Court Opinion

ID: 9842945
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 02:22:30.543166+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:14:21.748106
License: Public Domain

*998On Petition for Rehearing
PER CURIAM:
Appellant has filed a petition for rehearing in which he alleges, inter alia, that an oral communication between counsel for the Government and the defendant which was not in the record gave the defense reasonable ground to believe that the Government would not contend that the officers had a warrant for Gilberto’s arrest. We gave the Government an opportunity to answer. Although it does not admit that the conversation was of the tenor asserted by the defendant, it agrees that in fact there was no warrant for Gilberto’s arrest but contends that defendant should not now be allowed to question the officer’s presence on the ledge since he did not do so in the district court. While there may well be merit in this position, see United States v. Knuckles, 581 F.2d 305, 310 (2 Cir. 1978); United States v. Braunig, 553 F.2d 777, 780 (2 Cir. 1977), we prefer to rest our decision on the adequate and independent ground developed in Part II of the opinion. When Oscar Arboleda, in his own words, “tossed” the aluminum foil package “out the window”, he abandoned any reasonable expectation of privacy. See Rawlings v. Kentucky, — U.S. —, —, 100 S.Ct. 2556, 2561, 65 L.Ed.2d 633 (1980). The dissent concedes that if the package had come to rest when it hit the fire escape, the defendant would have been “out of luck”. 997 n. 5. Fourth Amendment protections did not spring back into force when the package fell from the fire escape to the ledge.
The petition for rehearing is denied.