Court Opinion

ID: 9632200
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 11:06:46.737738+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:08:11.376863
License: Public Domain

IKUTA, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
Even if Young’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated when Officer Koniaris observed hotel security staff search the hotel room, the government proved by a preponderance of the evidence before the district court that the gun ultimately would have fallen into police possession. The alleged misconduct was thus harmless under the inevitable discovery exception to the Fourth Amendment’s exclusionary rule. I therefore respectfully dissent.
I
The facts before the district court in this case establish that, absent the purported police misconduct, the gun would have come into police possession lawfully. The hotel’s search of Young’s room was independent, private, and conducted prior to police involvement. After reviewing registration records, the hotel management realized it had mistakenly given Young access to the room from which the laptop computer and other items were stolen. Dirk Carr, Assistant Director of Security at the Hilton Hotel San Francisco, called Young and asked to speak with him. Young agreed, but when Carr and Roger Hicks, the Security Supervisor at the hotel, went to Young’s room and knocked on *724the door, Young did not answer. At that point, Carr and Hicks opened the door with a master key. They found Young’s gun in a backpack and an empty key sleeve (missing the key) nearby with a label matching the number of the burgled room. Carr called William Marweg, Director of Security and Safety at the hotel, for instructions. Marweg told Carr to leave the gun in the room and to place it on electronic lockout (meaning Young could not reenter), actions consistent with hotel policy.1 Given the late hour, Marweg told Carr to call the San Francisco Police Department in the morning to inform it of the theft and the discovery of the gun. Marweg testified that, in his experience, “individuals who steal items from the hotel do not then return to the hotel.”
Curiously, Young returned to the hotel later that night. Upon finding the room inaccessible, he notified the front desk that his key card did not work. Suspecting Young had stolen the missing items from the room to which he mistakenly was given access, Hicks radioed Officer Koniaris, who was on patrol outside the hotel, and told him that the hotel suspected Young had stolen items from another guest. Officer Koniaris engaged Young in conversation for twenty to thirty minutes, during which time he learned that Young had been arrested for numerous felonies and had spent time in prison. Shortly thereafter, Hicks informed Officer Koniaris of the gun found in Young’s room and asked Officer Koniaris to come upstairs with him to Young’s room. With probable cause to believe that Young was a felon in possession of a firearm, Officer Koniaris searched Young for other weapons and handcuffed him to a bench in the hotel security office. It was not until after these events took place that Officer Koniaris followed Carr and Hicks up to the room where he looked “into the room from the hallway.” Then, after Hicks showed Officer Koniaris the gun inside the backpack, Officer Koniaris entered the room and took possession of it.
II
As a disincentive to police overreaching in violation of the Fourth Amendment’s bar on “unreasonable searches and seizures,” U.S. Const, amend. IV, the exclusionary rule prohibits the introduction of evidence seized during unlawful searches. Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 398, 34 S.Ct. 341, 58 L.Ed. 652 (1914). Because the underlying goal of the exclusionary rule is to balance “deterring unlawful police conduct with the public interest in having juries receive all probative evidence of a crime,” courts have developed a number of exceptions to the rule where the deterrence rationale “has so little basis that the evidence should be received.” Nix v. Williams, 467 U.S. 431, 443-44, 104 S.Ct. 2501, 81 L.Ed.2d 377 (1984) (discussing the inevitable discovery exception, the independent source exception, and the attenuated basis exception). As the Supreme Court has explained, the purpose of *725these exceptions is to allow the use of improperly obtained evidence when police misconduct is harmless. Id. at 443 n. 4, 104 S.Ct. 2501 (noting “[t]he ultimate or inevitable discovery exception to the exclusionary rule is closely related in purpose to the harmless-error rule”).
In line with this harmless-error approach, the Supreme Court adopted the inevitable-discovery rule in Nix, “to block setting aside convictions that would have been obtained without police misconduct.” Id. In that case, police were transporting a man suspected of involvement in the disappearance of a 10-year-old girl when one of the officers began questioning him in violation of his right to counsel. Id. at 435, 104 S.Ct. 2501. The suspect made incriminating statements and directed the officers to the child’s body. Id. at 436, 104 S.Ct. 2501. Meanwhile, a search team was busy combing the woods where the body was located. Id. At trial, the prosecution sought to admit evidence concerning the body’s location and condition. The accused moved to suppress the evidence, but the state court denied the motion, concluding the search team would have found the body a short while later. Id. at 437-38, 104 S.Ct. 2501. In subsequent habeas proceedings, the federal district court denied relief for the same reason. Id. at 439, 104 S.Ct. 2501. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that, “[i]f the prosecution can establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the information ultimately or inevitably would have been discovered by lawful means ... then the deterrence rationale has so little basis that the evidence should be received. Anything less would reject logic, experience, and common sense.” Id. at 444, 104 S.Ct. 2501 (footnote omitted). Because the body “would ultimately or inevitably have been discovered even if no violation of any constitutional or statutory provision had taken place,” id. at 434, 104 S.Ct. 2501, the government was not precluded from introducing evidence concerning its discovery, id. at 450, 104 S.Ct. 2501.
In applying Nix, we have considered whether evidence may “ultimately or inevitably” be discovered through the exercise of ordinary police practices. In United States v. Lang, 149 F.3d 1044, 1046 (9th Cir.1998), the police discovered a cereal box containing crack cocaine in the engine compartment of a vehicle as a result of an interrogation in violation of the defendant’s Miranda rights. We applied the inevitable discovery exception “ ‘to determine whether a reasonable probability of discovery existed prior to the unlawful conduct, based on the information possessed and investigations being pursued at such time.’ ” Id. at 1047 (quoting United States v. Drosten, 819 F.2d 1067, 1070 (11th Cir.1987)). In light of the “training and experience of the officers in searching vehicles for drugs,” the district court had found that the police would have discovered the drugs even absent the defendant’s incriminating statements. Id. at 1048. Based on that finding, we upheld the district court’s denial of the defendant’s motion to suppress. Id.; see also United States v. Mancerar-Londono, 912 F.2d 373, 376 (9th Cir.1990) (holding that drugs discovered in the warrantless search of a rental car were admissible because a standard inventory search after the arrest of a suspect in a rental car would result in police possession of the drugs); United States v. Andrade, 784 F.2d 1431, 1433 (9th Cir.1986) (holding the same in the context of the search of a garment bag).
As the majority rightly points out, the inevitable discovery doctrine does not apply where police officers simply fail to obtain a search warrant after their investigation has uncovered sufficient evidence to give them probable cause to conduct a search. In such circumstances, the exclusionary rule prevents the government from *726using evidence it would not have obtained absent an unlawful search, thereby deterring police from ignoring the warrant requirement. In United States v. Reilly, 224 F.3d 986, 990 (9th Cir.2000), for example, the police conducted a search based on invalid consent and thereafter discovered physical evidence. We held that such evidence was not admissible under the inevitable discovery doctrine, which “applies only when the fact that makes discovery inevitable is born of circumstances other than those brought to light by the illegal search itself.” Id. at 995; see also United States v. Mejia, 69 F.3d 309, 320 (9th Cir.1995) (inevitable discovery doctrine not applicable to items discovered during search of suspect’s residence pursuant to allegedly invalid consent, whether or not suspect’s consent was valid); United States v. Echegoyen, 799 F.2d 1271, 1280 n. 7 (9th Cir.1986) (inevitable discovery doctrine did not justify entry into a residence by narcotics detectives based on their observations of signs of likely drug manufacturing activities, even if a search warrant would have inevitably been issued).
Yet, if “the fact that makes discovery inevitable is born of circumstances other than those brought to light by the illegal search,” Reilly, 224 F.3d at 995, application of the inevitable discovery rulé is necessary to avoid putting the government in a worse position than it would be absent a police officer’s error. We do not limit the circumstances that make discovery inevitable in a rigid or mechanical way, nor do we limit the inevitable- discovery doctrine to those circumstances where an independent search would have discovered the evidence, as in Nix. For example, as noted above, we have held evidence admissible under the inevitable discovery doctrine when ordinary police practices would have uncovered the evidence. See, e.g., Lang, 149 F.3d at 1048. Indeed, as explained by Judge (now Justice) Kennedy:
There will be instances where, based on the historical facts, inevitability is demonstrated in such a compelling way that operation of the exclusionary rule is a mechanical and entirely unrealistic bar, preventing the trier of fact from learning what would have come to light in any case. In such cases, the inevitable discovery doctrine will permit introduction of the evidence, whether or not two independent investigations were in progress. The existence of two independent investigations at the time of discovery is not, therefore, a necessary predicate to the inevitable discovery exception.
United States v. Boatwright, 822 F.2d 862, 864 (9th Cir.1987). In other words, even when evidence has been seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment, the government can introduce the evidence at trial if it would have been discovered by the government anyway. Such unlawfully procured evidence is not subject to the exclusionary rule, because suppressing the evidence would put the government in a worse position “than it would have been in if no illegality had transpired.” Nix, 467 U.S. at 443, 104 S.Ct. 2501.
111
Applying this principle to the evidence at issue in this case, we must ask whether the record shows that the police ultimately would have obtained possession of the gun based on the situation as it existed before Officer Koniaris unlawfully took the gun out of the hotel room. See Lang, 149 F.3d at 1047. The answer to this question is yes. By the time Officer Koniaris entered the hotel room, security staff had already discovered Young’s gun by virtue of purely private action on the part of the hotel.2 *727The hotel had already notified Officer Koniaris of the existence of the gun and its exact location. Officer Koniaris had already determined that Young was a felon and that the gun was therefore evidence of a crime. Moreover, it is clear that Officer Koniaris and the hotel staff went to Young’s room because the hotel security staff wanted to give the gun to Officer Koniaris and he wanted it as evidence. Because the hotel staff had discovered the gun before Officer Koniaris commenced his investigation, it was a reasonable certainty that the police ultimately would have obtained possession of the gun by lawful means. See Nix, 467 U.S. at 444, 104 S.Ct. 2501. Accordingly, any error by Officer Koniaris in entering the hotel room was harmless.
Nevertheless, the district court rejected the government’s inevitable discovery argument:
The Court does not find this [inevitable discovery] argument persuasive as it is counter to the hotel policy and based on speculation that the hotel would never [have let] the defendant back in the room. I’m not sure that’s necessarily correct, especially that the defendant could have come back and said, you know, “I know the person in the other room,” and I — it’s just as much speculation or as little to say, he could have exonerated himself and then he would not have been ejected from the room— or evicted from the room.
Parsing this holding, it appears that the district court based its grant of Young’s motion to suppress the gun on two factual findings, namely: (1) the government’s claim that it would have inevitably obtained the gun “is counter to the hotel policy” and (2) the government’s claim is “based on speculation” that Young would not have been able to obtain access to the room to retrieve the gun.
In making its first finding, the district court failed to consider the facts before it. Because the hotel’s policy provides a procedure for returning guns to hotel guests, it is reasonable to infer that, under ordinary circumstances, the hotel would not turn over a guest’s gun to the police. But the hotel’s written policy does not address the situation where, as here, the guest in possession of a weapon is a known felon and the lead suspect in an ongoing criminal investigation taking place at the hotel. Therefore, nothing in the policy is contrary to security director Marweg’s statement that, under such circumstances, “the police must come to the hotel and take possession of the weapon.” The district court’s finding that turning over a weapon to the police in these circumstances would have been counter to the hotel policy is clearly erroneous. The majority similarly misreads the hotel’s policy.
The district court’s second finding, that it was speculative to conclude that the hotel would never have let Young back into his room, is clarified by the majority, which hypothesizes that “it is entirely likely that after some discussion with hotel security, Young might have decided to store the weapon, or, alternatively, take his belongings with him and vacate the room.” This finding is also clearly erroneous. In determining whether the police inevitably would have obtained the gun, the district court was required to consider the “demonstrated historical facts” of the case, Nix, 467 U.S. at 444 n. 5, 104 S.Ct. 2501, at the time directly before the unlawful conduct, Lang, 149 F.3d at 1047. Yet here, at the crucial moment before the unlawful entry, Young was a criminal suspect handcuffed to a chair in the hotel’s security office. Whether or not Officer *728Koniaris conducted the unlawful search of the hotel room, Young’s next destination was the police station for booking, not back to his hotel room to pack up. Under the facts of this ease, no reasonable sequence of events would lead to Young retrieving his gun before the police inevitably obtained it.
IV
This is a case where, “based on the historical facts, inevitability is demonstrated in such a compelling way that operation of the exclusionary rule is a mechanical and entirely unrealistic bar.” Boatwright, 822 F.2d at 864. Lawful police acquisition of Young’s gun was inevitable due to the hotel staffs independent discovery of the gun and communication of that information to the police. The majority’s contention that the inevitable discovery doctrine is inapplicable on the ground that Officer Koniaris’s seizure of the gun was contrary to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment misses the point. The question is not whether Officer Koniaris’s seizure of the gun was lawful, but whether the district court’s holding is contrary to the Supreme Court’s instruction that the exclusionary rule should not “put the police in a worse position than they would have been in if no unlawful conduct had transpired.” Nix, 467 U.S. at 445, 104 S.Ct. 2501 (emphasis omitted). Because proper application of the inevitable discovery rule would put the police in the same position it would have been in absent Officer Koniaris’s error, I would hold that the district court erred by suppressing the gun as evidence. Accordingly, I would reverse the grant of Young’s motion to suppress, and I respectfully dissent.

. Hilton Hotel Corporation Standard Practice Instructions section IV, subsection A states, in pertinent part:
In the event a team member in the course of his/her duties observes or finds a weapon in a guest room, the following procedures apply:
3. Security shall E-key the guest room without disturbing the weapon and leave a note on the door for the guest to call Security upon returning to the room.
8. If a weapon is found or observed in a guest room after a guest has checked out, the guest room is to be secured as indicated in 3 above. The local police are to be notified and requested to come onto company or hotel property and take possession of the weapon.

. Young does not challenge the legality of the first search, which was conducted by hotel *727employees.