Opinion ID: 2982127
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Search of the Apartment

Text: After the officers secured the apartment, they asked the adult occupants—Dunn, Kody Evans, and Kirby Evans—who held the lease on the apartment. Kirby Evans stated that she was the leaseholder. Officer Bartlett had Sergeant Joseph Poindexter take Kirby and the two children 10 Case: 12-6175 Document: 006111909876 Filed: 12/16/2013 Page: 11 Nos. 12-6175/12-6187/12-6324 outside. While outside, Sgt. Poindexter asked Kirby if the police could search the apartment. Kirby then signed a form giving her consent to search the apartment. The officers then searched the apartment, where they found a revolver and clothing that matched clothes seen on the surveillance footage of the robberies. Defendants now claim that the consent for the search was defective. Dunn claims that because he was a presently objecting co-tenant, the police gained consent improperly by removing Kirby from his presence in order to obtain that consent. A search conducted after consent that is given “freely and voluntarily” is valid. Bumper v. North Carolina, 391 U.S. 543, 548 (1968). In this case, there is no dispute that Kirby gave her consent to search the apartment. Dunn claims that despite Kirby’s consent, his consent was also needed in order for the search to be permissible, because he often stayed at the apartment. The magistrate judge rejected this argument, and so do we. Any individual who has actual common authority, United States v. Matlock, 415 U.S. 164, 170–71 (1974), or apparent common authority, Illinois v. Rodriguez, 497 U.S. 177, 182–87 (1990), over an area may give officers permission to conduct a search that they are entitled to rely upon. In this case, the search was conducted once Kirby gave her consent. Kirby was the sole holder of the lease, and had the only key to the apartment. While Dunn claims, correctly, that police cannot obtain consent by removing a “potentially objecting [co-]tenant . . . for the sake of avoiding a possible objection,” Georgia v. Randolph, 547 U.S. 103, 122 (2006), neither the magistrate nor the district court found any evidence that the police had done so here. Kirby had the full authority to give the police permission to search the apartment, and having done so, the search was lawful. 11 Case: 12-6175 Document: 006111909876 Filed: 12/16/2013 Page: 12 Nos. 12-6175/12-6187/12-6324