Court Opinion

ID: 9369760
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-02-09 18:00:33.329217+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:16:16.944734
License: Public Domain

NOT FOR PUBLICATION                           FILED
                    UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS                        FEB 9 2023
                                                                      MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
                                                                       U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
                           FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,                       No.    19-30142

                Plaintiff-Appellee,             D.C. No.
                                                1:17-cr-00304-BLW-1
 v.

DAVID WILLIAM FISCHER,                          MEMORANDUM*

                Defendant-Appellant.

                   Appeal from the United States District Court
                             for the District of Idaho
                 B. Lynn Winmill, Chief District Judge, Presiding

                       Argued and Submitted July 10, 2020
                       Submission Vacated August 3, 2020
                         Resubmitted February 9, 2023
                               Portland, Oregon

Before: M. MURPHY,** BENNETT, and MILLER, Circuit Judges.

      *
             This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
      **
            The Honorable Michael R. Murphy, United States Circuit Judge for
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, sitting by designation.
      Defendant David Fischer appeals his jury conviction and sentence for

possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute, in violation of 21 U.S.C.

§ 841(a)(1), (b)(1)(B)(viii); being a felon in possession of a firearm, in violation of

18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1); and possession of firearms in furtherance of a drug

trafficking crime, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c). We have jurisdiction under

28 U.S.C. § 1291 and 18 U.S.C. § 3742, and we affirm. Because the parties are

familiar with the facts and the procedural history of this case—and we have laid

out some facts in a previous order—we recount them only as necessary to explain

our disposition.

      1.     Fischer contends that the district court erred in denying his motion to

suppress. We review the denial of a motion to suppress de novo and the

underlying factual findings for clear error. United States v. Perea-Rey, 680 F.3d

1179, 1183 (9th Cir. 2012). Fischer was arrested in the doorway of his hotel room

after an hour-long standoff with police officers who had been surveilling him.

After taking Fischer into custody, police officers entered the hotel room and

searched the hotel’s bedroom and bathroom. The district court had previously

determined that the bedroom “immediately adjoined” the doorway where Fischer

was arrested, meaning that “an attack could be immediately launched” from it and

the police officers’ warrantless search of it was a permissible protective sweep.

Maryland v. Buie, 494 U.S. 325, 334–36 (1990).

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      We remanded to the district court for the limited purpose of determining

whether the police officers’ search of the hotel room’s bathroom also fell within

the protective sweep exception, and, if so, whether the two items of evidence

seized from the bathroom were discovered in plain view as a part of such search.

We allowed the district court to make any additional necessary factual findings.

      The district court determined that the “officers were . . . entitled to conduct a

protective sweep of the bathroom,” and that the two items recovered from the

bathroom—a plastic baggy and a shard of methamphetamine—were admissible

under the plain view doctrine.

      The district court found that the area of arrest included the hotel room’s

bedroom itself, and that the bathroom “‘immediately adjoined’ the area of arrest.”

The court also found that prior to entering the hotel room, the officers did not

know how many individuals beside the defendant, if any, were inside. After the

officers arrested Fischer in the doorway of the room, they discovered Tymilynn

Uhl in the hotel room. The court also found “[a]nother person could have easily

been hiding in the bathroom.” The court found that for these reasons, “it was

permissible for officers to conduct a protective search incident to arrest to ensure

that no one was hiding within.”

      We agree. Fischer was on parole for aggravated assault, had a history of

drug offenses, and was wanted on a parole violation warrant. There had been a

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lengthy standoff with Fischer barricaded in the hotel room. The officers did not

know what they would find in the hotel room’s bedroom or bathroom, and they

acted reasonably in conducting a protective sweep to make sure no one else posed

a danger to them. Thus, as the district court found, the officers were entitled to

conduct a search of the bathroom as a “space[] immediately adjoining the place of

arrest from which an attack could be immediately launched.” United States v.

Lemus, 582 F.3d 958, 962 (9th Cir. 2009) (quoting Buie, 494 U.S. at 334).

      The district court also found that both the shard of methamphetamine and

the baggy were in plain view when officers entered the bathroom, and that the

incriminating nature of both was immediately apparent to the officers. The court

found that the plastic baggy in the trashcan was visible even from the bedroom,

once the bathroom door was opened to let a dog out. And inside the bathroom, the

toilet lid was open, and the shard of methamphetamine was floating in the bowl.

The district court did not err in making its factual determinations, much less clearly

err. Since the items were in “plain view” and their incriminating nature was

immediately apparent, the officers could seize them under the “plain view”

doctrine. Horton v. California, 496 U.S. 128, 136–37 (1990).

      2.     Fischer also argues that the district court erred in denying his Rule 29

motion based on the supposed insufficiency of the evidence. We review a Rule 29

motion de novo. United States v. Magallon-Jimenez, 219 F.3d 1109, 1112 (9th

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Cir. 2000). The evidence was sufficient to establish that Fischer possessed the

drugs, the firearms, and the ammunition.

      Possession may be actual or constructive, and “[a] person has constructive

possession when he or she knowingly holds ownership, dominion, or control over

the object and the premises where it is found.” United States v. Thongsy, 577 F.3d

1036, 1040–41 (9th Cir. 2009) (quoting United States v. Lott, 310 F.3d 1231, 1247

(10th Cir. 2002)). Fischer contends that the items seized from the hotel room

could have belonged to Juliet Summers (in whose name the hotel room was

booked) or Uhl (who was in the hotel room along with Fischer). But we view the

evidence in the light most favorable to the government and ask whether “any

rational trier of fact could have found” possession beyond a reasonable doubt.

United States v. Krouse, 370 F.3d 965, 967 (9th Cir. 2004) (citation omitted). The

testimony from Summers and Uhl places the locked backpacks and their contents

in Fischer’s possession and shows that Fischer had control over the hotel room

where the drugs and firearms were found, and which contained a key to the

automobile where the ammunition was found. The jury also heard evidence that

the keys to the backpacks containing drugs and the firearms were attached to a

keychain with a Harbor Freight membership barcode registered to Fischer.

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Rational jurors could easily have found Fischer possessed all the relevant items.1

      3.     Finally, Fischer argues the district court erred in determining his

sentence because it (i) mistakenly applied a two-level sentencing enhancement for

obstruction of justice, and (ii) imposed an unreasonable sentence of 360 months’

imprisonment. We review the district court’s interpretation of the advisory

Sentencing Guidelines de novo, the underlying factual findings for clear error,

United States v. Hong, 938 F.3d 1040, 1051 (9th Cir. 2019), and the application of

the Sentencing Guidelines to the facts for abuse of discretion, United States v.

Gasca-Ruiz, 852 F.3d 1167, 1170 (9th Cir. 2017) (en banc).

      The application of the two-level obstruction of justice enhancement made no

difference to the ultimate Guidelines sentence range because the district court

found that Fischer was a “career offender” due to his prior drug convictions—a

determination that Fischer does not challenge on appeal. As a result, the district

court also applied the career offender enhancement, which caused Fischer to

receive the highest possible offense level for his controlled substance offense. The

      1
         We reject Fischer’s challenge to the finding that the firearms were in
furtherance of drug trafficking, a required element of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c). The
guns were found in a backpack that contained enough methamphetamine for four
hundred individual hits, and a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms, and Explosives testified that drug dealers frequently keep their guns and
drugs together to ensure easy access to guns during drug deals. This “reveal[s] a
[sufficient] nexus between the guns discovered and the underlying offense.”
Krouse, 370 F.3d at 968.

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career offender enhancement would have had this result even without the

obstruction of justice enhancement. “There was no error in calculating the

Guidelines range since the result would have been the same either way.” United

States v. Seljan, 547 F.3d 993, 1007 (9th Cir. 2008) (en banc).

      The district court’s sentence of 360 months was not unreasonable. The

district court considered the relevant 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) factors, including “the

nature and circumstances of the offense and the history and characteristics of the

defendant,” and “the need for the sentence imposed.” The district court’s decision

to impose a 360-month sentence was not “illogical, implausible, or without support

in inferences that may be drawn from the record,” United States v. Hinkson, 585

F.3d 1247, 1262 (9th Cir. 2009) (en banc), because the record—notwithstanding

Fischer’s age of thirty-three and dysfunctional childhood—demonstrated his

extensive criminal record and a need to protect the public.

      AFFIRMED.

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