Opinion ID: 4448517
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Parties’ Burdens at Trial

Text: Often when we are tasked with reviewing a determination of consent, it is because a defendant has challenged the validity of her conviction or is seeking to suppress certain evidence based on an unlawful search. See, e.g., Blake, 888 F.2d 30 Case: 17-14525 Date Filed: 10/21/2019 Page: 31 of 48 at 797–98 (considering whether evidence should be suppressed on the ground that a search exceeded the scope of the defendants’ consent); United States v. Edmondson, 791 F.2d 1512, 1515 (11th Cir. 1986) (finding that the defendant’s warrantless arrest in his home was illegal because his “consent” was based on a show of official authority by police officers). We have explained that because “[a] warrantless, nonconsensual entry into a suspect’s home to make a routine felony arrest is presumed to be unreasonable,” Edmondson, 791 F.2d at 1514, the burden is on the government to rebut that presumption and prove that the consent was voluntary, Chemaly, 741 F.2d at 1352; see also United States v. Matlock, 415 U.S. 164, 177 (1974) (stating that in the case before it the government “sustained its burden of proving by the preponderance of the evidence that [a third-party’s] voluntary consent to search . . . was legally sufficient” to overcome the defendant’s motion to suppress); Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 455 (1971) (“[T]he burden is on those seeking the exemption to show the need for it.”). That’s all true in criminal cases. It’s not in civil cases. “[I]n a § 1983 action, the plaintiff bears the burden of persuasion on every element.” Cuesta v. Sch. Bd. of Miami-Dade Cty., 285 F.3d 962, 970 (11th Cir. 2002). That burden is on the plaintiff even where the government would be bear it in criminal case. See id. (stating that it was the plaintiff’s “burden to show that the County lacked reasonable suspicion to search 31 Case: 17-14525 Date Filed: 10/21/2019 Page: 32 of 48 her” and holding that her claims failed as a matter of law because she “failed to produce any evidence indicating that the [jail] personnel lacked reasonable suspicion that she was concealing weapons or contraband”); Rankin, 133 F.3d at 1436 (“[P]laintiffs had the burden of demonstrating the absence of probable cause in order to succeed in their § 1983 claim.”); Evans v. Hightower, 117 F.3d 1318, 1320 (11th Cir. 1997) (“In order to establish a Fourth Amendment violation, [the plaintiff] must demonstrate that a seizure occurred and that it was unreasonable.”). “There is no question, therefore, that [K.C.R.] ultimately b[ore] the burden of persuasion in this case.” Am. Fed’n of State, Cty. & Mun. Emps. Council 79 v. Scott, 717 F.3d 851, 880 (11th Cir. 2013). Once a plaintiff shows that an arrest occurred in her home and that it was conducted without a warrant, it is the burden of production that shifts to the government to present evidence justifying the arrest. See Fed. R. Evid. 301 (“The party against whom a presumption is directed has the burden of producing evidence to rebut the presumption.”). Thus, for example, when a plaintiff asserts that the police conducted an unconstitutional warrantless search, and the government claims that its search was legal under an exception to the warrant requirement, . . . the plaintiff meets its initial burden by demonstrating the absence of a search warrant. At that point, it is the government that bears the burden of coming forward with evidence that an exception to the warrant requirement applied. Am. Fed’n, 717 F.3d at 881–82. 32 Case: 17-14525 Date Filed: 10/21/2019 Page: 33 of 48 That shift of the burden of production, however, “does not shift the burden of persuasion, which remains on the party who had it originally.” Fed. R. Evid. 301. So here, once K.C.R. showed that there was a warrantless arrest that was presumptively unreasonable (which she did), and once McKinney came forward with some evidence that the consent exception applied (which he did), it became K.C.R’s burden once more “to show either that [her father] never consented or that the consent was invalid because it was given under duress or coercion.” Valance v. Wisel, 110 F.3d 1269, 1279 (7th Cir. 1997). In other words, it was her burden, not McKinney’s, to persuade the jury on the one question before it.5