Opinion ID: 3038707
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: introduction

Text: This matter comes on before this court on an appeal from a final judgment of conviction and sentence in this criminal case entered on June 6, 2006, following appellant Devon Smith’s conditional plea of guilty after the District Court denied his motion to suppress. The circumstances of the case are straightforward. On June 8, 2004, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, police officers Christopher Laser and Richard Heim while on patrol observed Smith sitting in the passenger seat of an automobile that Danny Santiago was operating. Heim recognized Smith and was aware that there was an arrest warrant outstanding for him. Consequently, the officers stopped the vehicle and arrested Smith. Subsequently, Laser and Santiago got into an altercation during which Smith fled the scene. After additional officers arrived the police recaptured Smith and rearrested him. They also arrested Santiago at the scene of the stop. The police did not know who owned the vehicle for neither Smith nor Santiago claimed to own it. Moreover, 2 Santiago said he did not know who the owner was, its registration papers were not available, and Santiago did not know the location of the registration papers.1 Furthermore, inasmuch as the police arrested both men neither could drive the vehicle which had no other occupants. Moreover, there was no one else available at the scene to take its possession. These circumstances created a problem for Laser and Heim because they believed that they should not leave the vehicle at the place where they stopped it inasmuch as the conditions in the area led them to believe that if they did so the vehicle might be damaged, vandalized, or stolen. Therefore, Heim impounded the vehicle and drove it to the police station. At the station during a routine warrantless inventory search of the vehicle, Laser found a loaded semi-automatic handgun in its glove department. He then interrupted the search which he resumed after he obtained a search warrant for the vehicle. Subsequently, on the same day, in a statement that he has not renounced as untruthful, Smith told police detectives that he had loaded the weapon and placed it in the glove department.2 He also told them that he knew that he was a convicted felon and was aware that because of that status he was not lawfully permitted to possess the weapon. On May 3, 2005, a grand jury indicted Smith for unlawful possession of a firearm by a convicted felon in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g) and 924(c). Smith responded to the indictment by filing a motion to suppress the handgun as evidence. The District Court held an evidentiary hearing on the motion at which Heim, who was in Iraq, without objection by Smith, testified by video conference and Laser testified in person. 1 At the suppression hearing that we will describe below Laser testified that at some point after the search he discovered that Smith’s girlfriend owned the vehicle. 2 In the District Court Smith unsuccessfully argued that his statement should be suppressed as the “fruit of the poisonous tree.” Supp. app. at 41. In light of the result that we reach here that the seizure and search were lawful, there was no “poisonous tree.” 3 Thereafter, by an order entered October 26, 2005, accompanied by a memorandum opinion, the court denied the motion to suppress. In its opinion the District Court held that the impoundment was lawful because Heim impounded the vehicle pursuant to police community caretaking function authority and Lancaster police use a standardized routine that they followed here to determine whether to impound the vehicle. The court further held that the impoundment was “not arbitrary or unreasonable.”3 We quote judicial authority describing the parameters of the community caretaking function authority below. On November 8, 2005, Smith entered a conditional plea of guilty to the indictment but preserved his right to appeal from the denial of his motion to dismiss. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(a)(2); United States v. Zudick, 523 F.2d 848, 852 (3d Cir. 1975). The District Court accepted the plea of guilty and later sentenced Smith to a 192-month custodial term to be followed by five years of supervised release. It also imposed a $2,000 fine. Smith appeals making the following argument: The decision by a police officer to impound a vehicle must be exercised pursuant to standardized criteria or the seizure is unconstitutional. The testimony presented in this case established that Officer Heim was exercising his discretion when he opted to impound the vehicle and that there were no standard policies or 3 The District Court also held that the impoundment was lawful under Pennsylvania law and inasmuch as Smith predicates his argument on this appeal solely on the Fourth Amendment and does not contend that the District Court’s state law analysis was wrong we do not review that analysis. Of course, we could not uphold the impoundment merely because it was lawful under state law as it still would have to meet Fourth Amendment standards and the state law might not satisfy them. See United States v. Coccia, 446 F.3d 233, 238 (1st Cir. 2006). 4 procedures which circumscribed or otherwise limited that discretion. The district court thus clearly erred when it found as a fact that the officer was acting pursuant to a standardized routine when he decided to impound the vehicle. Accordingly, the evidence obtained as a result of the unconstitutional seizure of the vehicle should have been suppressed. Appellant’s br. at 12. Significantly, Smith does not contend that even if the impoundment was lawful the inventory search was not lawful. Consequently, we focus on the validity of the impoundment rather than the validity of the actual search of the vehicle.