Opinion ID: 681588
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Brathwaite's Suppression Motion

Text: 42 Appellant Brathwaite argues that the district court erroneously decided not to suppress certain evidence recovered when Brathwaite was arrested because of an alleged violation of the knock and announce statute, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 3109 (1988). We disagree.
43 The knock and announce statute provides that an officer may break open any outer or inner door or window of a house, or any part of a house, or anything therein, to execute a search warrant, if, after notice of his authority and purpose, he is refused admittance.... 18 U.S.C. Sec. 3109 (1988). The facts here are largely agreed upon. It is undisputed that on May 16, 1989, Agent Kerr, accompanied by a number of fellow agents, approached the door to Brathwaite's apartment, knocked and stated, [O]pen the door. FBI. The district court credited the agent's testimony that he heard noises in the apartment (described at trial as shuffling) both before and immediately after knocking. The agent also testified that he waited between 15-20 seconds, during which time he did not hear any noise from within, nor did Brathwaite make any apparent effort to open the door. Kerr then began hitting the door with a sledgehammer and within roughly a minute was inside. The FBI recovered a wallet containing credit and identification cards from inside a closet, and a scale and a bag with cocaine inside were recovered at the bottom of an air shaft four floors below Brathwaite's bathroom window. (Brathwaite claims, and we will assume, that those items would not have been visible to the agents from outside the apartment.)
44 The issue before us is fairly narrow, but significant. Both sides agree that the FBI agent knocked and announced his authority by stating FBI. Both sides also agree that the agent did not state his purpose as section 3109 requires. 10 The government contends, and the lower court held, that the noises heard by the agent both before and immediately after knocking, combined with the failure to open the door, created exigent circumstances which excused the failure to announce a purpose because the agents could reasonably have feared that the occupant was destroying evidence. 45 Appellant Brathwaite emphasizes that the agents waited between 15-20 seconds, by Kerr's estimate, before beginning to break down the door, during which time the agents could easily have announced their purpose without in any way aggravating the dangers to themselves or to the evidence. Although the district court concluded (in an aspect of its opinion from which Brathwaite does not appeal) that the warrantless search conducted by the officers once inside the apartment was consensual, the legality of the search itself is insufficient, as a matter of law, to overcome an illegal entry under section 3109. See United States v. Sheard, 473 F.2d 139, 142 (D.C.Cir.1972), cert. denied, 412 U.S. 943, 93 S.Ct. 2784, 37 L.Ed.2d 404 (1973). 11 If the officers' entry into the apartment violated that statute, then the products of the subsequent search would have to be suppressed, regardless of the reasonableness of the search. We examine, then, the permissibility of the agents' actions in entering the apartment. 46 The governing case in our circuit is United States v. James, 764 F.2d 885 (D.C.Cir.1985). There we stated: 47 In the ordinary case an officer is required to state both his authority and his purpose. In this case, however, the police, after knocking and announcing their authority repeatedly, but without eliciting a response, heard someone running down the back stairs. A reasonable interpretation of such sounds is that the inhabitants are well aware of the purpose of the police visit and are moving to destroy evidence. This is especially true where, as here, the police knew they had reliable information that cocaine was being sold at that location. Faced with the probable imminent destruction of evidence, the police acted properly by entering the premises at once. To require the police in these circumstances to announce that they are there to execute a search warrant would be to require a futile act. Compliance with section 3109 is unnecessary in such circumstances. 48 Id. at 888 (citations omitted). The holding in James, then, was based on two related strands of analysis. The probable imminent destruction of evidence gave rise to exigent circumstances sufficient to excuse full compliance with section 3109's requirements; and the sounds from inside the apartment, suggesting that evidence was being destroyed, made the need to announce the reasons for the police presence futile. In James the officers knocked repeatedly before eventually breaking in, a fact that suggests that the officers could well have announced their purpose while so doing. Nevertheless, we concluded that the facts gave rise to a sufficient danger that evidence would be destroyed such that noncompliance with the purpose requirement would be excused. 49 The facts in this case, which are virtually identical to those in James except for the fact that the officers here heard shuffling rather than evidence of flight, make it indistinguishable from James in all respects but one: the officers in James were present to execute a search warrant, whereas the officers in the case before us were seeking to effect an arrest. But that seems to us to be a distinction without a difference. To be sure, the prospect of destroyed evidence might have been thought to be a greater threat when police officers have come to search for evidence than when officers seek to arrest an individual. The former stands as a greater immediate impediment to the accomplishment of the officers' mission. The Supreme Court, however, has recently clarified that under the Fourth Amendment, exigent circumstances sufficient to excuse the warrantless entry into a house for purposes of effecting an arrest include the imminent destruction of evidence. See Minnesota v. Olson, 495 U.S. 91, 100, 110 S.Ct. 1684, 1689, 109 L.Ed.2d 85 (1990) (concluding that the Minnesota Supreme Court had applied the proper legal standard when it observed that a warrantless intrusion [to make an arrest] may be justified by ... imminent destruction of evidence). In this respect the Supreme Court's Fourth Amendment cases do not distinguish between arrests and searches: fear of the immediate destruction of evidence excuses the absence of a warrant to do either. Neither do our own. We have at least twice in recent years recognized that a reasonable fear that evidence would imminently be destroyed created those exigent circumstances that would excuse the failure to obtain a warrant prior to entering a home to effect an arrest. See United States v. Dawkins, 17 F.3d 399, 405 (D.C.Cir.1994); United States v. Socey, 846 F.2d 1439, 1444-45 (D.C.Cir.), cert. denied,488 U.S. 858, 109 S.Ct. 152, 102 L.Ed.2d 123 (1988). 50 If the imminent destruction of evidence is sufficient to excuse noncompliance with a constitutional mandate such as the Fourth Amendment, we do not see why a different, more stringent, standard should apply to the confessed noncompliance with section 3109's statutory dictates. At least one circuit has held that the imminent destruction of evidence provides sufficient exigency to excuse noncompliance with section 3109, even where the officers in question were there to arrest rather than search. See United States v. Wysong, 528 F.2d 345 (9th Cir.1976). This is all the more true where, as here, such noncompliance was only partial. As we have held, the degree of exigency necessary to excuse a partial violation of the knock and announce statute is considerably less than that required to excuse a total disregard of that statute, much less the absence of a warrant altogether: 51 The exigency required to justify a warrantless search differs from that required to excuse noncompliance with section 3109's announcement provision. That degree of exigency is, in turn, greater than that needed to excuse noncompliance with only the refusal portion of section 3109. 52 United States v. Bonner, 874 F.2d 822, 826 (D.C.Cir.1989). This is especially true where the admitted failure--the lack of any announcement regarding the agents' purpose--did not materially affect any of appellant's interests. As we reasoned in James, where the defendant is heard hiding or destroying evidence, or fleeing, to require the police to announce their purpose in seeking entry would indeed be to require a futile and pointless act. See James, 764 F.2d at 888. It is of no avail, then, for appellant to argue in these circumstances that the police had sufficient time during the approximately 15 seconds that they awaited a response to announce their purpose. The district court found that the police heard noises consistent with the destruction of evidence emanating from within the apartment, and that the persons inside made no effort to respond to the officers' knock. Those findings are not clearly erroneous. In these circumstances, it would, therefore, have been presumably futile for the police to announce their purpose. Accordingly, the district court's judgment, denying Brathwaite's motion to suppress, must be affirmed.