Opinion ID: 770086
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Legality of the Denning Search

Text: 10 The Fourth Amendment protects citizens against unreasonable searches and seizures by government actors. See Burdeau v. McDowell, 256 U.S. 465, 475 (1921). However, the Fourth Amendment does not apply to searches by private parties absent governmental involvement in the search. See Humphrey, 208 F.3d at 1203. A search by a private person becomes a government search if the government coerces, dominates, or directs the actions of a private person conducting the search. Pleasant v. Lovell, 876 F.2d 787, 796 (10th Cir. 1989). In such cases, the private citizen may be regarded as an agent or instrumentality of the police and the fruits of the search may be suppressed. United States v. Smythe, 84 F.3d 1240, 1242 (10th Cir. 1996). 11 In determining whether a search by a private person becomes a government search, the following two-part inquiry is utilized: 1) whether the government knew of and acquiesced in the intrusive conduct, and 2) whether the party performing the search intended to assist law enforcement efforts or to further his own ends. Pleasant, 876 F.2d at 797 (citations and quotations omitted). Both prongs must be satisfied before the private search may be deemed a government search. See United States v. Leffall, 82 F.3d 343, 347 (10th Cir. 1996). The totality of the circumstances guides the court's determination as to whether the two-part inquiry has been met. See Smythe, 84 F.3d at 1243. 12 If a government agent is involved merely as a witness, the requisite government action is absent and the search will be deemed private. See id. The police must instigate, orchestrate, encourage or exceed the scope of the private search to trigger application of the Fourth Amendment. Id. The police are under no duty to discourage private citizens from conducting searches of their own volition. See id. In Smythe, McCartney, the manager of a bus station in Sheridan, Wyoming, received a suspicious package from two men who requested that the package be shipped via bus to California. See id. at 1241. After the men left the station, McCartney, for safety reasons, became concerned about the contents of the box and, among other things, called the Sheridan Police Department (SPD) in an effort to determine whether he could open the package. See id. Sergeant Walker of the SPD arrived shortly thereafter and informed McCartney that he believed that McCartney could open the package but that he could not. See id. Sergeant Walker never touched the package, did not assist, ask or otherwise encourage Mr. McCartney to open the package and stepped away as Mr. McCartney opened the package. Id. McCartney testified that the decision to open the package was entirely his, and that he would have opened the package regardless of the police presence. See id. The Tenth Circuit held that the search was not a governmental search because McCartney had a legitimate, independent motivation to open the package based on his independently formed belief that something was dangerous about the package and his concern for the passengers on the bus in which the package was to be shipped. See id. at 1243. See also Leffall, 82 F.3d at 349 (finding that a police officer acting as a witness while an airline employee opened a package was not sufficient to make the airline employee a government agent where the airline employee acted to pursue his employer's interests in deterring traffic in illegal substances and contraband and the police did nothing to encourage the employee to conduct the search). 13 In this case, in contrast to Smythe and Leffall, the officers had substantially more involvement in the search of the box than merely being witnesses to the search. First, the officers specifically targeted the box and placed it to the side for safekeeping. Second, the officers twice, within a span of five minutes, attempted to encourage Denning to open the package and Denning testified that she was influenced by the officers' attempts. While companies such as UPS have legitimate reasons to search packages independent of any motivation to assist police, see, e.g., United States v. Parker, 32 F.3d 395, 399 (8th Cir. 1994), there is no evidence that in this instance Denning had a legitimate, independent motivation to open the package, despite her practice of randomly opening packages on other occasions. 14 Perhaps most damning of all is that, as the district court found, the officers substantially assisted in the search initiated by Denning. A 'search is a search by a federal official if he had a hand in it' and . . . '[s]o long as he was in it before the object of the search was completely accomplished, he must be deemed to have participated in it.' United States v. Knoll, 16 F.3d 1313, 1320 (2d Cir. 1994) (quoting Lustig v. United States, 338 U.S. 74, 78-79 (1949) (plurality opinion)). When Denning experienced difficulty opening the package, she testified that the DEA agents took over the task, taking the package from her and using a knife to cut through the foam where they found the Tupperware container which held the contraband. Denning did not cut through the packaging material, nor was she the one who discovered the Tupperware container and its contents. While private searches generally do not raise constitutional concerns, the Fourth Amendment would be seriously undermined if the search of the package in this case was described as anything other than orchestrated by the government.