U.S. v. Smith
| Citation | 522 F.3d 305 |
| Decision Date | 09 April 2008 |
| Docket Number | No. 06-3112.,06-3112. |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America v. Devon Monroe SMITH, Appellant. |
| Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (3rd Circuit) |
Patrick L. Meehan, United States Attorney, Robert A. Zauzmer, Assistant United States Attorney Chief of Appeals, Philadelphia, PA, K. Kenneth Brown, II, Special Assistant United States Attorney, Lancaster, PA, for Appellee.
Christopher D. Warren, Philadelphia, PA, for Appellant.
Before: FISHER, GREENBERG, and ROTH, Circuit Judges.
This matter comes on before this court on an appeal from a final judgment of conviction and sentence in this criminal case entered on June 6, 2006, following appellant Devon Smith's conditional plea of guilty after the District Court denied his motion to suppress. The circumstances of the case are straightforward. On June 8, 2004, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, police officers Christopher Laser and Richard Heim while on patrol observed Smith sitting in the passenger seat of an automobile that Danny Santiago was operating. Heim recognized Smith and was aware that there was an arrest warrant outstanding for him. Consequently, the officers stopped the vehicle and arrested Smith. Subsequently, Laser and Santiago got into an altercation during which Smith fled the scene. After additional officers arrived the police recaptured Smith and rearrested him. They also arrested Santiago at the scene of the stop.
The police did not know who owned the vehicle for neither Smith nor Santiago claimed to own it. Moreover, Santiago said he did not know who the owner was, its registration papers were not available, and Santiago did not know the location of the registration papers.1 Furthermore, inasmuch as the police arrested both men neither could drive the vehicle which had no other occupants. Moreover, there was no one else available at the scene to take its possession.
These circumstances created a problem for Laser and Heim because they believed that they should not leave the vehicle at the place where they stopped it inasmuch as the conditions in the area led them to believe that if they did so the vehicle might be damaged, vandalized, or stolen. Therefore, Heim impounded the vehicle and drove it to the police station. At the station during a routine warrantless inventory search of the vehicle, Laser found a loaded semi-automatic handgun in its glove department. He then interrupted the search which he resumed after he obtained a search warrant for the vehicle. Subsequently, on the same day, in a statement that he has not renounced as untruthful, Smith told police detectives that he had loaded the weapon and placed it in the glove department.2 He also told them that he knew that he was a convicted felon and was aware that because of that status he was not lawfully permitted to possess the weapon.
On May 3, 2005, a grand jury indicted Smith for unlawful possession of a firearm by a convicted felon in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g) and 924(c). Smith responded to the indictment by filing a motion to suppress the handgun as evidence. The District Court held an evidentiary hearing on the motion at which Heim, who was in Iraq, without objection by Smith, testified by video conference and Laser testified in person. Thereafter, by an order entered October 26, 2005, accompanied by a memorandum opinion, the court denied the motion to suppress. In its opinion the District Court held that the impoundment was lawful because Heim impounded the vehicle pursuant to police community caretaking function authority and Lancaster police use a standardized routine that they followed here to determine whether to impound the vehicle. The court further held that the impoundment was "not arbitrary or unreasonable."3 We quote judicial authority describing the parameters of the community caretaking function authority below.
On November 8, 2005, Smith entered a conditional plea of guilty to the indictment but preserved his right to appeal from the denial of his motion to dismiss. See Fed. R.Crim.P. 11(a)(2); United States v. Zudick, 523 F.2d 848, 852 (3d Cir.1975). The District Court accepted the plea of guilty and later sentenced Smith to a 192-month custodial term to be followed by five years of supervised release. It also imposed a $2,000 fine.
Smith appeals making the following argument:
The decision by a police officer to impound a vehicle must be exercised pursuant to standardized criteria or the seizure is unconstitutional. The testimony presented in this case established that Officer Heim was exercising his discretion when he opted to impound the vehicle and that there were no standard policies or procedures which circumscribed or otherwise limited that discretion. The district court thus clearly erred when it found as a fact that the officer was acting pursuant to a standardized routine when he decided to impound the vehicle. Accordingly, the evidence obtained as a result of the unconstitutional seizure of the vehicle should have been suppressed.
Appellant's br. at 12. Significantly, Smith does not contend that even if the impoundment was lawful the inventory search was not lawful. Consequently, we focus on the validity of the impoundment rather than the validity of the actual search of the vehicle.
The District Court had jurisdiction pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3231 and we have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291. As we often have indicated, we exercise the deferential clear error standard in reviewing a district court's factual findings but exercise plenary review over its determination of legal issues. See United States v. Perez, 280 F.3d 318, 336 (3d Cir.2002). In this case there is a sharp dispute of facts with respect' to whether Heim was acting pursuant to a standardized routine when he decided to impound the vehicle. On the one hand, the government contends that, as the District Court held, the police followed a standardized routine in impounding the vehicle. On the other hand, Smith contends that Heim, rather than following a standard impoundment routine, simply exercised his discretion when impounding the vehicle as the Lancaster Police Department did not have standard policies or procedures which circumscribed or otherwise limited that discretion. Nevertheless we need not determine whether the District Court clearly erred on the basis of the record before it wh'en it found that Heim was acting pursuant to a standardized routine when he impounded the vehicle because even if the court's finding was erroneous, for the reasons we will set forth we are satisfied that the impoundment was lawful. Thus, we decide this case assuming, as Smith contends, that the Lancaster Police Department did not have a standard policy regarding the impounding and towing of vehicles.4
There was considerable evidence at the suppression hearing explaining the Lancaster Police Department's policy or lack of policy governing the impounding of vehicles and why the police impounded the vehicle in which Smith was riding. It is understandable that inasmuch as Smith challenges the District Court's factual finding that Heim acted pursuant to that policy, in his brief he quotes the evidence at length. Even though we accept for purposes of this appeal Smith's contention that the District Court erred when it found that Heim acted pursuant to a standardized procedure when he impounded the vehicle we, too, will quote the evidence at length as it bears on the reasonableness of his action when he impounded the vehicle. Heim testified as follows:
Q. So you would have been the individual who decided`to impound the vehicle. Right?
A. More than likely, yes.
Q. Why was the vehicle impounded?
A. Let me check my report here. Oh, actually, the reason the vehicle was taken into custody that day is because neither the driver nor Mr. Smith was the owner of the vehicle and we were going to try and contact the registered owner.[5] Q. Why did you have to impound the vehicle to contact the registered owner?
A. Because a lot of times we leave vehicles on the street and they end up being stolen later down the road. A lot of times these vehicles are loaned out for drugs and duplicate keys are made. It was just to ensure that the rightful owner gets the vehicle back.
Q. Is there any policy with respect to impoundment of vehicles?
A. It's not actually impoundment. I can't say that there are actually policies on impoundment. We do for other things concerning vehicles. Off the top of my head I don't know.
Q. So to your knowledge there is no standard procedure with respect to impoundment of vehicles. Is that right?
A. We have standard procedures for what we do with the vehicles after we take custody of them. As far as actually taking the vehicle initially, I can't — like I said, we have so many policies that it's hard to remember. A lot of times I will have to refer to the policy manual to make a decision on something.
Q. Let me put it to you simply. Do you know whether or not there is any standard procedure or policy in the Lancaster City Police Department with respect to the impoundment of vehicles?
A. No. I can't say specifically that I know for a fact.
Q. Does that mean that the officer at the scene gets to make the decision as to whether or not a vehicle is impounded?
A. Sometimes, yes, and sometimes a patrol supervisor will be contacted depending on the situation.
Q. But again, the officer or whoever is making the decision has the discretion to decide whether or not to impound a vehicle. Right?
A. Not always, no. If we're talking about a major crime — if it's a homicide or something, then that decision will be made by a supervisor or detective. In this situation apparently it was me who made the decision about it. Q. But the point is, you have discretion in that regard. Right? You can impound it or not...
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