United States v. Anderson
| Decision Date | 24 November 2014 |
| Docket Number | No. 13–4152–cr.,13–4152–cr. |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America, Appellant, v. Valentino ANDERSON, Appellee–Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Reversed. Craig S. Nolan, (Gregory L. Waples on the brief), for Tristram J. Coffin, United States Attorney, District of Vermont, Burlington, VT, for Appellant.
Richard C. Bothfeld, Bothfeld & Volk P.C., Burlington, VT, for Appellee–Defendant.
Before: PARKER, LYNCH and CARNEY, Circuit Judges.BARRINGTON D. PARKER, Circuit Judge:
The Government appeals from an order of the United States District Court for the District of Vermont (Reiss, C.J.) suppressing, on substantive due process grounds, drugs that had been secreted within the vagina of Crystal Anderson, the wife of defendant Valentino Anderson, and that she surrendered to Vermont state police officers after a lengthy custodial interrogation during which she was the subject of unconstitutional, coercive conduct. The District Court held that, because the conduct of the Vermont state troopers vis-à-vis Mrs. Anderson was sufficiently outrageous, the drugs could not be admitted into evidence at Valentino Anderson's trial. The Government does not contest on appeal that the conduct of the Vermont state troopers violated Mrs. Anderson's substantive due process rights, but contends that Anderson cannot assert such a claim based on conduct directed solely at his wife. For the reasons that follow, we agree and we reverse.
Specifically, the district court found that Mrs. Anderson had been subjected to prolonged custodial interrogation without the benefit of Miranda warnings. Her statements were tainted by coercive police conduct, which included misrepresentations that her husband had incriminated her in drug trafficking and that she would be transported to a hospital where the drugs would be forcibly extracted from her body if she did not remove them herself. The district court also concluded that the police misconduct was exacerbated by the lack of any exigency. Unlike her husband, who was not detained, Mrs. Anderson was not a known drug trafficker and the misconduct took place over a number of hours in the police barracks. These circumstances as well as what the court termed the “egregious” flouting of a judicial finding that no probable cause existed to search or continue to detain Mrs. Anderson—all amounted, the court found, to outrageous police conduct that violated due process. Anderson, 2013 WL 5769976, at *12. Accordingly, the district court held that, the drug evidence obtained from Mrs. Anderson was “inadmissible for any purpose.” Id.
On appeal, the Government does not contest that the conduct of the Vermont state police violated Mrs. Anderson's substantive due process rights. 2 But the Government contends that under United States v. Payner, 447 U.S. 727, 735–37 n. 9, 100 S.Ct. 2439, 65 L.Ed.2d 468 (1980), Anderson cannot base a substantive due process claim on what happened to his wife. We agree and we reverse.3
The dispositive issue presented by this appeal is whether Anderson may suppress on substantive due process grounds evidence obtained as a consequence of an illegal search of his wife rather than himself. It is well settled that he may not do so based on the Fourth Amendment because “suppression of the product of a Fourth Amendment violation can be successfully urged only by those whose rights were violated by the search itself, not by those who are aggrieved solely by the introduction of damaging evidence.” Alderman v. United States, 394 U.S. 165, 171–72, 89 S.Ct. 961, 22 L.Ed.2d 176 (1969). “Coconspirators and codefendants have been accorded no special standing.” Id. at 172, 89 S.Ct. 961. The district court recognized as much but granted Anderson's suppression motion based on a conclusion that the police misconduct was sufficiently egregious that the admission of evidence obtained through such conduct at trial would violate Anderson's rights to substantive due process.
A defendant can raise a substantive due process claim if outrageous government conduct was directed at him. See United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739, 746, 107 S.Ct. 2095, 95 L.Ed.2d 697 (1987); see also Rochin, 342 U.S. at 169, 72 S.Ct. 205. But Payner bars such a claim when it is based on a “flagrantly illegal search” of the defendant's wife. 447 U.S. at 729, 100 S.Ct. 2439. In Payner, the defendant objected to the introduction of documents obtained illegally from the briefcase of a third party bank officer. Like Anderson, he raised a substantive due process claim. The evidence had been stolen by an informant who, working with an Internal Revenue Service agent, broke into the bank officer's apartment and stole his briefcase, which contained records that the government needed to build its case. 447 U.S. at 729, 100 S.Ct. 2439. The IRS agent then supervised the copying of approximately 400 documents taken from the briefcase, while a “lookout” observed the bank officer at dinner. When the bank officer left the restaurant, the lookout notified the informant and the briefcase was replaced. Id. at 730, 100 S.Ct. 2439. The documents recovered from the briefcase ultimately led to the discovery of important incriminating evidence.
The lower court had held that the defendant did not have standing to assert that the theft of the briefcase and the subsequent illegal search violated the Fourth Amendment, but, under the inherent supervisory power of federal courts and the due process clause, the illegally-seized evidence was not admissible. United States v. Payner, 434 F.Supp. 113, 129, 133–135 (N.D.Ohio 1977). Ultimately, the Supreme Court reversed. It agreed that the defendant did not have standing to invoke the Fourth Amendment's exclusionary rule, but went on to conclude that he also could not assert a substantive due process claim when his own property had not been subject to the illegal search. The Court stated:
even if we assume that the unlawful ... search was so outrageous as to offend fundamental ‘canons of decency and fairness,’ the fact remains that ‘[t]he limitations of the Due Process Clause ... come into play only when the Government activity in question violates some protected right of the defendant.’
Payner, 447 U.S. at 737 n. 9, 100 S.Ct. 2439 (quoting Hampton v. United States, 425 U.S. 484, 490, 96 S.Ct. 1646, 48 L.Ed.2d 113 (1976) (plurality opinion) (internal citations omitted)).
Accordingly, on the facts before us, Payner precludes suppression, on substantive due process grounds, of physical evidence obtained through a flagrantly illegal search directed at someone other than the defendant. This is so notwithstanding the fact that the conduct of the Vermont state police was deceptive, coercive and illegal.
In holding that Payner precludes Anderson's claim, we need not decide whether physical evidence obtained through outrageous conduct—such as torture—inflicted on a third party may never be excluded on due process grounds. The Seventh Circuit has explained that United States v. Chiavola, 744 F.2d 1271, 1273 (7th Cir.1984) (internal citation omitted). Significantly, neither Payner nor this case involved conduct, such as torture, so beyond the pale of civilized society that no court could countenance it.
This holding is in line with our sister circuits that have considered this issue. See, e.g., United States v. Dyke, 718 F.3d 1282, 1285, 1288 (10th Cir.2013) (...
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