United States v. Blakeney

• Decision Date: 06 February 2020
• Docket Number: No. 18-4921,18-4921
• Citation: 949 F.3d 851
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. Stephonze Phillip BLAKENEY, Defendant - Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

949 F.3d 851

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff - Appellee,

v.Stephonze Phillip BLAKENEY, Defendant - Appellant.

No. 18-4921

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued: November 13, 2019

Decided: February 6, 2020

ARGUED: Cullen Oakes Macbeth, OFFICE OF THE FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellant. Hollis Raphael Weisman, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Greenbelt, Maryland, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: James Wyda, Federal Public Defender, OFFICE OF THE FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellant. Robert K. Hur, United States Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellee.

Before MOTZ, DIAZ, and HARRIS, Circuit Judges.

PAMELA HARRIS, Circuit Judge:

Stephonze Blakeney was driving on a federal parkway in Maryland when he lost control of his car and crossed a raised median into oncoming traffic, causing a crash in which his passenger died. After he was indicted for offenses including vehicular homicide while impaired by alcohol, Blakeney moved to suppress evidence obtained from two searches conducted pursuant to search warrants: a toxicology analysis of blood drawn from Blakeney just after the accident, and a review of his car’s event data recorder. The district court denied Blakeney’s suppression motions, finding that the warrant applications established probable cause and that the search warrants were sufficiently particularized. And in any case, the district court noted, the officers had acted in objective good-faith reliance on the search warrants, making the evidence admissible under United States v. Leon , 468 U.S. 897, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984). We agree with the district court in all respects and thus affirm Blakeney’s convictions.

I.

A.

The fatal accident giving rise to this case occurred on June 5, 2017.¹ Late that evening, Stephonze Blakeney was driving westbound on Suitland Parkway in Prince George’s County, Maryland, just outside of the District of Columbia. He had one passenger in his car, Briaunna Smith. Both had been drinking earlier that evening. As Blakeney approached the District of Columbia, he passed an on-ramp where traffic merged onto the parkway. Near this gradually curving portion of the parkway, Blakeney lost control of his car, which veered sharply to the left. As Blakeney attempted to regain control, his car began to swerve, twice hitting the raised concrete median that divides traffic on the parkway. Eventually, Blakeney’s car crossed the median into eastbound traffic and struck a Nissan Altima operated by Milian Moreno.

Fire department and emergency medical services ("EMS") personnel, as well as the United States Park Police ("USPP"), responded to the scene of the accident just after 10:30 PM. The first USPP officer to arrive, Donald Greulich, bore witness to a catastrophic scene: the front end of Blakeney’s car, including its engine, had completely separated from the rest of the vehicle; Moreno was lying in the roadway, injured; Smith was in the passenger seat of what remained of Blakeney’s car, unresponsive; and Blakeney sat in the driver’s seat of his car, staring blankly. EMS personnel declared Smith deceased at the scene at 10:53 PM. Moreno was transported to a hospital where he ultimately recovered from his injuries.

When EMS personnel attempted to free Blakeney from his crumpled car, he became combative and resisted their efforts. The EMS workers told Officer Greulich that Blakeney appeared to be under the influence of alcohol and PCP. After the team was able to place Blakeney into an ambulance, Greulich called USPP detectives to the scene to complete a crash investigation, following standard USPP practice for cases in which a crash causes a fatality.

Sergeant Robert Steinheimer of the USPP arrived at 11:00 PM and took control of the investigation. While taking in the scene, Steinheimer "detected a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage, emanating from the passenger compartment" of Blakeney’s car. J.A. 27. In light of the severity and fatal nature of the crash, as well as his belief that evidence might be lost if not seized promptly, Steinheimer sought a telephonic search warrant from the District of Maryland’s then-on-duty magistrate judge, the Honorable Timothy Sullivan. Coordinating with the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland, Steinheimer reached Judge Sullivan by phone at 12:23 AM to procure the first of the two search warrants at issue in this case.

The contents of the call between Sergeant Steinheimer and Judge Sullivan, which was recorded and later transcribed, are especially important because they function both as the first search warrant application and the first search warrant itself. At the outset of the call, Steinheimer identified himself as the warrant applicant and Blakeney as the subject of the prospective search warrant. Prompted by Judge Sullivan to provide the probable cause supporting issuance of a search warrant, Steinheimer described the accident and the fatality involved, stated that Blakeney had been removed from the driver’s seat of his car "with a heavy odor of alcohol and possibly PCP," and reported that Blakeney had been "combative" and "had to be restrained" in order for EMS personnel to address his injuries. J.A. 48–49. Judge Sullivan then asked whether anyone at the hospital had sought Blakeney’s "consent to a test to determine alcohol." J.A. 49. Informed that Blakeney was still combative at the hospital and not assisting investigators, Judge Sullivan then stated:

Okay. I find that there is probable cause to justify the issuance of the warrant for the drawing of the blood of Mr. Blakeney, Stephonze Phillip Blakeney, as described earlier in this proceeding. It is 12:28 AM and based on the information communicated to me, I believe that there is probable cause at this time to draw his blood. And it is 12:29, all right.

J.A. 49. The conversation lasted for approximately six minutes.

Once the magistrate judge had approved a blood draw, another USPP officer, Sergeant Hamel Morris, went to the hospital where Blakeney had been taken. At 12:44 AM, he witnessed a nurse perform the blood draw, and took the blood sample into USPP custody. A toxicology test later performed by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for the District of Columbia revealed that Blakeney’s blood at the time of the blood draw contained 0.07 grams of ethanol per 100 milliliters of blood – a high enough concentration, a toxicologist later would testify at trial, to impair psychomotor functions and delay reaction times.

After the on-scene investigation was completed, the crashed cars were towed to the USPP’s impound garage, located in the District of Columbia. Three weeks after the accident, Steinheimer applied for the second warrant at issue on appeal. This application, filed in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, sought authorization to search the event data recorder ("EDR") – an instrument similar to the "black box" often used in plane-crash investigations – in Blakeney’s car for information about the car’s speed, brake status, and other conditions in the moments just before the crash. Steinheimer’s supporting affidavit specified Blakeney’s car as the place to be searched and the EDR, along with its data – which would cover the time of the crash and the five seconds just before the crash – as the items to be seized. The affidavit described how Blakeney’s car had "crossed over the raised, curb, center median and struck [Moreno’s] Nissan," causing a "motor vehicle crash, with injuries," J.A. 100, and explained that the EDR’s data was "needed by the crash reconstructionist to determine the underlying cause of the crash," J.A. 101.

The EDR search warrant was approved, and executed by Steinheimer and two other officers. Using the EDR data, a crash reconstructionist determined that Blakeney had been traveling at least 79 miles per hour in the five seconds before his vehicle struck Moreno’s Nissan, and that the car’s automatic braking system had slowed the car down to 68 miles per hour at the moment of impact. The posted speed limit on the parkway was 45 miles per hour.

On October 23, 2017, a federal grand jury indicted Blakeney on three charges related to the crash: homicide by motor vehicle while impaired by alcohol, driving without a license, and reckless driving.

B.

Before trial, Blakeney filed the two suppression motions that are at issue in this appeal. The first challenged the telephonic blood-draw warrant obtained at the scene of the accident and sought suppression of the results of the blood-toxicology test that followed. Blakeney’s primary argument was that the warrant was issued without the requisite probable cause. According to Blakeney, Steinheimer recklessly misled the magistrate when he said that Blakeney had been removed from his car "with a heavy odor of alcohol and possibly PCP"; in fact, no USPP officer had smelled PCP (rather than relying on secondhand information from EMS personnel), and Steinheimer smelled alcohol only in Blakeney’s car and not on his person. Once those misleading representations were stricken from the warrant application pursuant to Franks v. Delaware , 438 U.S. 154, 98 S.Ct. 2674, 57 L.Ed.2d 667 (1978), Blakeney finished, there was not enough to establish probable cause that the blood draw would reveal evidence of a crime. Blakeney also challenged the blood-draw warrant as insufficiently particularized, arguing that the magistrate’s oral authorization failed to specify the evidence to be seized by "reference to a particular offense." J.A. 20.

Blakeney’s second motion raised similar challenges to the admissibility of the evidence obtained from his car’s EDR. He argued that Steinheimer’s affidavit failed to establish probable cause to believe that the EDR contained evidence of a crime, describing nothing more than a car accident and providing no information about its cause. Blakeney also contended that like the blood-draw warrant, the...