U.S. v. Chambers

Citation395 F.3d 563
Decision Date02 February 2005
Docket NumberNo. 03-6298.,No. 03-6406.,03-6298.,03-6406.
PartiesUNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Leslie Delynn CHAMBERS, Defendant-Appellee.
CourtUnited States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (6th Circuit)

ARGUED: Thomas A. Colthurst, Assistant United States Attorney, Memphis, Tennessee, for Appellant. K. Jayaraman, Memphis, Tennessee, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Thomas A. Colthurst, Assistant United States Attorney, Memphis, Tennessee, for Appellant. K. Jayaraman, Memphis, Tennessee, for Appellee.

Before: MERRITT, DAUGHTREY, and SUTTON, Circuit Judges.

OPINION

MERRITT, Circuit Judge.

In this drug case, the District Court suppressed evidence of a methamphetamine laboratory seized by police officers as a result of a warrantless search of a trailer home and garage on a remote country road in a farming area of West Tennessee. The officers did not seek judicial review and approval in advance as the Fourth Amendment requires except in extraordinary circumstances. The government appeals the suppression order primarily on the ground that the possible destruction of evidence justified the warrantless search under the "exigent circumstances" exception to the warrant requirement. Secondarily, the government also claims as an alternative theory that the officers obtained a valid consent to search after their forced entry at the home. We will first set out the principles governing warrantless searches for evidence and then apply those principles to the situation before us. We will affirm the judgment of the District Court because here there was no emergency justifying a warrantless search and the officers anticipated that they would conduct the search and could easily have obtained a search warrant.

I. Principles Limiting Warrantless Searches Based on "Exigent Circumstances"

The principles governing warrantless searches based on "exigent circumstances" are fairly well settled. In the Fourth Amendment, the Founders required a warrant for searches and seizures because they did not trust constables, sheriffs and other officers to decide for themselves when they had probable cause to search houses, individuals and places of business. The first and most important principle is that searches must ordinarily be cleared in advance as a part of the judicial process. In Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 454-55, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971) (footnotes omitted), the Supreme Court explained:

Thus the most basic constitutional rule in this area is that "searches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by judge or magistrate, are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment — subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions." The exceptions are "jealously and carefully drawn," and there must be "a showing by those who seek exemption ...that the exigencies of the situation made that course imperative." "[T]he burden is on those seeking the exemption to show the need for it."

(Emphasis added and footnotes omitted.) In order for a warrantless search to pass muster, probable cause must exist, but "no amount of probable cause can justify a warrantless seizure," id. at 471, 91 S.Ct. 2022, because, in addition, the cause of the search must be based on an "emergency" and hence, "inadvertent" or unanticipated. "Where the discovery is anticipated, where the police know in advance the location of the evidence and intend to seize it, the situation is altogether different." Id. at 470, 91 S.Ct. 2022.

Under these principles, officers must seek a warrant based on probable cause when they believe in advance they will find contraband or evidence of a crime. They must articulate the basis of their belief in the affidavit and bring the matter before a magistrate. When the police go to a home with the intention of searching for evidence, they may not forgo a warrant.

When there is neither a warrant nor consent, courts will only permit a search or seizure to stand under extraordinary circumstances. In McDonald v. United States, 335 U.S. 451, 69 S.Ct. 191, 93 L.Ed. 153 (1948), "three police officers [without a warrant] surrounded the house" they had had under surveillance for two months where they believed that McDonald was conducting a numbers racketeering operation. "While outside the house, one of the officers thought he heard an adding machine. These machines are frequently used in the numbers operation. Believing that the numbers game was in process, the officers sought admission to the house." Id. at 452, 69 S.Ct. 191. They entered the home and seized the evidence while the numbers operation was in progress. The Court suppressed the evidence:

Where, as here, officers are not responding to an emergency, there must be compelling reasons to justify the absence of a search warrant.... We will not assume that where a defendant has been under surveillance for months, no search warrant could have been obtained.... No reason, except inconvenience of the officers and delay in preparing papers and getting before a magistrate, appears for the failure to seek a search warrant.... Absent some grave emergency, the Fourth Amendment has interposed a magistrate between the citizen and the police.

Id. at 454-55, 69 S.Ct. 191 (emphasis added). The "imperative" and "anticipated" language of Coolidge and the "grave emergency" language of McDonald are designed to insure that officers will seek a warrant based on probable cause when they have a belief in advance that they will find contraband or evidence of a crime. They may only forego a warrant in the case of a true exigency or emergency.

Moreover, for a warrantless search to stand, law enforcement officers must be responding to an unanticipated exigency rather than simply creating the exigency for themselves. In United States v. Richard, 994 F.2d 244 (5th Cir.1993), the officers were conducting surveillance of a hotel room occupied by suspects. The officers approached the door, knocked, and announced that they were police officers. The officers heard the sound of people talking softly, heard doors or drawers slamming, and footsteps moving about. The officer kicked the door open and entered the room without a warrant. Although officers claimed that they did not have probable cause to obtain a warrant in the beginning, the evidence suggested otherwise. Id. at 248. The court held that the officers could have secured the area around the room while they waited for a warrant; but because they did not, the officers had created the exigent circumstances that they wanted to rely on to justify their warrantless entry. A "warrantless entry became a foregone conclusion once officers knocked." Id. at 249-50. McDonald and Richard stand firmly for the proposition that warrantless searches are not permitted when the only exigency is one that is of the officer's creation.

Likewise, in Ewolski v. City of Brunswick, 287 F.3d 492, 504 (6th Cir.2002), we reviewed a number of the "created-exigency" cases that apply the emergency and inadvertence principle which, we said, cannot be met "if the police controlled the timing of the encounter giving rise to the search." Our review concluded that "the created-exigency cases have typically required some showing of deliberate conduct on the part of the police evincing an effort intentionally to evade the warrant requirement." Id. (Emphasis added.)

II. Application of "Exigent Circumstances" Principles to the Facts of this Case

The warrantless search in this case turned up extensive evidence of the operation of an elaborate meth laboratory that the police believed was at the premises when they arrived. At the suppression hearing below, the government offered evidence from the lead officer of the search, George Freeman, a narcotics officer for the Sheriff of Fayette County, Tennessee. He testified that four months before the search a known confidential informant advised police that the Chambers lab was manufacturing methamphetamine at the trailer home and garage where the search was later conducted. The informant's identity was known and his information was clear. There is no claim that the informant was anonymous, unreliable or had not given the officers a sound factual basis for his statements. Based on the strength of the information from the confidential informant, officers conducted both an extensive surveillance of the trailer home and garage from a nearby field for three nights and later used helicopter flyovers. The surveillance uncovered frequent nighttime visits to this remote location by numerous people in cars, some with out-of-county license plates — visits that Officer Freeman believed were consistent with customers purchasing drugs from the meth lab that the informant had described.1 In addition, at the trailer home in this remote farming area, the officers observed that Chambers was using surveillance cameras and several high intensity spotlights to keep watch over the area — all of which fully corroborated the confidential informant's report to the police. There was now strong, indeed overwhelming, evidence of multiple drug sales at the premises on a daily basis, evidence supporting the informant's statements that a meth lab was in frequent operation at the Chambers home. But the officers took no action at this time to secure a search warrant despite the incriminating evidence in their possession. No magistrate was asked nor has any magistrate ever turned down a request for a warrant in this case.

At the suppression hearing, narcotics Officer Freeman also testified that the sheriff's office then received an "anonymous" call on October 9, 2002, three months after the surveillance. Freeman said that the caller "was adamant that I write this down and stated that the Chambers were cooking meth right there on Linwood road right now and that we had better get out there, and hung up the phone." The police now had evidence from a known confidential informant, the strong...

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