United States v. Parks

• Decision Date: 30 August 2018
• Docket Number: No. 17-1914,17-1914
• Citation: 902 F.3d 805
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff - Appellee v. Kyle Maurice PARKS, Defendant - Appellant
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

902 F.3d 805

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff - Appellee

v.Kyle Maurice PARKS, Defendant - Appellant

No. 17-1914

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

Submitted: April 12, 2018

Filed: August 30, 2018

Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Denied October 11, 2018

Howard J. Marcus, Jennifer Winfield, Assistant U.S. Attorneys, U.S. ATTORNEY'S OFFICE, Eastern District of Missouri, Saint Louis, MO, for Plaintiff - Appellee.

Joseph Mark Hogan, Saint Louis, MO, for Defendant - Appellant.

Kyle Maurice Parks, Pro Se.

Before SMITH, Chief Judge, WOLLMAN and LOKEN, Circuit Judges.

WOLLMAN, Circuit Judge.

A jury found Kyle Maurice Parks guilty of one count of transportation of a minor to engage in prostitution in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1591(a)(1) and (b)(2) ; two counts of attempted transportation of a minor to engage in prostitution in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1591(a)(1), (b)(2), and 1594(a) ; and six counts of transportation of an individual with intent to engage in prostitution in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2421(a). Parks appeals from the denial of his motion to suppress evidence. He also argues that the district court¹ erred in admitting certain evidence and in denying his motion for judgment of acquittal on two of the counts. We affirm.

I. Background

Detective Mark Young, a Columbus, Ohio, police officer assigned to the Ohio Human Trafficking Task Force, received information on December 2, 2015, that seventeen-year-old T.S. had run away from an Ohio juvenile residential facility. The next day, T.S.’s mother called Young, saying that T.S. had contacted her and said that she was on her way to Florida with at least two other individuals. Believing that T.S. was in trouble, Young requested an emergency cell phone ping to determine her location. The ping showed that T.S.’s cell phone was located near the vicinity of a Red Roof Inn in St. Charles, Missouri.

Detective Young asked the St. Charles Police Department to dispatch officers to the Red Roof Inn to check for any vehicles with Ohio license plates. St. Charles police officers went to the hotel, where they located a gray van bearing temporary Ohio license tags that revealed that the vehicle was registered to Parks. Upon being provided this information, Young responded that he was familiar with Parks and that T.S. was likely with him.

In response to their inquiries, a hotel employee told the officers that there were two young women, R.W. and K.O., from Columbus, Ohio, who currently had rooms at the hotel. The officers first went to nineteen-year-old R.W.’s room. They knocked on the door, R.W. answered, and they informed her that they were looking for T.S. Although T.S. was not in R.W.’s room, the officers noticed another young woman, seventeen-year-old T.M., there. Officers then went to twenty-four-year-old K.O.’s room, where they located T.S. and a fifteen-year-old girl, L.L. R.W. and K.O. consented to the searches of the hotel rooms, in which officers found stained and soiled linens, drug paraphernalia, feminine hygiene products, prepaid gift cards, packages of condoms, used condoms, male clothing, items bearing Parks’s name, and an Ohio municipal court document citing K.O. for prostitution. Officers also obtained a Red Roof Inn surveillance video that showed R.W., K.O., and Parks together at the check-in counter.

Police transported the five young women to a locked juvenile facility in St. Charles, where they were interviewed by law enforcement. K.O. and T.S. both told the officers that they had committed acts of prostitution while at the Red Roof Inn and that they had given the money that they had earned to Parks. K.O. also stated that she had previously worked as a prostitute for Parks in Ohio.

Officers then discovered that Parks, his van, and seventeen-year-old S.L. were missing. The next morning’s shift officers were briefed on Parks and the incident at the Red Roof Inn. An email was sent out within the department, informing officers that they needed to be on the lookout for Parks and his vehicle. The email also included a photo of Parks.

Later that morning, Parks walked into the St. Charles County police headquarters and approached a police services officer who was working at the lobby desk. Parks gave the officer his name, said that he was from Ohio, and that he was there to bail out a female friend. The services officer recognized Parks and notified Officer Paul Yadlosky and Detective Stephanie Kaiser. When Officer Yadlosky arrived in the lobby, Parks walked towards the door and looked out at his van. When Detective Kaiser arrived, she noticed a gray van matching the email’s description in the parking lot.

Knowing that there was a missing girl who had last been seen with Parks and that the gray van was registered to Parks, Officer Yadlosky and Detective Kaiser decided to go out to the van to look for the girl. Detective Kaiser peered in the window and saw an older girl lying in the middle row of seats, wrapped in a blanket. Because the girl’s face was covered, it was difficult to determine her condition. The girl did not respond when the officers rapped on the van’s window. Officer Yadlosky then opened the van door, at which point the woman responded in a "sluggish and slow" manner. Officer Yadlosky testified that he could smell marijuana upon opening the van door and that he noticed a bag of marijuana on the floor of the van when the girl sat up. Officer Yadlosky seized the marijuana. The girl was later identified as missing seventeen-year-old S.L.

Officer Yadlosky quickly searched the van to ensure that no one else was inside. In doing so, Officer Yadlosky noticed cell phones, clothing, and condoms. Because of the van’s cluttered condition, Officer Yadlosky requested that a K-9 officer conduct a search for any hidden narcotics. The drug dog alerted to the driver’s side passenger door. Law enforcement officers thereafter conducted a full search of the van and seized sales receipts for prepaid gift cards, a receipt containing a Backpage.com (Backpage) email address, prepaid phone gift cards, eighty-eight condoms, and three cell phones.

Law enforcement officers later executed a search warrant for Parks’s Ohio office suite, which contained several rooms, including multiple bedrooms and a lounge area. One of the bedrooms contained a mattress, soiled bedding, and drug paraphernalia. In the lounge area, officers found a mini bar, sofas, a coffee table with a condom case, and Parks’s XXXREC business cards advertising "nude or partially nude, manies, pedies, full body massages, house cleaning, and dancing." Other items seized during the search included women’s clothing, a prepaid gift card, a shipping box with Parks’s name on it that contained bottles of an unknown liquid advertised as a male enhancement, used condoms, and a DVD entitled "The Bottum."²

Parks’s cell phone was also searched pursuant to a warrant. A forensic technician discovered numerous photos of partially dressed women and multiple text messages in which Parks inquired about ads on Backpage, stating that he was the owner of XXXREC and that he could "provide [them with] in call location and safe, reliable out call transportation."³

Parks was charged in a nine-count superseding indictment with offenses related to sex-trafficking and prostitution. He filed a motion to suppress the evidence seized during the search of his van. A magistrate judge⁴ recommended that Parks’s motion be denied because the search of the van was lawful under the community caretaker and automobile exceptions to the warrant requirement and that the items seized inevitably would have been discovered during an inventory search. The district court overruled Parks’s objection to the recommendation, adopted the report and recommendation, and denied the motion to suppress.

At trial, the government presented the evidence seized from Parks’s van, office, cell phone, and the hotel rooms. The government called sixteen witnesses, including several law enforcement officers and four victims.

L.L. testified that she had run away from an Ohio juvenile facility when T.S. called her and invited her to go on a road trip to Florida. L.L. agreed, and Parks picked her up in his van on December 2, 2015. There were five other women with Parks—T.S., T.M., S.L., and two women L.L. did not know, but who were later identified as R.W. and K.O. Parks provided the women with marijuana to smoke while they drove. Realizing later that they were not on their way to Florida, L.L. asked Parks to take her home. Parks responded that he would put her on a bus to Ohio, but refused to tell her when he would do so. L.L. then fell asleep and upon awakening learned that they were in the parking lot of the Red Roof Inn in St. Charles.

L.L. testified that Parks directed R.W. and K.O. to pay for two hotel rooms. He then assigned each of the girls to a hotel room. L.L. stayed in a room with T.S., K.O., and Parks. Parks told the women that they could sleep for a few hours in their rooms. When he woke them up, he told them to shower and get dressed because they were going to "post up." L.L. did not know what this meant, but she saw Parks on his phone with a card, and then he started taking pictures of the women. Parks asked to take L.L.’s picture, but she told him no and that she was only fifteen. L.L. then witnessed the young women going back and forth between rooms, having sex, and giving Parks some of their money. She also witnessed K.O. using heroin while in the hotel room.

T.S. testified that Parks approached her as she walked down a street in Columbus, Ohio, after her flight from the juvenile facility. He told her about Backpage and that he wanted her to go on dates—but that she did not have to have sex—and in return, he would give her "anything that [she] wanted." Parks drove T.S. to his office, where she met T.M., S.L., and K.O. Parks gave T.S. marijuana and K.O. heroin. Later that night, Parks arranged for T.S. to go on a "date" at his office. T.S. went into a bedroom with a man and...