U.S. v. Infante-Ruiz

• Decision Date: 10 September 1993
• Docket Number: No. 93-1175,INFANTE-RUI,D,93-1175
• Citation: 13 F.3d 498
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Pedroefendant, Appellant. . Heard
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 498

13 F.3d 498

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Pedro INFANTE-RUIZ, Defendant, Appellant.

No. 93-1175.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard Sept. 10, 1993.

Decided Jan. 25, 1994.

Laura Maldonado Rodriguez, Asst. Federal Public Defender, with whom Benicio Sanchez Rivera, Federal Public Defender, was on brief, for defendant-appellant.

Jose A. Quiles-Espinosa, Sr. Litigation Counsel, with whom Charles E. Fitzwilliam, U.S. Atty., was on brief, for U.S.

Before STAHL, Circuit Judge, ALDRICH and CAMPBELL, Senior Circuit Judges.

LEVIN H. CAMPBELL, Senior Circuit Judge.

Defendant-appellant Pedro Infante Ruiz was indicted in the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico for having knowingly received while a fugitive from justice a firearm transported in interstate commerce. 18 U.S.C. Secs. 922(g)(2) and 924(a). After the district court denied a motion in limine to suppress evidence, Infante entered a plea of guilty, with his plea being conditioned on the outcome of an appeal of the court's evidentiary ruling. Infante duly appealed, and we now reverse the district court's denial of a motion to suppress and vacate appellant's conviction.

I.

On October 8, 1991, Infante and two associates were driving a rented 1991 Mazda 626 in the vicinity of Parguera, Lajas, Puerto Rico, when they stopped to buy food at a local eatery. Officers of the Puerto Rico police were following the car, looking for an opportunity to arrest Infante on an outstanding warrant from Florida on federal narcotics charges. After the car stopped, the officers surrounded the vehicle and placed Infante under arrest. Infante resisted but was eventually restrained and placed inside a nearby unmarked squad car.

One of the arresting officers, Sergeant David Padilla Velez, asked the driver of the car, a Felipe de la Paz, for consent to search the vehicle. De la Paz verbally gave his consent, and Sgt. Padilla searched the passenger compartment. Sgt. Padilla then asked de la Paz for the key to the car's trunk. Although Sgt. Padilla did not explicitly ask for de la Paz's consent to search the trunk, de la Paz handed over the key to the trunk in response to the request and stood by without objection as the trunk was being searched.

Two briefcases, one brown and one black, were inside the trunk. De la Paz, upon inquiry by Sgt. Padilla, said that he was the owner of the brown briefcase. Sgt. Padilla opened and searched the brown briefcase, apparently without objection by de la Paz.

Sgt. Padilla then asked de la Paz who owned the black briefcase. De la Paz answered that it belonged to Infante. Without expressly asking for de la Paz's consent, but without any express objection from him, Sgt. Padilla then opened the unlocked briefcase belonging to Infante. Inside were various documents belonging to Infante, as well as items belonging to de la Paz and others. Also inside was a loaded .22 caliber Derringer pistol.

Infante was later charged with knowingly receiving while a fugitive from justice a firearm transported in interstate commerce. De la Paz and the other passenger were not arrested.

Infante moved to suppress the gun, arguing that it had been seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment. In an oral ruling, the district court denied the motion to suppress. The defendant later pleaded guilty to the charge, reserving his right to appeal from the court's denial of his motion to suppress. We now hold that the search of Infante's briefcase was unlawful and that the pistol should have been suppressed.

II.

The district court upheld the warrantless search of Infante's briefcase on four grounds: (1) Infante's lack of privacy interest in the suitcase; (2) probable cause; (3) a finding that the weapon would have been inevitably discovered; and (4) the drivers' consent. In reviewing a district court's denial of a suppression motion, we uphold its findings of fact unless they are clearly erroneous. United States v. Sanchez, 943 F.2d 110, 112 (1st Cir.1991); United States v. Cruz Jimenez, 894 F.2d 1, 7 (1st Cir.1990). The court's ultimate conclusion, however, is subject to plenary review, Sanchez, 943 F.2d at 112; United States v. Curzi, 867 F.2d 36, 42 (1st Cir.1989), as "[f]indings of reasonableness ... are respected only insofar as consistent with federal constitutional guarantees." Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23, 33, 83 S.Ct. 1623, 1630, 10 L.Ed.2d 726 (1963). We will, "where necessary to the determination of constitutional rights, make an independent examination of the facts, the findings, and the record so that [we] can determine for [ourselves] whether in the decision as to reasonableness the fundamental--i.e., constitutional--criteria ... have been respected." Id. at 34, 83 S.Ct. at 1630.

Applying these principles, we discuss in turn each of the grounds for upholding the search offered by the district court.

A. Infante's Privacy Interest in the Briefcase

The district court found that Infante had no privacy interest in the briefcase and concluded that the lack of such an interest provided a sufficient basis to deny the suppression motion. The district court found that Infante had left the unlocked briefcase in the trunk of the Mazda for a period of some days, even when he was not a passenger, and that he allowed de la Paz and others to place possessions of their own inside it. The district court found that the briefcase "was not under the control of the defendant" and that Infante had no Fourth Amendment privacy rights that could have been violated by its search.

While the district court cited no authority, the best analogy we could find for the district court's reasoning is California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35, 108 S.Ct. 1625, 100 L.Ed.2d 30 (1988). There, the police searched without a warrant the contents of garbage bags left at the curb outside the defendants' home. The Court held that the defendants "exposed their garbage to the public sufficiently to defeat their claim to Fourth Amendment protection." Id. at 40, 108 S.Ct. at 1628. It was "common knowledge," said the Court, that garbage bags left for pick up are "readily accessible to animals, children, scavengers, snoops, and other members of the public." Id. (footnotes omitted). The defendants were considered to have left their refuse "in an area particularly suited for public inspection and ... consumption, for the express purpose of having strangers take it." Id. at 40-41, 108 S.Ct. at 1629 (internal quotation omitted).

The facts in this case, however, are clearly distinguishable from Greenwood. Storing items inside a closed briefcase inside a locked car trunk did not reveal a willingness on the part of Infante to "expose" such items to the public. Moreover, nothing in the circumstances indicated that Infante had abandoned the briefcase, relinquished authority over it, or left it open to "public inspection and consumption." De la Paz's identification of the briefcase as belonging to Infante indicated that, among his friends, the case was still believed to belong to Infante. While there is evidence that Infante's confederates felt entitled to place items of their own within it, he did nothing to indicate its availability to the public generally nor did his actions betray an intention to forego an owner's normal right to exclude those he wished to exclude. By the time of the search, Infante himself was once more a passenger in the car carrying his briefcase.

We think it is clear, therefore, that Infante did not repudiate his privacy interest in the briefcase by placing it in the trunk of the Mazda. While he indicated a willingness to share access with a few friends, he in no way opened the case to public access. We therefore hold that Infante had a privacy interest in the briefcase and that the district court's finding to the contrary was in error.

B. Probable Cause

The district court also concluded that the search was justified by probable cause. It is now established that if the police have probable cause to believe that either a vehicle or a container within a vehicle contains contraband, evidence of crime, or other matter that may lawfully be seized, no Fourth Amendment violation occurs when the police open and search the container without a warrant. United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798, 102 S.Ct. 2157, 72 L.Ed.2d 572 (1982); California v. Acevedo, 500 U.S. 565, 111 S.Ct. 1982, 114 L.Ed.2d 619 (1991). The district court found here that because Infante was a federal fugitive and that the other occupants were allegedly under suspicion for trafficking in drugs, the police officers could have reasonably believed that the car's occupants were "dangerous people" and that contraband or weapons would be in the automobile. The district court supported its finding by saying it was "conventional wisdom" that "drug traffickers carry weapons."

But in order for probable cause to search to exist, the officer must have reasonably trustworthy information of supporting facts and circumstances such as would persuade a person of reasonable caution to believe the search is justified. 3 Charles Alan Wright, Federal Practice and Procedure: Criminal 2d Sec. 662 at 579 (1982). Certainty is not required. Id. But in the absence of supporting facts, the officer's suspicion or personal belief that probable cause exists is not enough. Id. at 582. Thus it was not enough here that the suspected vehicle contained persons with serious drug trafficking records. There had to be particular facts indicating that, at the time of search, the vehicle or a container within it carried contraband, evidence of crime, or other seizable matter. Id. at 2664.

The government conceded at oral argument that the police officers who conducted the search had no concrete information that Infante and his friends were transporting drugs or weapons at the time of the stop. The probable cause standard could not be satisfied merely by dependence on "conventional wisdom" or by the "dangerous"...