Court Opinion

ID: 9810073
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 21:38:55.242867+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:39:21.050302
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE BOATRIGHT,
dissenting.
145 The majority looks to the fact that Sotelo asserted ownership over wrapped packages that were inside the rental car she was driving and concludes that she has standing to challenge the search of these items. I believe this analysis is incomplete. As the majority notes, the test that determines standing to challenge a search under *197the Fourth Amendment has two prongs, which we evaluate under the totality of the cireumstances. The test asks first, whether the defendant had a subjective expectation of privacy, and second, whether society would recognize that expectation as reasonable. This two-pronged inquiry determines whether a defendant had a legitimate expectation of privacy in the item searched. I dissent because I believe that the majority ignored the cireumstances surrounding Sotelo's assertion of ownership over the packages when it applied its analysis. Hence, in my view, the majority did not consider the totality of the cireumstances or fully evaluate the objective reasonableness of Sotelo's expectation of privacy. As such, I respectfully dissent and would instead reverse and remand this case to the trial court for it to re-open the evidence on the issue of standing and then apply the totality of the cireumstances test.
1 46 While the majority describes the stop and search that occurred in this case, it is important to highlight a few additional facts that are relevant to the totality of the circumstances analysis. As the majority notes, a Colorado State Patrol Trooper stopped So-telo and her passenger, Mireles, for a traffic violation. During the stop, Sotelo provided the trooper with the rental car agreement. It listed Patrick Schooler as the renter of the vehicle with no additional authorized drivers. The trooper then contacted the rental company, which requested that he impound the car. Sotelo admitted to the trooper that she did not know the person who rented the vehicle-in fact, she knew only that his first name was Patrick-but she claimed that Mi-reles was friends with him. Mireles told the trooper that she had known Schooler for a few months, though neither she nor Sotelo could provide the trooper with a phone number for Schooler.
{47 Sotelo told the trooper that she and Mireles were driving to Maryland for the weekend to take presents to Sotelo's daughter and that they had stopped in Vineland, California to see family. Mireles, however, told the trooper that their only overnight stop had been in Nevada. When the trooper asked Sotelo what was inside the wrapped packages in the car, she stated that she was "pretty sure" that one package contained clothes and a microphone or singing machine, one package contained a large baby stroller with a car seat, and one package contained a baby bath. Three facts led the trooper to suspect that Sotelo and Mireles were actually transporting drugs: (1) based upon his training and experience, the trooper did not believe that the boxes in the car were of the correct size or shape to hold the contents Sotelo described, (2) both Sotelo and Mireles were unauthorized to drive the car and were not familiar with Schooler, and (8) Sotelo and Mireles gave inconsistent stories about the trip. As the majority details, a K-9 arrived just under three hours later and alerted on the trunk of the car. Based on these facts, the trooper obtained a search warrant for the packages, and upon opening them, found vacuum-sealed bags of marijuana.
148 As a result, the People charged So-telo with possession with intent to distribute marijuana. The defense filed a motion to suppress the marijuana evidence, arguing that the affidavit for the search warrant was not supported by probable cause and that it contained false statements. At the motions hearing, both parties acknowledged that the defense would file an additional motion challenging the search at a later time. But in an effort to handle the case expeditiously, the court and the parties agreed to go forward with evidence at that time, with the understanding that the People could later supplement the record and introduce additional evidence if necessary. Subsequent to the motions hearing, the defense filed another motion challenging the search, this time asserting that the police detained the packages for an excessive amount of time.
149 The People then filed a motion, captioned "People's Motion to Supplement Record Plus Argument on the Search Issue," in which they requested to supplement the ree-ord and introduce the rental car agreement. The court denied the motion on the ground that the prosecution had no need for the evidence because Sotelo's status as an unauthorized driver had already been established. According to the People's motion, however, the rental agreement had relevance beyond demonstrating that Sotelo was an unautho*198rized driver. The agreement also established that the car, by contract, had to be returned to California only hours after Sotelo was pulled over in Colorado-at which time she admitted that she was taking the car to the Washington, D.C. area for the weekend. Thus, the rental agreement suggested that Sotelo went beyond being merely an unauthorized driver.
£50 In my view, the facts surrounding Sotelo's legal status with respect to the car are relevant to the determination of whether society would recognize her expectation of privacy as reasonable, and also to the credibility of Sotelo's assertion of ownership over the packages. As such, the majority should consider these facts in the analysis. Unfortunately, the trial court did not allow the prosecution to re-open the evidence and introduce the rental agreement, so neither the prosecution nor the defense was given the opportunity to develop this evidence. Therefore, in my opinion, the case should be remanded to allow both parties to address this evidence.
I. Analysis
1[ 51 To explain my position, I begin with a brief analysis of the Fourth Amendment and principles of standing. Then, I examine the majority's reliance on case law and explain why it is misplaced. Finally, I conclude with a totality of the cireumstances analysis and recommend reversal and a remand to the trial court.
A. Standing Under the Fourth Amendment
52 The Fourth Amendment provides individuals with a right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, For the Fourth Amendment to protect an individual, that individual must establish that she had a legitimate expectation of privacy in the invaded place. Minnesota v. Carter, 525 U.S. 83, 88, 119 S.Ct. 469, 142 L.Ed.2d 373 (1998) (citing Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 143, 99 S.Ct. 421, 58 L.Ed.2d 387 (1978)). This requires a dual showing: first, that the individual had a subjective expectation of privacy, and second, that society would recognize that expectation as reasonable. United States v. Mitchell, No. 92-4120, 1994 WL 55597, at *2 (10th Cir. Feb. 23, 1994) (explaining the legitimate expectation of privacy test and stating that it is often met by showing ownership or lawful possession). In analyzing whether an individual's expectation of privacy is reasonable, the court must consider the totality of the cireumstances, including the defendant's ownership, lawful possession, or lawful control of the place searched. United States v. Abreu, 935 F.2d 1130, 1133 (10th Cir. 1991). The defendant's wrongful presence on the premises is also a factor that is relevant to the inquiry. Rakas, 439 U.S. at 141 n.9, 99 S.Ct. 421 (reaffirming the statement in Jones v. United States, 362 U.S. 257, 267, 80 S.Ct. 725, 4 LEd.2d 697 (1960), that individuals, "by virtue of their wrongful presence, cannot invoke the privacy of the premises searched" and chastising lower courts for "inexplicably" holding that a person in a stolen car could have standing to object to the search of the car).
T 53 I would emphasize that in determining the objective reasonableness of an individual's expectation of privacy in her personal items, where those items were found has been relevant to the analysis for at least three decades. The Supreme Court illustrated this point in Rawlings v. Kentucky, 448 U.S. 98, 105, 100 S.Ct. 2556, 65 L.Ed.2d 633 (1980), where it held that the defendant did not have standing to challenge the search of his companion's purse even though the defendant had placed his drugs in the purse earlier that day. Specifically, the Court concluded that even though the defendant claimed ownership of the drugs, he lacked standing because he had no legitimate expectation of privacy in the purse where the police found the drugs. Id. In this case, therefore, it is my position that the court must consider whether Sotelo had a legitimate expectation of privacy in the rental car as part of the totality of the cireumstances analysis. The majority, however, ignores the status of the vehicle in which the packages were found.
B. Standing for Unauthorized Drivers with No Legitimate Renter Present
T54 In reaching its conclusion that the defendant had standing in this case, the ma*199jority relies on United States v. Edwards, 632 F.3d 633 (10th Cir. 2001). As the majority notes, Edwards held that an unauthorized driver had standing to challenge the search of his bags within a car. Id. at 642. Edwards is distinguishable from the present case, however, because the defendant in Edwards was accompanied by the legitimate renter of the vehicle. United States v. Worthon, 520 F.3d 1173, 1183 (10th Cir. 2008). In situations like the one in this case, where a legitimate renter of the car was not present, the Tenth Circuit has made clear that Edwards does not apply. Id. ("Mr. Worthon also lacks standing to challenge the search [of his duffel bags] because unlike in Edwards, there was no authorized driver present.... Because he was not in lawful possession or custody of the vehicle, he can have no legitimate expectation of privacy in the invaded place.") (citations omitted). While the majority is not persuaded by Worthon's explicit statement that Edwards does not apply to cases in which a legitimate renter is not present, in my view, the distinction articulated in Worthon is sound. Thus, I do not find Edwards persuasive.)1
1 55 An additional problem with relying on Edwards is that the court in Edwards used the contents of the defendant's bag as part of its rationale for finding that the defendant had standing. Edwards, 632 F.3d at 642 ("[Edwards's bags] contained items such as clothing and toiletries in addition to the contraband seized by the police, and were being used to transport Edwards' personal belongings while traveling.... We therefore find that Edwards has standing to challenge the search of his personal luggage contained within the trunk of the rental vehicle."). As the majority notes, it is inappropriate to use hindsight for justification in the Fourth Amendment context. Maj. op. T 41.
156 By contrast, another Tenth Circuit case, Worthon, is directly on point and does not rely upon the contents of the item searched in its standing analysis. In Wor-thon, the Tenth Cireuit considered the precise issue in this case: whether unauthorized drivers who are not accompanied by a legitimate renter of the vehicle have standing to challenge the search of their personal belongings within the car. 520 F.8d at 1182. In that case, where a legitimate renter of the vehicle was not present, the court found that the defendant did not have standing to challenge the search of his personal belongings within the car. Id. at 1183.
1 57 In Worthon, a highway patrol trooper stopped the defendant, Myron Worthon, after he committed a traffic violation. Id. at 1176-77. The trooper obtained the rental papers for the van Worthon was driving and saw that the van was rented under another person's name and that the rental agreement did not list any additional authorized drivers. Id. at 1177. When another trooper contacted the rental company, the company requested that the troopers impound the van because the registered driver was not present. Id. One of the troopers asked Worthon whether the contents of the van were his, and Wor-thon responded that they were. Id. Because the van was going to be impounded, the trooper offered to take Worthon, his passenger, and Worthon's belongings into town. Id. When Worthon agreed, the trooper checked one of several military duffle bags in the van to be sure that there was nothing dangerous inside it before he put the bags in his patrol car. Id. He grabbed one *200of the duffle bags and immediately felt a large, square block that he believed, based on his training and experience, to be drugs. Id. Upon searching the duffle bags, the troopers discovered 245 pounds of marijuana. Id.
158 At a motions hearing, Worthon challenged the search of his duffle bags, but the trial court found that he lacked standing. United States v. Romero, Nos. 06-10072-01-JTM, 06-10072-08-JTM, 2006 WL 2663124, at *2 (D.Kan. Sept. 15, 2006). The Tenth Circuit affirmed the lower court on appeal, concluding that Worthon, as an unauthorized driver with no legitimate renter present, could not establish that he was in lawful possession or custody of the vehicle. 520 F.3d at 1183 (quoting United States v. Roper, 918 F.2d 885, 887 (10th Cir. 1990)) ("Mr. Worthon 'was driving a rented vehicle and was not named on the rental agreement or any other documents.... [He] made no showing that any arrangement had been made with the rental car company that would have allowed him to drive the car legitimately'"). Thus, the court found that Worthon could not have a legitimate expectation of privacy in the invaded place and held that he lacked standing to challenge the search of his bags. Id.
T59 That court's heavy reliance on the status of the driver demonstrates how significant this factor is to resolving the question before us. In fact, the Tenth Circuit in Worthon hardly relied on anything but the unauthorized status to find that the driver lacked a legitimate expectation of privacy in his personal items within the car. That said, I am not advocating that we adopt a bright-line test where an unauthorized driver without a legitimate renter present could never have standing to challenge the search of her personal items within the car. Instead, I would simply assert that the court must consider the fact that Sotelo was without any apparent authority to possess the car when it evaluates her standing.
C. Application to Sotelo
160 As Worthon illustrates, the status of the driver is an important factor to consider when analyzing the standing question that we are presented with in this case. Additional facts in Sotelo's case, however, make the status of the driver even more relevant to the analysis, particularly under the second prong of the test for standing. The proffered evidence from the prosecution suggests that not only was Sotelo driving the car without authorization and without a legitimate renter present, she also had no intention of returning the rental car to California by the time it was due that evening. The rental contract, which the trial court refused to allow into evidence, establishes that the car Sotelo was driving had to be returned to Fresno, California at 8:05 p.m. on the same day that she was pulled over in Colorado at 2:28 pm. The distance between Colorado and California alone would have made it impossible for Sotelo to return the car to California on time that evening. Sotelo, however, had no intention of attempting to return the car by its due date. By her own admission, she was taking the car to the Washington, D.C. area for the weekend.
1 61 Considering these facts, Sotelo's status appears to have been somewhere in between being an unauthorized driver and being the driver of a stolen vehicle. This is significant because courts look with additional skepticism at claims that a driver of a stolen vehicle had a reasonable expectation of privacy in her personal items within the car. United States v. White, 504 Fed.Appx. 168, 172 (3d Cir. 2012) (finding that the defendant lacked standing to challenge the search of his backpack and his locked box that police found inside the stolen car he was driving); United States v. Hargrove, 647 F.2d 411, 412 (4th Cir. 1981) ("A person who cannot assert a legitimate claim to a vehicle cannot reasonably expect that the vehicle is a private repository for his personal effects, whether or not they are enclosed in some sort of a container United States. v. Goldstein, No. 2:10-er-00525-JAD-PAL, 2018 WL 5408265, at *3 (D.Nev. Sept. 25, 2013); see also United States v. Caymen, 404 F.3d 1196, 1200 (9th Cir. 2005) (finding that the defendant had no legitimate expectation of privacy in the contents of a computer he fraudulently obtained because even if he had a subjective expectation of privacy in the contents, "such *201an expectation is not one that 'society is prepared to accept as reasonable ").
T 62 As these cases illustrate, the amount of privacy a person can reasonably expect in items within a car depends, in part, on how she acquired possession of the vehicle. Thus, while I agree with the majority that Sotelo's claim of ownership over the packages is a fact that the court must consider, her claim of ownership alone is not sufficient. As discussed above, it is a two-part test that determines whether an individual had a legitimate expectation of privacy in the item searched. Under the first prong, where we consider whether the defendant had a subjective expectation of privacy, it is highly relevant that Sotelo asserted ownership over the packages. My concern, however, is that the majority did not sufficiently examine the facts under the second prong, which asks whether society would recognize her expectation of privacy as reasonable.
( 63 When evaluating the objective reasonableness of Sotelo's expectation of privacy under the second prong, evidence in addition to her claim of ownership over the packages needs to be considered. Moreover, Sotelo's assertion of ownership itself warrants seruti-ny under the objective reasonableness prong because the description she gave of the packages' contents did not match up to the size and shape of the boxes.2 Even more important, however, is Sotelo's legal status with respect to the car. Here, Sotelo was driving a rental car without the legitimate renter present. She admitted that she did not even know the legitimate renter's last name, and despite both women having cell phones, neither Sotelo nor Mireles could provide a phone number for Schooler. Their inability to produce Schooler's contact information, despite having two cell phones between them, calls into question the truthfulness of Sotelo's claim that Mireles was Schooler's friend and that they had permission to use the car. The trooper, in fact, cited their lack of familiarity with Schooler as part of his basis for believing the women were engaged in criminal activity. Rather than relying on Sotelo's bare assertion, therefore, I believe we must consider these facts surrounding her statement if we are to make a proper determination about the objective reasonableness of her claim of privacy in the packages. The terms of the rental agreement, discussed above, have a similar effect on the analysis under prong two because they suggest that Sotelo went beyond being an unauthorized driver. All of these facts impact whether society would recognize Sotelo's expectation of privacy as reasonable, and they should be considered when the court applies the two-pronged test to evaluate her standing.
II. Conclusion
T 64 The trial court focused solely on the fact that the defendant claimed the packages were hers, and while the majority claims to have applied a totality of the cireumstances test, it ignored the status of the car and the other relevant cireumstances and focused instead on two facts: that Sotelo claimed ownership of the packages and that the packages were gift-wrapped. I do not believe that the majority, through this analysis, considered the totality of the cireumstances or fully evaluated the objective reasonableness of Sotelo's expectation of privacy in the packages. Thus, I would reverse the trial court and remand this case to that court with directions for it to re-open the evidence on the issue of standing and then apply the totality of the cireumstances test. Hence, I respectfully dissent.

. The other cases cited by the majority are similarly distinguishable in that they, like Edwards, do not involve an unauthorized driver who was not accompanied by a legitimate renter of the vehicle. See, eg., Robbins v. California, 453 U.S. 420, 101 S.Ct. 2841, 69 L.Ed.2d 744 (1981) (defendant owned the car in question); Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U.S. 753, 99 S.Ct. 2586, 61 L.Ed.2d 235 (1979) (defendant was legitimately present in taxicab); United States v. Buchner, 7 F.3d 1149 (5th Cir. 1993) (defendant's bag was found in an empty car rented to defendant's girlfriend; it is unclear whether the girlfriend was present at the time of the search); United States v. Broadway, 580 F.Supp.2d 1179 (D. Colo. 2008) (defendant rented the apartment in which packages were found); People v. Ortega, 34 P.3d 986 (Colo. 2001) (defendant was legitimately present in a Greyhound bus); People v. Hillman, 834 P.2d 1271 (Colo. 1992) (issue was the search of the defendant's trash he left out on his driveway); People v. Tufts, 717 P.2d 485 (Colo. 1986) (defendant had permission from the owner of the car to drive the vehicle); People v. Young, 363 Ill.App.3d 268, 300 IIl.Dec. 231, 843 N.E.2d 489 (2006) (defendant was a passenger in a car that the legitimate owner was driving).

. The majority also suggests that Sotelo "cover{ed] and sealled] the packages with wrapping paper." See Maj. op. 139. That conclusion is unsupported by the record. Furthermore, So-telo's statement that she was "pretty sure" she knew what was inside the boxes belies that inference.