Opinion ID: 773283
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Admissibility of Evidence of Key Fitting Lock of Apartment Door

Text: 64 Jambu argues that the trial court should have suppressed testimony concerning the fact that a key found in the Mustang fit the lock of his apartment door. In reviewing a decision on a suppression issue, we review the lower court's findings of fact for clear error and its conclusions of law de novo. United States v. Jenkins, 124 F.3d 768, 771-72 (6th Cir. 1997). We must review the evidence in the light most likely to support the district court's decision. United States v. Williams, 962 F.2d 1218, 1221 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 506 U.S. 892 (1992). 65 The record reveals that Officer Rodney Seelye of the Louisville Division of Police found a key in a silver Mustang which the police had reason to believe was used to transport cocaine from Florida. The Mustang was found in the parking lot of Jambu's apartment complex, the Tanglewood Apartments on Bermuda Lane. Officer Seelye decided to investigate whether the key was to Jambu's apartment, as this would be evidence of Jambu's connection to the conspiracy. He proceeded to the building where Jambu's apartment was located and entered through an unlocked door into a common corridor open to the public. Officer Seelye knew the location of Jambu's apartment. He inserted the key into the front door of Jambu's apartment to determine whether the key worked the lock mechanism. He learned that the key did operate the lock, but he did not open the door or enter the apartment. This occurred after an earlier search of Jambu's apartment, the results of which were suppressed by the trial court. 66 The trial court found that this case involved an insertion of the key for the discrete and only purpose of seeing whether it would turn the tumbler and that it was not the beginning of the search. The court found that the door was located on a hallway which was a common area and public, and that the keyhole is open, obvious, facing out into the public area, not concealed, with unrestricted access. Relying on United States v. DeBardeleben, 740 F.2d 440 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 1028 (1984), the trial court concluded that the insertion of the key was not a search, that the defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in a keyhole that was open to the public side of the door, and that, even assuming that a search had occurred, the intrusion was minimal and justified by the circumstances. The trial court also found that the officer had lawful possession of the key, and that the legitimate interests of proper crime investigation permitted testing the key in the lock. 67 Jambu does not appear to contest the officer's version of what transpired, and the trial court's findings of fact are supported by the evidence and are not clearly erroneous. Rather, Jambu argues that he had an expectation of privacy in the lock to his apartment door, and that trying the key in the lock constituted an illegal search. 68 In DeBardeleben, we held that the insertion of keys into the lock of an automobile was a minimal intrusion, justified by a 'founded suspicion' and by the legitimate crime investigation which did not constitute a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. DeBardeleben, 740 F.2d at 444-45 (quoting United States v. Portillo-Reyes, 529 F.2d 844, 852 (9th Cir. 1975)(Wright, J., dissenting), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 899 (1976). We noted that the agent in that case, acting on a reasonable belief that the car belonged to defendant, did not search the Chrysler but merely identified it as belonging to defendant. DeBardeleben, 740 F.2d at 445 (emphasis in original). 69 In United States v. Lyons, 898 F.2d 210 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 920 (1990), the First Circuit relied onDeBardeleben in holding that the insertion of a key into the padlock of a storage unit was not a search, or, in the alternative, was not an unreasonable search prohibited by the Fourth Amendment. The court noted that the insertion of the key into the lock of the storage unit was merely a means of identifying a storage unit to which the defendant had access. Lyons, 898 F.2d at 213. The court further stated that the lock was placed on the door to protect the contents of the storage unit, and that it is those contents that are the object of the lessee's privacy expectations, not the padlock. By placing personal effects inside the storage unit, Lyons manifested an expectation that the contents would be free from public view. Id. (emphasis in original). 70 In United States v. Concepcion, 942 F.2d 1170 (7th Cir. 1991), the court addressed, among other issues, the question of whether law enforcement officers' use of keys seized from the defendant to try the lock to the door of an apartment without entering the apartment constituted an unreasonable search. The court found that the insertion and turning of the key in the lock constituted a search, but that the lessee's privacy interest in the lock was so small that the officers did not need probable cause to inspect it, and the search was not unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Id. at 1172-73. 3 71 Under DeBardeleben, the mere insertion of a key into a lock, by an officer who lawfully possesses the key and is in a location where he has a right to be, to determine whether the key operates the lock, is not a search. That is what happened in the case before us 4 . 72 Jambu argues that one has a greater privacy interest in one's apartment than one does in a vehicle, and that thereforeDeBardeleben, which involved an automobile lock, should not control. However, the lock to Jambu's apartment was accessible by means of an unlocked, common hallway which was open to the public. Jambu had no reasonable expectation of privacy in this hallway. The lock to his apartment door was just as accessible to anyone passing through that hallway as the lock on his car door was to anyone passing through the building's parking lot. Just as the lock on a car door is designed to protect any property left in the car and to ensure privacy inside the vehicle, anapartment door lock functions to protect and keep private the contents of the apartment. The information gained by the officers in inserting a key into an apartment door is the same as that gained by inserting a key into a car door, namely, that the key works the lock. The fact that a person may have a greater expectation of privacy in the inside of his residence than in the interior of a vehicle, which is more visible to the public by reason of its design, does not warrant applying a different standard to an apartment door lock which was just as accessible to the public in this case as an automobile lock 5 . 73 The trial court properly denied Jambu's motion to exclude the evidence of the key fitting the lock to his apartment.