United States v. Adams

• Decision Date: 18 August 2020
• Docket Number: No. 18-1465,18-1465
• Citation: 971 F.3d 22
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Erick Levar ADAMS, a/k/a X, a/k/a Deuce, Defendant, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

971 F.3d 22

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee,

v.Erick Levar ADAMS, a/k/a X, a/k/a Deuce, Defendant, Appellant.

No. 18-1465

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

August 18, 2020

Mary June Ciresi for appellant.

Benjamin M. Block, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Halsey B. Frank, United States Attorney, was on brief, for appellee.

Before Thompson, Selya, and Barron, Circuit Judges.

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

Under the Constitution, a warrant authorizing the search of property cannot issue except upon a showing of probable cause. See U.S. Const. amend. IV. Under this standard, such a warrant may issue only upon a showing that a crime has been committed and that evidence of that crime is likely to be found by a search of the designated property. See United States v. Clark, 685 F.3d 72, 78 (1st Cir. 2012). In the case at hand, defendant-appellant Erick Levar Adams, convicted of drug-trafficking and firearms offenses, challenges the district court's refusal to suppress the avails of a number of warrant-backed searches. Concluding, as we do, that each of the challenged warrants issued upon a sufficient showing of probable cause and that the defendant's other claims of error lack bite, we affirm his conviction and sentence.

I. BACKGROUND

We rehearse the facts as supportably found by the district court following an omnibus hearing on several of the defendant's motions to suppress. When appropriate, we supplement these findings with uncontested facts drawn from the broader record. See United States v. Dancy, 640 F.3d 455, 458 (1st Cir. 2011).

In December of 2014, two state police troopers stopped a rental car being driven by the defendant near Sanford, Maine. After learning that the defendant was driving without a valid license, the troopers arrested him. A post-arrest search of the defendant's person revealed that he was carrying approximately $500 in cash.

During the course of the stop, Special Agent Randall Medeiros of the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency (MDEA) was summoned to the scene. The officers then conducted two separate canine sniffs directed at the car. Both dogs alerted to the presence of drugs in the passenger compartment. An ensuing search of the passenger compartment and a backpack found in the backseat of the car disclosed three cellphones, the cut corner of a plastic bag (resembling a "Dominican tie" commonly used to package drugs), and two loose screws (suggesting that parts of the rental car had been disassembled, perhaps to hide drugs).

The car was towed to a police barracks, and a search warrant was procured. The search revealed two additional cellphones but no contraband. The defendant was allowed to leave but — approximately one month later — Medeiros obtained search warrants for the contents of the five cellphones.

The MDEA was not the only law enforcement agency interested in the defendant. Roughly two months after the 2014 traffic stop, police officers in Connecticut obtained a search warrant for an apartment rented by the defendant. During the ensuing search, officers found (among other things) large quantities of cocaine and heroin, along with drug-packaging accoutrements.

Meanwhile, the MDEA continued its investigation of the defendant's activities. Several confidential informants told the authorities that the defendant and his associates were dealing drugs in and around Biddeford, Maine. Agents proceeded to arrange a number of controlled drug buys from the defendant's associates and coordinated one buy from the defendant himself. The Maine probe reached a climax in January of 2016 when agents secured arrest warrants for the defendant and one of his associates, pinpointed their location at a hotel in Saco, and secured a no-knock search warrant for the particular hotel room in which the two men were staying. Prior to executing the arrest warrant, agents observed the defendant leave the hotel and retrieve a black bag from a parked blue Volkswagen. Later — when executing the arrest warrants — the officers observed drugs and drug paraphernalia scattered in plain view throughout the hotel room. They also saw drugs in the bag the defendant had retrieved from the blue Volkswagen.

Based on these observations, the officers obtained an additional warrant authorizing searches of both the hotel room and the Volkswagen. A thorough search of the hotel room unearthed substantial quantities of heroin, cocaine, and cocaine base (crack cocaine), together with approximately $27,000 in cash.

One thing sometimes leads to another, and the Volkswagen search turned up paperwork for a storage locker in the name of the girlfriend of one of the defendant's associates. The agents visited the storage facility and viewed video footage depicting the man who had been sharing the hotel room with the defendant driving the Volkswagen and entering the storage unit about twenty-four hours earlier. Once a canine sniff produced a positive alert for the presence of narcotics inside the storage locker, another search warrant was obtained. This search yielded firearms and additional drugs.

In due season, a federal grand jury sitting in the District of Maine charged the defendant (in a superseding indictment) in five counts. Only two counts are relevant for present purposes: count 1 charged the defendant with conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and to distribute at least 280 grams of cocaine base and unspecified quantities of other drugs, see 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), 846, and count 4 charged him with possession of a firearm by a felon, see 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(1), 924(e). The defendant initially maintained his innocence and filed a flurry of motions to suppress evidence stemming from the seizures and searches of the cellphones, the hotel room, and the storage locker. After an omnibus evidentiary hearing, the district court denied all of the motions. The defendant subsequently moved to suppress evidence gleaned from the search of the Connecticut apartment, and the court denied this motion on the papers.

Jury selection was set to begin on June 5, 2017. A few days before, the defendant entered a conditional guilty plea to counts 1 and 4, see Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(a)(2), reserving the right to appeal the district court's denials of his suppression motions. Specifically, his conditional plea allowed him only "to have an appellate court review" the district "court's decisions dated November 29, 2016 and May 12, 2017 on [his] Motions to Suppress." In exchange, the government agreed to dismiss the remaining charges and to recommend a sentence of between 180 and 300 months. The district court accepted this binding plea agreement.

A little under one month after the change-of-plea hearing, the defendant moved to retract his guilty plea. Following a further hearing, the district court denied the motion. Some months later, the defendant moved unsuccessfully for reconsideration of the earlier denials of the plethora of suppression motions. At the disposition hearing, the court sentenced the defendant to a 300-month term of immurement. This timely appeal followed.

II. ANALYSIS

We subdivide our discussion of the defendant's asseverational array into four segments.¹ First, we treat with the 2014 traffic stop. Second, we deal sequentially with the defendant's attacks on the cellphone warrants, the warrant authorizing the search of the Connecticut apartment, the no-knock warrant, and the storage locker warrant.² Third, we summarily dispose of the defendant's vain attempt to secure review of the district court's denial of his motion to reconsider its earlier suppression rulings. Fourth, we train the lens of our inquiry on the district court's denial of the defendant's motion to withdraw his guilty plea.

A. The Traffic Stop.

We start with the defendant's remonstrances about the 2014 traffic stop that led to the seizure of the five cellphones. Although we start there, these remonstrances soon encounter insurmountable obstacles. The defendant never raised any of them in his myriad motions to suppress and, in all events, they are foreclosed by the terms of his conditional plea.

Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11(a)(2) allows a defendant, "[w]ith the consent of the court and the government," to enter a conditional guilty plea "reserving in writing the right to have an appellate court review an adverse determination of a specified pretrial motion." A primary purpose of this rule is to " ‘identify precisely what pretrial issues have been preserved for appellate review,’ and to husband scarce judicial resources by permitting a defendant fully to litigate hoarded issues while at the same time lessening the burden on busy district courts and sparing the sovereign the expense of trial." United States v. Caraballo-Cruz, 52 F.3d 390, 392 (1st Cir. 1995) (quoting Fed. R. Crim. P. 11 advisory committee's note to 1983 amendment). Virtually any and all nonjurisdictional issues not explicitly preserved for appeal in the conditional plea agreement — and certainly all Fourth Amendment suppression issues — are deemed waived.³ See United States v. Anderson, 374 F.3d 955, 958 (10th Cir. 2004) ; United States v. Ramos, 961 F.2d 1003, 1005-06 (1st Cir. 1992), overruled on other grounds by United States v. Caron, 77 F.3d 1 (1st Cir. 1996) (en banc); United States v. Simmons, 763 F.2d 529, 533 (2d Cir. 1985).

Under the terms of his conditional plea, the defendant reserved the right to appeal only the district court's two suppression rulings, namely, the omnibus order entered on November 29, 2016, and the order entered on May 12, 2017 (which denied the motion to suppress the fruits of the Connecticut apartment search). Neither of those rulings was directed to the validity of the traffic stop or the actions that followed at the site of the stop. On its face, then, the conditional plea did not reserve any right to challenge the traffic stop on appeal.

To be sure, the district court's first suppression ruling (November 29, 2016) touched on the traffic stop. But this was...