U.S.A v. Sanchez

• Citation: 612 F.3d 1
• Decision Date: 09 July 2010
• Docket Number: No. 09-1906.,09-1906.
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee,v.Ruben SANCHEZ, Defendant, Appellant.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (1st Circuit)

612 F.3d 1

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee,v.Ruben SANCHEZ, Defendant, Appellant.

No. 09-1906.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Submitted May 5, 2010.

Decided July 9, 2010.

Jonathan Shapiro, Alexandra Deal, and Stern, Shapiro, Weissberg & Garin, LLP on brief for appellant.

Kelly Begg Lawrence, Assistant United States Attorney, and Carmen M. Ortiz, United States Attorney, on brief for appellee.

Before LYNCH, Chief Judge, SOUTER,^* Associate Justice, and SELYA, Circuit Judge.

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

This appeal proves the venerable adage that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Although the appeal potentially presents a variety of issues, it is most easily resolved by resort to an elementary principle of constitutional law: the plain view exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment. The tale follows.

Before us, defendant-appellant Ruben Sanchez challenges an order denying his motion to suppress evidence-a gun and ammunition-seized during an inventory search of a motorcycle impounded by the police. Setting to one side more exotic theories, we apply the plain view doctrine, which affords a solid basis for the refusal to suppress. Accordingly, we affirm the challenged order.

The facts are largely undisputed and, to the extent that the district court has engaged in interstitial factfinding to fill gaps or resolve conflicts, its findings are not clearly erroneous.

The critical events occurred in Melrose, Massachusetts, on September 22, 2006. At that time, two municipal police officers were separately patronizing a local restaurant (one had stopped for a take-out order; the other had stopped to eat). Spotting each other, the officers chatted inside the restaurant. As they conversed, a motorcycle pulled into the restaurant's parking lot. The operator entered the restaurant and began speaking with a female customer.

A few hours before, one of the officers, Roy, had perused a photographic printout prepared in connection with an arrest warrant issued the previous day for one “Ruben Sanchez.” Roy told his fellow officer, Slaney, that the motorcyclist looked like Sanchez. Roy further related that the warrant had issued following an allegation of domestic violence by Sanchez's girlfriend.

Slaney left the restaurant and went to his police cruiser, which was parked nearby. Using the car's computer, he ran the motorcycle's license plate number through a data bank maintained by the Registry of Motor Vehicles (RMV). ¹

After Slaney obtained the information, he informed Roy that the license plate and the motorcycle did not fit together. The plate had been issued for a 1976 Honda motorcycle. The motorcycle in the parking lot was not a 1976 Honda, but a 2002 Harley-Davidson. In addition, the registration of the 1976 Honda had been revoked for failure of the owner (a man other than Sanchez) to maintain compulsory insurance. See Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 90, § 34H.

The officers, having reasonably (and, as matters turned out, correctly) concluded that Ruben Sanchez and the appellant were one and the same, waited in the parking lot. They planned to arrest the appellant on the outstanding warrant when he emerged from the restaurant. During this interlude, Roy called the officer who had investigated the domestic violence complaint. That officer furnished a description of the complainant that matched the woman whom the appellant had encountered inside the restaurant.

Moments later, the appellant and the woman repaired to the parking lot. They were talking with each other. Roy and Slaney approached, calling the woman's name. When she acknowledged her identity, the officers asked the appellant if he was Ruben Sanchez. He responded affirmatively, and the officers arrested him pursuant to the outstanding warrant.

After effecting the arrest, the officers decided to impound the motorcycle. In accordance with standard Melrose police procedure, Roy called the officer in charge for permission to impound and tow the motorcycle. He subsequently testified that he chose this course of action because “the wrong plate was on [the motorcycle]” and “it wasn't legally there” because it was neither properly registered nor insured as it should have been “to be in that parking lot.”

The district court credited this account. United States v. Sanchez, 535 F.Supp.2d 216, 224 (D.Mass.2008). Roy's actions at the time further confirm the account: he issued a citation to the appellant for the violations that he had described. See Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 90, § 9 (operating with invalid registration); id. § 23 (attaching false license plate with intent to conceal vehicle's identity); id. § 34J (operating without insurance).

Roy received permission from his superior to impound and tow the motorcycle. Following standard practice, he performed an inventory search incident to the impoundment before the tow truck arrived. He discovered a loaded handgun in an unlocked saddlebag at the rear of the motorcycle.

We fast-forward to the prosecution that undergirds this appeal. The seized firearm eventually formed the basis for federal felon-in-possession charges. See 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), (8). The appellant initially maintained his innocence and moved to suppress, among other things, the handgun and ammunition. The district court held a two-day evidentiary hearing and, ruling ore tenus, denied the motion. The court subsequently issued a rescript in which it explained that the officers' decision to impound the motorcycle was a reasonable exercise of their community caretaking function.²Sanchez, 535 F.Supp.2d at 219-21. Impoundment was, therefore, lawful despite the absence of a search warrant. Id. Relatedly, the police department's written inventory protocol id. at 220, gave the officers effective guidance in making the decision to impound and tow. Id. at 220-22. Finally, the court found that the towing of the motorcycle was not barred under state law. Id. at 222-24.

With the prospect of a trial looming, the appellant entered a conditional guilty plea, reserving his right to seek appellate review of the suppression issue. See Fed.R.Crim.P. 11(a)(2). The district court sentenced him to a 180-month incarcerative term, to be followed by five years of supervised release. This timely appeal ensued.

In reviewing a trial court's denial of a motion to suppress, we accept the court's factual findings to the extent that they are not clearly erroneous. United States v. Chhien, 266 F.3d 1, 5 (1st Cir.2001). We review its legal conclusions de novo. Id.

This appeal is narrow in its scope: neither the arrest nor the inventory search procedure itself is challenged. Rather, the appellant challenges only the seizure of the motorcycle, arguing that the police impounded it in derogation of his Fourth Amendment rights. Accordingly, his thesis runs, the objects seized in the ensuing inventory search are subject to suppression as fruit of a poisonous tree. See Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 484-85, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963).

Mindful that a decision to impound is analytically distinct from a decision to undertake an inventory search incident to a lawful impoundment United States v. Duguay, 93 F.3d 346, 351 (7th Cir.1996), our task is to determine whether the impoundment itself offended the Fourth Amendment. In carrying out this task, we are not bound by the lower court's rationale but, rather, may affirm its order on any alternate basis made manifest by the record. Chhien, 266 F.3d at 7 n. 4. We avail ourselves of this flexibility here.

It is common ground that the Fourth Amendment forbids “unreasonable searches and seizures.” U.S. Const. amend. IV. Although this ordinarily means that a seizure of property by a police officer requires a warrant, exceptions exist. One of these exceptions is for items in plain view. See, e.g., Horton v. California, 496 U.S. 128, 136-37, 110 S.Ct. 2301, 110 L.Ed.2d 112 (1990); Vega-Rodríguez v. P.R. Tel. Co., 110 F.3d 174, 181 (1st Cir.1997). Although the district court eschewed reliance on the plain view doctrine in favor of a different rationale, we think that this doctrine offers the simplest basis on which to resolve this appeal.

The desirability of this approach is enhanced by the fact that no further factual findings are needed to invoke this doctrine. The only pertinent question is whether, on an objective view of the record, the impoundment (a form of seizure) was premised on evidence lawfully discovered and seized while in plain view. See United States v. Hadfield, 918 F.2d 987, 993 (1st Cir.1990).

A warrantless seizure is lawful under the plain view doctrine as long as (I) the police officer who effects the seizure lawfully reaches the vantage point from which he sees an object in plain view; (ii) probable cause exists to support his seizure of that object; and (iii) he has a right of access to the object itself. United States v. Allen, 573 F.3d 42, 51 (1st Cir.2009); United States v. Antrim, 389 F.3d 276, 283 (1st Cir.2004).

It is beyond serious question that the first element of this test is satisfied here. The officers were in a parking lot where they had a right to be, and both the motorcycle and its license plate were easily visible to the naked eye. Thus, the officers had lawfully reached the position from which they saw the objects that they subsequently seized.

The second element of the test concerns whether probable cause existed for the seizure, not whether probable cause existed for the arrest. As the district court explained, the objects seized were not evidence of the crime for which the appellant was arrested. Sanchez, 535 F.Supp.2d at 224. Thus, for purposes of the plain view doctrine, the relevant question is whether the officers had probable cause to believe that the seized objects were evidence of some other crime.

As a general matter, probable cause exists when the police have (I) reliable information that a crime has been committed and (ii) sufficient reason to believe...