Opinion ID: 167725
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: fo urth am endm ent claim s

Text: In October 2002 law enforcement officers went to the home of M r. Copeman and M s. Blunt in Keota, Oklahoma, to execute arrest warrants for them both. They came out of their home and were arrested without incident. After they had been secured, two other individuals approached from behind the residence. Agent Steve Fioretti of the Haskell County Sheriff’s Department asked them if they had any weapons. One of them, M s. Rhonda Allen, said that she had a knife. As she pulled it from her pocket, Agent Fioretti saw a bag of white powder in her possession, which was seized. It field-tested positive for methamphetamine. A third person, M s. Judy Harp, who was barefoot, then exited the residence. After she was frisked she asked the officers if she could go back into the home to get her shoes. According to Agent Fioretti, he “asked if she lived there, and she stated ‘W ell, yeah, I’m kind of like the kids nanny and I do the cleaning and I do the shopping.’” R. Vol. XVIII at 15. She offered to “take somebody in with her to get her shoes.” Id. Agent Fioretti instructed Oklahoma Highway Patrol Trooper Clint Craft to accompany her. Agent Fioretti testified that he “had never had any dealings with” M s. Harp and was concerned about weapons in the residence: “I didn’t know if she would go in and try to get a weapon and come back outside or try to get a weapon and flee or what she was -3- going to do.” Id. at 16. Trooper Craft testified that he was in the home for only 30 seconds, and simply followed M s. Harp to the bathroom where she put her shoes on. W hen he first entered the home, he saw a jar on a dresser by the front door with different types of syringes in and around it. Some of the syringes w ere of a type he knew to be used to inject methamphetamine. Agent Fioretti obtained a search warrant for the home, relying in part on the methamphetamine found on M s. Allen, the five additional small bags (one that tested positive for methamphetamine) found on M s. Allen when she was booked into jail, and Trooper Craft’s observation of the syringes. The warrant authorized a search for evidence of drug distribution, particularly methamphetamine, and weapons. According to the return on the warrant, officers seized several items from the home, including “several bags with a white chunky substance,” a “9 M M semi auto handgun,” a bag containing $64,5000, and “[s]everal plastic bottles wrapped in black tape containing a total of $90,000.00.” R. Vol. I Doc. 18, Gov’t Ex. One at 7. During execution of the warrant, Agent Fioretti saw a door that had been taken off a black truck; its Vehicle Identification Number w as in plain view. A check revealed that the vehicle had been reported stolen. He informed the other officers on the scene to stop searching. They obtained a second warrant, which authorized a search for evidence of drug-related activity, firearms, and “stolen merchandise,” including, among other things, “electronics equipment, hand tools, power tools, firearms and ammunition,” any evidence of stolen -4- vehicles, and “[t]ools utilized in the renumbering of vehicles.” Id., Gov’t Ex. Two at 10. The search yielded 85 seized items. Some of the items were seized because police were able to verify on the scene that they were stolen. Other seized items fit general descriptions of items that had been reported stolen. Agent Fioretti testified that they seized many items that they “thought” w ere stolen with the intention to “verify . . . at a later date.” R. Vol. XVIII at 72. A third warrant was obtained to search another residence for evidence of drug-related activity and weapons. The return lists 35 items or, rather, categories of items, that were seized; most were drug-related but officers also seized 110 cows, 2 pigs, 15 horses, a mule, 2 hay buggies, 5 trailers, a hay rake, and a Ford semi truck and trailer. Agent Fioretti testified that these items were seized for caretaking purposes, and to prevent theft. M r. Copeman and M s. Blunt both contend that the police entry into their home with M s. Harp to obtain her shoes violated the Fourth Amendment, and that without the illegal entry there was not sufficient probable cause to issue the first search warrant. M s. Blunt also challenges the searches under the second and third warrants, contending that the officers conducting the searches flagrantly violated the terms of the warrants and conducted general searches.
“W hen reviewing the denial of a motion to suppress, we view the evidence in the light most favorable to the government, accept the district court’s findings -5- of fact unless clearly erroneous, and review de novo the ultimate determination of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment.” United States v. Apperson, 441 F.3d 1162, 1184 (10th Cir. 2006) (internal quotation marks omitted).
The district court denied the motion to suppress the items seized under the first warrant, relying on United States v. Butler, 980 F.2d 619 (10th Cir. 1992), to conclude that the police did not violate the Fourth Amendment by entering the home with M s. Harp to retrieve her shoes. In Butler a shoeless man was arrested outside his home when the arresting officer noticed broken glass on the ground. To obtain shoes for the arrestee, the officer took him back into his home, where the officer saw a gun next to the bed. W e held that when there is “a legitimate and significant threat to the health and safety of the arrestee,” police may accompany him back into the home to obtain clothes. Id. at 622. Although recognizing that there was no health or safety issue in this case with respect to the arrestees (M r. Copeman and M s. Blunt), the district court based its finding on the safety of the officers, stating that “there is no evidence suggesting that Craft escorted Harp for any reason other than to ensure officer safety while she retrieved her shoes.” R. Vol. I Doc. 29 at 6. In the alternative, the district court also found that “it w as entirely reasonable for Fioretti to believe Harp had authority to consent to the entry.” Id. M s. Harp said she lived there and was like a nanny. See Illinois v. Rodriguez, 497 -6- U.S. 177, 179 (1990) (“[A] warrantless entry . . . does not violate the Fourth Amendment[ ] . . . if the officers have obtained the consent of a third party who possesses common authority over the premises.”). She offered to take an officer into the home with her. According to the court, her statement that she lived there and her offer to take an officer in with her “made it reasonable for Fioretti to conclude that she had the authority to enter the house herself and, moreover, to consent to the entry into the house by law enforcement officials.” R. Vol. I Doc. 29 at 7. See Rodriguez, 497 U.S. at 186 (“The Constitution is no more violated when officers enter without a warrant because they reasonably (though erroneously) believe that the person who has consented to their entry is a resident of the premises, than it is violated when they enter without a warrant because they reasonably (though erroneously) believe they are in pursuit of a violent felon who is about to escape.”). On appeal M r. Copeman and M s. Blunt have challenged only the first basis for the district court’s ruling. M s. Blunt raises the apparent-authority issue in her reply brief, but we generally do not address issues raised for the first time in a reply brief. United States v. Holbert, 285 F.3d 1257, 1263 (10th Cir. 2002) (“The general rule is that appellate courts will not entertain issues raised for the first time on appeal in an Appellant’s reply.”). We therefore affirm the district court’s ruling on Trooper Craft’s entry. -7-
M s. Blunt also contends that during the execution of the second and third search warrants “officers seized numerous items . . . for which there was no probable cause or source in the warrants for seizure. This converted the searches into general searches and requires blanket suppression.” Blunt A plt. Br. at 11. The district court rejected the argument, stating that other than the animals and some stolen property “the items listed on the return were property falling under one of the listed categories of the search warrant.” R. Vol. I Doc. 29 at 11. It did state, however, that items that “w ere seized during the execution of these warrants based on non-specific information from the Haskell County Sheriff and his deputies that they had ‘heard or remembered’ general reports of stolen property” should be suppressed Id. “If evidence is illegally seized, the general rule is that only the improperly seized evidence, not all of the evidence, must be suppressed . . . .” United States v. Hargus, 128 F.3d 1358, 1363 (10th Cir. 1997) (internal quotation marks omitted). But “even evidence which is properly seized pursuant to a warrant must be suppressed if the officers executing the warrant exhibit flagrant disregard for its terms.” United States v. Foster, 100 F.3d 846, 849 (10th Cir. 1996) (internal quotation marks omitted). “[W]hen law enforcement officers grossly exceed the scope of a search warrant in seizing property, the particularity requirement is undermined and a valid warrant is transformed into a general warrant thereby -8- requiring suppression of all evidence seized under that warrant.” Id. at 849-50 (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted). Only “[i]n very rare cases” have we “applied the unusual remedy of blanket suppression.” United States v. Le, 173 F.3d 1258, 1269 (10th Cir. 1999). In Foster we held that blanket suppression was appropriate because “there was a wholesale seizure of Foster’s property amounting to a fishing expedition.” 100 F.3d at 850. One officer testified that they “‘took anything of value’” and the district court found that “‘no attempt was made to substantiate a connection between the seizure of the majority of the seized items and the terms of the warrant.’” Id. A similar “fishing expedition” was conducted in United States v. M edlin, 842 F.2d 1194, 1199 (10th Cir. 1988). The warrant authorized seizure of only firearms and the records of sales and purchases of firearms, id. at 1195, but the officers “seized some 667 items of property none of which were identified in the warrant authorizing the search,” id. at 1196. In contrast, in Hargus, 128 F.3d at 1363, “[a]lthough we [were] given pause by the wholesale seizure of file cabinets and miscellaneous papers and property not specified in the search warrant, the officers’ conduct . . . was motivated by the impracticability of on-site sorting and the time constraints of executing a daytime search warrant.” M oreover, “[t]he officers were authorized to seize ten broad categories of records, and those records were present in every drawer of both file cabinets.” Id. -9- In this case the district found that, with the exception of the seized animals and some stolen goods, all the seized items were within categories described by the warrants. As for the items seized on suspicion that they were stolen, Agent Fioretti testified that they were seized generally because of reports of similar items that were stolen. The officers seized some baseball, football, and basketball cards, for example, because the sheriff assisting the search “had [received] several reports of numerous baseball cards and basketball cards that were stolen in and around Haskell County.” R. Vol. XVIII at 30. Several boxes of arrowheads were also seized because “[t]here had been several burglaries where a large amount of arrowhead collections had been stolen in Haskell County and [the sheriff] believed these could be a part of that burglary.” Id. at 68. A brown leather saddle with “Bar 99 on the back was seized for the same reason. Id. at 30. Agent Fioretti testified that on-scene confirmation would have been too timeconsuming. But when it could be verified that items were in fact stolen, the officers apparently attempted to do so. Several class rings were seized, for example, which had names on them that w ere recognized by officers on the scene. Some of those people were called and confirmed that the rings had been stolen. And many items w ere left behind because they did not appear to be stolen. All the officers on the scene were provided a copy of the warrant, and Agent Fioretti himself made the final decision whether an item should be seized. -10- The district court specifically suppressed items that were seized under only a general belief that they were stolen. But even if some items w ere improperly seized, the above account of police procedures shows that the warrants were not executed with “flagrant disregard” for their terms, or that the officers “grossly exceeded” the warrants’ authorization. Foster, 100 F.3d at 849. The seized animals are a different story. At the suppression hearing Agent Fioretti explained the decision to seize the animals: The sheriff and I talked about it and we called the assistant district attorney and he advised that if we didn’t have anybody that could take care of them, that we knew would take care of them, that we needed to take them basically into protective custody. That way we knew they were taken care of. R. Vol. XVIII at 33. Agent Fioretti testified that he did not know of any other way to care for the animals. He further testified that he had no purpose in seizing the animals other than to care for them. Even if their seizure was improper, the circumstances do not exhibit a flagrant disregard for the warrant. The animals w ere not seized as evidence and were not admitted into evidence, a factor we found important in Hargus, 128 F.3d at 1363 (“[A] search is not invalidated merely because some things are seized that are not stated in the warrant. This is particularly true when the non-specified items are not admitted into evidence against the defendant.”). Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s denial of the motion to suppress. -11-