U.S. v. Halliman

• Decision Date: 15 January 1991
• Docket Number: Nos. 89-3182,89-3183,s. 89-3182
• Citation: 923 F.2d 873
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America v. Hugh B. HALLIMAN, et al. Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

Page 873

923 F.2d 873

287 U.S.App.D.C. 380

UNITED STATES of America v. Hugh B. HALLIMAN, et al. Appellants.

Nos. 89-3182, 89-3183.

United States Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit.

Argued Sept. 21, 1990.

Decided Jan. 15, 1991.

R. Kenneth Mundy, Washington, D.C., for appellant Hugh B. Halliman in No. 89-3182.

Lawrence M. Baskir (appointed by the court), for appellant Troy Phauls in No. 89-3183.

Sherri L. Evans, Asst. U.S. Atty., with whom Jay B. Stephens, U.S. Atty., and John R. Fisher, Roy W. McLeese, III, and Patricia Stewart, Asst. U.S. Attys., Washington, D.C., were on the brief, for appellee in both cases.

Before RUTH BADER GINSBURG, SENTELLE, and THOMAS, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge THOMAS.

CLARENCE THOMAS, Circuit Judge.

Hugh Halliman and Troy Phauls appeal their convictions for possessing cocaine and cocaine base (crack) with intent to distribute. Each contends that the district court improperly denied his respective motion to suppress tangible evidence. Phauls also contends that the court erred in denying his motions to sever his trial from Halliman's. We affirm both convictions.

I. FACTS

In November 1988, Michael Haynie, the night manager of the Holiday Inn at 1501 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W., in Washington, D.C., called the Metropolitan Police Department about a group of guests who had resided at the hotel since late that October. The guests rented two or three rooms at a time, received fifteen to twenty calls per day, paid for their rooms in cash, and switched rooms frequently. A hotel housekeeper had found drugs, drug paraphernalia, and ammunition in one of the guests' rooms.

Officer Wayne Simpson and Detective Robert Thompson led the police department's investigation. Beginning on November 29, they interviewed Haynie and other security personnel at the hotel. Haynie gave the officers the name and address of Hugh Halliman and descriptions that fit Troy Phauls and Kenneth Shannon. On one occasion, Haynie pointed Phauls out to Simpson in the lobby as the taller of the two men he had described. Hotel security guards also gave the officers the names and addresses of two women, Lisa Holland and Sharon Daniels, who the guards believed were associated with the group.

Simpson and Thompson gathered additional evidence that the group of guests was involved in drug trafficking. On the evening of November 29, they learned that the group had switched to room 903 from rooms 601 and 602. Simpson and Thompson searched the abandoned rooms and found cocaine residue, marijuana, and a round of ammunition. On December 5, they learned that the hotel's cleaning staff had seen handguns in room 903, which members of the group continued to occupy.

On the same day, December 5, the officers learned that Halliman had paid for two additional rooms, numbers 806 and 918, one of which was registered in Lisa Holland's name. They decided to seek warrants for the three rooms that they could link to Halliman. The next day, at about 5:00 p.m., Detective Thompson applied to the D.C. Superior Court for search warrants. The affidavits supporting Thompson's application identified Hugh Halliman, Lisa Holland, and Sharon Daniels by name and stated that since late October, Halliman had rented eleven different rooms, Holland had rented two rooms, and Daniels had rented one. The affidavits did not refer to either Phauls or Shannon. The judge issued all three warrants.

When Thompson returned to the police station with the warrants, the officers who were to participate in the room searches assembled for a briefing and discussed the rooms and individuals that the search warrants targeted. The officers also learned that two men, in addition to Halliman, were connected to the group.

Shortly before the police left the station, Haynie called Simpson, who had called earlier seeking to confirm the suspects' room numbers, and told him that Halliman had just rented room 900. The officers did not delay their search to apply for a warrant for the new room. Instead, they decided to execute their warrants for rooms 806, 903, and 918 and to knock on the door of room 900 and attempt to interview and identify the occupant.

A. Search of Room 900

The police officers arrived at the Holiday Inn at about 7:00 p.m., met Haynie in the basement to get keys to rooms 806, 903, and 918, then rode the elevators to the eighth and ninth floors. On the ninth floor, Sergeant Gerald Neill and two other officers positioned themselves in front of room 900. Neill, armed with a shotgun but not with a key, stood in front, approximately three inches from the door. He knocked on the door, waited, then knocked again. A man with a heavy Jamaican accent said "just a minute, just a minute." Neill had met Halliman before on at least one occasion and knew that he spoke with a heavy Jamaican accent. Meanwhile, to Neill's surprise, the officers down the hall began knocking on the doors to rooms 903 and 918 and loudly announcing their presence. The man inside room 900 again said "just a minute, just a minute"; he sounded as if he were moving across the room. Then Sergeant Neill heard what he thought was the sound of a flushing toilet. Fearing that the man inside was destroying narcotics, Neill and the other officers started kicking and banging at the door. Moments later, more officers came up the hall from room 806 with a sledgehammer and broke the door down.

When the policemen rushed through the doorway, they saw Halliman running out of the bathroom. They collided with him, pushing him back into the bathroom, where the water in the toilet bowl was still swirling. In plain view on the bathroom floor was a plastic bag containing cocaine.

The policemen forced Halliman to lie face down on the floor in front of the bathroom door. Neill knelt down to Halliman, who was naked, and said, "You know who we are. You know why [we] are here. We are the police." He then asked, "Do we have your permission to search your apartment, yes or no?" Halliman answered "yes." The officers began to search room 900 and found some cocaine and crack inside a shoe in a shoe box and in a clothes bag in the coat-rack area. At that point, Neill asked Halliman, who had since gotten dressed, to sign a consent-to-search form, which Neill had obtained from his briefcase. Halliman refused. The police officers terminated their search and took Halliman from the room.

Neill left the hotel to apply for an emergency search warrant. His affidavit included copies of the search warrants and affidavits for rooms 903, 918, and 806, explained why the police had forcibly entered room 900, and further stated:

Once inside Mr. Halliman was stopped comeing [sic] our [sic] of the bathroom, and found on the floor was a plastic bag containing off white powder (Cocaine). The affiant then ask [sic] Mr. Halliman if the officers could have permission to search his apartment. Mr. Halliman gave that permission. The affiant then obtained a consent to search form while other officers began to search. Mr. Halliman then refused to sign a consent to search and the search was stopped, but not before the officers had recovered an additional quantity of powder and crack cocaine. Field test positive for Cocaine. The tests were from both the powder and the crack cocaine.

The judge granted the warrant, and the officers resumed their search of room 900, finding Halliman's wallet with some currency, a beeper, and personal papers. ¹

B. Search of Phauls's Person

While Sergeant Neill was away seeking the emergency search warrant, Phauls and Shannon entered the hotel lobby. Detective Pierre Mitchell, who was present in the lobby, saw the two men enter and head toward the elevators. As they walked by, a security guard told Mitchell that Phauls and Shannon "were two of the men that were frequenting the [ninth] floor." Mitchell decided to follow them.

Phauls and Shannon took the elevator to the ninth floor. As they left the elevator, they walked by Officer William Nealis and Haynie, the night manager, who were standing in the hallway outside room 900. Nealis watched the two men look intently at the broken lock on room 900 and walk down the hallway toward room 903. Haynie then advised Nealis that the two men were "the other two guys in the group" and that the taller one was armed. Phauls and Shannon continued toward room 903, stopped briefly in front of the door, and then turned toward room 908, which was directly across the hall. As the two men took a few steps away from room 908, Nealis approached them with a gun in his hand, and told them to put their hands against the wall. Nealis patted Phauls down and took seventeen plastic bags containing crack from Phauls's left sleeve. Detective Mitchell subsequently joined Nealis, patted down Shannon, and recovered keys to room 903 and to a padlock found there.

C. The Indictment and Pre-Trial Motions Hearing

On January 5, 1989, the government filed a three-count indictment in the district court against Halliman, Phauls, and Shannon. The first count charged Halliman and Shannon with possession with intent to distribute more than fifty grams of crack. See 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2; 21 U.S.C. Sec. 841(a), (b)(1)(A)(iii). The second count charged Phauls with possession with intent to distribute more than five grams of crack. See 21 U.S.C. Sec. 841(a), (b)(1)(B)(iii). The third count charged Halliman with possession with intent to distribute a detectable amount of cocaine. See 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2; 21 U.S.C. Sec. 841(a), (b)(1)(C). ² Shannon pleaded guilty before trial.

Halliman and Phauls both filed pre-trial motions to suppress tangible items of evidence. Halliman moved to suppress three categories of evidence that the police had recovered from room 900: the bag of cocaine that the officers had found on the bathroom floor after entering the room; the bags of cocaine and crack that the officers had found after Halliman said that they could search the room; and the remaining...