Opinion ID: 204415
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: ANALYSIS Legal Searches

Text: Polanco insists that the district judge stumbled in denying his suppression motion. We review the judge's ruling de novo, except that we assess his factual findings (which Polanco does not really contest) only for clear error and will affirm his ruling if `any reasonable view of the evidence supports it.' United States v. Bater, 594 F.3d 51, 55 (1st Cir.2010) (quoting United States v. Mendez-de Jesus, 85 F.3d 1, 2 (1st Cir.1996)). Polanco protests that the judge failed to see that Arizona v. Gant, ___ U.S. ____, 129 S.Ct. 1710, 173 L.Ed.2d 485 (2009), signals a rollback of the auto exception. Gant, he says, limits warrantless vehicle searches to situations where an arrestee is unsecured and close enough to threaten officer safety or destroy evidence. And, his argument continues, agents had him in a cell when they combed the car for evidence at a secure location, so the search offended the Fourth Amendment. This is a dead-end argument. Gant dealt with the search-incident-to-arrest doctrine in the vehicle context. Pre- Gant, officers could conduct a warrantless search of the passenger compartment of [the arrestee's] automobile under that doctrine. New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 460, 101 S.Ct. 2860, 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981). Some courts even permitted searches when . . . the handcuffed arrestee ha[d] already left the scene. Thornton v. United States, 541 U.S. 615, 628, 124 S.Ct. 2127, 158 L.Ed.2d 905 (2004) (Scalia, J., concurring in the judgment) (collecting cases reading Belton broadly). But Gant clarified that an automobile search may fall within the search-incident-to-arrest doctrine only in two very specific situations: when the arrestee is unsecured and within reaching distance of the passenger compartment at the time of the search (the officer-safety justification), or when it is `reasonable to believe evidence relevant to the crime of arrest might be found in the vehicle' (the evidence-preservation justification). Gant, 129 S.Ct. at 1719 (quoting Thornton, 541 U.S. at 632, 124 S.Ct. 2127 (Scalia, J., concurring in the judgment)). Gant also noted that officers may conduct vehicle searches under other doctrines. Id. at 1721. Our case does not involve the search-incident-to-arrest exception, however. As the district judge noted, the government had jettisoned any search-incident-to-arrest theory before the suppression hearing. Only the auto exception matters herean exception that provides that [i]f there is probable cause to believe a vehicle contains evidence of criminal activity, agents can search without a warrant any area of the vehicle in which the evidence may be found. Id. (discussing United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798, 820-21, 102 S.Ct. 2157, 72 L.Ed.2d 572 (1982)). And, critically, Gant did not scrap that exception. See id. That is not just our opinion: every circuit that has considered the issue to date has either concluded or assumed that the auto exception survived under Gant. See, e.g., United States v. Arriaza, No. 09-4957, 2010 WL 4813775, at  (4th Cir. Nov.24, 2010) (unpublished); United States v. Aguilera, 625 F.3d 482, 485-86 (8th Cir.2010); United States v. Hinojosa, 392 Fed.Appx. 260 (5th Cir.2010) (unpublished); United States v. Vinton, 594 F.3d 14, 25 (D.C.Cir.2010); United States v. Stotler, 591 F.3d 935, 940 (7th Cir.2010). We assumed as much in United States v. Bucci, 582 F.3d 108, 117 (1st Cir.2009). Now that the issue is directly before us we turn that assumption into a holding. Before we go further, we add a few words of caution. The auto exception is distinct from the evidence-preservation component of Gant 's search-incident-to-arrest analysis (which for simplicity's sake we call the Gant evidentiary justification). We give two examples only. The auto exception extends beyond the crime of arrest. See Gant, 129 S.Ct. at 1721. But the Gant evidentiary justification does not extend to evidence of other offenses. See id. Also, the auto exception requires probable cause. See id. But the Gant evidentiary justification only requires a reasonable basis. See id. at 1719. These distinctions make a difference. And, for obvious reasons, it is important to keep them straight. Now back to Polanco. Measured against the auto exception's regime, Polanco's challenge comes up short. Consider what agents knew before the December 10 car search. The December 3 heroin deal had gone down at the Mall's food court and involved Contreras, Polanco, and Polanco's Camry, and the December 10 deal was set to play out the same way until agents changed locations out of concern for the public's safety. Agents then saw Contreras leave the Mall with Polanco in Polanco's car, and Contreras told Godek over the phone to come get this stuff. When agents got to the new site they spied Polanco and Contreras waiting in Polanco's car. A pat-down search of the two turned up nothing. But a Mirandized Contreras told all. Polanco's car had a trap (a street term for a hidden compartment), a nervous Contreras whispered to agents at the scene, and the heroin and a loaded gun were stashed inside, he said. He also fingered Polanco as his supplier. [2] Given these facts, we think agents had more than enough probable cause to believe that Polanco's car contained evidence of criminality. See generally United States v. Woodbury, 511 F.3d 93, 97-98 (1st Cir.2007) (emphasizing that probable cause only requires a fair probabilitywhich is well short of certaintythat evidence of criminal activity will be found in a particular place). As a fallback defense, Polanco contends that the search flunked the auto-exception test, for three reasons: agents did not actually stop his car, they gave it a thorough going over at another locale, and they had time to get a warrant. But each argument is a retread that has no traction: an impressive convoy of auto-exception cases holds that if the requisite probable cause exists it matters not whether the vehicle was already parked, see, e.g., United States v. McCoy, 977 F.2d 706, 710 (1st Cir.1992); United States v. Panitz, 907 F.2d 1267, 1271 (1st Cir.1990), whether it was searched at another locale, see, e.g., Ross, 456 U.S. at 807 n. 9, 102 S.Ct. 2157; United States v. Lopez, 380 F.3d 538, 545 (1st Cir.2004); McCoy, 977 F.2d at 710, or even whether agents had time to obtain a warrant first, see, e.g., Ross, 456 U.S. at 807 n. 9, 102 S.Ct. 2157; Panitz, 907 F.2d at 1270 n. 3. The end result, then, is this. Because probable cause existed, the search of Polanco's Camry was lawful under the auto exceptiona conclusion that spoils his fruit-of-the-poisonous-tree claim regarding the apartment search. Consequently, the district judge rightly denied Polanco's motion to suppress.