Court Opinion

ID: 9493432
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:07:51.759515+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:50.186358
License: Public Domain

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
If we had to decide in the abstract whether using anesthesia to recover drugs from a suspect’s mouth is wise, all things considered, then this might be a difficult case and justify a remand. My colleagues offer a thoughtful discussion of the costs and benefits. But this is not an action seeking damages for an unreasonable search, nor is it an anticipatory objection to a proposed search, as in Winston v. Lee, 470 U.S. 753, 105 S.Ct. 1611, 84 L.Ed.2d 662 (1985), where a court may assess reasonableness in advance. It is a criminal prosecution, and the search had the support of a warrant. Unless that warrant was transparently defective, the evidence is admissible; constitutional errors in the terms of (or basis for) a search warrant do not support use of the exclusionary rule. United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984). This record reveals more than enough to show that the district judge did not err in denying Husband’s motion to suppress.
The facts are simple, all the vital details undisputed. As police approached a reported drug-distribution point, Husband put in his mouth something large enough to produce a knot in his cheek. After Husband refused to open his mouth, the police sought a search warrant. While they waited for the judge’s decision, Husband began to twitch and sweat. Police feared that he was experiencing a seizure from a drug overdose and took him in an ambulance to St. John’s Hospital. At about 11 P.M. a state judge issued a warrant authorizing a search of “[t]he body of Eunice Husband” for drugs. Alan Gra-*637vett, an emergency-room physician at the hospital, told Husband about the warrant and asked him to open his mouth. Husband refused. Medical personnel then tried to pry Husband’s mouth open, but when he resisted they stopped. Gravett again asked Husband to open his mouth and told him that the alternative was the administration of a muscle relaxant that would cause unconsciousness. Husband still kept his jaw clenched, so at 11:22 P.M. Gravett delivered 40 milligrams of Ami-date in an intravenous solution. Husband was unconscious for about 15 minutes, under medical care the entire time. Nurses removed from his mouth three plastic bags, which held about 20 grams of crack cocaine. Gravett explained in a written statement to the district judge that this procedure was justified not only by the warrant but also by concerns about Husband’s life: “possible life threatening overdose (as manifested by seizure activity) and potential airway obstruction made removal of material in mouth Medically Mandatory to prevent possible harm to patient.” (Underlining and capitalization in handwritten original.)
Husband stipulated that Gravett, if called at the suppression hearing, would testify along the lines of his statement. Counsel representing Husband did not produce any medical evidence suggesting that Anúdate was an inappropriate drug (or 40 milligrams an inappropriate amount) for this procedure, nor did Husband deny that the procedure appeared to the supervising physician to be “medically mandatory” under the circumstances. Instead of arguing that the manner of executing this warrant was unreasonable, Husband advanced two legal propositions: first, that a general anesthetic never may be used to execute a warrant; second, that if anesthesia ever is permissible, it must be authorized explicitly by the warrant. The district judge rejected both of these propositions and denied the motion to suppress. Husband then entered a conditional guilty plea to the crime of possessing cocaine with intent to distribute, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1), reserving his right to appeal from the denial of his motion to suppress the drugs recovered from his mouth. Fed.R.Crim.P. 11(a)(2).
My colleagues do not accept either of Husband’s arguments. A per se rule against anesthesia (or any other means of executing a search warrant) finds no support in the text of the fourth amendment or the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence. Cases such as Winston show that some medical procedures are unreasonable in some 'circumstances (in Winston the search would have entailed surgery to extract a bullet, which the Court deemed unwarranted because the bullet was lodged deep inside the body and its recovery was unimportant to the criminal prosecution), but no decision condemns an entire class of procedures under all circumstances. Opening his mouth posed zero risk to Husband, and the risk created by his obduracy also was slight. No evidence in the record suggests that Anúdate creates any dangers (even the danger of an allergic reaction). As for the second point: Dalia v. United States, 441 U.S. 238, 254-59, 99 S.Ct. 1682, 60 L.Ed.2d 177 (1979), holds that a warrant need not specify the means of execution. See also Richards v. Wisconsin, 520 U.S. 385, 396 n. 7, 117 S.Ct. 1416, 137 L.Ed.2d 615 (1997). The fourth amendment tells us what must be in a warrant: “no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” Nothing here requires specification of means to be used in execution. See generally Wayne R. LaFave, 2 Search and Seizure § 4.8(g), § 4.10 (3d ed.1996). The warrant to search “[t]he body of Eunice Husband” met all constitutional requirements, and it would be folly to require judges, as opposed to physicians, to determine how to search inside a person’s body.
My colleagues take a very different course, one of their own devising. They *638say that perhaps Dr. Gravett and the police should have waited Husband out. Eventually he would have opened his mouth, if only to eat, or would have swallowed the plastic bags, which could have been recovered from his stools some days later. They direct the district court to conduct additional proceedings to investigate these possibilities, which could have avoided the administration of any drugs and therefore better served Husband’s interest in bodily integrity.
Patience may be a virtue, but the question my colleagues pose for the district court is not one in which Husband had any interest. He could have offered medical evidence at the suppression hearing but chose not to do so. We should respect the parties’ decisions rather than prolong litigation because the record does not answer questions that we would have posed had we been in counsel’s shoes. And I do not suspect Husband’s lawyers of incompetence. Neither the police nor Dr. Gra-vett could tell what was in Husband’s mouth or how well it was wrapped; for all they knew he had a lethal quantity of drugs in leaky packaging. Gravett thought that immediate intervention was “Medically Mandatory to prevent possible harm' to patient.” Nothing in my colleagues’ opinion calls this assessment into question or implies that the procedures used to administer the drug (and to attend Husband until his recovery) were medically deficient, or that the use of brute force would have been superior to the use of muscle relaxant. If Gravett had not acted, we might now be considering a suit by Husband’s heirs under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, contending that the state violated his rights by not forcing his mouth open and saving his life.
Leon makes a remand pointless. By parallel to the Constitution’s knock-and-announce requirement for search of a dwelling, see Wilson v. Arkansas, 514 U.S. 927, 115 S.Ct. 1914, 131 L.Ed.2d 976 (1995), the police were obliged to inform Husband of the warrant and ask him to open his mouth, so that forcible entry could be avoided. They did this. Once Husband refused, the police were entitled to use force' — a battering ram to open a door, a drug to open a mouth. Even if it would be better practice for warrants to specify details of execution, this one did not; the error, if any, was made by the issuing judge rather than by the police. Likewise the state judge erred if, as my colleagues imply, he should have held a hearing before issuing the warrant. Maj. op. 634 (stating “our preference for more procedural safeguards in these circumstances”). What safeguards, in particular? My colleagues mention “a full adversary presentation and appellate review” (ibid.). An adversarial hearing at 11 P.M., followed by appellate review, while a suspect who lacks counsel is having seizures from an apparent drug overdose and may die if medical personnel tarry? Under these circumstances a warrant probably was unnecessary, see Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 770-71, 86 S.Ct. 1826, 16 L.Ed.2d 908 (1966); it is hardly the occasion to make warrants harder to obtain. Search warrants are issued ex parte even though they may authorize police to invade private places, papers, and conversations. Surely Leon does not permit a court to suppress evidence just because appellate judges prefer to replace ex parte search warrants with leisurely proceedings. The police did the right thing by taking the matter up with a court in advance. Leon holds that errors by a judicial officer do not justify suppression.
One assumption underlying the discussion so far requires defense. I have assumed that a warrant to search “[t]he body of Eunice Husband” authorizes a search inside his mouth, rather than just of his clothing and skin. Doubtless the state judge could have chosen better language, but the point of the warrant was clear. The judge knew exactly what the police wanted to do: get the contents of Husband’s mouth. The affidavit, which was sworn before the judge and apparent*639ly attached to the warrant, describes the situation in detail, -adding to what I have already mentioned that three officers “felt Husbands [sic] cheek and it felt like a hard rock like object between his teeth and cheek.” Police would not have asked for a warrant to search Husband’s person and effects; they could do that without judicial approval, indeed without suspicion. See United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 94 S.Ct. 467, 38 L.Ed.2d 427 (1973); United States v. Edwards, 415 U.S. 800, 94 S.Ct. 1234, 39 L.Ed.2d 771 (1974). The only reason to issue a warrant was to authorize intrusion into the body, so the warrant must be understood in that light. Whether or not the judge should have given that authorization, Leon shows that the results of executing the warrant were admissible in evidence — unless perhaps the warrant was executed by unreasonable means. But as I have already noted Husband does not challenge the means of execution, except to say that evidence never may be secured using medical procedures that entail unconsciousness, and that position is untenable.
Husband brought the muscle relaxant on himself by refusing to open his mouth. Note the gulf between this situation and that of Winston, Schmerber, and Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165, 72 S.Ct. 205, 96 L.Ed. 183 (1952), where invasive procedures were unavoidable, and courts had to decide whether obtaining the evidence at all could be justified. Here, by contrast, the warrant could have been executed without force and without risk had Husband cooperated — as he was legally obligated to do. My colleagues’ statement, maj. op. 632, that Husband “was not allowed to refuse medical treatment, or to determine the course of his own care”, is false on multiple levels: the administration of Anúdate was not designed as “treatment” or “care” for some illness, and Husband was given the opportunity' to rule his own fate — by opening his mouth. Police rightly may be required to ask suspects to open both mouths and doors before using force; and it would be unreasonable to use a medical means of conducting a search without medical supervision, but here the request was made and medical details were left to Dr. Gravett and his staff. This is a paradigm of conscientious police work.
The majority does not describe any means of executing this warrant more appropriate than the one Dr. Gravett selected. What holds their interest is the possibility that the police might have secured the evidence without relying on the warrant. In other words, the remand is designed to explore the question whether it was reasonable to. execute the warrant. As far as I know, this is a novelty. Treating execution of a valid warrant as itself unreasonable would eviscerate Leon and authorize suppression of evidence if the court concludes in retrospect that the evidence could have been obtained in some less intrusive way. It is like saying that if the police arrive at a drug dealer’s house, knock and announce their purpose, and are told that they will not be admitted, they should sit down and cogitate whether they could obtain the evidence by waiting for the inhabitants to emerge in a day or two to buy food. Yet if peaceable entry is refused, then police armed with a warrant may break down the door and conduct the search, without being exposed to a later inquiry whether the suspect might have been nabbed on the street' rather than at home. That’s exactly the position the police occupied with regard to Husband, though the place to be searched was a mouth rather than a living room or bedroom or telephone conversation or file cabinet, and they behaved in exactly the proper way.
A warrant authorizes (and when read literally commands) the police to perform a search. True enough, probable cause does not justify risky intrusions for minuscule gain; Winston holds as much! But if the judge asked to issue the warrant authorizes the police to use force to overcome resistance (and this is what every warrant *640authorizes), and the police are met with resistance, then force may be used. Evidence thus seized may be suppressed only when every reasonable officer would have known of the warrant’s invalidity. Cf. Ornelas v. United States, 517 U.S. 690, 698-99, 116 S.Ct. 1657, 134 L.Ed.2d 911 (1996); Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 236, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983); Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 419, 89 S.Ct. 584, 21 L.Ed.2d 637 (1969) (all requiring “great deference” to the decision of a judicial officer who issues a warrant). My colleagues do not believe that every reasonable officer should have known that the warrant to search “[t]he body of Eunice Husband” (that is to say, the inside of his mouth) was constitutionally infirm. Indeed, the very fact that the majority has difficulty assessing reasonableness even after a suppression hearing — and that a federal magistrate judge, a federal district judge, and the third member of this panel believe that there was no infirmity — show that an officer on the scene would not have known that the warrant was invalid. Leon holds that a court may not exclude evidence just because, taking a refined view years after the search, appellate judges believe that the warrant was infirm. Suppressing evidence because a judge disagrees with a physician’s solution to a medical problem could not help to deter constitutional misconduct by the police, the exclusionary rule’s only proper function. See, e.g., Pennsylvania Board of Probation v. Scott, 524 U.S. 357, 362-65, 118 S.Ct. 2014, 141 L.Ed.2d 344 (1998); Nix v. Williams, 467 U.S. 431, 442-43, 104 S.Ct. 2501, 81 L.Ed.2d 377 (1984).
Let us put Leon aside, however, and explore the roads not taken. What else might have happened? One possibility is that the cocaine would have dissolved in Husband’s body, destroying the evidence. A second possibility is that Husband eventually would have relented and opened his mouth. A third is that the plastic bags containing the crack would have passed through Husband’s digestive system without rupturing or leaking, so that the drugs could have been recovered by searching Husband’s excrement. A fourth is that some medical procedure not involving unconsciousness (perhaps a sedative or a local anesthetic that would have deprived Husband of control over his jaw muscles) could have been employed. Possibilities two, three, and four all lead to recovery of the cocaine. The inevitable-discovery doctrine tells us not to use the exclusionary rule when full compliance with the Constitution was bound to yield the same evidence. Murray v. United States, 487 U.S. 533, 536-41, 108 S.Ct. 2529, 101 L.Ed.2d 472 (1988); United States v. Jones, 214 F.3d 836 (7th Cir.2000).
That leaves possibility one: that delay would have enabled Husband to succeed in his quest to keep the drugs from the police. My colleagues observe that it is an open question whether the drugs would have been lost (indeed, whether Husband would have died as a result) had the police waited. Maj. op. 635 n. 5. True enough— but the answer is not legally relevant. That suspects could have destroyed their drugs, if only they had more time, does not justify suppression. The exclusionary rule is not designed to reward the destruction of evidence. See Segura v. United States, 468 U.S. 796, 813-16, 104 S.Ct. 3380, 82 L.Ed.2d 599 (1984). When deciding whether discovery was “inevitable,” Segu-ra holds, courts must assume that suspects behave lawfully. Spoliation of evidence (the first possibility) is not lawful, and all lawful alternatives lead to recovery of the drugs, so Husband’s motion to suppress was properly denied even if the warrant was executed in an unreasonable manner or should not have been executed at all. Arguments can be made pro and con about the wisdom of Dr. Gravett’s decision, but application of the exclusionary rule is out of the question.