Court Opinion

ID: 9439981
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 07:04:44.612799+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:26:53.557177
License: Public Domain

LIPEZ, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The majority concludes that “any error the district court may have committed [in admitting evidence from the search] is harmless” because it is “beyond a reasonable doubt that the error complained of did not contribute to the verdict obtained.” I respectfully disagree with that conclusion. I must therefore analyze the legality of the search and the issue of harmless error.

The Search

I do not question the district court’s factual findings, e.g., I accept that Picou voluntarily consented to the search. I do, however, disagree with the district court’s legal determination that Picou had actual legal authority or, in the alternative, that she had apparent authority to consent to the search of Salimonu’s apartment.11
It is basic that “any intrusion upon a constitutionally-protected privacy interest without a proper warrant is per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment subject only to a few specifically established exceptions.” United States v. Donlin, 982 F.2d 31, 33 (1st Cir.1992) (internal quotation marks omitted). Consent is one such exception to the warrant requirement. Id.; see also Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218, 219, 93 S.Ct. 2041, 36 L.Ed.2d 854 (1973). In order for the consent to a warrantless search to be valid, however, the consent must come either from the defendant or “from a third party who possessed common authority over or other sufficient relationship to the premises or effects sought to be inspected.” United States v. Matlock, 415 U.S. 164, 171, 94 S.Ct. 988, 39 L.Ed.2d 242 (1974). The Court explained in Matlock that common authority requires
mutual use of the property by persons generally having joint access or control for most purposes, so that it is reasonable to recognize that any of the co-inhabitants has the right to permit the inspection in his own right and that the others have assumed the risk that one of their number might permit the common area to be searched.
Id. at n. 7. It is common authority which gives the consenting party the ability to allow the government to conduct a search “even when the defendant specifically objects to it.” Donlin, 982 F.2d at 33. This common authority requirement reflects an important principle: the consenting party does not waive the defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights. Instead, the consenting party voluntarily consents to waive his or her own privacy interest in the property to be searched, thereby validating the government’s otherwise-proscribed warrant-less search. “The burden of establishing that common authority rests upon [the government].” Illinois v. Rodriguez, 497 *76U.S. 177, 181, 110 S.Ct. 2793, 111 L.Ed.2d 148 (1990).
The district court erred in concluding that Picou had the requisite authority to consent to the search of Salimonu’s apartment. At the suppression hearing, it was established that Picou did not live there; none of her possessions was in the apartment; indeed, she had never been in the apartment before the day it was searched. Far from having “joint access or control for most purposes,” Picou’s authority was highly circumscribed, as was evident from the letter and the circumstances surrounding her presence (e.g., that she needed the building management to provide her with a key). She had permission to enter the apartment solely for the purpose of facilitating the move of Salimonu’s possessions into storage. Access to the apartment for that limited purpose cannot be reconciled with the joint access or control for most purposes which is required for valid consent. See United States v. Hyson, 721 F.2d 856, 859 (1st Cir.1983) (citing Matlock, 415 U.S. at 171, 94 S.Ct. 988).12
The district court did not distinguish between joint access or control over (and thus authority to consent to a search of) the apartment and joint access or control over the possessions inside the apartment when it emphasized in its decision Picou’s authority to “take and retain possession of the property in the defendant’s apartment.” See United States v. Warner, 843 F.2d 401, 403 (9th Cir.1988) (permission for landlord to enter apartment for particular purpose did not give landlord authority to consent to search of apartment); see also United States v. Fultz, 146 F.3d 1102 (9th Cir.1998) (distinguishing joint access to a garage from joint access and control over the personal property in the garage). Whether the situation would be materially different if the government had attempted to secure consent to search possessions that had already been removed from the apartment is a question we do not have to address. The fact is that the government decided to execute a warrantless search of Salimonu’s apartment and must justify this search.13 Lacking joint access or control over the apartment for most purposes, Pi-cou lacked authority to consent to its search.
The government’s alternative apparent authority theory for justifying the search also misses the mark. Even if Picou lacked actual authority to consent to the search of Salimonu’s apartment, the government argues, the search was valid because Picou had apparent authority to consent. Relying on Illinois v. Rodriguez, 497 U.S. 177, 110 S.Ct. 2793, 111 L.Ed.2d 148 (1990), the government contends that the Fourth Amendment is not violated by a consensual warrantless search if the police mistakenly, but reasonably, believed that the consenting party had actual legal authority to consent to the search. See id. at 188-89, 110 S.Ct. 2793. In Rodriguez, however, the police officers were literally tricked into reasonably believing that the consenting party had actual authority. See id. at 179, 110 S.Ct. 2793. The police in Rodriguez responded to a call and were met by Fischer, who showed signs of a severe beating. She told the officers where they could locate her assailant and agreed to take them to the apartment and to unlock the door with her key so that the officers could arrest him. Fischer repeatedly referred to the apartment as “our” apartment, and told the officers that she had clothes and furniture there. Id. Some of these representations turned out to be *77false, and the Supreme Court concluded that the lower court’s “determination of no common authority over the apartment was obviously correct.” Id. at 182, 110 S.Ct. 2793. Nonetheless, the Court held that “what is generally demanded of the many factual determinations that must regularly be made by [government] agents ... is not that they always be correct, but that they always be reasonable,” id. at 185-86, 110 S.Ct. 2793 (italics added), and upheld the search because of Fischer’s apparent authority to consent to the search.
In this case, there are no mistaken factual determinations by the officers and the apparent authority doctrine is thus inapplicable. See United States v. Whitfield, 939 F.2d 1071, 1074 (D.C.Cir.1991) (holding that Rodriguez “held only that the Fourth Amendment does not invalidate warrant-less searches based on a reasonable mistake of fact, as distinguished from a reasonable mistake of law” and concluding that “Rodriguez thus applies to situations in which an officer would have had valid consent to search if the facts were as he reasonably believed them to be.”); United States v. Welch, 4 F.3d 761, 764 (9th Cir.1993) (“[T]he doctrine is applicable only if the facts believed by the officers to be true would justify the search as a matter of law.”). Neither the Supreme Court nor any court of appeals that has applied Rodriguez’s apparent authority doctrine has extended it to validate a warrantless search by officers who have made a reasonable error of law. See United States v. Salinas-Cano, 959 F.2d 861, 866 (10th Cir.1992) (“[The police officer’s mistake] was a mistake of law rather then a mistake of fact, and Rodriguez therefore does not resolve the issue.”) (internal citation omitted).
Rodriguez does not purport to alter the legal standard for determining authority to consent to a search. Instead, it instructs that courts are to apply the correct legal standard not .only to the facts as they actually existed but to the facts as a reasonable police officer would have believed them to be. In this case, unlike in Rodriguez, there were no factual misunderstandings about Picou’s relationship with the apartment, and therefore the apparent authority doctrine is inapplicable. The officers only knew that someone who had come to the building with a letter ¡from Salimonu authorizing her access to the apartment had also been given a key to the apartment by the building manager. On the basis of this information alone, government agents went to the apartment and asked Picou to consent to the search. It is irrelevant whether they read the letter from Salimonu before or after securing Picou’s consent14 because, as discussed above, the letter as a matter of law would not “warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief,” Rodriguez, 497 U.S. at 188, 110 S.Ct. 2793,15 that Picou had “joint access or control [over the apartment] for most purposes,” Matlock, 415 U.S. at 171, n. 7, 94 S.Ct. 988. Under such circumstances, the warrantless entry was unlawful. See Rodriguez, 497 U.S. at 188-89, 110 S.Ct. 2793.

Harmless Error Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

Having determined that the warrantless search violated Salimonu’s Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches, I must inquire whether the government can carry its burden “to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the error complained of did not contribute to the verdict *78obtained.” Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 24, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967). The government’s theory at trial was that Salimonu organized and led a conspiracy involving Christopher Perry, Kim McKinnon, and Ralph Petrosino, among others. The case against Salimonu came from the testimony of Perry and McKinnon, who had been caught with evidence incriminating them in a drug importation scheme, and from Petrosino, who admitted his involvement in the conspiracy. Each of them had plea bargained in exchange for testimony implicating Salimo-nu. Other than the testimony of the three co-conspirators, the government’s remaining evidence consisted largely of (1) tape-recorded telephone conversations between Salimonu and McKinnon and Salimonu and Petrosino; and (2) the evidence seized during the warrantless search of Salimonu’s apartment.
The defense’s theory was that Salimonu had been mis-identified — that Perry, McKinnon, and Petrosino had falsely implicated him to protect themselves. One of the government’s lead agents testified that a woman who had been recruited to join but did not in fact participate in the conspiracy identified another man (also Nigerian) as “Laddie” and as the head of the conspiracy. There was evidence that for some time during the fourteen months between the end of the conspiracy and Sali-monu’s eventual arrest the government considered that man, Olayinka Apanpa, to be the “Laddie” they were looking for, and three searches (each of them pursuant to a search warrant) were executed on Apan-pa’s properties.
I now turn to a more detailed discussion of the government’s evidence.
1. The Consistency of the Co-conspirators’ Testimony
The majority notes the consistency of the testimony of the co-conspirators and states that “[t]he three co-conspirators testified in detail as to Salimonu’s leadership role in the conspiracy, declaring that Sali-monu planned the drug trips, paid the co-conspirators’ expenses, [and] gave instructions as to where the couriers should stay and what they should do.” In fact, however, McKinnon’s and Petrosino’s testimony was derived largely from what Perry told them. McKinnon and Petrosino had limited personal contact with Salimonu; their involvement in the conspiracy was for the most part at the direction of Perry as well as other, unindicted co-conspirators who did not testify. They were recruited by Perry and both had personal relationships with Perry which pre-dated and were independent of the alleged conspiracy. Perry’s motivation to plea bargain and implicate Salimonu in exchange for leniency was abundantly clear, and his credibility was further undermined by his admission that he had been a drug dealer of marijuana and cocaine prior to this conspiracy.
Petrosino testified to meeting Salimonu on only two or three occasions in the basement of the house of Perry’s mother where Perry had been cutting Salimonu’s hair. Any conversation between Salimonu and himself was brief, consisting exclusively of salutations, and he never spoke to Salimo-nu in person about anything relating to the conspiracy. In fact, Petrosino testified that Perry began recruiting him for the conspiracy in April 1992, more than three months after the last time Petrosino ever saw Salimonu in person. Petrosino also testified that he was given money in furtherance of the conspiracy on two occasions by a man named Foley whom Perry had instructed him to meet. Perry also told Petrosino how to get his pre-arranged plane ticket and how to acquire a passport, and it was Perry who provided Petrosino with money for his passport application. Indeed, on cross examination by the defense, Petrosino testified that on three separate occasions he expressed a desire to abandon the conspiracy but that Perry coerced him into continuing participation through threats and intimidation.
Although McKinnon likewise had relatively little face-to-face interaction with *79Salimonu, testifying that during the course of the alleged conspiracy she met him three or four times, she did testify to more significant personal interaction with Sali-monu than Petrosino had described. McKinnon testified that she met Salimonu shortly after Perry had begun recruiting her and that she rode around in a car with Perry and Salimonu for an hour, when Salimonu told her that she could make a lot of money and repeatedly assured her that “everything was going to be alright.” But it was Perry who told McKinnon when she was to travel, gave McKinnon her plane ticket, provided McKinnon with spending money for the trip, and paid for her hotel rooms. Although McKinnon testified that it was her understanding that Salimonu was reimbursing Perry for all the money she saw Perry spend in furtherance of the conspiracy, she got that impression mostly from what Perry told her. On the witness stand, McKinnon admitted that she had told the customs investigators an entirely different story (in her words, “a bunch of lies”) during her initial interrogation.16 McKinnon also admitted on the witness stand that she lied in an attempt to protect Perry (the father of one of her children).
The majority also emphasizes that the co-conspirators were consistent with one another even though they “apparently had no opportunity to communicate after their arrests.” However, McKinnon was arrested on May 29, 1992 and flew to Chicago the next day (accompanied by U.S. Customs agents) in order to make a controlled delivery to Perry. Perry came to meet McKinnon at the airport on May 30, 1992 and from the time Perry met McKinnon (who had been under arrest for over a day at that point) until he was arrested in the airport parking lot, Perry and McKinnon were alone (although under visual surveillance) with a chance to communicate.
2. The Tapes of Phone Conversations
The prosecution introduced into evidence five taped phone conversations involving Salimonu, one of which involved Petrosino and four of which involved McKinnon. (A sixth tape involved McKin-non and Perry.) Petrosino and McKinnon were under arrest and cooperating with the U.S. Customs agents at the time of each of the calls. The call between Petro-sino and Salimonu was not inculpatory. Petrosino attempted to draw Salimonu into a conversation about the conspiracy but Salimonu simply responded with confusion. It is undisputed that Petrosino had never called Salimonu in furtherance of the conspiracy; the U.S. Customs agents had to provide Petrosino with a phone number for Salimonu because Petrosino only knew how to contact Perry throughout the course of the conspiracy.
Three of four conversations between McKinnon and the man who was identified as Salimonu17 were likewise benign. Sali-monu is heard asking McKinnon how her trip was, helping to arrange McKinnon’s flight from Boston to Chicago, and sympathizing with how much McKinnon misses her children. In their fourth conversation, Salimonu asks McKinnon: “[d]id they go through your stuff at all?” When McKin-non responds in the negative, Salimonu says: “Thank God.” Of course, the jury could decide that it was in fact Salimonu on the tape and use this exchange as evidence of Salimonu’s knowing participation in the conspiracy.
*803. The Evidence from the Search
The evidence seized during the warrant-less search and ultimately admitted into evidence includes (l)the Foley Shomuga phone card and travel records, and (2)multiple cellular phone records. The former led the government to Angela Nash who testified that Laddie had asked her to get a cellular phone in her name for his use. See Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 485-86, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963) (noting that the exclusionary rule applies to evidence gained during a search or as a direct result of a search and applies to physical as well as verbal evidence). The jury could have used the Angela Nash testimony to ascribe guilty motives to Sali-monu’s deceptive acquisition of a cellular phone using a non-conspirator’s identity. Nash was the only non-conspirator fact witness to testify to such suspicious activity on the part of Salimonu, and the government argued her disinterested- credibility to the jury.
The Foley Shomuga evidence corroborated Petrosino’s testimony. Petrosino testified that “Foley” had given him cash to buy his plane ticket and, at a later date, cash for his trip. It is true, as the majority notes, that the prosecution had also discovered independently of the search and had placed into evidence a. letter from Salimonu to a former landlord in Atlanta establishing that Salimonu knew a person named Foley. But the phone card seized from Salimonu’s apartment and admitted into ' evidence put Foley in Salimonu’s apartment in Chicago and also allowed the government to subpoena Shomuga’s travel records from Salimonu’s travel agent. Until the warrantless search, the police had no surname for Foley. Those records, which revealed Foley’s travel between Chicago and Atlanta (a city in which other evidence showed Salimonu had shared an apartment with Foley), along with the Foley Shomuga phone card in Salimonu’s apartment, provided a key link between Petrosino’s testimony that “Foley” provided him with money for the conspiracy and the government’s theory that Salimonu was the conspiracy’s organizer.18 Although the majority minimizes this evidence, claiming that it did not “ha[vej any significance to the government’s case,” it clearly enhanced Petrosino’s credibility.
Angela Nash’s testimony also established a foundation for admission of the cellular phone records which were in her name but which, according to her testimony, reflected Salimonu’s use of the cellular phone. Although other evidence established that Salimonu knew Perry and McKinnon, the cellular phone records provided a documentary basis for arguing that Perry and McKinnon had truthfully described their involvement with Salimonu in drug trafficking. Perry’s appointment book had multiple references to Salimonu with an “HC” next to them. Perry himself testified that these were references to haircut appointments. Fifty-seven phone calls, however, from Salimonu to Perry, and another fourteen to the motels where McKinnon was staying with Perry, altered the evidentiary landscape significantly, and substantially corroborated Perry’s and McKinnon’s account of their relationship with Salimonu.
The government emphasized the significance of the phone records by preparing poster-size enlargements of summaries of them so that the jurors could give them extra attention. Then, in its argument to the jury, the government continuously urged the jury to rely on the phone records as evidence of the conspiracy and corroboration of the credibility of the government’s witnesses:
We know that [Salimonu convinced Angela Nash to get him a phone in her name] a couple of ways. We know that, number 1, she told you. We know that, number 2, because the contract for that *81phone was found in his apartment. Remember that? The search in September of 1993 revealed the service contract in the name Angela Nash for that telephone, 3152877.
And as exhibits in this case, ladies and gentlemen, as Exhibits 90, 91, and 92, you’re going to have the phone charts. They are summaries of the Cellular One telephone records. Look at them.
******
You have the [phone] records, you can analyze them. But what do they show, ladies and gentlemen? They show- — I can get the numbers here — some 57 telephone calls from the cell phone that [Salimonu] had in Angela Nash’s name to Christopher Perry in that one six-week period.
But more than that, they corroborate Christopher Perry, and they corroborate Kim McKinnon, because they show seven calls to the Day’s Inn where Kim McKin-non was being housed and fed, and they show some seven calls to the Kitchenette Hotel where she moved ...
******
What we have now is Cellular One corroborating Christopher Perry and Cellular One corroborating Angela Nash, who in turn corroborates Christopher Perry ...
******
And then where does this great conspiracy of Chris Perry [wrongly implicating Salimonu] reach? It reaches into the— the tentacles go into the Cellular One Telephone Company. They reach out to Angela Nash.
* * * * *
Now, try hard as he might, [defense counsel] can’t cover-up the evidence that does show [Salimonu’s] guilt. Do you remember the 57 telephone calls to Chris Perry, either to his mother or to the beeper, and then the' additional ones to the Day’s Inn and the Kitchenette Hotel? What do you think Laddie’s calling Chris Perry for? I want to confirm my haircut for six weeks from now. But I’ll call you again in an hour. But let’s just make sure we know. 57 times? Holy Moses. Get away.
These multiple exhortations by the prosecutor that the jury should rely on the phone records reflect the government’s awareness that corroborating the testimony of the co-conspirators was critical to its case. All of the main witnesses in the case — Perry, McKinnon, and Petrosino-— had plea bargained in exchange for their testimony and had other credibility issues. Although the jury could believe them without the corroborative evidence obtained through the search of Salimonu’s apartment, that evidence significantly enhanced the credibility of the co-conspirators. Hence the government repeatedly emphasized the importance of the phone records to the jury in its closing arguments.
It is an inescapable fact that “[t]he force of a prosecutor’s argument can enhance immeasurably the impact of false or inadmissible evidence.” Brown v. Borg, 951 F.2d 1011, 1017 (9th Cir.1991). That enhancement is particularly significant when the prosecution uses illegally seized corroborative evidence to remove reasonable doubts from the government’s case. I therefore cannot conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the evidence gained from the unconstitutional search of Salimo-nu’s apartment did not affect the jury’s verdict. I would vacate that verdict and remand for a new trial.

. It is unclear from the transcript whether the district court adopted the apparent authority doctrine as an alternative holding or merely acknowledged apparent authority as an alternative theory offered by the government. In any event, assuming the district court adopted the apparent authority doctrine as an alternative rationale, review of this legal determination is de novo.

. In announcing its decision, the district court also found that Salimonu would have potentially been subject to eviction within weeks of the search. Although the district court may only have been noting that fact, that finding is irrelevant to the legality of the search. It is undisputed that at the time of the search Salimonu was a lawful tenant of the apartment and retained a privacy interest therein.

. It is unclear why the government did not seek a warrant to search Salimonu's apartment.

. The district court’s factual finding on this point is ambiguous but it appears that the district court found that the government agents did not read the letter before securing Picou’s consent to search the apartment.

. "As with other factual determinations bearing upon search and seizure, determination of consent to enter must ‘be judged against an objective standard: would the facts available to the officer at the moment ... "warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief” ’ that the consenting party had authority over the premises?” Rodriguez, 497 U.S. at 188, 110 S.Ct. 2793 (quoting Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21-22, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968)).

. McKinnon's original story to the U.S. Customs agents was that she had been contacted by telephone by a man named Shawn Wilbor-ough who asked her to go to Indonesia to transport Nigerian healing medicine. She further testified that Shawn had put her in communication with other co-conspirators whom she identified as Bobby, Billy, and Jimmy; she said that she did not know any of the co-conspirators' real names and had only spoken to them over the telephone.

. The defense challenged whether it was in fact Salimonu on the taped phone conversations and presented expert testimony that the voice on the tapes was not Salimonu's.

. The jury did not have to find that Salimo-nu was the leader of the conspiracy in order to find him guilty. However, this leadership theory was advanced by the prosecution during the presentation of the evidence and arguments to the jury.