Opinion ID: 2829581
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Ill , 506 U.S. 56, 65 (1992).

Text: The Court accordingly has explained that subjecting luggage to a “canine sniff” does not amount to a “search” under the Fourth Amendment because it infringes no constitutionally protected privacy interest: a canine sniff “does not require opening the luggage” or “expos[ing] noncontraband items . . . otherwise . . . hidden from public view.” United States v. Place, 462 U.S. 696, 706-07 (1983). But detaining luggage to facilitate a canine sniff “is no doubt . . . a ‘seizure’ . . . for purposes of the Fourth Amendment” because it “intrudes on” the owner’s “possessory interest in [the] luggage.” Id. at 707-08. Conversely, whereas recording of serial numbers on stereo equipment does not constitute a seizure because it does not “meaningfully interfere with [the owner’s] possessory interest,” shifting the position of the equipment to bring the serial numbers into view amounts to a search: “expos[ing] . . . concealed portions” of the equipment is an “invasion of [the owner’s] privacy.” Hicks, 480 U.S. at 324-25 (internal quotation marks omitted). Here, although Miller consistently (and exclusively) frames his Fourth Amendment argument as one about the unlawful seizure of the twenty-two boxes from the back of the Ford Explorer, he makes no complaint of any interference with his possessory rights. Instead, he contends that the “key question” the district court failed to address was whether Miller had a “privacy interest in the boxes themselves.” Appellant Br. 24, 27 (emphases added and omitted). Indeed, he invokes the term “privacy” more than fifty times in the portion of his briefing devoted to the suppression motion, but he never once makes reference to any loss of a “possessory” 7 interest in the boxes. Appellant Br. 4-36; Appellant Reply Br. 4-10. It therefore is unsurprising that, in the decision on which Miller principally relies, United States v. Most, 876 F.2d 191, 195-200 (D.C. Cir. 1989), this court examined whether a search of a defendant’s bag by a police officer violated the Fourth Amendment. In the course of finding the search unlawful, we held that the defendant had not relinquished his reasonable expectation of privacy in the bag’s contents by leaving the bag with a store clerk while shopping. Id. at 19899. Most is inapposite to Miller’s seizure challenge. The defendant there contested the search of the bag, not its seizure, because the police never obtained a warrant to search it. Id. at 193, 195-96. Here, by contrast, the Secret Service obtained a warrant before searching the boxes. And Miller unsurprisingly makes no argument that the search of the boxes was unlawful. In short, there is a basic mismatch between Miller’s wholesale reliance on his privacy interest in the boxes and his challenge to the seizure of those boxes. To the extent the seizure of those boxes violated his Fourth Amendment rights, the violation would intrude on his possessory interest in the boxes rather than on any reasonable expectation of privacy associated with them. See, e.g., Jacobsen, 466 U.S. at 113. But because Miller raises no claim of interference with his possessory interests, his challenge to the seizure necessarily fails. B. Miller alternatively raises a second claim related to the recovery of the boxes from the Ford Explorer. He asserts that his trial counsel rendered constitutionally ineffective 8 assistance by failing to call any witnesses during the hearings on Miller’s suppression motion and by failing timely to submit into the record an FBI form (FBI 302) documenting an interview with Smith. According to Miller, his trial counsel’s failure to put him or Smith on the stand or to enter the FBI 302 into the record deprived him of an opportunity to show that he had effective control of the Ford Explorer and thus had standing to contest its search. To prevail on a Sixth Amendment claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, Miller first would need to show that his trial counsel’s performance was deficient, falling below “an objective standard of reasonableness” as defined by “prevailing professional norms.” Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 687-88 (1984). Miller would also need to demonstrate that his counsel’s deficient performance caused him prejudice—“that there is a reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different.” Id. at 694. Our general practice when faced with a “colorable and previously unexplored” ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim raised for the first time on direct appeal is to remand the claim for an evidentiary hearing. United States v. Rashad, 331 F.3d 908, 908-10 (D.C. Cir. 2003). We will resolve such a claim without a remand only if the “trial record alone conclusively shows that the defendant either is or is not entitled to relief.” Id. at 909-10 (internal quotation marks omitted). Here, with respect to the first prong of the Strickland inquiry, the government describes various tactical considerations that may have led defense counsel to refrain from placing Smith or Miller on the stand—for instance, to avoid waiving Miller’s Fifth Amendment protection, or because Smith might have been a hostile witness. The record is unclear, moreover, whether Smith planned to invoke her 9 own Fifth Amendment privilege to avoid testifying. We thus do not know “all the circumstances animating counsel’s strategic decisions from which we could determine whether [counsel’s] failure” to call the witnesses and timely submit the FBI 302 “was a reasonable, calculated choice or a mark of deficient performance.” United States v. Mohammed, 693 F.3d 192, 204 (D.C. Cir. 2012) (internal quotation marks omitted). With respect to Strickland’s prejudice prong, the record does not conclusively show whether trial counsel’s decision might have caused prejudice to Miller, a subject on which the district court has an “advantageous perspective.” Massaro v. United States, 538 U.S. 500, 506 (2003). We therefore adhere to our normal practice and remand Miller’s claim to the district court to examine his allegations. See Mohammed, 693 F.3d at 204.