Opinion ID: 2968788
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the manner in which the cocaine was packaged

Text: (apparently weighing approximately one kilogram each, heavily wrapped in cellophane with a brown opaque material inside); (2) Detective Finkel’s firm belief, based on his ten years’ experience, that packages appearing in this manner always contained narcotics; (3) [the airline employee’s] belief that the packages contained narcotics; and (4) that the only items found in Williams’ suitcase besides the five packages of cocaine were towels, dirty blankets, and a shirt with a cigarette burn. Id. at 198. Because the presence of illegal narcotics in the packages was a foregone conclusion, Williams had no reasonable expectation of privacy in those contents. Accordingly, under the venerable Katz principle, see Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 361 (1967) (Harlan, J., concurring), the officers’ observation of those contents did not constitute a search, and thus a search warrant was unnecessary. Williams, 41 F.3d at 198; See Jackson, 131 F.3d at 1108 (reaffirming that no search occurs when the plain view seizure doctrine properly applies to the contents of an opaque container). Simply put, despite the majority’s labored efforts to the contrary, this case is not Williams or Corral. Most important, under a proper plain view seizure analysis, it cannot be said that a reasonable officer in King’s position had knowledge approaching certainty, Corral, 970 F.2d at 725, that the bag under Davis’s hospital bed contained evidence of a felonious shooting in which Davis was a victim.14 The district court 14 As noted above, a determination whether historical facts satisfy a constitutional standard is reviewed de novo. Gwinn, 219 F.3d at 331. The question whether the information available to Detective King rendered the incriminating nature of the contents a foregone conclusion is such a determination, as the historical facts surrounding the seizure of the bag are not in dispute. UNITED STATES v. DAVIS 79 and the majority treat the bag of Davis’s clothing as analogous to the cellophane-wrapped cocaine in Williams. See Maj. Op. at 16 (holding that the totality of the circumstances . . . support[s] the determination that it was a foregone conclusion the bag under Davis’ hospital bed contained the clothing he wore when he was shot, and that the clothing was evidence of a crime). I disagree. As a matter of law, based on what was known by the officers after they attempted to interview Davis at the hospital, the likelihood that the bag contained probative evidence of a felonious shooting in which Davis was a victim does not rise to the level of probable cause. In the first place, there is unwarranted confidence shown by the district court and the majority that Davis’s pants would contain a bullet hole. See id. at 16-17 (We have little trouble, however, in concluding that Davis’ pants would contain a bullet hole, and would thus be incriminating evidence in the prosecution of his assailant. Such a conclusion is based on the circumstances, Davis’ appearance, and the location of his bullet wound.). The facts of United States v. Jamison, 509 F.3d 623 (4th Cir. 2007), illustrate why this confidence is misplaced. The defendant in Jamison was a felon who accidentally shot himself in the groin area with a gun he had been carrying in his waistband. 509 F.3d at 625. Like Davis here, when Jamison was transported by his associates to the hospital for treatment, he relayed to investigating officers a fanciful falsehood that he was the victim of an attempted robbery. Id. at 626. The investigating officer noticed Jamison’s clothing on a chair in the treatment room and confirmed by the absence of a bullet hole in Jamison’s pants that Jamison was lying about the circumstances surrounding how he was shot.15 Id. It 15 We described this turn of events as follows in our opinion reversing the district court’s grant of Jamison’s motion to suppress evidence for violation of the Miranda doctrine: 80 UNITED STATES v. DAVIS was far from a foregone conclusion that, apart from the likely presence of blood on Davis’s clothing, the contents of the bag would serve as useful evidence in the prosecution of an illusory shooter about whom Davis would provide no information. Indeed, the photograph in the record of Davis’s high-thigh wound depicts a wound that is entirely consistent with one that would be suffered from an accidental discharge of a weapon by someone carrying a firearm in his waistband. Equally important, there can be scant doubt that, in view of Davis’s refusal to cooperate with the officers who responded to the hospital to investigate, the HCPD officers fairly quickly turned their attention to Davis as a suspect in criminal activity, just as Jamison quickly became a suspect in his own shooting. Indeed, even the government contends on appeal (contrary to the majority’s facile attempt to show that in seizing Davis’s personal property the Howard County police were seeking to protect Davis), that the police appropriately deemed Davis to be not an innocent crime victim. Govt’s Br. at 46-47 n.13. But see Davis, 657 F. Supp. 2d at 640 (Davis was positively the victim of a violent crime.). Without securing Jamison’s consent, Detective Macer examined Jamison’s injury, partially exposing his genitalia. He found charring and stippling at the entry wound consistent with a shot fired at close range. He further observed a downward trajectory from the entry wound to the exit wound. Finding these facts to be in tension with Jamison’s account of the shooting, Detective Macer then examined Jamison’s clothing and found no bullet holes. Detective Macer again asked Jamison to explain the shooting; Jamison repeated that he was shot while using drugs. When Detective Macer explained that his observations seemed inconsistent with Jamison’s story, Jamison admitted that he shot himself with a handgun and threw the gun away. Detective Macer asked Jamison to reveal the location of the gun so that it could be secured, but Jamison refused, explaining that he was on probation. Jamison, 509 F.3d at 626-27 (footnote omitted). UNITED STATES v. DAVIS 81 The actions of the officers in searching the car in which Davis was transported to the hospital and in eventually arresting Davis and his friend bear out this highly likely scenario. Indeed, the facts of this case show that because Davis used a falsely made District of Columbia driver’s license bearing his photograph under the alias Gary Edmonds, the only way in which the HCPD could reliably identify Davis was to arrest him and take his fingerprints. That is exactly what they were determined to do and that is exactly what they did. In short, even the investigating officers did not believe Davis was a victim; rather, they were investigating his possible involvement in criminal activity. Thus, rather than accept uncritically the officers’ post hoc rationalization that they needed Davis’s clothing to prosecute the unknown person who allegedly shot him, under the circumstances of this case, [w]e should be reiterating the usual exhortation: ‘Get a warrant.’ United States v. Norman, 701 F.2d 295, 302 (4th Cir.) (Murnaghan, J., concurring), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 820 (1983).16 16 A unanimous Supreme Court of Georgia recently reached the same conclusion on material facts nearly identical to those here in an interlocutory appeal in a capital case. In Clay v. State, 725 S.E.2d 260 (Ga. 2012), an officer had seized a bag containing a murder suspect’s bloody clothing while the suspect (who, unlike Davis, was unconscious at the time of the seizure) was undergoing treatment at a hospital. 725 S.E.2d at 264, 269. The court found that the officers were not justified in opening the bag because all that was in plain view when Officer Cupp seized the bagged clothing from the counter was the pink and white personal effects bag itself. Id. at 269. [W]ithout opening the bag, it was not a ‘foregone conclusion’ that the bag contained [the suspect’s] bloody clothes, and so the full-blown search of the bag constituted an unlawful search. Id. Concomitantly, Davis cites to us, as he cited to the district court, a raft of cases supporting the unremarkable proposition, largely accepted by the district court but ignored by the majority, that a hospital patient retains his constitutionally protected interests in his clothing removed by hospital personnel in the course of their rendering treatment to him. See Appellant’s Br. at 23-24 (citing Jones v. State, 648 So. 2d 669 (Fla. 1994); People v. Jordan, 468 N.W.2d 294, 301 (Mich. App. 1991); Commonwealth v. Silo, 389 A.2d 62, 63-67 (Pa. 1978); People v. Watt, 462 N.Y.S.2d 389, 391-92 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1983); Morris v. Commonwealth, 157 S.E.2d 191, 194 (Va. 1967); People v. Hayes, 154 Misc.2d 429, 430-34 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1992); State v. Lopez, 476 S.E.2d 227, 231-34 (W.V. 1996). Not a single one of these courts accepted the deeply flawed conception of the plain view doctrine applied by the district court in this case and accepted here by the majority. 82 UNITED STATES v. DAVIS As should thus be apparent, the incriminating nature of the contents of the bag here was nowhere close to being so obvious that no search occurred — unlike in Williams. In Williams, the drug packaging at issue was so readily recognizable that even a lay person, the airline employee who originally opened the baggage, testified that she immediately reported her discovery because the bags looked like dope. See 41 F.3d at 198 (noting that [b]ecause Lee is a layperson, not trained in law enforcement, her belief that the five packages contained ‘dope’ strongly supports the district court’s conclusion that the contents of the packages were a foregone conclusion). The hearing testimony in this case did not indicate that the bag was distinctive in any way; thus, the government did not satisfy its burden on that issue. Indeed, the district court noted that [t]here was no testimony as to whether the bag was open or closed, or whether it was transparent, opaque, or somewhere in-between. Davis, 657 F. Supp. 2d at 638. Neither Detective King nor Lieutenant Lampe was able to provide a description of the bag beyond Lieutenant Lampe’s comment that it was probably plastic. Moreover, the Williams court emphasized Detective Finkel’s testimony that, based on his ten years of experience in narcotics enforcement, packages of the sort at issue always contain narcotics. 41 F.3d at 198 (emphasis in original). In this case, Detective King testified on cross-examination that the hospital makes a practice to secure any property that they take. Clothing from a victim, they place it under their bed. J.A. 147. When asked the follow up question, So you’re familiar it’s the hospital’s practice to secure that clothing in a white opaque plastic bag; is that correct?, Detective King responded, It’s been in different things. Sometimes it all depends on if somebody bags it or not. Id. In addition, as stated supra, neither Detective King nor Lieutenant Lampe was able to describe the bag. Detective King’s testimony clearly does not rise to the level of familiarity or certainty expressed by Detective Finkel in Williams. Manifestly, it does not rise to Justice Stevens’s virtually certain metric. The UNITED STATES v. DAVIS 83 government’s evidence of the nature of the bag and the surrounding circumstances was equivocal at best, and clearly did not rise to the level of virtual certainty that the bag would contain contraband, which the government would have to show to establish that no search of the bag’s contents occurred. Williams is also inapposite on its facts in two additional meaningful respects, such that the case does not support, let alone dictate, the result reached by the majority. First, the Williams court, in language and reasoning that was wholly unnecessary to the outcome of its analysis, considered not only the extrinsic evidence of the contents of the packages, but also the physical appearance and character of the packages to bolster its conclusion, whereas the district court in this case considered only extrinsic evidence. Considering only extrinsic evidence, and not the physical appearance and character of the container itself, takes the foregone conclusion analysis too far from the origins of the plain view seizure container exception acknowledged in Sanders footnote 13, in which the Supreme Court provided the quintessential examples of a single-purpose container, namely a kit of burglar tools or a gun case. 442 U.S. at 764 n.13. The Sanders Court noted that the contents of such containers can be inferred from their outward appearance. Id. Narcotics packaging is so readily recognizable as to rise to the level of the archetypal kit of burglar tools or a gun case. A non-descript plastic bag does not so betray its contents.17 17 None of the cases cited by the government in support of its reconceptualization of the plain view seizure doctrine are to the contrary. See United States v. Jackson, 381 F.3d 984 (10th Cir. 2004) (after officer searched baby powder container with defendant’s consent and discovered cocaine secreted inside, officer could replace lid to container, arrest defendant, and then reopen the container at the police station without obtaining a warrant); United States v. Eschweiler, 745 F.2d 435, 455 (7th Cir. 1984) (during search of premises, key to safety deposit box discovered in an envelope marked safety deposit box); United States v. Morgan, 744 F.2d 1215, 1222 (6th Cir. 1984) (after airline employee opened suspicious 84 UNITED STATES v. DAVIS Second, and critically, the search in Williams was a search for contraband and not mere evidence of someone’s criminal act.18 For the reasons expressed above, see supra pp. 65-66, in addition to his possessory interest in the bag and its contents, Davis clearly enjoyed a reasonable expectation of privacy in his own clothing and their contents every bit as much as he enjoyed a reasonable expectation of privacy, as the majority rightly holds, in the chemical facts concerning his biological material and blood.19 Indeed, it is curious, to say package and discovered container marked with names of controlled substances used to dilute illegal narcotics, and then without a request by drug agents, reopened suitcase when drug agents arrived, chemicals were in plain view of agents and marked containers could be opened without a warrant). 18 Of course, I do not seek a return to the mere evidence doctrine discarded by the Supreme Court in Warden v. Hayden, 387 U.S. 294, 301-02 (1967). Rather, the point here is that my search of Supreme Court and circuit authority, as I discuss in the text, does not reveal an instance in which a law enforcement officer has been authorized to seize a closed, opaque container containing non-contraband personalty from the possession of a person on the basis of the plain view exception. In such circumstances, even assuming a seizure is allowed, absent some applicable warrant exception, if the ensuing search of the container was without a warrant, the search violates the Fourth Amendment. Ample Supreme Court authority supports this view. See supra pp. 64-67. 19 In contrast, one never has a reasonable expectation of privacy in regard to his possession of contraband. See United States v. Moore, 562 F.2d 106, 111 (1st Cir. 1977) (observing that the possessors of [contraband and stolen property] have no legitimate expectation of privacy in substances which they have no right to possess at all), cert. denied, 435 U.S. 926 (1978); cf. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. at 123 (A chemical test that merely discloses whether or not a particular substance is cocaine does not compromise any legitimate interest in privacy.). Jacobsen and the cases relied on by the majority, see Maj. Op. at 17-18, are entirely consistent with this longstanding rule. See, e.g., United States v. Smith, 459 F.3d 1276, 1293 (11th Cir. 2006) (plain view seizure of child pornography in the course of a search for narcotics); United States v. Rodriguez, 601 F.3d 402, 408 (5th Cir. 2010) (where officers came upon a sawed-off shotgun in the course of responding to a domestic violence call, the court reasoned that, The shotgun was properly seized on a temporary basis to secure it so that the officers could investigate the domestic disturbance call. Once seized for this purpose, the incriminating nature of the weapon became apparent and it was then subject to permanent seizure as contraband.). UNITED STATES v. DAVIS 85 the least, to reason as does the majority that Davis retained, for several years after the bag was seized at the hospital, a reasonable expectation of privacy in the character of his DNA molecules, but that he lacked any reasonable expectation of privacy in the presence of those molecules in his blood while they were embedded in his clothing and hidden from the government in a bag which was effectively in his actual possession at the hospital. Thus, I would limit Williams and its reliance on extrinsic indicia of the container’s contents to cases involving the plain view seizure of containers holding contraband. For all these reasons, Williams does not control the outcome in this case.20