Opinion ID: 783322
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Fourth Amendment argument

Text: 27 Swanson argues that the seizure of his car was without any legal justification, as the agents did not have probable cause. He argues that at the time of the seizure, the agents did not have any information that Rick (the target of the agents' arrest warrant) had been in the car for over a month, and had no information that there was evidence of a crime inside the car. 28 We review the district court's decision on Swanson's motion to suppress under two complementary standards. First, the district court's findings of fact are upheld unless clearly erroneous. Second, the court's legal conclusion as to the existence of probable cause is reviewed de novo. United States v. Leake, 998 F.2d 1359, 1362 (6th Cir.1993) (citations omitted). 29 A warrantless seizure of an automobile is reasonable if there is probable cause that an automobile contains evidence or fruits of a crime plus `exigent circumstances.' United States v. Beck, 511 F.2d 997, 1001 (6th Cir.1975). The government urges us to hold that the automobile exception to the warrant requirement justified the seizure and subsequent search of Swanson's car. However, the question requires more than a mere invocation of the automobile exception. The Supreme Court in Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971), stated that [t]he word `automobile' is not a talisman in whose presence the Fourth Amendment fades away and disappears. Id. at 461, 91 S.Ct. at 2035. The Court in Coolidge distinguished between the seizure of an automobile parked in the defendant's driveway and one that the police have stopped and is readily mobile. Id. at 461 n. 8, 91 S.Ct. at 2036. 30 The Supreme Court's holding in Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 45 S.Ct. 280, 69 L.Ed. 543 (1925), extended only to warrantless searches of automobiles where the searching officer had probable cause and the car was stopped on the highway. Id. at 156, 45 S.Ct. at 286. In Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42, 90 S.Ct. 1975, 26 L.Ed.2d 419 (1970), the Court held that if a warrantless search is justified under Carroll, the police may seize the car and search it at the station house without a warrant. Id. at 52, 90 S.Ct. 1975. In Coolidge, the Court stated that the automobile exception to the warrant requirement extended only to circumstances in which it is not practicable to secure a warrant. Coolidge, 403 U.S. at 462, 91 S.Ct. at 2036 (quoting Carroll, 267 U.S. at 153, 45 S.Ct. at 285). It held that Carroll would not have justified a warrantless search of Coolidge's car at the time of his arrest, and thus, the subsequent search at the station house was also illegal. Id. at 463, 91 S.Ct. at 2036. 31 The reasons the Court ultimately concluded that a warrantless search of Coolidge's car would not have been justified by the automobile exception are instructive in the analysis of the present case. The Court stated that what distinguished the seizure of Coolidge's car from the search in Carroll was that there was no alerted criminal bent on flight, no fleeting opportunity on an open highway after a hazardous chase, no contraband or stolen goods or weapons, no confederates waiting to move the evidence, not even the inconvenience of a special police detail to guard the immobilized automobile. Id. at 462, 91 S.Ct. at 2036. The police knew where the car was regularly parked, they arrested Coolidge and escorted his wife to another location, had the premises guarded by two policemen throughout the night, and the evidence seized consisted of vacuum sweepings. Id. at 448, 460-61, 91 S.Ct. at 2028, 2035. The Court assumed the police had probable cause for the purposes of delineating the automobile exception. Id. at 458, 91 S.Ct. at 2034. 32 We conclude that the agents had both probable cause and justification for seizing and searching Swanson's automobile without a warrant. First, the agents had probable cause to seize and search the vehicle. Rick had used the Grand Am to deliver an automatic weapon thirty days earlier to a confidential informant; thus the vehicle was used as an instrumentality of the crime. The agents also had ample facts at their disposal to support their belief that there was further evidence of a crime inside the car. Only two days earlier, Rick had received a Federal Express package from the confidential informant containing money as payment for automatic weapons and silencers that Rick was to deliver by United Parcel Service. The agents had seen Rick arrive for work at the tattoo parlor in the Grand Am that day. When they searched the tattoo parlor, the empty Federal Express package was found in the trash. They also found three handguns, but not any automatic weapons that might be the ones that were to be delivered to the confidential informant. Moreover, the agents had just spoken with Swanson. Swanson had given evasive answers only to questions about guns. When asked if there was anything in the car that could get him into trouble, he replied yes. There was a fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime would be found inside the automobile. Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 238, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 2332, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983). 33 There were also exigent circumstances that justified the warrantless seizure and search. The Supreme Court has noted that [t]he mobility of automobiles,... creates circumstances of such exigency that, as a practical necessity, rigorous enforcement of the warrant requirement is impossible. California v. Carney, 471 U.S. 386, 391, 105 S.Ct. 2066, 2069, 85 L.Ed.2d 406 (1985) (internal quotation marks omitted). In this case, the agents were not arresting Swanson. He would have been free to drive the car away, and perhaps destroy or dispose of evidence, or even the car itself. The evidence they believed they would find in the car was contraband or weapons. See Coolidge, 403 U.S. at 460, 91 S.Ct. at 2035 (distinguishing the objects the police expected to find in the automobile from objects that are stolen [or] contraband [or] dangerous). Indeed, the agents could have guarded both Swanson and the car until a warrant could be obtained. However, that is no less of an intrusion than the seizure and subsequent search of the car. See Chambers, 399 U.S. at 51-52, 90 S.Ct. at 1981. 34 While it is true that the agents had known for some time the role the Grand Am played in their investigation of Rick, from a review of the testimony at the suppression hearing, it appears that the warrant to arrest Rick issued only one or two days before it was executed and the automobile seized. Moreover, the package containing the purchase money had arrived only two days before the execution of the warrant. As the agents testified, it was the belief that this money or the automatic weapons Rick was selling would be in the car that formed the basis of their probable cause to seize it. 35 The agents would have been justified in searching the car at the scene according to Carroll. Therefore, they were justified in seizing the car and searching it at a later time. Chambers, 399 U.S. at 51-52, 90 S.Ct. at 1981; Autoworld Specialty Cars, Inc. v. United States, 815 F.2d 385, 389 (6th Cir.1987) (upholding the warrantless seizure of cars out of a showroom because the officers had probable cause and because of the inherent mobility of cars); see also United States v. Graham, 275 F.3d 490, 511 (6th Cir.2001) (affirming district court's denial of motion to suppress evidence recovered from a pickup truck because the agent had probable cause to search the truck and the inherent mobility of the truck), cert. denied, 535 U.S. 1026, 122 S.Ct. 1625, 152 L.Ed.2d 636 (2002). III. 36 For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM Swanson's conviction.