Court Opinion

ID: 9896268
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-11-09 21:01:01.108649+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:14:32.234532
License: Public Domain

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                                              UNPUBLISHED

                               UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
                                   FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

                                                No. 22-4452

        UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

                     Plaintiff – Appellee,

               v.

        RE’SHAUN LAMONTE WILBORNE,

                     Defendant – Appellant.

        Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, at
        Charleston. Joseph R. Goodwin, District Judge. (2:21-cr-00162-1)

        Argued: September 20, 2023                                   Decided: November 7, 2023

        Before AGEE, RUSHING and BENJAMIN, Circuit Judges.

        Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.

        ARGUED: Rachel Elizabeth Zimarowski, OFFICE OF THE FEDERAL PUBLIC
        DEFENDER, Charleston, West Virginia, for Appellant. Monica D. Coleman, OFFICE OF
        THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Charleston, West Virginia, for Appellee. ON
        BRIEF: Wesley P. Page, Federal Public Defender, Jonathan D. Byrne, OFFICE OF THE
        FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER, Charleston, West Virginia, for Appellant. William S.
        Thompson, United States Attorney, Negar M. Kordestani, Assistant United States Attorney,
        OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Charleston, West Virginia, for
        Appellee.
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        Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.

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        PER CURIAM:

               Re’Shaun Wilborne appeals from the district court’s order denying his motion to

        suppress evidence of a firearm discovered in his backpack after his arrest. The district court

        denied the motion because it found that the firearm would have been inevitably discovered

        pursuant to a lawful inventory search. For the reasons discussed below, we affirm.

                                                     I.

               Wilborne was arrested outside of a Family Dollar store based on an active state

        arrest warrant. After he was handcuffed, the police recovered his belongings from inside

        the Family Dollar, including a backpack and two bags of clothes. The police searched the

        backpack and found a loaded firearm. Wilborne, the backpack, and the clothing bags were

        subsequently transported to the Charleston Police Department (“CPD”) station.

               At the time of Wilborne’s arrest, CPD had a policy requiring all property seized

        with an arrestee to be inventoried at the police station. Pursuant to this policy, the police

        were required to fill out a property report listing the seized items and indicating whether

        they constituted evidence that had to remain at the station or personal property that could

        go with the arrestee to jail. And under the jail’s policy, all personal property taken to the

        jail was required to be searched for safety purposes before entering the jail.

               Based on CPD’s policy, when Wilborne’s property arrived at the station, CPD

        Detective Jordan Hilbert searched the clothing bags and filled out two property reports. In

        one report, he identified the two bags of clothes and indicated that Wilborne’s mother could

        retrieve them. In the other report, he described Wilborne’s backpack and noted that it

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        contained a firearm and would be put into safekeeping pending trial. Wilborne was then

        interviewed and transported to the regional jail.

               Based on his possession of a firearm at the time of his arrest, Wilborne was indicted

        in the United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia on one count

        of being a felon in possession of a firearm. He filed a motion to suppress the evidence

        derived from the search of his backpack. The district court denied the motion following an

        evidentiary hearing, reasoning that the firearm would have been inevitably discovered by

        a lawful inventory search at the police station prior to Wilborne’s transport to jail.

               Following this decision, Wilborne pleaded guilty but preserved his right to appeal

        the district court’s denial of his suppression motion. The court sentenced Wilborne to

        thirty-seven months’ imprisonment, and he filed a timely notice of appeal. We have

        jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291.

                                                    II.

               Wilborne argues that the district court erred in denying his motion to suppress

        because CPD’s policy lacked standardized criteria to guide inventory searches and thus

        was legally insufficient. Reviewing the district court’s factual findings for clear error and

        legal conclusions de novo, United States v. Bullette, 854 F.3d 261, 265 (4th Cir. 2017), we

        disagree.

               Under the inevitable-discovery doctrine, evidence obtained through an

        unreasonable search is admissible if the Government shows by a preponderance of the

        evidence that police would have “ultimately or inevitably” discovered the evidence by

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        “lawful means,” such as through a lawful inventory search. Id. (citation omitted). In order

        for an inventory search to be permissible, “the search must have been conducted according

        to standardized criteria, such as a uniform police department policy, and performed in good

        faith.” United States v. Seay, 944 F.3d 220, 223 (4th Cir. 2019) (cleaned up). Such a policy

        need not be in writing, id.; Bullette, 854 F.3d at 266, nor must the government “elicit step-

        by-step testimony concerning such a policy to meet its burden,” Bullette, 854 F.3d at 267.

        Instead, there must simply be sufficient evidence to show that law enforcement had a

        standard inventory procedure “and would have inevitably discovered the challenged

        evidence by conducting an inventory search according to routine and standard . . .

        procedures.” Id. at 266.

               In this case, the evidence presented to the district court clearly supported its finding

        that the police would have inevitably discovered the firearm during a standardized

        inventory search of the backpack. Detective Hilbert testified, without contradiction

        elsewhere in the record, that whenever CPD officers arrest a suspect and there is no one at

        the scene of the arrest to take the arrestee’s personal property—as was the case here—the

        police transport that property to the station. At the station, officers then inventory the

        property to determine whether it is personal property that could go with the arrestee to the

        jail or evidence that must stay at the police station.

               Based on this uniform policy, even if the CPD had not searched Wilborne’s

        backpack at the scene of his arrest, they still would have transported Wilborne and his

        personal effects to the police station; searched the bags while filling out the property reports

        and characterizing the items as personal property or evidence; and inevitably discovered

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        the firearm in the backpack. Therefore, the district court did not clearly err in concluding

        that Wilborne’s firearm would have been inevitably discovered pursuant to a lawful

        inventory search.

                                                  III.

               For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the district court’s denial of Wilborne’s motion

        to suppress.

                                                                                       AFFIRMED

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