Court Opinion

ID: 9839274
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-12 18:00:37.009238+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:12:54.581844
License: Public Domain

Case: 22-50042         Document: 00516891713             Page: 1      Date Filed: 09/12/2023

                                       REVISED 9/12/23

              United States Court of Appeals
                   for the Fifth Circuit
                                      ____________                                    United States Court of Appeals
                                                                                               Fifth Circuit

                                                                                             FILED
                                       No. 22-50042                                      May 10, 2023
                                      ____________
                                                                                        Lyle W. Cayce
   United States of America,                                                                 Clerk

                                                                      Plaintiff—Appellee,

                                             versus

   Albert Ramos Ramirez, Jr.,

                                               Defendant—Appellant.
                      ______________________________

                      Appeal from the United States District Court
                           for the Western District of Texas
                               USDC No. 5:20-CR-334-1
                      ______________________________

   Before Dennis, Elrod, and Ho, Circuit Judges.
   Jennifer Walker Elrod, Circuit Judge:*
          Defendant Albert Ramirez was convicted of being a felon in
   possession of a firearm after law enforcement officers discovered a gun in his
   jacket during a warrantless search. The sole question on appeal is whether,
   by tossing his jacket over a fence onto his mother’s property, Ramirez
   forfeited his property or privacy interest in the jacket, thereby freeing officers
   to seize and search the jacket heedless of Fourth Amendment constraints.

          _____________________
          *
              This opinion is not designated for publication. See 5th Cir. R. 47.5.
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                                     No. 22-50042

          He did not. Whether considered under the rubric of Ramirez’s
   property rights or that of his reasonable expectation of privacy, Ramirez’s
   jacket continued to enjoy Fourth Amendment protections because Ramirez
   did not demonstrate an intent to abandon it. As the Government has not
   argued that an exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement
   applied to the search, we vacate and remand for further proceedings not
   inconsistent with this opinion.
                                           I
          When Officer Christopher Copeland of the San Antonio Police
   Department began his shift, he was told to be on the lookout for a truck that
   was registered to Ramirez’s mother. Accordingly, Officer Copeland visited
   her address several times during his patrol. Upon driving up the second time,
   he discovered the truck, with Ramirez in the driver’s seat, at an intersection
   catty-corner to the mother’s house. He then observed Ramirez roll through
   a stop sign before pulling into his mother’s driveway. Officer Copeland
   initiated a stop in response to the traffic violation.
          But at that point Ramirez was already exiting the vehicle, which was
   now parked in front of his mother’s chain link fence. A female passenger also
   exited the vehicle. Officer Copeland observed Ramirez walk toward the gate
   and toss his jacket over the fence into his mother’s yard and onto the back
   corner of a closed trash bin.
          Ramirez then began to walk around the front of the truck, at which
   point Officer Copeland confronted him, patted him down, placed him in
   handcuffs, and detained him in the back of his patrol vehicle. Officer
   Copeland also detained the female passenger.             Officer Copeland later
   testified that he felt it was necessary to secure Ramirez and the female
   passenger as a safety precaution because they had exited the vehicle without

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                                     No. 22-50042

   being instructed to do so and because the female passenger attempted to
   approach the truck multiple times despite being instructed not to.
            Officer Copeland advised Ramirez that he had been stopped because
   he ran a stop sign, to which Ramirez replied, “my bad.” While patting him
   down, Officer Copeland asked Ramirez whether he had any weapons, and
   Ramirez responded that he did not. He then asked Ramirez for permission
   to search the truck, which Ramirez gave. No contraband was found in the
   truck.
            Officer Craig Pair arrived soon thereafter, whereupon Officer
   Copeland asked Officer Pair to reach over the fence to retrieve the jacket and,
   searching it, discovered a gun in one of its pockets. Officer Copeland did not
   ask for consent to search the jacket or to enter the property.
            Ramirez was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm. He
   moved to suppress the gun, arguing, as relevant here, that he did not abandon
   his jacket by tossing it over his mother’s fence and that its search therefore
   violated his rights under the Fourth Amendment.
            A suppression hearing was held in which the Government’s primary
   witness was Officer Copeland. Testimony showed that Ramirez had lived at
   his mother’s house most of his life, including into his adulthood, and that he
   still came to her house almost daily for meals and to check on and make
   breakfast for her. Evidence also showed that Ramirez regularly received mail
   at his mother’s address, including bills, and that his criminal history and his
   most recent ID both linked him to his mother’s address.
            The district court ultimately denied the motion to suppress,
   concluding that Ramirez abandoned his jacket. With the gun admitted,
   Ramirez pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 46 months’ incarceration. He
   now appeals his conviction.

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                                                 II
          The relevant facts are undisputed. The legal questions raised by
   Ramirez about the constitutionality of Officer Copeland’s conduct are
   reviewed de novo. United States v. Aguilar, 973 F.3d 445, 448 (5th Cir. 2020).
                                                 A
          From the late 1960s until quite recently, Fourth Amendment inquiries
   focused exclusively on whether challenged governmental action intruded on
   the challenger’s “reasonable expectation of privacy”—a formulation taken
   from Justice Harlan’s concurrence in the seminal case of Katz v. United
   States.1 This was the approach followed by the district court.
          One of the many ways a criminal suspect can forfeit his reasonable
   expectation of privacy, and thus Fourth Amendment protection, is by
   abandonment—the quintessential examples being a fleeing suspect who
   abandons contraband by tossing it to the ground as he runs from police and
   the suspect who abandons an item by insisting that it does not belong to him.
   In cases of alleged abandonment, courts look to “[a]ll relevant circumstances
   existing at the time” to determine “whether the person prejudiced by the
   search had voluntarily discarded, left behind, or otherwise relinquished his
   interest in the property in question.” United States v. Colbert, 474 F.2d 174,
   176 (5th Cir. 1973).
          The district court relied on Colbert to conclude that Ramirez
   abandoned his jacket, and therefore retained no reasonable expectation of
   privacy in its contents, by tossing it over his mother’s fence. But we do not
   think it can fairly be said that Ramirez manifested an intent to disclaim

          _____________________
          1
              389 U.S. 347, 360 (Harlan, J., concurring).

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   ownership in his jacket simply by placing it on the private side of his mother’s
   fenced-in property line.
           This would be a different case if Ramirez had dropped his jacket on
   the public sidewalk and ran away, or if he had insisted before the search that
   the jacket did not belong to him. It would also be a different case if the
   evidence demonstrated that Ramirez was not permitted to leave his
   possessions on his mother’s property. But the Government has not offered
   any evidence to that effect. To the contrary, the evidence offered at the
   suppression hearing overwhelmingly showed that Ramirez was welcome on
   the property.
           The Government maintains on appeal that “[a] defendant abandons
   an object when he throws it to the ground as officers approach.” As Ramirez
   points out, however, the authorities cited by the Government for this blanket
   rule all involve the critical additional facts that the challenged evidence was
   discarded in a public place while the suspect was fleeing arrest. United States
   v. Bush, 623 F.2d 388, 390–91 (5th Cir. 1980) (holding that defendant had no
   legitimate expectation of privacy in package containing cocaine he hurled to
   the ground in a public bowling alley); United States v. Jones, 347 F. App’x
   129, 135 (5th Cir. 2009) (holding that defendant abandoned $100 bill and
   drugs dropped in a parking lot while running from police); United States v.
   Williams, 79 F. App’x 677, 681–82 (5th Cir. 2003) (holding that defendant
   abandoned gun he tossed in a stranger’s backyard while running from
   police).2 Ramirez did not flee from Officer Copeland or leave his jacket in a
   public place.

           _____________________
           2
            The fourth case cited by the Government, United States v. Silva, 957 F.2d 157 (5th
   Cir. 1992), is inapposite. There the court found that the defendant had been lawfully seized
   before he disclosed the evidence he sought to suppress. Id. at 161.

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           The Government also argues that Ramirez “manifested an intent to
   abandon the jacket” when he walked away from the jacket and towards
   Officer Copeland. For support the Government relies, as did the district
   court, on Colbert. But the Government overstates the holding in that case
   too. Colbert relied on “[a]ll relevant circumstances existing at the time”—
   i.e., that the defendants had verbally disclaimed ownership of their briefcases,
   placed the briefcases on a public sidewalk, and walked away. Ramirez, by
   contrast, did not disclaim ownership of his jacket, did not place it in a public
   place, and consequently did not walk away in a manner consistent with an
   intent to abandon it. To the contrary, he tossed it over the fence and onto his
   mother’s property.3
           Finally, the Government argues that Ramirez “implicitly den[ied] the
   jacket and the pistol in its pocket” when, while being patted down, he insisted
   that he did not have a gun. It is true that a suspect may relinquish his privacy
   interest in an item by disclaiming ownership of it, as Colbert demonstrates.
   But the Government did not identify, and we have not found, any case
   holding that a suspect loses his reasonable expectation of privacy in an item
   by lying about its contents.
           The facts of this case parallel those of our sister circuit’s decision in
   United States v. McClendon, 86 F. App’x 92 (7th Cir. 2004). There law
   enforcement seized a defendant’s satchel, which the defendant had placed
   on his open bedroom windowsill. Id. at 94. The government argued that the
   defendant had abandoned the satchel, and thus retained no reasonable

           _____________________
           3
             The Government also cites United States v. Johnson, in which a defendant was
   held to have lost his reasonable expectation of privacy in his fanny pack because he left it in
   his neighbor’s home against his neighbor’s express wishes. No. 07-30955, 2008 WL
   3876550 *3 (5th Cir. 2008 Aug. 21, 2008). Again, the evidence in this case does not show
   that Ramirez was unwelcome on his mother’s property.

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                                    No. 22-50042

   expectation of privacy in its contents, by placing it where it was easily
   accessible to passersby. Id. The Seventh Circuit disagreed, distinguishing
   cases like those the Government relies on here because “[t]he Fourth
   Amendment does not protect an individual’s privacy only if he ensures that
   his possessions are placed beyond the grasping reach of his fellows.” Id. at
   94. In the Seventh Circuit’s view, “placing an item on one’s own bedroom
   window sill is quite different than tossing an item on the ground near a public
   street.” Id. at 95.
          This case is also like United States v. Sanders, in which a defendant left
   an airport without claiming her luggage. 719 F.2d 882 (6th Cir. 1983). The
   defendant told airport agents that she had not claimed her bags because she
   was not going home immediately. Id. at 886. But she never denied ownership
   of the bags. Id. In deciding that the defendant retained a reasonable
   expectation of privacy in her luggage, the court observed that “[o]ne can
   properly infer from her words and actions that [the defendant] continued to
   indicate she had an interest in keeping the contents private.” Id. at 886. See
   also United States v. James, 353 F.3d 606, 616 (8th Cir. 2003) (“We are
   convinced that a person does not abandon his property merely because he
   gives it to someone else to store.”); United States v. Eden, 190 F. App’x 416,
   425 (6th Cir. 2006) (“[A] defendant must do more than merely walk away
   from something as private as a suitcase to support a finding of
   abandonment.”).
          Like the placement of a satchel on a windowsill, or of baggage with
   airport personnel, Ramirez’s placement of his jacket on his mother’s
   property does not support an inference of abandonment. To the contrary,
   Ramirez’s conduct indicates a continued interest in keeping the contents of
   the jacket private. He placed it where he could expect it would be safe, and
   where he could return to it later.

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                                     No. 22-50042

             While Ramirez’s actions might support the inference that Ramirez
   intended to conceal his jacket and its contents from Officer Copeland, they
   do not evince an intent to discard, leave behind, or otherwise disavow an
   ownership or privacy interest in the jacket. In the absence of alternative
   arguments from the Government, we hold that Ramirez did not lose his
   reasonable expectation of privacy in the jacket or its contents, and that
   Officer Copeland’s search was subject to Fourth Amendment constraints.
                                           B
             The dissenting opinion comes to the opposite conclusion based on the
   principle that an item is abandoned if “discard[ed] . . . in a location that is
   easily accessible to the public.” Post, at 13. We agree with the premise, so
   far as it goes. But Ramirez did not discard his jacket or expose it to the public.
   He placed it on family property before walking up to Officer Copeland, and
   he remained nearby throughout his interaction with Copeland. It defies
   common sense to infer from these acts that Ramirez intended to abandon his
   jacket.
             For much the same reason, authorities expounding the Fourth
   Amendment protection applicable to garbage are inapplicable. Ramirez did
   not throw his jacket away. A person who intends for an item to go to the
   dump does not do the sorts of things that Ramirez did with his jacket. Again,
   Ramirez put his jacket down after exiting his vehicle and before walking up
   to Officer Copeland. Ramirez remained only a few paces away from the
   jacket while speaking with Officer Copeland. And there is no reason to think
   that Ramirez would not have retrieved the jacket before going in for the night.
   In short, the record does not support the idea that Ramirez abandoned his
   jacket in the way that one abandons trash.

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                                    No. 22-50042

                                         III
          We reach the same conclusion applying the independent property-
   rights analysis set forth in United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012). In
   Jones, the Supreme Court held that, separate and apart from the Katz
   analysis, the Fourth Amendment must “at a minimum” restrict “physical
   intrusion[s that] would have been considered a ‘search’ within the meaning
   of the Fourth Amendment when it was adopted.” Id. at 404–05. After Jones,
   the Fourth Amendment is understood to protect against “government
   trespass upon the areas (‘persons, houses, papers, and effects’) it
   enumerates” in addition to reasonable expectations of privacy. Id. at 406.
   See also Florida v. Jardines, 569 U.S. 1 (2013) (following the approach
   outlined in Jones).
          The Government does not dispute that the Fourth Amendment
   extends to protect a person’s clothing. Cf. Jones, 565 U.S. at 404 (suggesting
   an expansive understanding of the term “effects” in deeming it “beyond
   dispute that a vehicle is an ‘effect’ as that term is used in the Amendment”).
   See also United States v. Edwards, 415 U.S. 800, 805 (1974) (describing
   prisoner’s clothing as “the effects in his immediate possession”); Warden,
   Md. Penitentiary v. Hayden, 387 U.S. 294, 320 (1967) (Douglas J., concurring)
   (observing that “[a]rticles of clothing are covered [by the text of the Fourth
   Amendment] as well as papers”). Instead, the Government maintains that
   Ramirez forfeited his property interest in his jacket when he tossed it over his
   mother’s fence and walked away.
          We are unaware of any cases expounding on the interplay between
   abandonment and Jones’s property-rights rubric. Nevertheless, the method
   prescribed by Jones is clear: the Government’s position must rise or fall
   according to its consistency with the longstanding common law property
   rights that the Fourth Amendment was originally understood to protect. Cf.

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   Richmond, 915 F.3d at 358 (“[I]n concluding that attaching a GPS to the
   exterior of a vehicle was a trespass, Jones relied on its reading of the common
   law of trespass as it existed in 1791 when the Fourth Amendment was
   ratified.”).
           Courts through both ratification periods treated an owner’s intent as
   the central question in claims of abandonment.4 Comment, Laid, Mislaid,
   and Abandoned Property, 8 Fordham L. Rev. 222, 222 (1939). See also 2
   William Blackstone, Commentaries 6 (“Property, both in lands and
   moveables, being thus originally acquired by the first taker, which taking
   amounts to a declaration that he intends to appropriate the thing to his own
   use, it remains in him, by the principles of universal law, till such time as he
   does some other act which shews and intention to abandon it.”). So,
   coincidentally—or perhaps not—it turns out that evidence of intent also
   plays the starring role in questions of abandonment under Jones’s property-
   rights analysis. Cf. Jardines, 569 U.S. at 14 (2013) (Kagan, J., concurring)
   (observing that shared intuitions about the privacy one can reasonably expect
   often originate in property law).
           Moreover, absent other evidence, the location in which an item had
   been left was treated as dispositive evidence of intent in common law
   abandonment claims. The case of Livermore v. White, 74 Me. 452 (1883) is
   instructive. There the owner of a tannery discovered a large quantity of
   animal skins that had been placed in a tanning vat decades earlier. In holding

           _____________________
           4
             There is ongoing debate over the relevant historical period for determining the
   original meaning of enumerated rights incorporated against the states by the Fourteenth
   Amendment—that is, whether they should be determined according to prevailing
   understandings when those rights were originally ratified in 1791 or when the Fourteenth
   Amendment was ratified in 1868. N.Y. Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111,
   2138 (2022). Like the Court in Bruen, we need not resolve this debate because the relevant
   property law principles were consistent through both ratification periods.

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   that the skins still belonged to the tannery’s previous owner, the Supreme
   Court explained that proof of abandonment requires showing both “the
   intention to abandon and the external act by which the intention is carried
   into effect.” Id. at 455. The placement of the skins in the vat showed the
   opposite intention, as “the act was one of preservation—the proprietor
   expending labor upon his property thereby to enhance its value. It was an act
   which excludes the very idea of abandonment.” Id.
          The same principle is illustrated in the earlier case of McLaughlin v.
   Waite, which held that “[i]f chattels are found secreted in the earth, or
   elsewhere, the common law presumes the owner placed them there for
   safety, intending to reclaim them.” 5 Wend. 404, 405 (N.Y. 1830). “[I]f,”
   by contrast, “they are found upon the surface of the earth, or in the sea, if no
   owner appears to claim them, it is presumed they have been intentionally
   abandoned by the former proprietor.” Id. at 405–06.
          It follows that Ramirez did not abandon his property interest in his
   jacket by tossing it over his mother’s fence. Like the placement of hides in a
   tanning vat or the secreting-away of goods in the ground, Ramirez’s
   placement of his jacket on family property “excludes the very idea of
   abandonment.” He put it for safekeeping where he knew he could find it
   again, and where he could trust that strangers—if acting lawfully—would be
   unable to get at it.
          And so, Ramirez’s jacket enjoyed Fourth Amendment protection
   under Jones’s property-rights formulation too.

                                   *        *         *
          We hold that Ramirez did not abandon his jacket by tossing it over his
   mother’s fence because he did not thereby manifest an intent to discard it.

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   The Government elected to rely exclusively on its abandonment theory,
   expressly waiving alternative grounds for affirmance at oral argument.5 We
   therefore VACATE Ramirez’s conviction and sentence, as well as the denial
   of his motion to suppress, and REMAND for further proceedings consistent
   with this opinion.

          _____________________
          5
           At oral argument, Judge Elrod had the following exchange with the
   Government’s attorney:
                   Judge Elrod: “Okay, you’ve only argued abandonment. So, if we
          don’t find abandonment, do you lose?
                   Counsel:         “Well, if the district court was mistaken, I think it goes
          back to the district court.”
          Oral Argument at 31:15–31:26.

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   James C. Ho, Circuit Judge, dissenting:
          If you discard an item in a location that is easily accessible to the
   public—for example, on top of a garbage can right next to a public sidewalk—
   it’s only natural for others to presume that you’ve abandoned that item.
          That’s just common sense. And that common-sense intuition is
   reflected in our law. There’s no Fourth Amendment violation when a police
   officer searches an item that has been abandoned in a public area. See, e.g.,
   California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35, 41 (1988) (“society would not accept as
   reasonable respondents’ claim to an expectation of privacy in trash left for
   collection in an area accessible to the public”); United States v. Compton, 704
   F.2d 739, 741 (5th Cir. 1983) (“Compton has no standing to contest the
   seizure of the drugs from the trash, having abandoned” it by “toss[ing]” it
   “into the trash”).
          The facts here are undisputed: Albert Ramirez tossed his jacket onto
   a garbage can right next to a public sidewalk.
          And that’s abandonment under our longstanding precedents.
   Ramirez “was just like the bank robber who having a gun, finds himself
   pursued, and in his hope of escaping detection throws the gun into a yard
   where, if it is not picked up he might retrieve it.” United States v. Williams,
   569 F.2d 823, 826 (5th Cir. 1978). “Such conduct is transparently an
   abandonment of the tight grip of ownership and reliance solely on the feeble
   hope of re-acquisition.” Id. (emphasis added). And that act of abandonment
   is fatal to a claim under the Fourth Amendment, because “‘[o]ne has no
   standing to complain of a search or seizure of property he has voluntarily
   abandoned.’” Id. (quoting United States v. Colbert, 474 F.2d 174, 176 (5th
   Cir. 1973)). Accordingly, I would affirm.

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                                          I.
          “It is common knowledge that plastic garbage bags left on or at the
   side of a public street are readily accessible to animals, children, scavengers,
   snoops, and other members of the public.” Greenwood, 486 U.S. at 40. So
   there is no “expectation of privacy,” and thus no Fourth Amendment
   protection, when you leave trash “in an area accessible to the public.” Id. at 41
   (emphasis added).
          As the Court further explained, this conclusion was “reinforced by
   the unanimous rejection of similar claims by the Federal Courts of Appeals.”
   Id. For example, the Court cited United States v. Kramer, 711 F.2d 789 (7th
   Cir. 1983). The court there observed that “the special protection the Fourth
   Amendment accords . . . does not extend to . . . discarded garbage.” Id. at
   792. And that was so even where accessing the garbage required “the police
   to trespass a few feet upon the outer edge of his front yard either by reaching
   across the fence into the air space above the yard or by stepping across the
   fence onto the yard.” Id. at 794.
          Numerous other circuit precedents likewise hold that there’s no
   Fourth Amendment protection for garbage left on private property in a
   manner reasonably accessible to the public. See, e.g., United States v. Segura-
   Baltazar, 448 F.3d 1281, 1288 (11th Cir. 2006) (“Even though the trash was
   located on Segura-Baltazar’s property, near his garage, there was no
   reasonable expectation of privacy because the trash was sufficiently exposed
   to the public.”); id. (“[T]here was testimony that the trash near the curb was
   three to six feet from the sidewalk, and fifty-five to sixty-five feet from the
   house. . . . Regardless of the exact distance, however, the facts we find most
   relevant and persuasive are that the garbage was plainly visible and accessible
   from the street.”); United States v. Long, 176 F.3d 1304, 1308 (10th Cir. 1999)
   (“it is difficult to imagine anyone using an area in which garbage was regularly

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   deposited for the intimate activities of the home,” including garbage bags left
   on top of a trailer parked in a yard accessible from public alley); United States
   v. Redmon, 138 F.3d 1109, 1113 (7th Cir. 1998) (en banc) (applying Greenwood
   “in the present case even though it is not strictly a curbside collection,”
   because the defendant “chose the front of the joint garage on the shared
   driveway-sidewalk”); United States v. Comeaux, 955 F.2d 586, 589 (8th Cir.
   1992) (applying Greenwood “even assuming that the garbage cans were within
   the curtilage,” because “the garbage was readily accessible to the public”);
   United States v. Wilkinson, 926 F.2d 22, 27 (1st Cir. 1991) (applying
   Greenwood even where garbage was left on “lawn next to the curb,” rather
   than “on the curb itself”).
                                          II.
          The majority “agree[s] with the premise” that “an item is abandoned
   if discarded in a location that is easily accessible to the public.” Ante, at 8
   (cleaned up).
          And that’s exactly what happened here.                As the majority
   acknowledges, Ramirez “toss[ed] his jacket over the fence into his mother’s
   yard and onto the back corner of a closed trash bin.” Id. at 2. So Ramirez
   threw his jacket in an area “easily accessible to the public”—as
   demonstrated by the fact that the jacket was subsequently picked up by one
   of the officers on the scene.
          Nevertheless, the majority contends that Ramirez did not abandon the
   jacket because (1) he “remained only a few paces away from the jacket while
   speaking with” the officers on the scene, and (2) “there is no reason to think
   that Ramirez would not have retrieved the jacket before going in for the
   night.” Id. at 8.
          But remaining “a few paces away” while speaking with law
   enforcement is not inconsistent with abandonment. We’ve repeatedly found

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   abandonment despite the fact that the defendant remained in close proximity
   to the abandoned item. See, e.g., United States v. Thomas, 12 F.3d 1350, 1366–
   67 (5th Cir. 1994); United States v. Canady, 615 F.2d 694, 697 (5th Cir. 1980).
          Nor does one’s hope to re-acquire the abandoned item alter the
   conclusion that the item has indeed been abandoned. See, e.g., Williams, 569
   F.2d at 826 (defendant’s “hope of re-acquisition” does not alter finding of
   abandonment).
          I respectfully dissent.

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