U.S. v. Chaney

• Decision Date: 27 July 2011
• Docket Number: No. 09–1835.,09–1835.
• Citation: 647 F.3d 401
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee,v.Vincent CHANEY, Defendant, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

647 F.3d 401

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee,

v.Vincent CHANEY, Defendant, Appellant.

No. 09–1835.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard Sept. 13, 2010.Decided July 27, 2011.

Robert Herrick, for appellant.Seth R. Aframe, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom John P. Kacavas, Acting United States Attorney, was on brief, for appellee.Before TORRUELLA, RIPPLE,^* and LIPEZ, Circuit Judges.LIPEZ, Circuit Judge.

Defendant-appellant Vincent Chaney appeals the denial of a motion to suppress evidence seized from him in the raid of a motel room in which Chaney was a guest. Placed on the floor and handcuffed in the wake of his host's arrest on drug charges, Chaney consented to a search of his pants pocket to locate identification; the search turned up seven small bags of crack cocaine. A dozen rounds of .38–caliber ammunition were later discovered in the pocket of his jacket.

After unsuccessfully moving to suppress this evidence, Chaney entered a conditional guilty plea to charges of simple possession of cocaine and possession of a firearm after a prior felony conviction. On appeal, Chaney argues that the police exceeded the scope of his consent by removing cocaine, rather than identification, from his pocket; that his consent was the product of a coercive atmosphere and hence not voluntary; and that all evidence seized was the fruit of an unlawful de facto arrest. Finding no reversible error in the district court's rulings, we affirm.

I.

The events giving rise to this appeal took place in the course of a police raid on a Manchester, New Hampshire motel room in late 2005. In reciting the facts, we draw on the district court's oral findings of fact at Chaney's suppression hearings as well as testimony taken at those hearings.

On November 30, 2005, state and federal law enforcement officials in possession of a federal arrest warrant for a man named Peter Boyd, suspected of distributing crack cocaine, went to the Queen City Inn in Manchester, New Hampshire. Past experience flagged the motel as a likely choice for local drug dealers looking for temporary lodging. Shown a picture of Boyd, a clerk at the Queen City Inn confirmed to an investigating United States Marshal that a man of Boyd's appearance was staying in a room at the motel. The marshal summoned four additional federal and local law enforcement officers to the motel to aid in executing the warrant.

The motel room in which Boyd was staying was registered in the name of Brigit Hebert, a woman familiar to the authorities as the subject of several past drug-related arrest warrants. Unbeknownst to the officers, also present in Hebert's motel room was Vincent Chaney. According to his testimony at the suppression hearings, Chaney had come the previous night from Virginia, hoping to visit two of his daughters who were living with their mother in Manchester. Arriving too late to visit with his daughters, Chaney went to a bar and happened upon Boyd, an old acquaintance. Boyd offered to put Chaney up for the night in the room he was sharing with Hebert at the Queen City Inn. Boyd, Hebert, and Chaney were thus all present in Hebert's motel room when the officers arrived early in the afternoon of the next day to execute Boyd's arrest warrant.

Two local detectives were dispatched to cover the rear door to Hebert's motel room while three marshals approached from the front, knocking on the door and announcing their presence. The door opened to reveal Boyd, wearing pajama pants but shirtless and without shoes. Boyd was taken into custody, and the marshals entered the room with their weapons drawn to perform a protective sweep. They found the room darkened and clothing scattered across the floor, with Hebert lying in bed and Chaney, whom the officers did not recognize, standing next to it. The marshals told Hebert to get out of bed and put her hands up, which she did. Chaney was less compliant, edging toward the corner of the bed despite repeated commands to stop moving and lie on the ground. After six or more warnings, Chaney acquiesced and was handcuffed on the floor. The marshals completed their sweep of the main room, the space underneath the bed, and the bathroom, finding in plain view two bags of what appeared to be marijuana (sitting on a windowsill), three crack pipes (on the windowsill and on a chair), and a number of rounds of .22–caliber ammunition (located in a clear bag in the closet).¹

As the protective sweep was being conducted, the marshals opened the rear door of the motel to admit the local detectives. Detective Brian Newcomb approached Chaney, patted him down for weapons, and then attempted to learn his identity. Chaney was not immediately forthright, telling Detective Newcomb only that his name was Vincent and providing him with several false dates of birth. After the local dispatch reported that it was unable to find a match for the dates of birth in their database, Newcomb asked Chaney if he had any identification. Chaney indicated that he did, and that it could be found in his back pocket. Detective Newcomb asked for and was granted consent to retrieve the identification from Chaney's back pocket, but the pocket turned out to be empty. Asked if the identification might be located elsewhere, Chaney suggested that it might be in his left front pocket. Chaney again consented to have Newcomb search his pocket for the identification.

Detective Newcomb placed his hand in Chaney's left front pocket and removed first a plastic bag that held seven individual plastic bags, each of which contained a “chunky off-white substance”; he then reentered Chaney's pocket and removed a social security card.² Newcomb believed the off-white substance in the bags to be crack cocaine, having seen the substance in his prior law enforcement experience some fifty to one hundred times (a field test later confirmed his suspicions). Newcomb informed Chaney that he was under arrest for possession of crack cocaine with intent to distribute. After learning from dispatch that the social security card found in Chaney's pocket, which bore the name “Vincent Earold Chaney,” belonged to a four-year-old boy, ³ Newcomb again asked Chaney for his date of birth. Chaney provided the correct date this time, and a search of police records confirmed his identity and revealed an outstanding warrant for his arrest in Massachusetts for a probation violation.

As Detective Newcomb was escorting Chaney to a police car outside the motel, Chaney asked Newcomb to retrieve a backpack and jacket Chaney had left in the room. Newcomb retrieved a backpack and jacket matching the description provided by Chaney. After Chaney confirmed that they belonged to him, Newcomb searched both items, locating in the jacket pocket a plastic bag containing twelve rounds of .38–caliber ammunition.

Chaney was eventually indicted in the district court on two counts arising out of the incident: one count of simple possession of cocaine base, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 844(a), and one count of unlawful possession of a firearm after a prior felony conviction, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 922 and 924(a)(2).⁴ Chaney moved to suppress all of the evidence seized in the course of his detention and arrest.

The district court held two evidentiary hearings to evaluate possible grounds for suppression. The first, held by Judge DiClerico on September 4, 2008, addressed Chaney's argument that the search of Hebert's motel room was unlawful due to the absence of a valid search warrant. After testimony from Chaney and three of the police officers who conducted the search and arrest, Judge DiClerico ruled that Chaney lacked standing to challenge the search of the motel room. The judge also found that Chaney had consented to a search of his pockets, and that the search of Chaney's jacket before turning it over to him had been reasonable in light of officer safety concerns.

A second hearing was held before Judge Barbadoro on September 17, 2008. ⁵ After brief supplemental testimony from two of the officers, Chaney's counsel presented arguments that the search of Chaney's pockets occurred during an unlawful de facto arrest and that Chaney's consent to the search was invalid because it was the product of coercion. Judge Barbadoro rejected the arguments, ruling that Chaney's detention was not a de facto arrest, being limited in duration and reasonable in scope, and that Chaney's consent was voluntary. At the close of the hearing, the judge confirmed that all of the issues concerning Chaney's detention and consent were preserved for appeal:

It's preserved for purposes of appeal that the entry was illegal. It's preserved for purposes of appeal that the scope of the detention after the entry was improper, and it's preserved for purposes of appeal that any consent given was not valid and does not justify and make lawful the seizure that followed. I think you've presented every possible suppression argument that can be presented.

Chaney subsequently entered into a conditional plea agreement by which he reserved his right to appeal the district court's suppression rulings. Subject to that agreement, Chaney pled guilty to one count of simple possession and one count of possession of a firearm after a felony conviction. Judgment was entered against Chaney in April 2009, and this timely appeal followed.

II.

In evaluating the district court's denial of Chaney's suppression motion, we review the court's findings of fact for clear error and its legal conclusions de novo. United States v. Larios, 593 F.3d 82, 92 (1st Cir.2010). Chaney raises three challenges to the district court's ruling. First, he argues that the removal from his pocket of plastic bags containing cocaine exceeded the scope of his consent, which, he asserts, was limited to a search of his pocket to locate identification. Second, he argues that, even if he consented to a general search of his pants pocket, the consent was involuntary because of an unduly...