Court Opinion

ID: 9498541
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:19:58.885717+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:53.269350
License: Public Domain

SUTTON, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in the majority’s resolution of Keith Presley’s sufficiency-of-the-evidence claim (Part II.B), in its resolution of Kevin Davis’s Sixth Amendment claim (II.C) and in its resolution of the various sentencing issues that both defendants raise (II.D). Although I find much with which to agree in the majority’s analysis of Davis’s Fourth Amendment claim, I believe that the officers had probable cause to stop Davis and search his car and that this probable cause did not dissipate over the course of the encounter. I therefore respectfully dissent from Part II.A of the opinion.
Let me start by emphasizing my agreement with the majority. I agree that the initial stop of Davis’s automobile was lawful. I agree that, once the officers had stopped Davis’s vehicle, they needed probable cause, but nothing more, to search Davis’s Range Rover under the automobile exception to the warrant requirement. See Pennsylvania v. Labron, 518 U.S. 938, 940, 116 S.Ct. 2485, 135 L.Ed.2d 1031 (1996). I agree that if the officers had just “reasonable suspicion” to search Davis’s car, see Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), the “investigative detention” should have been “temporary” and should have “last[ed] no longer than is necessary to effectuate the purpose of the stop,” Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491, 500, 103 S.Ct. 1319, 75 L.Ed.2d 229 (1983). I agree that the government would be hard-pressed to satisfy the reasonable-suspicion standard in this case, given the 90-minute delay before Sabor, as opposed to Rocky, alerted to Davis’s rear hatch and the officers procured a warrant. See United States v. Place, 462 U.S. 696, 709-10, 103 S.Ct. 2637, 77 L.Ed.2d 110 (1983). And I generally agree that, in the context of a dog sniff performed after the *363officers have reasonable suspicion that a vehicle contains contraband, the police have no more right to get a second opinion (whether advertently or not) than a criminal suspect does.
My problem is that when the officers initially detained Davis, they had probable cause, not reasonable suspicion, that Davis was involved in drug trafficking. As with many criminal investigations, the relevant timeline for analyzing the Fourth Amendment claim begins well before the officers observed Davis and Presley meet on April 29, 1999. Through the winter of 1998— 1999, Chicago police officers, led by 25-year veteran Sergeant Patrick Scanlon, conducted surveillance of Presley and stopped four individuals with whom Presley met, finding cocaine packaged in large boxes on each occasion. On December 30, 1998, officers stopped Christopher Tram-mell after he had met with Presley, discovering 30 kilograms of cocaine in his vehicle. On the same day, officers stopped Elix Duncan and Kenneth Dunlap after they met with Presley and found 65 kilograms of cocaine. In March of 1999, officers stopped Holly Baskins-Spears after she met Presley and seized 38 kilograms of cocaine. On the basis of the first two searches, the officers obtained a search warrant for a building in South Holland, a suburb of Chicago, where they found cutting agents, presses for making kilogram packages, empty industrial size soap detergent boxes of Tide and Arm & Hammer and a mound of seemingly discarded laundry detergent on the floor.
By the time that investigators with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Narcotics Strike Force observed Davis and Presley on April 29, 1999, in other words, they had already witnessed Presley meet with four individuals who were later stopped and found possessing cocaine in large quantities and, so far as the record reveals, they had never once stopped an individual who met Presley and was later found not to be possessing cocaine. Then, on April 29, the Cook County investigators saw Davis’s silver 1999 Range Rover following Presley’s car. The investigators then “observed those two vehicles take different routes to a[] [home] in [the Chicago suburb of] Olympia Fields,” JA 1102, 1494, where investigators saw Davis meet Presley in the driveway of the home at about 6:00 p.m. During the course of their observations, the investigators saw two Tide boxes— boxes that connected this encounter to the drug packaging materials that the police had earlier found at the South Holland drug house — “on the hood or tailgate” of Davis’s Range Rover, with Presley and Davis standing nearby. JA 363. When the police stopped Davis on April 29, they thus knew that: (1) Davis had just rendezvoused with a suspected drug dealer, Presley, whom the police had already linked to over 100 kilograms of cocaine; (2) when the police had seen Davis and Presley together earlier that day, Tide boxes were “on the hood or tailgate” of Davis’s car; (3) Tide boxes used as drug packaging material had been found in the December 1998 search of Presley’s drug house; and (4) the officers stopped four individuals after those individuals met with Presley under suspicious circumstances, and each time the officers found substantial quantities (30, 38 and 65 kilograms) of cocaine.
On this record, the officers could fairly conclude that probable cause existed, namely that there was a “fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime [would] be found” in Davis’s car. Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 238, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983). See id. at 245 n. 13, 103 S.Ct. 2317 (noting that probable cause “requires only a probability or substantial chance of criminal activity, not an actual showing of such activity”); see also Ornelas v. United States, 517 U.S. 690, *364700, 116 S.Ct. 1657, 134 L.Ed.2d 911 (1996) (officer “may draw inferences based on his own experience”); United States v. Caicedo, 85 F.3d 1184, 1193 (6th Cir.1996) (consideration may be given to the particular experience of the officers conducting the search). Nor need the officers have established conclusively whether Davis or Presley drove away with the two Tide boxes the officers had seen on the hood or tailgate of Davis’s Range Rover. If, as the officers legitimately surmised, they had just witnessed a drug deal, the deliverer of the Tide boxes was as apt to have evidence of a crime as the receiver of them.
In the end, it took no leap of inferential faith for the officers to conclude that the fourth car leaving a suspicious meeting with Presley, like the previous three, would also be carrying contraband, which is why the case law pertaining to warrant-less searches of automobiles permits searches supported by a similar amount of information. See Maryland v. Dyson, 527 U.S. 465, 465-66, 119 S.Ct. 2013, 144 L.Ed.2d 442 (1999) (holding that probable cause supported police search of a vehicle when a “reliable confidential informant” told officers that “a rented red Toyota” with a particular license number would contain drugs); Labron, 518 U.S. at 939, 116 S.Ct. 2485 (police had probable cause to search the trunk of a car when they “observed respondent Labron and others engaging in a series of drug transactions on a street in Philadelphia”); United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798, 800-01, 102 S.Ct. 2157, 72 L.Ed.2d 572 (1982) (police had probable cause to search a ear upon receiving a tip from a reliable informant that an individual was selling narcotics kept in the trunk of the car); United States v. Pittman, 411 F.3d 813, 817 (7th Cir.2005) (“When both occupants bolted and one was discovered to have an arrest warrant outstanding against him, the police had probable cause to believe that a search of the car would turn up contraband or evidence of [a] crime.”); United States v. Jouett, 87 Fed.Appx. 539, 541-42 (6th Cir.2004); United States v. Fofo, 39 Fed.Appx. 184 (6th Cir.2002); United States v. Brookins, 345 F.3d 231, 236 (4th Cir.2003) (officers had probable cause to search a car when a reliable informant told them that the defendant generally made narcotics deliveries on a particular route and the officers saw the defendant pass a package to another individual); United States v. Burton, 288 F.3d 91, 100-01 (3d Cir.2002) (“Because the Task Force observed Burton leave what they thought to be a drug deal and place the results of that transaction in his trunk, probable cause existed to conclude that the [car] itself was involved in an illegality.”).
Nor is this a case like Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U.S. 85, 91, 100 S.Ct. 338, 62 L.Ed.2d 238 (1979), where the Court noted that “a person’s mere propinquity to others independently suspected of criminal activity does not, without more, give rise to probable cause to search that person.” Here the two super-sized Tide boxes at a minimum provided the “more” evidence that was needed on top of Davis’s suspicious association with a suspected drug dealer. See, e.g., Burton, 288 F.3d at 100; United States v. Pace, 898 F.2d 1218, 1240-41 (7th Cir.1990) (noting that although “mere propinquity, without more,” is insufficient to support probable cause, the fact that the defendants were seen leaving “rooms in which the police found large amounts of either cocaine or money” and the defendants were left alone at a home “with [] money and cocaine out in the open” established that police had probable cause to arrest them); United States v. Valencia, 913 F.2d 378, 383-84 (7th Cir.1990) (noting that although “mere association with a drug dealer was not enough to create probable cause [to arrest the defendant] *365absent other circumstances indicating” involvement in criminal activity, the defendant’s “apparent concern with secrecy ... provided the additional fact needed”). When both Davis’s and Presley’s cars proceeded onto Interstate 94 heading east into Indiana, the officers need not have eliminated the possibility that they were engaged in the entirely lawful, but rare, act of interstate clothes laundering.
Although this analysis establishes that the officers had probable cause to search Davis’s car immediately and to detain it at the start of the encounter, that does not end the inquiry. Whether because of an abundance of caution, see JA 244, 1056 (officer stating to another officer that she would run the first dog sniff “to establish more [] probable cause”) (emphasis added), or because they believed they lacked probable cause, the officers elected not to search the car immediately and requested a drug-sniffing dog instead. Two things then happened: (1) time passed and (2) Rocky (the first dog) failed to alert after sniffing the car. Neither development, however, eliminated the right to search the vehicle.
Doubtless, the passage of time is critical to the reasonableness of a Terry stop, see Place, 462 U.S. at 709, 103 S.Ct. 2637, but it is less important where the police already have probable cause to search property. “For constitutional purposes, [there is] no difference between on the one hand seizing and holding a car before presenting the probable cause issue to a magistrate and on the other hand carrying out an immediate search without a warrant.” Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42, 52, 90 S.Ct. 1975, 26 L.Ed.2d 419 (1970). Indeed, “there is little to choose in terms of practical consequences between an immediate search without a warrant and the car’s immobilization until a warrant is obtained.” Id.; see also Place, 462 U.S. at 701, 103 S.Ct. 2637 (“Where law enforcement authorities have probable cause to believe that a container holds contraband or evidence of a crime, but have not secured a warrant, the Court has interpreted the [Fourth] Amendment to permit seizure of the property, pending issuance of a warrant to examine its contents, if the exigencies of the circumstances demand it or some other recognized exception to the warrant requirement is present.”); United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1, 13 n. 8, 97 S.Ct. 2476, 53 L.Ed.2d 538 (1977) (permitting detention of footlocker based on probable cause); United States v. Respress, 9 F.3d 483, 488 (6th Cir.1993) (sanctioning a ten-hour delay in obtaining a warrant because “this was not an unreasonable length of time for preparing an affidavit, submitting it to a magistrate, having it reviewed, and getting the warrant issued”); United States v. Grosenheider, 200 F.3d 321, 330 n. 10 (5th Cir.2000) (noting that “the holding [in Place ] is inapposite here because there was probable cause from the inception of the computer’s detention, and the four or five hour duration of the detention until the warrant was procured was plainly reasonable”); United States v. Martin, 157 F.3d 46, 54 (2d Cir.1998); United States v. Rivera, 825 F.2d 152, 158 (7th Cir.1987). As these cases illustrate, the delay before the search occurred does not invalidate the search given that the officers had probable cause, not reasonable suspicion, to hold the car.
Precedent also generally establishes that a dog’s failure to alert does not by itself destroy probable cause. Illustrative of the cases is then-Judge Breyer’s opinion in United States v. Jodoin, 672 F.2d 232 (1st Cir.1982), which holds that a “dog’s failure to react does not ... destroy the ‘probable cause’ that would otherwise exist. It is just another element to be considered.” Id. at 236; see also id. at 234 (holding that officers’ actions did not violate the Fourth *366Amendment when, supported by probable cause, they held defendant’s suitcase for several days, even though “a detector dog sniffed the suitcase but the dog did not signal the presence of narcotics”). Our circuit, in an unpublished disposition, has upheld the detention of a suitcase although “[njeither [of two] dog[s] alerted to the bag” before a dog named “Pete alerted positively to the bag.” United States v. Stephens, 96-6551, 1997 WL 720412 at *2-3 1997 U.S.App. LEXIS 33049, at *7-8 (6th Cir. Nov. 14,1997). The Stephens panel noted that the defendant had used dryer sheets to mask the odor of the drugs, see id. at 3, n. 2; United States v. 141,770.00 in United States Currency, 157 F.3d 600, 604 n. 4 (8th Cir.1998) (“The wide-spread use of scented dryer sheets to mask the smell of illegal narcotics is well documented in the decisions of the Courts of Appeals”), and reasoned that the defendant’s lies to an officer and her drug-courier profile independently gave the police “probable cause to believe that [the] defendant’s luggage contained contraband at the time it was seized and detained,” Stephens, 1997 WL 720412 at *4, 1997 U.S.App. LEXIS 33049, at *11-12; see also United States v. Lartigue, Nos. 93-5356/93-5369, 1994 WL 151337, at *5-6, 1994 U.S.App. LEXIS 9342, at *14-15 (6th Cir. Apr. 26, 1994) (noting that the defendants “cite no authority in support of th[e] proposition” that “the failure of [the] canine ‘Pete’ to alert on the bag negated the existence of probable cause” and holding that “the failure of a dog to alert does not nullify the officers’ suspicions”); United States v. Vidal, No. 87-5952, 1988 WL 24216 at *1-2, 1988 U.S.App. LEXIS 3374, at *4-5 (6th Cir. Mar. 17, 1988) (rejecting defendant’s argument that “once the narcotics sniffing dog registered a negative response to the existence of drugs, any probable cause finding was destroyed”).
In a variety of factual scenarios, other courts have reached similar conclusions. See United States v. Williams, 124 Fed.Appx. 885, 887 (5th Cir.2005) (holding that, “[u]nder the[ ] circumstances, the failure of the drug dog to alert did not deprive the officers of probable cause to search the vehicle”); United States v. Ramirez, 342 F.3d 1210, 1213 (10th Cir.2003) (“We will not require investigators to cease an otherwise reasonable investigation solely because a dog fails to alert, particularly when we have refused to require that a dog sniff test be conducted at all.”); United States v. Gill, 280 F.3d 923, 926 & n. 3 (9th Cir.2002) (denying defendant’s suppression motion although a drug “dog did not alert” and noting that drug dogs “are not trained to detect PCP or methamphetamine due to the risk these substances pose to the dogs”); United States v. Glover, 104 F.3d 1570, 1577 (10th Cir.1997) (“[Defendant] relies on a line of cases holding that probable cause is established once a drug dog alerts on a package for the mistaken proposition that absent such an alert, officers are not entitled to detain the package any further. Contrary to [defendant’s] assertion, drug-detecting dogs have not supplanted the neutral and detached magistrate as the arbiter of probable cause.”); United States v. Frost, 999 F.2d 737, 744 (3d Cir.1993) (“When one includes both the fact that the drug sniffing dog did not alert to the suitcase and the fact that drug couriers' often mask the scent of drugs in suitcases so that a drug sniffing dog will not alert, the failure to alert to the suitcase is not inconsistent with the substantial probative thrust of information which [the officer] did include [in the warrant].”); United States v. Sullivan, 625 F.2d 9, 12 (4th Cir.1980) (upholding detention when a “dog did not show a ‘full alert’ ” but “did show an interest in one blue bag”); McKay v. State, 149 Md.App. 176, 814 A.2d 592, 599 (2002) (holding that “a drug *367sniffing dog’s failure to detect drugs does not automatically negate probable cause”); State v. Siluk, 567 So.2d 26, 28 (Fla.Ct. App.1990) (“We do not accept the argument that the failure of the local narcotics dog to ‘alert’ to the luggage neutralized the probable cause flowing from [a prior] alert.”); cf. United States v. Guzman, 75 F.3d 1090, 1096 (6th Cir.1996) (noting that a “dog’s interest in defendant Guzman’s bag” could be taken into account “when determining whether the totality of the circumstances established probable cause to seize [the] defendant”); United States v. Spetz, 721 F.2d 1457, 1464 (9th Cir.1983); Schmid v. State, 615 P.2d 565, 577 (Alaska 1980).
These cases reveal a near universal recognition that a drug-sniffing dog’s failure to alert does not necessarily destroy probable cause, and ample reasons support this approach. Canine searches are not infallible, for one. See Illinois v. Caballes, 543 U.S. 405, 125 S.Ct. 834, 839, 160 L.Ed.2d 842 (2005) (Ginsburg, J., dissenting) (collecting lower-court eases indicating that dogs falsely alert between 7% and 38% of the time). For another, the evidence of drug trafficking that the officers expected to find in Davis’s car does not invariably overlap with the evidence of drug trafficking that the average drug-sniffing dog will notice. Here, for example, Davis’s car ended up with $705,000 in United States currency as well as documents connecting Davis to Presley. Davis has offered no good reason why the failure of a drug-sniffing dog to alert here undermines evidence of probable cause arising from a two-party drug-trafficking transaction in which it frequently will be the case that one party leaves with money while the other leaves with drugs. For a final reason, making it easier for probable cause to dissipate due to a failed investigative technique may induce officers to be less cautious and to search more cars before exhausting preliminary investigative techniques. If an officer has probable cause to search a car immediately, why risk the possibility that an individual has done a particularly good job of masking the scent of drugs? Better to search the vehicle without calling for a dog sniff. And the principle extends beyond the dog-sniff context. Why, to take just one other example, conduct a breathalyzer test— which may be fallible for reasons similar to a dog sniff, see Marshall v. Columbia Lea Reg’l Hosp., 345 F.3d 1157, 1161 (10th Cir.2003) — if a driver appears visibly intoxicated? Better, an officer might conclude, to arrest first and perform additional investigations later.
The only case that Davis has cited in support of his position, United States v. Jacobs, 986 F.2d 1231 (8th Cir.1993), does nothing to derail this train of analysis. In Jacobs, the Eighth Circuit held that a warrant application stating that a dog had shown an interest in the defendant’s package but omitting the fact “that the dog failed to alert to the package” did not set forth sufficient facts to “support probable cause.” Id. at 1235. In reaching this conclusion, the court noted that, apart from the inconclusive dog sniff, the evidence in support of probable cause was limited to the facts that the sender of the package had delivered it just before Federal Express shipped its packages, did not know the local zip code and paid for the mailing in cash. See id. at 1232-33. I agree with the Eighth Circuit that “[w]hile [this] information ..., plus the fact that the dog showed an interest in the package, might have provided reasonable suspicion that it contained contraband, more is needed” to find probable cause. Id. at 1235. And that “more” is precisely what we have in this case. In the final analysis, I would conclude that under these particular circumstances — where the police have *368directly observed an individual appear to exchange large detergent boxes with a suspected drug dealer in a manner that is consistent with past surveillance that has led to the capture of large quantities of cocaine on several occasions — the police did not lose probable cause because of a failed dog sniff.
I would affirm Davis’s and Presley’s convictions and remand to the district court for resentencing.