Court Opinion

ID: 9495313
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:59:21.527179+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:56.139256
License: Public Domain

*685BOGGS, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
United States District Judge James Todd made a specific credibility finding that Haynes, the defendant in this case, had consented to a search of his car. The judge did so after having a full hearing in which he personally observed testimony by all of the potential witnesses, including the defendant himself. I believe that the district judge did not commit clear error in that factual determination, and thus I would affirm his denial of the motion to suppress the gun found in that search. I therefore respectfully dissent as to as to the contrary holding of the court. I concur in Parts III.B.l (exigent circumstances do not support the search) and III.C (affirming refusal to suppress Haynes’s statement) of the court’s opinion.
As with any event testified to by a large and contentious number of witnesses, there are some contradictions between the testimony of many of the witnesses. However, two fairly clear story lines emerge from the testimony given before the district judge. The basic story line of the government is that a number of police officers found Haynes hiding in an upstairs bedroom. He was arrested and handcuffed at that point, and was escorted out of the building by Officers Carr and Lemons. When they arrived at a patrol car that was waiting in front of the building, they patted him down, found the keys to his car, and obtained his specific consent to search the car. This account is completely consistent with the testimony of Carr and Lemons, and is not specifically contradicted by any of the testimony by the other police officers.
Officer George, whose testimony is cited as contradictory to Lemons and Carr, Maj. Op. at 673, is simply not contradictory. He indicates that he merely assumed that a pat down would have been done in the apartment. (“I would think so.” JA 102). He does not say that Haynes was patted down in the apartment. He concedes that he did not know if any keys were removed from Haynes, nor did he see any officer, especially not Carr or Lemons, depart with the keys. (JA 102-03)
The other points stated by our court in casting some doubt on the credibility of Carr and Lemons either relate to earlier events such as the entry into the house, Maj. Op. at 675-76, or are simply the variations that can be expected in any situation with vigorous and clever cross examination. It is not for this court to decide that the district judge chose unwisely in deciding to believe the main thread of the officers’ account rather than that of Haynes and his witnesses.
A conflicting story line is provided by Haynes, and supported in varying degrees by several citizen witnesses. This story line is that a single officer left the house while Haynes and other officers were still inside the house. That officer went into the car, possibly using keys obtained from Haynes, and was at least partially inside the car when Haynes was brought out of the building by two police officers. By this account, Haynes reacted loudly, profanely, and negatively to the officer’s presence. By his account, Haynes at no time consented to any search of his car.
On balance, Judge Todd, having had the opportunity to observe all of the witnesses, concluded that he credited the officers’ accounts that Haynes had consented. It is true that the judge gave some colorful, and perhaps ill-advised under the circumstances, descriptions of the difficulties of the case, characterizing it as “trying to catch moonbeams in a jar.” (JA 251) Despite the majority’s reliance on this phrase (see pages 681), I do not read it as the judge admitting that no truthful determination could be made and thus, a fortiori, no conclusion as to the voluntariness of the *686consent. Rather, I read it as simply being a colorful way of indicating that the evidence was so conflicting that an ultimate resolution might only be possible in the mind of God, but as a judge charged with decision-making responsibility, the judge found the officers to be credible.
It is true that, in the of course his oral presentation from the bench, the judge stated that: “[it] does seem clear that somebody went into the car while Mr. Haynes was still in the house.” (JA 250). Since he ultimately placed no controlling weight on that statement, his statement can, in my view, best be read as a example of the dangers of ruling from the bench without a review of the transcript and a subsequent written conformation or correction of that transcript. Rather, I would read that statement as not contradicting the officers’ general credibility, but simply noting the fact that there was consistent testimony by some of the defense witnesses as to their version. The judge then chose to rule on the basis that there was valid consent even if there had been an earlier search.
In particular, the officers’ accounts are consistent that two officers, Carr and Lemons, took control of Haynes in the bedroom, took him outside the building and searched him and obtained the key. There is no indication from any source that any officer other than Carr and Lemons participated in this endeavor, nor that any other specific officer took the keys and went out to the car.
On the other hand, the testimony of the opposing witnesses is uncertain and contradictory on this point. If Carr and Lemons were the two officers who took custody of Haynes and took him out of the building, then the officer who made the alleged “early search” must have been someone else. Yet the citizen witnesses have no consistent theory of who that officer was. One witness, Carla Vibbert, specifically identified the officer who did so as Officer George, but also testified, that the searching officer was in uniform, when it is undisputed that George was in plain clothes. (JA 114-17). Haynes implies that Lemons did not participate in taking him out of the building (JA 240), making it plausible for Lemons to have been the initial searching officer, but he then has no explanation for the identity of the other of the two officers who took him out of the building, and even his own witnesses agree that there were two officers who did that.
To the extent that there were inconsistencies in the officers’ various stories, as stated by Judge Todd in passing (JA 250), those inconsistencies appear to focus on the initial entry into the building, by Vast-binder, Kelly, and others, centering on who it was that opened the door, and how that person was treated. There is thus no inconsistency, either logically or in the weighing of credibility, in Judge Todd’s finding.
The second problematic result in the majority opinion concerns the correct legal rule, even when we assume that there had been an earlier search. Under this circumstance, the court is correct that the earlier search, if it uncovered relevant evidence, would not be validated by a subsequent consent. However, the principle is equally well established that a second search can be valid if supported by independent consent. See United States v. Dice, 200 F.3d 978, 983 (6th Cir.2000); United States v. Carson, 793 F.2d 1141, 1155-58 (10th Cir.1986). In this case, it seems undisputed from the facts that if there were an earlier search, that search did not uncover the relevant evidence of the illicit firearm. The only testimony as to the discovery of that firearm is that it was done by Officer Lemons, subsequent to Haynes’s having been placed in the police car. The gun was found behind the *687driver’s seat, under KFC sacks and papers.” (JA 165). Therefore, the first search would be relevant only to the extent that it in some way overbore the will of Haynes or caused him to believe that any resistance to a request would be futile. I believe that the record will not support such a conclusion.
First, there is no indication in the judge’s findings that Haynes even knew of any putative earlier search. The majority’s opinion states that he saw an earlier search. Maj. Op. at 683-84. While Haynes’s version of the facts is that the search was going on when he came out of the house, there is nothing in the judge’s ruling that indicates that he credited that statement In fact, Judge Todd specifically stated (JA 253), “I don’t credit Mr. Haynes’ testimony.”
There is also no indication that the officers made any coercive or even persuasive statements to Haynes based on the earlier search (for example, something like: “We know you have a gun in there” or: “It’ll go easier on you if you consent”). Haynes’s extensive familiarity with the criminal justice system, alluded to by all parties, the district court, and the majority opinion, is some support for a finding that his consent, if indeed given (as the judge’s credibility determination concluded), was a knowing and voluntary one.
The court’s analogy to and reliance on United States v. Worley, 193 F.3d 380, 386-87 (6th Cir.1999) is, in my opinion, misplaced. In Worley, we were simply interpreting a statement that the defendant clearly made: “You’ve got the badge, I guess you can.” Under those circumstances, we held that the statement indicated a submission to authority rather than consent, and certainly not a clear and positive statement of consent. In our case, if we do not find clear error in the judge’s determination of consent, we are left with interpreting a far more ambiguous set of circumstances. Other than the general fact of being under arrest, which does not vitiate consent to a search, there was nothing in the facts found credible by the district judge that would lead to a finding of lack of voluntariness. On the judge’s credibility finding, Haynes’s statements were “clear and positive” as to consent.
It is true that the testimony reveals two very different general stories. I, or any other judge, reading the cold record, might be inclined to believe that Haynes’s is closer to the truth than that of the police officers. However, that is not our task. The district judge saw the witnesses, made a defensible conclusion in the face of conflicting evidence, and did not, in my opinion, commit clear error factually, or any error legally. Indeed, the majority opinion states, at page 18: “It may be, as the district court found, that Haynes consented to the search of his car after it had already begun.” If that is so, then the judge made a choice between two possible stories. The court’s analysis of reasons to disagree with Judge Todd (especially at lines 356-99) does not, in my opinion, rise to the level cited in Anderson v. City of Bessemer City, 470 U.S. 564, 575, 105 S.Ct. 1504, 84 L.Ed.2d 518 (1985). No objective evidence contradicts the officers’ story; nor are the stories so internally inconsistent or implausible on their face that no one could believe them. The court’s contrary opinion either relies wholesale on the accuracy of Haynes’s witnesses, or holds the district judge to a falso in unius theory, where any indication of disbelief in a portion of an officer’s testimony bars the judge from crediting any part of it. This goes beyond our review for clear error, and I therefore respectfully dissent as to the validity of the search of Haynes’s car.