U.S. v. Miravalles

• Decision Date: 29 January 2002
• Docket Number: No. 01-13027.,01-13027.
• Citation: 280 F.3d 1328
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Reynaldo MIRAVALLES, Jr., a.k.a. Reynaldo Miravalles, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

280 F.3d 1328

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Reynaldo MIRAVALLES, Jr., a.k.a. Reynaldo Miravalles, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 01-13027.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

January 29, 2002.

G. Richard Strafer, G. Richard Strafer, P.A., Coral Gables, FL, for Defendant-Appellant.

Phillip DiRosa, Anne R. Schultz, Miami, FL, Robert B. Cornell, Fort Lauderdale, FL, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Before CARNES, BARKETT and KRAVITCH, Circuit Judges.

CARNES, Circuit Judge:

Reynaldo Miravalles, Jr. appeals his conviction for trafficking and attempting to traffic in cigars bearing counterfeit marks, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2320. He contends that the district court erred in denying his motion to suppress evidence of counterfeit cigar labels obtained because law enforcement officers were present in the common areas of his apartment building. The facts of the case present us with an issue of first impression in this circuit: whether the tenants of a large, multi-unit apartment building have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the common areas of the building. We hold that they do not, at least where the lock on the door of the building is not functioning and anyone may enter.

This case began when several law enforcement officers, including agents of the United States Secret Service and members of the Metro-Dade Police Department, gathered in a parking lot adjacent to the apartment building where Miravalles resided with his wife and daughter. The officers believed, based on a tip from a confidential informant, that cigars with counterfeit labels¹ were located in his apartment, but they did not have sufficient probable cause to obtain a search warrant.

Hoping to develop probable cause, the officers entered the large high-rise apartment building through the glass front door. They did not notify the property manager before entering and did not have to in order to gain entry, because the door was unlocked. Though designed to be locked and function with an electronic card mechanism, the door was on occasion unlocked when the electronic system was not working.² The day the officers entered the building was such an occasion. Once inside, the officers got on the elevator and rode up to the fourteenth floor where Miravalles' apartment, No. 1414, was located.

The officers knocked and Miravalles' father answered the door. They told him they were conducting an investigation, but he refused to consent to a search of the apartment. As the officers were speaking to the father, Miravalles' wife approached the apartment. Hoping that she would be more cooperative, the officers asked her for permission to search the apartment. Their hopes were not realized. She refused to give consent to the search and told the officers to leave if they did not have a warrant. At that point, one of the officers looked into the open door and told Miravalles' wife that he could see what appeared to be boxes of Cuban cigars and that they could be counterfeit. In response to the officer's request to bring him a cigar, Miravalles' wife retrieved one, which had no label, and gave it to the officer.

Most of the officers then left and went downstairs, but at least one remained behind on the fourteenth floor and hid in the hallway near the apartment. He did not have to hide long before he saw Miravalles' wife come out of the apartment with a garbage bag, which she threw in a chute used by the tenants on that floor to send trash to the ground floor for disposal. Immediately thereafter, she went back to the apartment and came out again with a second bag, through which the officer could see what appeared to be counterfeit cigar labels, and she threw that bag into the chute, too. The officers then retrieved the two bags from the garbage bin on the ground floor and verified that they contained counterfeit cigar labels.

After retrieving those counterfeit labels, the officers decided they had probable cause to arrest the occupants of the apartment, and went back up to the fourteenth floor. They knocked on the door of the apartment, but this time there was no answer. They continued to knock for several minutes and yelled for the occupants to respond. As the officers were preparing to enter by force, the property manager who was responding to the commotion arrived at the apartment and opened the door for the officers using her master key. They entered and arrested Miravalles' father and wife. Miravalles was not there. The officers observed in plain view throughout the apartment boxes of cigars and counterfeit labels and seized them.

Based on the evidence obtained from the two bags Miravalles' wife threw away and the evidence seized during the search of the apartment, a grand jury returned an indictment against Miravalles, charging him with trafficking in, and attempting to traffic in, cigars bearing counterfeit marks, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2320.³ Miravalles filed a motion to suppress the evidence, contending that it had been seized as a result of the officers trespassing in the apartment building and an illegal search of his apartment.

After conducting an evidentiary hearing on the motion to suppress, a magistrate judge issued a report and recommendation concluding that tenants have an expectation of privacy in the common areas of their multi-unit apartment buildings, which the officers had violated when they entered Miravalles' apartment building without permission. After the government filed objections, the district court, while adopting the recommendation and report's findings of fact, disagreed with its legal conclusions about whether there was a reasonable expectation of privacy in the common areas of the apartment building. The district court held that there was none, and therefore the search and seizure that resulted from the officers being in the building was not unconstitutional.

After that ruling, Miravalles pleaded guilty to one of the counts of the indictment in return for the dismissal of the other three counts. He made his guilty plea pursuant to Fed.R.Crim.P. 11(a)(2), reserving a right to appeal the district court's denial of his motion to suppress the evidence. The district court accepted Miravalles' plea and adjudged him guilty, sentencing him to three years of probation and ordering him to pay a special assessment of $100. This is Miravalles' appeal, which challenges the denial of his motion to suppress.⁴

A person has an expectation of privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment if he has a subjective expectation of privacy, and if society is prepared to recognize that expectation as objectively reasonable. See Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 361, 88 S.Ct. 507, 516, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967) (Harlan, J., concurring). We have never spoken directly to the issue presented in this case, but a number of other circuits have. Five of the six circuits that have decided the issue have concluded that tenants do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the common areas of their apartment building. Of those five decisions, four necessarily suggest that it does not matter whether the door to the apartment building is locked or unlocked at the time law enforcement officers arrive, because in each of those cases the door was locked. See United States v. Nohara, 3 F.3d 1239, 1241-42 (9th Cir. 1993) (apartment hallway); United States v. Concepcion, 942 F.2d 1170, 1171-72 (7th Cir.1991) (apartment common areas); United States v. Barrios-Moriera, 872 F.2d 12, 14-15 (2d Cir.1989) (apartment hallway), overruled on other grounds by Horton v. Cal., 496 U.S. 128, 110 S.Ct. 2301, 110 L.Ed.2d 112 (1990); United States v. Eisler, 567 F.2d 814, 816 (8th Cir.1977) (apartment hallway). It is not clear which position the other of those five circuits, the First Circuit, would take on locked door facts, but it has held there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in an apartment building's apparently unlocked parking garage. See United States v. Cruz Pagan, 537 F.2d 554, 558 (1st Cir. 1976). The only circuit that has recognized a reasonable expectation of privacy in the common areas of an apartment building, at least when the door is locked, is the Sixth Circuit. See United States v. Carriger, 541 F.2d 545, 550 (6th Cir.1976) (apartment common areas).

The five circuits holding that there is no reasonable expectation of...