U.S. v. Buford

• Decision Date: 10 February 2011
• Docket Number: No. 09–5737.,09–5737.
• Citation: 632 F.3d 264
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellant,v.Jerry Thomas BUFORD, Jr., Defendant–Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

632 F.3d 264

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellant,
v.
Jerry Thomas BUFORD, Jr., Defendant–Appellee.

No. 09–5737.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued: Oct. 20, 2010.Decided and Filed: Feb. 10, 2011.

[632 F.3d 266]

ARGUED: Joseph Alexander Little, Assistant United States Attorney, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellant. Michael C. Holley, Office of the Federal Public Defender, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Addison Thompson, Assistant United States Attorney, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellant. Michael C. Holley, Hugh M. Mundy, Office of the Federal Public Defender, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellee.Before: GILMAN and GRIFFIN, Circuit Judges; ROSE, District Judge. ^*

OPINION GRIFFIN, Circuit Judge.

Following a traffic stop on May 18, 2008, Nashville Police arrested defendant Jerry Thomas Buford, Jr. and searched the vehicle in which he was riding, as was then permitted by the precedent of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. See, e.g., United States v. White, 871 F.2d 41, 44 (6th Cir.1989). Based upon the evidence obtained from the search and his subsequent statement to the police, Buford was indicted for being a felon in possession of a firearm, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(1) and 924. Shortly before trial, the Supreme Court in Arizona v. Gant, ––– U.S. ––––, 129 S.Ct. 1710, 173 L.Ed.2d 485 (2009), overruled this court's holdings regarding vehicle searches incident to arrest. In light of Gant, the district court granted Buford's motion to suppress all evidence connected to the search of his vehicle, including his statement to the police. The government now timely appeals, and we reverse and remand for further

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proceedings. In doing so, we hold that the good-faith exception precludes application of the exclusionary rule when police act in objectively reasonable reliance upon clear and settled Sixth Circuit precedent that is later overruled by the United States Supreme Court. Accordingly, we reverse the district court's order granting Buford's motion to suppress and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

I.

On May 18, 2008, shortly after midnight, officers of the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (“MNPD”) conducted a traffic stop of an automobile registered to Buford and occupied by two men. The stop was made after an officer checked the vehicle's plate registration and learned that its owner-registrant, defendant Buford, had an outstanding arrest warrant for a probation violation.

Following the stop, an officer spoke with the driver, defendant Buford. The officer verified Buford's identity and the validity of the warrant before taking him into custody. His passenger, Kristopher Lawson, was also removed from the automobile. During a subsequent search of the vehicle incident to arrest, MNPD Officer Justin Chisolm recovered a loaded Ruger .45 caliber pistol underneath the front passenger seat.

Buford was transferred to the Davidson County Criminal Justice Center (“DCCJC”) for booking on his probation violation. According to the district court, “[a]s the defendant and the officers were approaching the DCCJC, the defendant, in conjunction with a conversation about contraband, apparently volunteered that the gun ‘was in the car [be]cause people try to rob me for the truck.’ ” Buford was charged with unlawful possession of the gun.

Based upon the recent authority of Arizona v. Gant, Buford moved to suppress the firearm and his statement. In Gant, the Supreme Court held that a warrantless search of an automobile incident to a recent occupant's arrest violates the Fourth Amendment unless “the arrestee is within reaching distance of the passenger compartment at the time of the search or it is reasonable to believe the vehicle contains evidence of the offense of arrest.” 129 S.Ct. at 1723. In the district court, Buford maintained that “at the time of the search, [he] was handcuffed and locked inside a patrol car. Likewise, Lawson was removed from the Blazer and was without access to the passenger area.” Buford also alleged that he “was arrested due to an outstanding warrant for a probation violation .... [and] [t]hus, the search of his car was not based upon a reasonable expectation that evidence related to that violation would be found therein.” In response, the government conceded “that, for purposes of the facts of this specific case, the search incident to the arrest did not fall within the parameters elaborated in Gant.”

The district court held a June 11, 2009, suppression hearing at which Officer Chisolm and MNPD Officer Chris Gilder, a legal instructor at the MNPD Training Academy, testified.¹ Officer Chisolm testified that he took a police course taught by Gilder in December 2005 that included training related to the search of vehicles. According to Gilder, prior to April 22, 2009, police-academy participants in his course received the following instructions regarding searches of vehicles incident to arrest: “[W]hen a person is taken into custody ... their person may be searched.... And in the context of a motor

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vehicle, [the permissible search area] would include the passenger compartment ... and any unlocked containers that are located within it.” Gilder further testified that “this instruction” did not “depend on whether the subject was in handcuffs or” on “the underlying cause of arrest....” This instruction was consistent with Sixth Circuit precedent on May 18, 2008, when Buford's vehicle was stopped and searched.

On June 11, 2009, the district court granted Buford's motion to suppress. The district court reasoned that under the retroactivity principle and, specifically, Griffith v. Kentucky, 479 U.S. 314, 328, 107 S.Ct. 708, 93 L.Ed.2d 649 (1987), “the rule in Gant applies with the same force as if Gant were on the books at the time of the defendant's arrest.” In its ruling, the district court held that the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule did not apply.

The government timely appeals.

II.

“The grant or denial of a motion to suppress is a mixed question of fact and law. On appeal, we review the district court's findings of fact for clear error and its conclusions of law de novo.” United States v. Ellis, 497 F.3d 606, 611 (6th Cir.2007) (citations omitted). This case presents solely a legal question, and thus we review it de novo.

III.

The Fourth Amendment guarantees the right of liberty against unreasonable searches and seizures by providing:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

U.S. Const. amend. IV.

However, “there [are] exceptions to the warrant requirement.” United States v. U.S. Dist. Court for the E. Dist. of Mich., S. Div., 407 U.S. 297, 318, 92 S.Ct. 2125, 32 L.Ed.2d 752 (1972) (citing Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969)). Relevant to the present case, the law is well established that when police make an arrest, they may search “the arrestee's person and the area ‘within his immediate control’ ” without obtaining a warrant. Chimel, 395 U.S. at 763, 89 S.Ct. 2034. That rule is justified by the need “to remove any weapons that the [arrestee] might seek to use in order to resist arrest or effect his escape [,]” and the need to prevent the “concealment or destruction” of evidence. Id. at 763, 89 S.Ct. 2034; accord Thornton v. United States, 541 U.S. 615, 620, 124 S.Ct. 2127, 158 L.Ed.2d 905 (2004); Knowles v. Iowa, 525 U.S. 113, 116–17, 119 S.Ct. 484, 142 L.Ed.2d 492 (1998).

In New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 101 S.Ct. 2860, 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981), the Supreme Court applied its search-incident-to-arrest jurisprudence to the motor-vehicle context. The Court highlighted the difficulty in determining the precise area within the immediate control of the arrestee, noting “that articles inside the relatively narrow compass of the passenger compartment of an automobile are in fact generally, even if not inevitably, within ‘the area into which an arrestee might reach in order to grab a weapon or evidentiary ite[m].’ ” Id. at 460, 101 S.Ct. 2860 (alteration in original) (quoting Chimel, 395 U.S. at 763, 89 S.Ct. 2034). Expressing a desire to establish a “workable rule[,]” the Court held “that when a policeman has

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made a lawful custodial arrest of the occupant of an automobile, he may, as a contemporaneous incident of that arrest, search the passenger compartment of that automobile.” Id. at 460, 101 S.Ct. 2860 (footnote omitted).

In this circuit, before Gant, “our consistent reading of Belton ha[d] been that, once a police officer has effected a valid arrest, that officer can search the area that is or was within the arrestee's control.” White, 871 F.2d at 44. We, like the majority of other circuits, interpreted Belton to allow law enforcement officers to search a vehicle incident to a lawful custodial arrest of its occupants without a warrant or probable cause, “even after the arrestee was handcuffed and placed in the backseat of a police cruiser.” United States v. Patterson, 993 F.2d 121, 123 (6th Cir.1993) (per curiam); see also United States v. Nichols, 512 F.3d 789, 797 (6th Cir.2008). “Although there [was] a split in the circuits on this point, we [had] not wavered in our adherence to this rule.” Patterson, 993 F.2d at 123 (footnote omitted). Thus, when the search occurred in this case on May 18, 2008, there was no doubt as to its constitutionality in the Sixth Circuit, if not most of the country. See Gant, 129 S.Ct. at 1718 (acknowledging that Belton was “widely understood to allow a vehicle search incident to the arrest of a recent occupant even if there [was] no possibility the arrestee could gain access to the vehicle at the time of...