U.S. v. Clariot

• Decision Date: 25 August 2011
• Docket Number: No. 09–5783.,09–5783.
• Citation: 655 F.3d 550
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellant,v.Jose M. CLARIOT; Franklin Guzman; Oscar Toledo, Defendants–Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

655 F.3d 550

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellant,
v.
Jose M. CLARIOT; Franklin Guzman; Oscar Toledo, Defendants–Appellees.

No. 09–5783.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued: July 26, 2011.Decided and Filed: Aug. 25, 2011.

[655 F.3d 551]

ARGUED: Brent A. Hannafan, Assistant United States Attorney, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellant. Michael D. Noel, Brentwood, Tennessee, Jodie A. Bell, Bell, Tennent & Frogge, Nashville, Tennessee, Kimberly S. Hodde, Hodde & Associates, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellees. ON BRIEF: Heather G. Childs, Assistant United States Attorney, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellant. Michael D. Noel, Brentwood, Tennessee, Jodie A. Bell, Bell, Tennent & Frogge, Nashville, Tennessee, Kimberly S. Hodde, Hodde & Associates, Nashville, Tennessee, Benjamin H. Perry, Balthrop, Perry & Noe, Ashland City, Tennessee, for Appellees.Before: SUTTON and WHITE, Circuit Judges; STAFFORD, District Judge. ^*SUTTON, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which STAFFORD, D.J., joined. WHITE, J. (p. 556), delivered a separate opinion concurring in the reversal.OPINION SUTTON, Circuit Judge.

When three men landed an airplane at an unstaffed airport in Jackson, Tennessee at 9:00 p.m., local law enforcement investigated. Five officers approached the plane, and they asked for identification. A warrant check on the individuals came up clean and the officers returned the identifications, after which they chatted with the men about their travel plans.

Roughly ten to fifteen minutes of conversation later, the officers asked for consent to search the plane. The pilots refused—nervously, as the officers tell it. After declining to give consent for the search, the three men climbed back into the plane and flew to Nashville, where local police discovered 70 kilograms of cocaine hidden in the plane. Facing federal drug charges, the three men filed a suppression motion. Although permitting the admission of the 70 kilograms of cocaine, the district court suppressed the officers' account of what happened at the Jackson airport—the defendants' reactions to the request to search and their prompt take-off to Nashville. Because the suppressed evidence was not the product of an illegal seizure, the exclusionary rule does not apply. We reverse.

[655 F.3d 552]

I.

On January 29, 2008, Franklin Guzman and Oscar Toledo flew a Cessna airplane, apparently originating in the Southwest, over rural Tennessee, with Jose Clariot as a passenger. At 9:00 p.m., the pilots landed at an airport in Jackson, population 62,000 or so. Having been tracking the path of the private plane, the Department of Homeland Security asked Lieutenant William Carneal of the local sheriff's office to investigate the plane after it touched down. The plane landed after dark and after the airport staff had gone home for the day—not an everyday occurrence at the Jackson airport—prompting Carneal to call four other officers to meet him at the airport.

The officers entered the airport and approached the plane. Carneal asked Guzman whether the men needed help—they did not—then asked for identification. He took the identifications to a police car parked fifteen to twenty feet behind the airplane's tail and called the Department of Homeland Security to check whether the men had any outstanding warrants. After five to ten minutes, the agency replied that they did not. Carneal returned the identifications to the men and discussed their options for spending the night in Jackson and the possibility of leaving the plane unattended at the airport for the night.

While the officers waited to hear back from airport personnel about leaving the plane there overnight, Lieutenant Carneal asked to search the plane. According to Carneal, both Guzman and Toledo grew “nervous” and spoke anxiously back and forth. “[N]o, we are going to go, we are going to go,” Guzman finally responded. After further discussion, the pilots continued to refuse permission to search the plane, then flew to Nashville.

Later that night, the three men landed in Nashville, registered their plane and took a shuttle to a hotel. Federal officers told local police that the plane had taken an irregular flight pattern, prompting the police to examine the outside of the plane with a narcotics dog, which signaled the presence of drugs. Claiming to be airport personnel, the officers called Guzman's hotel room and told him that police had expressed interest in the aircraft and would be arriving soon to inspect the plane. Guzman immediately left his room. A Nashville detective stopped him and asked to search the airplane. He consented. The officers found 70 kilograms of cocaine packed in three suitcases.

A federal grand jury indicted Guzman, Toledo and Clariot for conspiring to distribute cocaine. 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), 846. The defendants filed a motion to suppress several pieces of evidence, including Lieutenant Carneal's testimony that the pilots appeared nervous and abruptly left the Jackson airport after he asked to search the plane. The district court suppressed Lieutenant Carneal's observations. The United States filed this interlocutory appeal. See 18 U.S.C. § 3731.

II.

Section 3731 provides a one-party path for interlocutory review of suppression orders. It allows the government, but not criminal defendants, to challenge a suppression ruling prior to trial. Id. Before us then is just one of the many Fourth Amendment questions raised by the parties below about this search: Did the district court err in suppressing Lieutenant Carneal's observations of the defendants' reactions at the Jackson airport after he took their identifications?

In suppressing this evidence, the district court made two relevant legal conclusions: (1) the initial seizure of the men (while Lieutenant Carneal checked their

[655 F.3d 553]

identifications) lacked reasonable suspicion, and (2) the evidence disclosed later in the encounter should be suppressed as the tainted fruit of an illegal seizure. The government and the defendants focus on the second conclusion, and so will we. For the purpose of deciding this case, we thus will assume for the sake of argument that the initial encounter violated the Fourth Amendment and consider only whether the court should have applied the exclusionary rule in this setting.

The Fourth Amendment safeguards “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” Missing from this language, as the Supreme Court has pointed out, is anything about “precluding the use of evidence obtained in violation of its commands.” Arizona v. Evans, 514 U.S. 1, 10, 115 S.Ct. 1185, 131 L.Ed.2d 34 (1995). The exclusionary rule is a judicial innovation, developed by the federal and state courts in construing their respective constitutions. The first federal decision arises under the Fifth and Fourth Amendments and excludes private papers obtained through a subpoena based on self-incrimination and privacy concerns. See Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 633, 638, 6 S.Ct. 524, 29 L.Ed. 746 (1886). Early state court decisions follow a similar path. See, e.g., People v. McCoy, 45 How. Pr. 216, 217–18 (N.Y.Sup.Ct.1873); State v. Height, 117 Iowa 650, 91 N.W. 935, 938–40 (1902); State v. Newcomb, 220 Mo. 54, 119 S.W. 405, 409 (1909).

In 1914, the United States Supreme Court embraced the exclusionary rule for...