Opinion ID: 760681
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Tineo's Suppression Motion

Text: 6 Tineo contends that evidence seized in a South Milwaukee hotel room should have been suppressed by the district court because the police officers exceeded the scope of the consent to search. On September 15, 1993, Milwaukee Police Officer John Edwards and two other officers knocked on the door of Room 214 of the Exel Inn in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee. Jeremy Clemente opened the door and Edwards asked Clemente if he could search the room for narcotics or drug paraphernalia. Clemente agreed, and the officers found a scale in an open box near a coat rack. Officer Edwards then opened a dresser drawer and found a package of sandwich baggies (used by drug dealers for packaging individual amounts of drugs). During the search, Clemente, Tineo, and a third man were sitting on the right side of one of the two beds in the motel room. Officer Edwards, upon finding the sandwich baggies, explained that voluntarily turning over any narcotics in the room would be in their best interests. No one responded, and Officer Edwards asked the men to move to the other side of the bed. Another officer then lifted up the right side of the bed and discovered narcotics. Officer Edwards immediately arrested all three men, and then continued to search the room; he also discovered cocaine under the other bed. At least, this is how Officer Edwards described the search during the suppression hearing. Tineo asserts that the officers merely asked to check the room, and Clemente did not consent to a search of the room for narcotics. The district court credited the testimony of Officer Edwards over the conflicting testimony of Clemente and Tineo, and refused to suppress the evidence seized in the motel room. 7 The Fourth Amendment's general prohibition against the warrantless search of a person's property [does] not apply when the 'search [is] conducted pursuant to a valid consent. ' Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218, 222, 93 S.Ct. 2041, 36 L.Ed.2d 854 (1973). We review the district court's findings of fact after a suppression hearing for clear error, while reviewing conclusions of law and mixed questions of law and fact de novo. United States v. Meyer, No. 96-4230, 1998 WL 334456 at  11 (7th Cir. June 23, 1998). Thus, our review of the district court's determination that a search is consensual is deferential to the extent that it turns on a question of fact. United States v. Yusuff, 96 F.3d 982, 986 (7th Cir.1996). A third party with common authority over the premises sought to be searched may provide such valid consent. United States v. Matlock, 415 U.S. 164, 171, 94 S.Ct. 988, 39 L.Ed.2d 242 (1974). The scope of the consent to search is generally determined by what the officers are searching for. United States v. Saadeh, 61 F.3d 510, 518 (7th Cir.1995) (We first must determine the scope of [the defendant's] initial consent. The scope of a search generally is characterized by its expressed object.) (citations omitted). In assessing the reasonableness of the scope of the search in relation to the consent given, the district court may consider the contemporaneous failure to object to the search. United States v. Maldonado, 38 F.3d 936, 940 (7th Cir.1994). 8 The district court was entitled to believe Officer Edwards' testimony that he asked to search the room specifically for narcotics. The initial visual search of the hotel room turned up a scale, and further searching revealed sandwich bags in a dresser drawer. Additionally, no one objected when the police officers opened dresser drawers, or when they asked Tineo and Clemente to move away from the right side of the bed. Cf. Saadeh, 61 F.3d at 518 (The defendant did not object to the search of his toolbox. In fact, he stood by and watched quietly as the agent opened it. That lack of protest undercuts a defendant's later challenge to a third party's authority to consent.). Given that the object of the search was narcotics, and items consistent with the sale of drugs were discovered, it does not seem objectively unreasonable to look under the mattress where Tineo had been sitting; therefore, the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying Tineo's suppression motion. 9