Opinion ID: 532961
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: factual background 1235>>i. factual background

Text: 3 On July 26, 1988, a grand jury indicted appellant Trevor Burnett, along with Anthony Cameron, Frank Parris, and Jacqueline Hall, of unlawful possession with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of a mixture containing cocaine base, 21 U.S.C. Secs. 841(a), (b)(1)(A)(iii) (1982), unlawful use of a firearm in aid of drug trafficking, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 924(c)(1) (1982), and aiding and abetting an offense against the United States, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2 (1982). The indictments stemmed from the following events. 4 According to the government, on June 29, 1988, around 4:30 a.m., three officers of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) were investigating drug activity in a northeast Washington housing project. Acting on a tip, the officers went to apartment no. 23, where they knocked on the door and identified themselves. Anthony Cameron, who had seen the officers from the second story landing and then returned to the apartment, opened the door. At their request, Cameron allowed the officers into the apartment's living room. When one of the officers, Detective Lorren Leadmon, asked Cameron whether he knew the whereabouts of the lady of the house--the apartment's lessee--and whether he lived in the apartment, Cameron answered negatively. Leadmon then asked Cameron whether anyone else was in the apartment. While posing the question, Leadmon saw an arm stretched across a bed through the outer door of a bedroom just off the living room of the apartment. Cameron, however, simultaneously said that there was no one else in the apartment. 5 The officers then stepped into the hallway from the living room and introduced themselves as police to appellant Burnett, whose arm they had seen through the open door. Without entering the bedroom, the officers asked Burnett whether he lived in the apartment and whether he knew the lessee's whereabouts. Appellant answered the officers' questions in the negative, but added that he knew the lessee as Wanda. While speaking to Burnett, the officers noticed an open second bedroom to their right, and a man and a woman--Frank Parris and Jacqueline Hall--inside. Like appellant, Parris and Hall were fully clothed and lying on a bed with their heads at the foot of the bed towards the open bedroom door. Leadmon asked them the same questions about the whereabouts of the lessee as he had asked Cameron and Burnett, and received the same answers. 6 While the officers were speaking with Parris and Hall, they noticed an unzipped tote bag just inside the second bedroom, about three or four feet from where they were standing in the hallway. Inside the tote bag the officers saw bundles of money as well as a plastic bag containing a white powder that they suspected to be crack cocaine. A subsequent inventory revealed that the tote bag contained 101 smaller bags containing cocaine as well as identification in Burnett's name. Engaging in a protective search, the officers found a shotgun underneath one of the beds in the bedroom where Hall and Parris had been. On the advice of an Assistant United States Attorney, the officers seized the tote bag, with the money and the drugs that they saw, as incriminating evidence in their plain view. 1 The officers then obtained a search warrant encompassing the entire apartment, where they found more cash, cocaine, and drug paraphernalia. 2 7 Burnett's co-defendant Cameron presented a somewhat different version of these events. He testified at the suppression hearing that he had been asleep on the living room couch when the officers knocked on the apartment door. He let the officers into the apartment only after they repeatedly told him to Step aside. In addition, he claimed that the door to the bedroom where Hall, Parris, and the tote bag were found was closed. Ronald Jackson, who lived across the hall from Burgess' apartment, testified that he saw one police officer put his foot in the apartment door as he tried to enter. 8 Cameron also testified that he had arrived on the night of June 28 at Burgess' apartment, where, with Burgess' permission, he waited for a friend. While Cameron had heard of Burnett as a professional soccer player, they had never met until that night. Cameron said he did not know how Burnett came to be in Burgess' apartment or how long Burnett had been there. 9 This testimony was presented at a hearing on defendants' motions to suppress all of the evidence that the police found in the apartment. The defendants claimed that the police had engaged in an unlawful search and seizure and had acted without probable cause. Crediting the prosecution testimony, the district judge denied the suppression motions on October 26, 1988. United States v. Burnett, et al., Crim. No. 88-0281 (D.D.C. Oct. 26, 1988) (memorandum order denying defendants' motions to suppress evidence) (reprinted as Addendum to Brief for the United States) [hereinafter cited as Admissibility Order]. On November 14, 1988, Parris and Cameron each pled guilty to one count of conspiracy against the United States in violation of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 371 (1982). Hall failed to appear at the suppression hearing and has remained a fugitive since then. 10 At trial, in December, Burnett himself testified. He claimed that on June 27 he had traveled down to Washington with Parris and Hall; that Parris had put Burnett's clothing in Parris' tote bag; and that the next morning, he, Burnett, had removed his clothes from the bag but did not check to see what else the bag contained. He claimed that he never saw the cash or drugs in the bag, and did not know how his wallet wound up there. 11 The prosecution also presented testimony at trial that inside the rear pocket of a pair of jeans in the tote bag, the police found a wallet containing Burnett's social security card, voter registration card, driving permit, and paycheck stub. Burnett's fingerprints were also found on the large plastic bag containing the smaller bags of cocaine. An MPD expert testified that the amount of cash and drugs found in the apartment suggested that the apartment served as a stash house that was part of a drug distribution operation. 12 On December 14, 1988, the jury found Burnett guilty of the drug offense but acquitted him of the firearms charge. On January 31, 1989, he was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment followed by five years' supervised release. Burnett filed a notice of appeal on February 13, 1989. We now consider his three claims on appeal.