d

26, 30 (1st Cir. 2003). We supplement them with additional facts

not disputed by the parties. 

On October 20, 2005, local police officers executed a

search warrant at 11 Battles Street, a three-story tenement in
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Brockton, Massachusetts. The warrant authorized a search of the

third-floor apartment and cellar.

When the officers entered the apartment, three people

tried to flee. The officers detained them. In a bedroom, the

officers found defendant-appellant Maurice J. ("Jimmy") Fagan and

his thirteen-year-old daughter. In that bedroom, officers found,

among other things, a loaded handgun and a key to a padlock. A

search of the defendant's pockets revealed a small plastic bag

containing 3.14 grams of crack cocaine and roughly $358 in cash.

The officers found more drugs in the living room, pantry, and rear

hallway.

The police noticed a closet on the third-floor landing of

11 Battles Street. The landing itself is approximately six feet by

twelve feet. The closet's door is about eight feet from the front

door to the third-floor apartment. Using the key that they had

found in the bedroom, the officers opened the padlock that secured

the closet door. Inside, they found two digital scales, "wampum

cards" from Foxwoods Resort Casino, and paperwork from the

Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles (RMV). The wampum cards

and RMV paperwork bore the defendant's name.

In due season, a federal grand jury indicted the

defendant on one count of possession of crack cocaine with intent

to distribute, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1), and one count

of being a felon in possession of ammunition, in violation of 18
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U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). The defendant moved to suppress the evidence

seized from the storage closet, arguing that the warrant limited

the search to the third-floor apartment and cellar, and did not

include the closet on the landing outside the apartment. 

Following an evidentiary hearing, the district court

denied the motion. It concluded that the closet was appurtenant to

the apartment and, therefore, validly searched under the purview of

the warrant. Fagan, 2006 WL 3210060, at *5. 

A trial ensued. The jury convicted the defendant on both

counts charged in the indictment. The court sentenced him to a

210-month incarcerative term. This timely appeal followed. In it,

the defendant challenges only the denial of his pretrial motion to

suppress the evidence seized from the storage closet.

II. ANALYSIS

We employ a bifurcated approach in assaying the denial of

a motion to suppress. In carrying out that approach, we assess

factual findings for clear error and evaluate legal rulings de

novo. See Ornelas v. United States, 517 U.S. 690, 699 (1996);

United States v. Coplin, 463 F.3d 96, 100 (1st Cir. 2006).

Applying this binary standard, we review the district court's

conclusion that the search of the closet did not exceed the scope

of the warrant de novo. See United States v. Rogers, 521 F.3d 5,

9 (1st Cir. 2008).
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The Fourth Amendment states in pertinent part that no

search warrant shall issue unless it "particularly describ[es] the

place to be searched, and the . . . things to be seized." U.S.

Const. amend. IV. The authority to search conferred by a warrant

is circumscribed by the particular places delineated in the warrant

and does not extend to other or different places. United States v.

Bonner, 808 F.2d 864, 868 (1st Cir. 1986). But search warrants are

not always self-elucidating and, in all events, search warrants

must be read in a practical, common-sense manner. See United

States v. Ferreras, 192 F.3d 5, 9-10 (1st Cir. 1999) (admonishing

that "hypertechnical readings" of search warrants "should be

avoided"). It follows that search warrants should be viewed

through a real-world prism and interpreted in a "realistic

fashion." United States v. Principe, 499 F.2d 1135, 1137 (1st Cir.

1974) (quoting United States v. Ventresca, 280 U.S. 102, 108

(1965)).

It is clear that structures that are part of the premises

specified in a search warrant may validly be searched under the

purview of the warrant. See, e.g., Ferreras, 192 F.3d at 9-10

(affirming denial of motion to suppress evidence found in an attic

when search warrant specified only the second-floor apartment

because the attic was found to be a part of the apartment).

Similarly, structures not explicitly mentioned in a warrant but

that reasonably can be viewed as a part of the described premises
 Although the case law seems to have developed along these 1

three avenues, it is at least arguable that the same doctrine

encompasses all of them. Analysis of this proposition is, however,

beyond the scope of this opinion.

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have been held validly searched under the purview of the warrant.

See, e.g., United States v. Heldt, 668 F.2d 1238, 1265 (D.C. Cir.

1981). So, too, structures have been deemed appurtenant to the

premises specified in a search warrant, though not physically a

part of those premises, and have been held validly searched under

the purview of the warrant. See, e.g., Principe, 499 F.2d at 1137

(affirming refusal to suppress evidence seized from "appurtenant"

cabinet located immediately outside the apartment specified in the

warrant).

This case involves the third of these scenarios: an

allegedly appurtenant structure. In that circumstance, we think 1

that the standard to be applied is one of objective reasonableness.

So long as the officers executing the warrant have an objectively

reasonable basis, in light of the known characteristics of the

location and the evidence at hand, for concluding that a structure

is appurtenant to the premises specified in the search warrant, that

structure may validly be searched under the purview of the warrant.

See id. (noting that "officers could reasonably suppose, given the

second floor layout and its proximity to the apartment, that the

cabinet was appurtenant to the apartment, as in fact it was"). 
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In this context, we refer to appurtenancy in its

conventional sense. A typical dictionary definition of

"appurtenant" indicates that it means "[b]elonging as a property or

legal right (to); spec. in Law, constituting a property or right

subsidiary to one which is more important." Oxford English

Dictionary 590 (2d ed. 1989). Structures that have been found to

be appurtenant to described residential premises include such things

as storage closets, see United States v. McCaster, 193 F.3d 930, 933

(8th Cir. 1999); cabinets, see Principe, 499 F.2d at 1137; storage

rooms and bins, see United States v. Ware, 890 F.2d 1008, 1011 (8th

Cir. 1989); lockers, see State v. Llamas-Villa, 836 P.2d 239, 242

(Wash. Ct. App. 1992); mailboxes, see People v. Weagley, 267 Cal.

Rptr. 85, 87 (Cal. Ct. App. 1990); and birdhouses, see United States

v. Asselin, 775 F.2d 445, 446-47 (1st Cir. 1985).

Whether a searching officer reasonably could conclude that

a specific structure is appurtenant to the premises specified in a

particular search warrant necessarily demands close attention to the

facts incident to the search in question. Each instance is likely

to be sui generis, but the case law depicts some helpful guideposts.

These include the proximity of the structure to the described

premises, see Ware, 890 F.2d at 1011 (holding that a storage room

next to an apartment was "near enough to alert the searching

officers that it was an appurtenance of the apartment"); the

location's layout and the context-specific relationship between the
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structure and the premises specified in the warrant, see Principe,

499 F.2d at 1137; and extrinsic evidence, including evidence

discovered during admittedly valid portions of the search,

suggesting that the structure is appurtenant to the premises

specified in the warrant, see Ware, 890 F.2d at 1011 (observing that

the defendant's key ring included keys to a storage room deemed

appurtenant to the premises specified in the warrant).

In the case at hand, all of these guideposts point toward

the conclusion that the district court reached. The third-floor

closet was located on the third-floor landing, no more than eight

feet from the front door of the apartment; the landing itself was

small and led to the apartment; the spatial relationship between the

closet and the apartment was intimate; the other residential units

in the building were physically removed from both the third floor

and the third-floor landing; and the key found in the defendant's

bedroom opened the padlock that secured the closet. Thus, evidence

found in the flat quite literally opened the door to the closet.

That combination of factors was sufficient to permit an objectively

reasonable officer to conclude that the storage closet was

appurtenant to the apartment and to search the closet under the

purview of the warrant. 

In an effort to blunt the force of this reasoning, the

defendant asserts that such a holding is unwarranted because here,

unlike in Principe, there was no confirmation from the landlord that
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use of the storage closet was a concomitant of renting the

apartment. Accordingly, the defendant's thesis runs, the lack of

clarity about whether tenants other than the defendant were entitled

to use the closet should have precluded the search. 

This thesis is unpersuasive. Each case must stand or fall

on its own facts, and a landlord's verification is not a sine qua

non to a finding of appurtenancy. See, e.g., Asselin, 775 F.2d at

446-47; Weagley, 267 Cal. Rptr. at 87. What counts is whether the

searching officer has an objectively reasonable basis for believing

that a particular structure is appurtenant to the premises specified

in the search warrant. If he does, he may search that structure

under the purview of the warrant; he need not halt his search to

scrutinize lease arrangements, interrogate landlords, or interview

other occupants of the building. 

The short of it is that a police officer sometimes can

make an objectively reasonable determination of appurtenancy through

a common-sense evaluation of information contained in the warrant,

the layout, and evidence encountered at the scene. This is such a

case: the proximity of the storage closet to the apartment, its

relative isolation from the other residential units in the multifamily building, the fact that a key discovered in the apartment

opened the closet, and the utter absence of any countervailing

information were enough to ground an objectively reasonable

conclusion that the closet was appurtenant to the apartment. See,
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e.g., McCaster, 193 F.3d at 933 ("[T]he close proximity of the area

to McCaster's living quarters and its enclosure within the duplex

unit supports the finding that it was reasonable for the officers

to believe that the area fell within the scope of the warrant.").

III. CONCLUSION

We need go no further. For the reasons elucidated above,

we hold that the district court did not err in denying the

defendant's motion to suppress.

Affirmed.