Court Opinion

ID: 9486400
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:47:03.846764+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:42.370075
License: Public Domain

EMILIO M. GARZA, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
The majority concludes that “[t]he briefcase was beyond Skirvin Johnson’s immediate control, and thus the motion to suppress evidence obtained from the briefcase should have been granted.” Because this conclusion rests on a selective reading of parts of Officer Sterrett’s testimony,1 I cannot concur that the district court’s finding — that the briefcase five to six feet from where Johnson was sitting was within Johnson’s immediate control — was clearly erroneous.2
This was not a situation where “law enforcement officers have reduced property not immediately associated with the person of the arrestee to their exclusive control, and there is no longer any danger that the arres-tee might gain access to the property to seize a weapon or destroy evidence.” United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1, 15, 97 S.Ct. 2476, 2485, 53 L.Ed.2d 538 (1977). Officer Sterrett testified that: (1) Johnson was not handcuffed; (2) Johnson got up two or three times from his chair; and (3) “when [Johnson] got up, he was right next to the briefcase. He could have put his hand in the briefcase.” Second Supplemental Record on Appeal at 38. Based on these facts — and that the briefcase was only five or six feet away from Johnson — the district court’s finding that the briefcase was within Johnson’s immediate control was certainly plausible.
“[A]n appellate court is not free to reweigh the evidence or to ... substitute for the district court’s reasonable factual inferences from the evidence other inferences that the reviewing court may regard as more reasonable.” Glass v. Petro-Tex Chem. Corp., 757 F.2d 1554, 1559 (5th Cir.1985) (citing Pullman-Standard v. Swint, 456 U.S. 273, 284, 102 S.Ct. 1781, 1788, 72 L.Ed.2d 66 (1982)). Accordingly, I respectfully dissent from that part of the majority’s opinion. See Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 763, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 2040, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969); United States v. Johnson, 846 F.2d 279, 283 (5th Cir.1988).

. For example, the majority states that "Johnson was approximately eight feet away from his briefcase.” Sterrett testified, however, that Johnson was six to eight feet away; Johnson testified that he was five to six feet away. Whether Sterrett may have had an improper intent in searching the briefcase is, as the majority concedes, irrelevant to the issue of immediate control.

. See Amadeo v. Zant, 486 U.S. 214, 223, 108 S.Ct. 1771, 1777, 100 L.Ed.2d 249 (1988) ("If the district court’s account of the evidence is plausible in light of the record viewed in its entirety, [this Court] may not reverse it even though convinced that had [we] been sitting as the trier of fact, [we] would have weighed the evidence differently.” (attribution omitted)).