Opinion ID: 700653
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Voluntariness of Mr. Willis' Consent to Search

Text: 15 Mr. Willis next submits that his verbal consent to the search of his truck and trailer was not voluntary. According to the defendant, Trooper Hartman arranged the consent to search form under the warning ticket on his clipboard so that its signature line was at the bottom. The officer then told the defendant, as he handed him the clipboard, that he was giving him just a warning, and that he should sign it at the bottom. Mr. Willis mistakenly signed the consent form rather than the warning ticket. The defendant further points out that the officer did not advise him of his mistake until he was seeking verbal consent to search the vehicles, and did not tell him that he could withdraw the written consent. 5 Under these circumstances, contends Mr. Willis, the trooper's use of the written consent while seeking verbal consent for the search was improper and caused the verbal consent not to be a product of the defendant's free will. 16 In Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218, 93 S.Ct. 2041, 36 L.Ed.2d 854 (1973), the Supreme Court of the United States held that whether a consent to search was voluntary is a question of fact to be determined from the totality of all the circumstances. Id. at 227, 93 S.Ct. at 2048. We review the district court's factual determination for clear error. United States v. Price, 54 F.3d 342, 345 (7th Cir.1995). If the consent to search is voluntary, that consent removes the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement. Quinones-Sandoval, 943 F.2d at 774. The burden of proving voluntariness, however, is on the government. United States v. Taylor, 31 F.3d 459, 463 (7th Cir.1994) (citing Schneckloth, 412 U.S. at 222, 93 S.Ct. at 2045). 17 The district court, at the suppression hearing, considered whether the trooper intentionally had obtained Mr. Willis' signature on the wrong form in order to coerce his oral consent. After hearing all the testimony and argument of counsel, the court concluded that the trooper's offer to Mr. Willis to review the written consent form was an opportunity for Mr. Willis to withdraw his consent. 6 The court then rejected the defendant's contention that the officer intentionally obtained Mr. Willis' signature on the wrong document to get a verbal consent to search: 18 THE COURT: But that isn't the evidence in this case. The evidence in this case is that it was clearly a mistake and an intentional accidental mistake and that the officer told your client about it, you signed the wrong form, can I search your truck, do you want to read this, do you want to look this over, and he said no, go ahead, search it. And see, it seems to me that it's quite clear that at any time your client wanted to, up until the time that they had some probable cause to make an arrest, which [was] ... certainly before he ever opened the door and went into the trailer your client could have said, I changed my mind, I'm late, have a nice day.... 19 ... 20 ... [Y]ou're saying that there is psychologically an action that takes away the voluntariness of it, and I don't see that. I think it was a good search. Motion to suppress is denied. 21 Tr.II at 54-55. 22 In adjudicating the issue of voluntary consent to search, the district court was faced with a situation that would remind any Judge of the Third Branch of the priorities that must govern his judicial actions. The modus operandi of the trooper raised a very serious question about the voluntariness of the consent. The possibility that the officer overstepped his bounds was a very real one. Upon examination of the record--and mindful of the limitations of our own authority to review the factual findings of the district court--we must conclude that the district court's review of the voluntariness of Mr. Willis' consent was an adequate discharge of its responsibilities. Upon examination of the totality of the circumstances, the district court determined that Mr. Willis could have withdrawn his consent at any time, and that the trooper gave him the opportunity. 23 Although we must leave undisturbed the decision of the district court in this case, we note that the trooper testified that it was his practice to place the consent to search form under the ticket, and to write an X where the signature should be made on that form. 7 As long as this practice persists, federal judicial officers scrutinizing claims that consents to search were voluntary must be demanding in their insistence that the government shoulder its burden of establishing that any consent, written or oral, that is arguably the product of this procedure, was indeed a voluntary one.