U.S. v. Williams

• Decision Date: 20 August 2009
• Docket Number: No. 08-2413.,08-2413.
• Citation: 577 F.3d 878
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Cortez L. WILLIAMS, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

577 F.3d 878

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Cortez L. WILLIAMS, Appellant.

No. 08-2413.

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

Submitted: May 14, 2009.

Filed: August 20, 2009.

David R. Mercer, Asst. Fed. Public Defender, Springfield, MO, argued (Raymond C. Conrad, Jr., Fed. Public Defender, Kansas City, MO, on the brief), for appellant.

Bruce E. Clark, Asst. U.S. Atty., Kansas City, MO, argued (John F. Wood, U.S. Atty., on the brief), for appellee.

Before WOLLMAN, JOHN R. GIBSON, and MURPHY, Circuit Judges.

JOHN R. GIBSON, Circuit Judge.

Cortez L. Williams was convicted by a jury of one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) and sentenced to forty-six months' imprisonment and three years' supervised release. Before trial, the district court¹ denied Williams's motions to suppress evidence and to dismiss the indictment. Williams appeals his conviction, arguing that the district court erred in denying his motion to suppress the firearm because the officers who arrested him impermissibly conducted a protective sweep of his home. Williams also contends that the district court erred in denying his motion to dismiss the indictment because the firearm was destroyed before trial in violation of his Fifth Amendment rights. We affirm.

I.

On July 26, 2006, six officers from the FBI Violent Crimes Task Force,² including Investigator Michael Blegen, Detective John Cooley, and Officer Chad Obersteadt, went to a residence at 8014 Manning in Raytown, Missouri to execute an arrest warrant for Williams, who had allegedly violated the terms of his parole. The officers had received a tip that Williams was threatening to burn down houses of people who lived near him at a previous residence. They also knew that Williams had been arrested in 2004 for being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Officer Blegen and several other officers went to the front door of the house while some officers secured the rear of the house. Blegen knocked on the front door and announced, "Police!" A child peered out and unlocked the door, but did not open it. Blegen heard the child calling out for her mom and dad. While this was occurring, Detective Cooley observed Williams run to the rear door of the house as if to exit, turn, and go back inside. Williams then went into the living room, which was in the front of the house, where he was arrested. Williams's girlfriend, Virginia Brown, and the child were also present.

After Williams was handcuffed on the living room floor, several of the police officers conducted a search, looking for any other individuals in the home who may have posed a danger to them. Upon entering a bedroom, Officer Obersteadt saw a black semi-automatic pistol on top of a high bookcase, partially concealed in a pile of clothing.

Cooley, a detective with the Kansas City, Missouri Police Department, took custody of the firearm. When filling out the inventory sheet for the firearm, Cooley indicated that the firearm was not intended to be used as evidence and answered "yes" to the question, "May the property room release or dispose of the property according to the approved procedures?" Cooley stated that he filled out the form in this way because a decision had been made by state officials that Williams would not be arrested for possession of an illegal firearm. The firearm was test fired by the Kansas City, Missouri Police Crime Laboratory. The gun was capable of discharging a cartridge, but the cartridge case had to be manually removed after it was fired. The forensic specialist who tested the firearm noted that, in addition to missing the extractor that would have ejected the cartridge cases, the gun was also missing the safety lever and the left grip. The firearm was also tested for the presence of DNA; Williams's DNA was found in the sample from the weapon. On March 16, 2007, consistent with the directions on the inventory sheet, the firearm was destroyed.

Williams was indicted in federal court on May 9, 2007, on one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm. Williams filed several pre-trial motions, including motions to suppress the firearm as being the fruit of an unconstitutional search, and to dismiss the indictment based on the destruction of the firearm. The district court denied both of these motions, and Williams was found guilty following a jury trial.

II.

A.

Williams's first argument on appeal is that the district court erred in denying his motion to suppress the firearm because it was obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment. "We examine the factual findings underlying the district court's denial of the motion to suppress for clear error and review de novo the ultimate question of whether the Fourth Amendment has been violated." United States v. Walsh, 299 F.3d 729, 730 (8th Cir.2002) (internal quotation marks omitted). The parties agree that there was no warrant for the search of Williams's home. Therefore, the firearm is admissible only if the search falls into an exception to the warrant requirement.

In Maryland v. Buie, the Supreme Court held that a properly limited warrantless protective sweep may be conducted "in conjunction with an in-home arrest when the searching officer possesses a reasonable belief based on specific and articulable facts that the area to be swept harbors an individual posing a danger to those on the arrest scene." Maryland v. Buie, 494 U.S. 325, 337, 110 S.Ct. 1093, 108 L.Ed.2d 276 (1990). A protective sweep must be quick and limited to a cursory look at places where a person could be found. Id. at 335-36, 110 S.Ct. 1093.

The government alleges that the search of the bedroom did not require the officers to demonstrate any suspicion because the search was incident to arrest and the bedroom was adjacent to the living room, where Williams was arrested. See id. at 334, 110 S.Ct. 1093 (officers may, "without probable cause or reasonable suspicion, look in closets and other spaces immediately adjoining the place of arrest from which an attack could be immediately launched"). The district court made no findings of fact regarding the proximity of the two rooms or whether the scope of the search complied with this standard, nor did it rely on this basis for the admission of the challenged evidence. We need not address this contention on appeal, however, because we conclude that the officers had the reasonable suspicion required by Buie in order for a protective search to come within the limits of the Fourth Amendment.

In coming to the conclusion that the protective sweep was justified by reasonable suspicion that dangerous accomplices may have been present, the district court found the following "articulable facts and resulting rational inferences:"

(1) [T]he child who came to the door when police first knocked called out to "Mom and Dad", indicating that more than one adult was in the house with the child, (2) the officers had prior information that defendant was threatening to burn down houses of his neighbors, (3) the officers knew that defendant had previously been arrested for possessing a firearm after having been convicted of a felony, and (4) officers observed defendant attempt to flee from police out the back door and therefore were aware that he wished to avoid capture.

From these facts, the district court concluded that the officers had shown that they acted on the reasonable suspicion that a hidden accomplice or accomplices could pose a threat to the officers.

Williams's attempt to evade arrest by turning back into the home after he saw the police at the back door, his resultant opportunity to alert a possible accomplice, and the police officer's knowledge of his prior conviction for unlawful possession of a firearm all support the officers' reasonable suspicion that an unknown individual in the home could pose a danger to them. See United States v. Jones, 193 F.3d 948, 950 (8th Cir.1999) (retreat into building "could reasonably have been construed as an effort to get help or to warn others"); United States v. Davis, 471 F.3d 938, 945 (8th Cir.2006) ("prior intelligence indicated that Davis possessed firearms, which could indicate a danger to officer safety").

Williams, however, argues that the search was pretextual because the police "ha[d] observed the only occupants of the home and they [were] aware that there [was] no one else in the home." While hindsight reveals that the officers had already encountered all of the occupants of the home before conducting the protective sweep, that information was not apparent to the officers when they initiated the sweep. Whether the search was a valid protective sweep depends on whether the facts possessed by the officers and the rational inferences from those facts created a reasonable suspicion that a dangerous individual may be hidden in the home. The district court found that the officers heard a child yell "Mom and Dad," creating the inference that at least two, but possibly more than two, adults were present. The officers had no reason to know that Williams was the child's father, and thus it was rational for the officers to infer that one or more adults were still in the...