Opinion ID: 449643
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Wheelings' Claim

Text: 29 Defendant Wheelings claims that the evidence seized at his Bronx apartment should have been suppressed. He argues that the canine sniff, upon which the magistrate relied in part, was an illegal search and that therefore the search warrant was not based on untainted probable cause. We first address the claim that the canine sniff constituted an illegal search. The Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable government intrusions into their legitimate expectations of privacy. United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1, 7, 97 S.Ct. 2476, 2481, 53 L.Ed.2d 538 (1977). Canine sniffs are recognized as being less intrusive than a typical search used to determine the presence of contraband, and the practice of using trained dogs to sniff baggage at airports has been held not to constitute a search. See United States v. Place, 462 U.S. 696, 103 S.Ct. 2637, 2644-45, 77 L.Ed.2d 110 (1983); United States v. Waltzer, 682 F.2d 370, 373 (2d Cir.1982), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 103 S.Ct. 3543, 77 L.Ed.2d 1392 (1983); United States v. Bronstein, 521 F.2d 459, 463 (2d Cir.1975), cert. denied, 424 U.S. 918, 96 S.Ct. 1121, 47 L.Ed.2d 324 (1976). 30 It is one thing to say that a sniff in an airport is not a search, but quite another to say that a sniff can never be a search. The question always to be asked is whether the use of a trained dog intrudes on a legitimate expectation of privacy. See Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967). While one generally has an expectation of privacy in the contents of personal luggage, this expectation is much diminished when the luggage is in the custody of an air carrier at a public airport. 31 We have recognized the heightened privacy interest that an individual has in his dwelling place. For example, in United States v. Taborda, 635 F.2d 131 (2d Cir.1980), we found that police use of a telescope to identify objects or activities unable to be identified without it was a search and that, absent a search warrant, the observations could not form the basis for the issuance of a warrant. Id. at 139-40. We stated that [t]he very fact that a person is in his own home raises a reasonable inference that he intends to have privacy, and if that inference is borne out by his actions, society is prepared to respect his privacy. Id. at 138; see also United States v. Bonfiglio, 713 F.2d 932, 937 (2d Cir.1983) (it was not the enhancement of the senses per se that was held unlawful in Taborda, but the warrantless invasion of the right to privacy in the home). In United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276, 103 S.Ct. 1081, 75 L.Ed.2d 55 (1983), the Supreme Court recently held that police use of an electronic beeper to track the defendants movements was not a search within the contemplation of the Fourth Amendment. Id. at 1087. But the Court specifically found that the police had not used the beeper to track defendant's activities within his home, so that the traditional expectation of privacy within a dwelling place, id. at 1085, was undisturbed. 32 Thus, a practice that is not intrusive in a public airport may be intrusive when employed at a person's home. Although using a dog sniff for narcotics may be discriminating and unoffensive relative to other detection methods, and will disclose only the presence or absence of narcotics, see United States v. Place, 103 S.Ct. at 2644, it remains a way of detecting the contents of a private, enclosed space. With a trained dog police may obtain information about what is inside a dwelling that they could not derive from the use of their own senses. Consequently, the officers' use of a dog is not a mere improvement of their sense of smell, as ordinary eyeglasses improve vision, but is a significant enhancement accomplished by a different, and far superior, sensory instrument. Here the defendant had a legitimate expectation that the contents of his closed apartment would remain private, that they could not be sensed from outside his door. Use of the trained dog impermissibly intruded on that legitimate expectation. The Supreme Court in Place found only that the particular course of investigation that the agents intended to pursue here--exposure of respondent's luggage, which was located in a public place, to a trained canine--did not constitute a 'search' within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Place, 103 S.Ct. at 2644-45. Because of defendant Wheelings' heightened expectation of privacy inside his dwelling, the canine sniff at his door constituted a search. As the agent had no warrant, the search violated the Fourth Amendment. Hence, we conclude that the information gathered from the dog's alert may not properly be used to support the issuance of the search warrant of Wheelings' apartment.
33 To have the evidence seized pursuant to the search warrant suppressed, Wheelings must further show that there was not a sufficient residue of probable cause to support the warrant, without considering the improper sniff, and that the agent who conducted the search did not reasonably rely on the warrant. See United States v. Leon, --- U.S. ----, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984). 34 In addition to the positive sniff, the affidavit before the magistrate included the following information about defendant Wheelings: (1) upon being notified that DEA agents were there to arrest him, Wheelings quickly slipped through his apartment door and closed it so that the agents had no chance to enter; (2) a confidential informant whose reliability was established and much of whose information was corroborated, observed Wheelings processing and repackaging heroin between September and October of 1976; (3) this same informant also observed heroin being processed and repackaged for distribution between June and December of 1980 in a mill that was controlled by Wheelings and Walter Centano; (4) the informant personally observed another heroin mill in operation for four months in early 1981 and stated that Wheelings also jointly controlled this mill; (5) another agent stated in an affidavit: Based on the information set forth in Exhibit B hereto [informant's information] indicating that Wheelings is a major heroin dealer, there is probable cause to believe that narcotics are presently being secreted in the apartment. The agent further stated, based on his 13 years experience as a DEA agent, that the premises described, including Wheelings' apartment, were occupied by high-ranking members of a massive narcotics organization, and that such narcotics traffickers invariably maintained financial records and other evidence of their narcotics trafficking at their residence. 35 Probable cause to believe certain items will be found in a specific location is a practical, nontechnical conception, see Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 176, 69 S.Ct. 1302, 1311, 93 L.Ed. 1879 (1949), that need not be based on direct, first-hand, or hard evidence. Nonetheless, there must be enough evidence reasonably to believe that evidence of illegal activity will be present at the specific time and place of the search. See Sgro v. United States, 287 U.S. 206, 210-11, 53 S.Ct. 138, 140, 77 L.Ed. 260 (1932) ([I]t is manifest that the proof must be of facts so closely related to the time of the issue of the warrant as to justify a finding of probable cause at that time); United States v. Beltempo, 675 F.2d 472, 478 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 457 U.S. 1135, 102 S.Ct. 2963, 73 L.Ed.2d 1353 (1982) (The inquiry with respect to probable cause in the case of an observation of an isolated incident should focus on all of the relevant circumstances, including the element of time lapse). Here, the informant did not say that any of the illegal activity that he observed had taken place at Wheelings' apartment. Nor did he indicate that there was a heroin mill in operation at the time the search warrant was issued. The warrant to search Wheelings' apartment was issued on March 10, 1983 and the most recent heroin operation with which the informant connected Wheelings was in the first four months of 1981. Thus, the evidence before the magistrate of Wheelings' participation in illegal activity was two years old. Even though courts should avoid [a]dopting an arbitrary 'cut-off' expressed in days or weeks beyond which probable cause ceases to exist, Beltempo, 675 F.2d at 478, two-year-old evidence of participation in a heroin mill, not at the dwelling to be searched, is stale and cannot support a search warrant. Wheelings' suspicious entry into his apartment is not enough alone to establish probable cause to search that apartment without some evidence that he was involved in illegal activity at that time. 36 A determination of whether probable cause existed must be made by us independently, as the deference usually accorded to a magistrate's finding of probable cause, see Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 419, 89 S.Ct. 584, 590, 21 L.Ed.2d 637 (1969); United States v. Travisano, 724 F.2d 341, 345 (2d Cir.1983), is not appropriate when the magistrate relied in part on improper information. We cannot find that the totality of the circumstances, Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 2328, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983)--apart from the dog's alert--provided a sufficient basis for the issuance of a search warrant. 37 This does not end our inquiry. We must consider whether the agent who conducted the search acted in good faith reliance on the search warrant. The Supreme Court recently stated in United States v. Leon: 38 [A]ssuming that the [exclusionary] rule effectively deters some police misconduct and provides incentives for the law enforcement profession as a whole to conduct itself in accord with the Fourth Amendment, it cannot be expected, and should not be applied, to deter objectively reasonable law enforcement activity. 39 104 S.Ct. at 3419. The DEA agent brought his evidence, including the positive alert from the canine, to a neutral and detached magistrate. That magistrate determined that probable cause to search existed, and issued a search warrant. There is nothing more the officer could have or should have done under these circumstances to be sure his search would be legal. The magistrate, whose duty it is to interpret the law, determined that the canine sniff could form the basis for probable cause; it was reasonable for the officer to rely on this determination. The Leon Court announced a good faith exception to the exclusionary rule, and we find that the exception applies to this case. Thus, the district court correctly refused to suppress the evidence seized at defendant Wheelings' apartment.