Opinion ID: 401019
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Standing of Appellant Garcia

Text: 7 In order to challenge on Fourth Amendment grounds the use of evidence at one's trial, one must demonstrate a legitimate expectation of privacy in the area searched. United States v. Salvucci, 448 U.S. 83, 92, 100 S.Ct. 2547, 2553, 65 L.Ed.2d 619 (1980). The hotel room here was registered to appellant Guilbe. Appellant Garcia, however, offered no evidence of any personal interest in the room beyond his being merely present. Indeed, he affirmatively sought to deny any connection with the room or its contents. It was therefore perfectly legitimate to introduce evidence seized from the room against him at trial. 8 We realize that the government did not challenge Garcia's standing, either before the trial court or on appeal. That fact, however, does not alone bring us within the rule of Steagald v. United States, 451 U.S. 204, 208-11, 101 S.Ct. 1642, 1645-47, 68 L.Ed.2d 38 (1981), in which a defendant's standing was held to be beyond further challenge. In Steagald the government failed to challenge facts from which the defendant's standing could reasonably have been inferred. In this case, Garcia never carried his initial burden of offering facts from which a court might reasonably infer his standing. See United States v. Miller, 636 F.2d 850, 853-54 (1st Cir. 1980). Moreover, in Steagald the government appeared to have raised the standing issue as part of a last-minute shift in litigation tactics. In this case, there is nothing to suggest that the government was deliberately sandbagging the district court or shifting strategies. 9 In the discussion that follows, we consider only whether appellant Guilbe was denied a fair trial by the admission of the seized evidence.