Court Opinion

ID: 9840765
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-20 00:01:04.2859+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:10:40.342756
License: Public Domain

Case: 22-50042      Document: 00516901289         Page: 1    Date Filed: 09/19/2023

           United States Court of Appeals
                for the Fifth Circuit                                  United States Court of Appeals
                                                                                Fifth Circuit

                                 ____________                                 FILED
                                                                     September 19, 2023
                                  No. 22-50042                           Lyle W. Cayce
                                 ____________                                 Clerk

   United States of America,

                                                             Plaintiff—Appellee,

                                       versus

   Albert Ramos Ramirez, Jr.,

                                           Defendant—Appellant.
                  ______________________________

                  Appeal from the United States District Court
                       for the Western District of Texas
                           USDC No. 5:20-CR-334-1
                  ______________________________

   Before Dennis, Elrod, and Ho, Circuit Judges.
   Per Curiam:
          The court having been polled at the request of one of its members, and
   a majority of the judges who are in regular active service and not disqualified
   not having voted in favor (Fed. R. App. P. 35 and 5th Cir. R. 35), on the
   Court’s own motion, rehearing en banc is DENIED.
          In the en banc poll, seven judges voted in favor of rehearing (Chief
   Judge Richman and Judges Jones, Smith, Ho, Duncan, Oldham, and Wilson),
   and nine judges voted against rehearing (Judges Stewart, Elrod, Southwick,
   Haynes, Graves, Higginson, Willett, Engelhardt, and Douglas).
Case: 22-50042        Document: 00516901289              Page: 2      Date Filed: 09/19/2023

                                         No. 22-50042

   Jerry E. Smith, Circuit Judge, dissenting from the denial of rehearing
   en banc:
           The panel majority opinion is serious error, and this matter is easily
   enbancworthy. I respectfully dissent from the decision not to grant en banc
   rehearing.
           The panel should have affirmed the conviction. There are at least two
   major flaws on the merits:
           The first is the majority’s errant conclusion that Ramirez did not
   abandon his jacket. A person abandons property when he tosses it into the
   trash or, as here, discards it onto a trash receptacle. That point is forcefully
   made in Judge Ho’s cogent panel dissent, 67 F.4th 693, 700–02 (5th Cir.
   2023), explaining in particular that “there’s no Fourth Amendment protec-
   tion for garbage left on private property in a manner reasonably accessible to
   the public,” id. at 701.
           I cannot improve on Judge Ho’s concise explanation and therefore
   won’t try to restate it. The panel majority mutilates existing law by failing to
   recognize that, as a suspect, Ramirez had no expectation of privacy once he
   had tossed his jacket over a fence onto a trash container in plain view of the
   apprehending officer. The district court correctly denied the motion to
   suppress.
           But that’s not the majority’s only salient error. The majority was frus-
   trated that Ramirez had no keys to his mother’s house or gate and did not
   sleep there. 1 Desperate to establish Ramirez’s expectation of privacy there,

           _____________________
           1
             These are dispositive facts that the majority does not disclose. And the majority
   misleads the reader by saying that “there is no reason to think that Ramirez would not have
   retrieved the jacket before going in for the night.” 67 F.4th at 698 (emphasis added). That
   implication―that Ramirez would grab the jacket and retire for the night at his mother’s

                                               2
Case: 22-50042        Document: 00516901289             Page: 3      Date Filed: 09/19/2023

                                        No. 22-50042

   the majority purposefully enlarges the definition of property by declaring a
   heretofore unheralded category that it calls “family property.” 2
           Not content to recognize Ramirez’s expectation of privacy just at his
   own house (a few blocks from his mother’s), the majority makes the following
   ambitious holding: “Ramirez’s placement of his jacket on family property
   ‘excludes the very idea of abandonment.’” 67 F.4th at 699 (quoting Liver-
   more v. White, 74 Me. 452, 455 (1883)). Remarkably, the only source the
   majority can claim for that bold pronouncement is a decision of another
   state’s court rendered 140 years ago. One might think that Fourth Amend-
   ment jurisprudence has advanced appreciably since the presidency of
   Chester A. Arthur.
           Nor does the majority cabin its embrace of the limitless notion of
   “family property.” Does it include (as here) only one’s parent? One’s
   immediate family? Grandparents? In-laws? Aunts, uncles, and cousins?
   One’s betrothed? A significant other? How about an intimate acquaintance?
   A former spouse? The majority does not say.
           This uncalled-for holding will predictably be used to open Pandora’s
   Box for miscreants who claim they never abandoned contraband because they
   left or discarded it on or at “family property,” however defined. It is a new
   chapter in Fourth Amendment law, courtesy of the Fifth Circuit.
                                        * * * * *
           Seemingly oblivious to the consequences of these holdings, the
   Attorney General did not bother to petition for en banc or even panel
           _____________________
   house―is false. Ramirez lived elsewhere with his wife (who was estranged from his mother)
   and did not sleep―regularly or even occasionally―at his mother’s house.
           2
           The majority employs the word “mother” or “mother’s” or “family property”
   approximately 21 times.

                                              3
Case: 22-50042        Document: 00516901289             Page: 4      Date Filed: 09/19/2023

                                        No. 22-50042

   rehearing. That is frustrating to this court where, as here, the panel opinion
   is seriously flawed.
           It is no secret that the absence of a petition dissuades multiple judges
   from voting for rehearing even where they disagree with the result or the
   reasoning. But even when the losing side is missing in action, judges are
   sometimes able to identify major flaws that undermine this court’s jurispru-
   dence. Those judges request a sua sponte poll. Most recently, that was suc-
   cessful in a different criminal appeal, United States v. Campos-Ayala, 70 F.4th
   261 (5th Cir. June 7, 2023), vacated for reh’g en banc, 2023 U.S. App. LEXIS
   23220 (5th Cir. Aug. 31, 2023). We can only hope that, having declined to
   support its position in an en banc petition, the government will do so at the
   sua sponte en banc rehearing of that matter.
           In the instant case, despite that a judge requested a poll, the court has
   narrowly voted against sua sponte en banc rehearing. As the will of the major-
   ity, I respect that decision, which could be the sum of (1) judges who agree
   with the panel majority; (2) judges who aren’t willing to bite the bullet where
   the government seemingly doesn’t care; (3) judges who believe the case is
   not enbancworthy; (4) judges who place weight on the fact that Ramirez is
   nearing the end of his sentence; and (5) judges who note that the opinion is
   now unpublished.
                                        * * * * *
           Let me dwell at some length on that last possibility. On May 10, 2023,
   the majority opinion and dissent were issued as a published decision, and in
   due course the case was assigned a citation in F.4th, but for more than four
   months the mandate did not issue. 3 Then the panel ordered that the opinion

           _____________________
           3
            This delay caused considerable confusion. The panel opinion had issued on
   May 10, but the mandate of this court had not. The attorneys and the district court over-

                                              4
Case: 22-50042         Document: 00516901289               Page: 5      Date Filed: 09/19/2023

                                          No. 22-50042

   be unpublished, and that unpublished decision―otherwise unchanged―was
   re-issued on September 12, while the en banc poll was still underway.
           Highly consequential opinions should not be designated as unpub-
   lished 4 in an obvious effort to discourage judges from voting in favor of
   en banc rehearing. I complained of this at length in Sambrano v. United Air-
   lines, Inc., 45 F.4th 877, 886 (5th Cir. 2022) (Smith, J., dissenting from the
   denial of rehearing en banc), and won’t enlarge on it now.
                                          * * * * *
           The majority opinion is a serious misapplication of Fourth Amend-
   ment law. I respectfully dissent from the well-intentioned denial of rehearing
   en banc.

           _____________________
   looked the latter. Unbeknownst to this court, in late June the attorneys, by agreement and
   thinking the case was over, had moved, in the district court, for judgment of dismissal of
   the indictment and Ramirez’s release from custody. The district court complied. Once
   this court became aware of that, it, on August 1, directed the attorneys to explain, sug-
   gesting that the district court was without jurisdiction in the absence of a mandate. The
   attorneys and court conscientiously agreed to withdrawal of the orders.
            That misstep was forgivable. Especially where no petition for rehearing has been
   filed, the attorneys and the public have no way of knowing why a case is lingering or whether
   the absence of a mandate is intentional or a clerical oversight. A judge may place an
   internal, confidential hold on the mandate (which is never shown on the public docket),
   either with or without a rehearing petition. A matter can linger in seeming inaction for
   weeks or months until the court resolves it either by an en banc poll or the judge’s with-
   drawal of his or her hold on the mandate. This is all a reflection of the fact that this court
   takes its work seriously and carefully scrutinizes panel opinions, irrespective of whether the
   losing side seeks rehearing.
           4
            The decision whether to publish matters because, per Fifth Circuit Rule 47.5.4,
   unpublished opinions are not precedent that binds the district courts and Fifth Circuit
   panels. By designating an opinion as unpublished, a panel can declare the winner it prefers
   without necessarily soiling the jurisprudence for future cases.

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