Opinion ID: 320293
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Trunk

Text: 10 Although the trunk was not searched the second time until after a search warrant had been obtained, it was lawfully seized by government agents at Customs, and remained subject to governmental seizure and control thereafter while it was being used as bait. See 21 U.S.C. 881(a)(3). 11 There was no prejudicial error in refusing to grant Quiroz-Santi an evidentiary hearing on his motion to suppress. Rule 41(e), Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, provides that the court 'shall receive evidence on any issue of fact necessary to the decision of the motion.' Evidentiary hearings need not be set as a matter of course, but if the moving papers are sufficiently definite, specific, detailed, and nonconjectural to enable the court to conclude that contested issues of fact going to the validity of the search are in question, an evidentiary hearing is required. Cohen v. United States, 378 F.2d 751, 760-761 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 389 US. 897, 88 S.Ct. 217, 19 L.Ed.2d 215 (1967). 12 In the present case we need not decide whether Quiroz-Santi's motion met the Cohen standard. Although a pretrial evidentiary hearing could have been conducted, the Dustoms agents involved in the seizure testified at the trial. Quiroz-Santi examined them thoroughly on the circumstances surrounding the surveillance of the defendants and the trunk. While the practice of consolidating the suppression hearing with the trial is not to be commended in all cases, the defendants here were not prejudiced by the denial of a separate hearing, and no reversible error occurred. 13 As property subject to forfeiture, see 21 U.S.C. 881(a)(3), the trunk was properly seized by Customs agents when they took possession of it from the railway-express office at which it had been left. See 21 U.S.C. 881(b)(4); cf. Cooper v. California, 386 U.S. 58, 87 S.Ct. 788, 17 L.Ed.2d 730 (1967). Although we need not decide whether the agents could have entered a private residence without a warrant in order to seize the trunk, we have no difficulty in holding that they acted properly in seizing a trunk, known to have been used to smuggle cocaine, from a railroad shipping office. Since the seizure was legal, the motion to suppress was correctly denied, and the trunk and its contents were properly admitted into evidence.