Opinion ID: 1290329
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Seizing the Contraband under the Plain Feel Doctrine

Text: That Officer Livingstone was entitled to stop Yamba under Terry still leaves the question of whether the pat-down search was properly conducted. For if it was not, there would be a ripple effect on the criminal case against him, ending in the exclusion of the papers with allegedly stolen credit card numbers as fruit[s] of the poisonous tree. Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 487-88, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963); see Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40, 65-66, 88 S.Ct. 1889, 20 L.Ed.2d 917 (1968); United States v. Brown, 448 F.3d 239, 244 (3d Cir.2006). Those papers, of course, were found in a routine (and legal) inventory search upon Yamba's booking at the police station, Illinois v. Lafayette, 462 U.S. 640, 103 S.Ct. 2605, 77 L.Ed.2d 65 (1983), which took place after his arrestan arrest made possible only by the discovery of marijuana during the Terry search. [3] In Terry, the Supreme Court said that [t]he scope of the search must be strictly tied to and justified by the circumstances which rendered its initiation permissible. 392 U.S. at 18, 88 S.Ct. 1868. It later expounded on that statement when speaking about Terry searches specifically: The purpose of this limited search is not to discover evidence of crime, but to allow the officer to pursue his investigation without fear of violence. . . . So long as the officer is entitled to make a forcible stop, and has reason to believe that the suspect is armed and dangerous, he may conduct a weapons search limited in scope to this protective purpose. Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143, 146, 92 S.Ct. 1921, 32 L.Ed.2d 612 (1972) (footnote omitted) (emphasis added). The proper scope of a search becomes critical when police discover something suspicious they were not expecting or intending to find. And in such a case the plain view doctrine often governs whether their discovery can be admitted against a defendant. See, e.g., Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 107 S.Ct. 1149, 94 L.Ed.2d 347 (1987). As the Supreme Court has said, precedent has come to reflect the rule that if, while lawfully engaged in an activity in a particular place, police officers perceive a suspicious object, they may seize it immediately. Texas v. Brown, 460 U.S. 730, 739, 103 S.Ct. 1535, 75 L.Ed.2d 502 (1983) (plurality opinion) (citing Frazier v. Cupp, 394 U.S. 731, 89 S.Ct. 1420, 22 L.Ed.2d 684 (1969); Harris v. United States, 390 U.S. 234, 88 S.Ct. 992, 19 L.Ed.2d 1067 (1968); United States v. Lefkowitz, 285 U.S. 452, 52 S.Ct. 420, 76 L.Ed. 877 (1932); Marron v. United States, 275 U.S. 192, 48 S.Ct. 74, 72 L.Ed. 231 (1927)). The plain view doctrine, therefore, is best understood not as an independent exception to the warrant clause, but simply as an extension of whatever the prior justification for an officer's access to an object may be. Brown, 460 U.S. at 738-39, 103 S.Ct. 1535 (internal quotation marks omitted). So understood, courts have logically extended this concept to permit the admission of evidence discovered with other sensory faculties. See, e.g., United States v. Angelos, 433 F.3d 738, 747 (10th Cir.2006) (plain smell) (citing United States v. Haley, 669 F.2d 201, 203 (4th Cir.1982); United States v. Clayton, 210 F.3d 841, 845 (8th Cir.2000); United States v. Rhiger, 315 F.3d 1283, 1290 (10th Cir.2003)); United States v. Baranek, 903 F.2d 1068, 1070-72 (6th Cir. 1990) (plain hearing). In this case, we deal with another application of the plain view doctrine: plain feel. Unlike plain hearing and plain smell, which the Supreme Court has not decided, it has put its imprimatur on plain feel. [4] In Minnesota v. Dickerson, the Court took up the issue of whether police officers may seize nonthreatening contraband detected during a protective patdown search of the sort permitted by Terry,  and decided that the answer clearly is that they may, so long as the officers' search stays within the bounds marked by Terry.  508 U.S. 366, 373, 113 S.Ct. 2130, 124 L.Ed.2d 334 (1993). Since Dickerson, our Court has not had the opportunity to examine and apply its teachings in a precedential opinion. In Dickerson, police officers were patrolling a neighborhood and saw the defendant leaving what was known to them as a crack house. When he saw the officers in their patrol car, the defendant abruptly halted and began walking in the opposite direction. Id. at 368-69, 113 S.Ct. 2130. He then walked into an alley. This activity aroused the suspicion of the officers, and they decided to investigate further. After ordering the defendant to stop, one of the officers conducted a Terry search of the defendant. According to the Court, [t]he search revealed no weapons, but the officer did take an interest in a small lump in [the defendant's] nylon jacket. Id. at 369, 113 S.Ct. 2130. The officer testified later at an evidentiary hearing that, [a]s I pat-searched the front of his body, I felt a lump, a small lump, in the front pocket. I examined it with my fingers and it slid and it felt to be a lump of crack cocaine in cellophane. Id. At that point the officer reached into [the defendant's] pocket and retrieved a small plastic bag containing one fifth of one gram of crack cocaine. Id. The trial court admitted the contraband by analogizing to the `plain-view' doctrine. Id. The Minnesota Court of Appeals, though finding a valid Terry stop, reversed the evidentiary ruling, concluding that the officers had overstepped the bounds allowed by Terry in seizing the cocaine. Id. at 370, 113 S.Ct. 2130. Both the Minnesota Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed. Before addressing the plain feel concept, the Supreme Court first described the plain view doctrine from which it derived: [I]f police are lawfully in a position from which they view an object, if its incriminating character is immediately apparent, and if the officers have a lawful right of access to the object, they may seize it without a warrant. If, however, the police lack probable cause to believe that an object in plain view is contraband without conducting some further search of the object i.e., if its incriminating character is not immediately apparentthe plain-view doctrine cannot justify its seizure. Id. at 375, 113 S.Ct. 2130 (citations, brackets, and internal quotation marks omitted). Applying this rule, the Court focused on the trial court's findings regarding what the officer believed about the lump in the defendant's pocket. Specifically, it noted that the officer made no claim that he suspected this object to be a weapon. Id. at 378, 113 S.Ct. 2130 (internal quotation marks omitted). [T]he officer's own testimony, the Court went on to say, belies any notion that he `immediately' recognized the lump as crack cocaine. Rather, . . . the officer determined that the lump was contraband only after squeezing, sliding, and otherwise manipulating the contents of the defendant's pocketa pocket which the officer already knew contained no weapon. Id. Since Dickerson, many courts have focused on exactly how immediately an officer must know that something felt during a Terry search is contraband or precisely how much a clothed object can be manipulated before a search becomes illegal. See, e.g., United States v. Williams, No. CRIM. RDB-05-0240, 2005 WL 1902490, at  (D.Md. Aug.9, 2005); United States v. Ramirez, No. 02 CR 1228(GEL), 2003 WL 260572, at  (S.D.N.Y. Feb.5, 2003) (No doubt a metaphysician could draw distinctions between `immediately' knowing something, knowing it after a `second or two,' being 90% certain of something after running one's fingers across it, and knowing for certain after squeezing it.). And in the course of admitting in evidence certain contraband that was discovered in a Terry search, courts have credited testimony by some police officers that suggests remarkable sensory powers. See, e.g., United States v. Ashley, 37 F.3d 678, 681 (D.C.Cir.1994) (admitting in evidence contraband known immediately to be crack, despite the fact that it was found inside two pair of pants, a pair of briefs, a paper bag, a paper napkin, and a plastic bag). Even the officer in this case testifiedcredibly, according to the District Courtthat after feeling through a middle medium weight jacket for what [p]robably wasn't even a half second, he nevertheless could tell right away that the lump in Yamba's pocket was marijuana. We reject a narrow focus on how quickly and certainly the nature of an object felt during a Terry search is known and on how much manipulation of a person's clothing is acceptable. In Terry, the Supreme Court authorized police officers to perform a routine pat-down search for weapons. Such searches necessarily involve a certain amount of squeezing, sliding and otherwise manipulating of a suspect's outer clothing, 508 U.S. at 378, 113 S.Ct. 2130, in an attempt to discern whether weapons are hidden underneath. Thus, the problem with the officer's actions in Dickerson must be more than simply their occurrence. And a close reading of the case reveals what that more entails. The Court in Dickerson clearly identified the object of a proper Terry search: weapons. Id. at 373, 113 S.Ct. 2130 (stating that a Terry search must be strictly limited to that which is necessary for the discovery of weapons which might be used to harm the officer or others nearby. (internal quotation marks omitted)). The same sentence in Dickerson that identified squeezing, sliding and otherwise manipulating the contents of the defendant's pocket as a problem also noted that the officer committed the offending conduct when he already knew [the pocket] contained no weapon. Id. at 378, 113 S.Ct. 2130. The Court repeated the refrain in the next paragraph: Here, the officer's continued exploration of [the defendant's] pocket after having concluded that it contained no weapon was unrelated to the sole justification of the search under Terry: the protection of the police officer and others nearby. It therefore amounted to the sort of evidentiary search that Terry expressly refused to authorize and that we have condemned in subsequent cases. Id. (emphasis added; brackets, ellipsis, internal quotation marks, and citations omitted). The proper question under Dickerson, therefore, is not the immediacy and certainty with which an officer knows an object to be contraband or the amount of manipulation required to acquire that knowledge, but rather what the officer believes the object is by the time he concludes that it is not a weapon. That is, a Terry search cannot purposely be used to discover contraband, but it is permissible that contraband be confiscated if spontaneously discovered during a properly executed Terry search. Moreover, when determining whether the scope of a particular Terry search was proper, the areas of focus should be whether the officer had probable cause to believe an object was contraband before he knew it not to be a weapon and whether he acquired that knowledge in a manner consistent with a routine frisk. United States v. Jones, 303 F.Supp.2d 702, 706 (D.Md.2004) (citing Dickerson, 508 U.S. at 376, 113 S.Ct. 2130; Hicks, 480 U.S. at 327, 107 S.Ct. 1149). Assuming that an officer is authorized to conduct a Terry search at all, he is authorized to assure himself that a suspect has no weapons. He is allowed to slide or manipulate an object in a suspect's pocket, consistent with a routine frisk, until the officer is able reasonably to eliminate the possibility that the object is a weapon. If, before that point, the officer develops probable cause to believe, given his training and experience, that an object is contraband, he may lawfully perform a more intrusive search. If, indeed, he discovers contraband, the officer may seize it, and it will be admissible against the suspect. If, however, the officer goes beyond what is necessary to determine if the suspect is armed, it is no longer valid under Terry and its fruits will be suppressed. Dickerson, 508 U.S. at 373, 113 S.Ct. 2130. In making this ruling, we join at least two of our sister courts of appeals that have framed the issue in this way. See United States v. Mattarolo, 209 F.3d 1153, 1158 (9th Cir.2000) (Had the officer continued to manipulate the object beyond what was necessary to ascertain that it posed no threat, he would have run afoul of the Supreme Court's holding in Minnesota v. Dickerson. ); United States v. Rogers, 129 F.3d 76, 79 (2d Cir.1997) (Sergeant Mason was conducting a lawful protective patdown search (a point that Rogers concedes) when he felt the heavy object in Rogers' coat pocket. He manipulated the object for `a few seconds' to determine what it was, and felt `a hard object and then a softer object.' At that point, Mason was not yet able to exclude the possibility that there was a weapon in the pocket, so that the search was still within the bounds of Terry, and Mason had become `fairly certain' the pocket contained drugs. That belief, combined with Rogers' evasive and suspicious conduct, gave the officers probable cause to search Rogers' pocket for contraband. The police were therefore permitted to remove and open the rolled-up paper bag.). In our case, Officer Livingstone felt around or otherwise manipulated the contents of Yamba's pocket in the process of checking for weapons when he came across what in his experience could be contraband. It is not key whether Livingstone was certain that the object in Yamba's pocket was contraband by the time he knew it not to be a weapon; what is key is whether Livingstone had probable cause to believe that it was and this occurred at the same moment or before he determined that Yamba had no gun on his person. The record demonstrates that probable cause indeed existed before Livingstone's search went beyond the bounds of Terry. Livingstone testified that, when he felt Yamba's pocket, he could feel a plastic bag containing a soft[,] spongy-like substance. Though it is true, as Yamba's counsel noted in cross-examination, grass[ [5] ] or oregano might feel similarly soft or spongy, people do not normally go around with those substances in their pockets. Moreover, Officer Livingstone also felt small buds and seeds along with the contents of the plastic bag. This detail is more consistent with marijuana than lawn grass or oregano. Based on Livingstone's experience, he reasonably suspected that Yamba had marijuana in his pocket. His belief was reached quickly and upon minimal manipulation of Yamba's pocket from the outside, consistent with a routine frisk allowed by Terry. And though Livingstone admitted to manipulating the object even after forming the belief that it was not a weapon, he only did so to mak[e] sure it was what [he] knew it to be. In other words, by that point Officer Livingstone already had probable cause to conduct a more intrusive search than that authorized by Terry alone. While one may reasonably question the veracity of Officer Livingstone's testimony, it was credited by the District Court. Were we the fact-finder, we may not have done the same; but we cannot say that the Court's finding was clearly erroneous. Nevertheless, consistent with the legal standard set out above, we purposely do not rely on the precision of Officer Livingstone's testimony that he reached his conclusion within a half second. However long it took Livingstone to form that belief, the record indicates that he did so within the bounds of Terry, as there is nothing to suggest that he conducted anything beyond a routine frisk until after there was probable cause to search more intrusively.