United States v. Barraza–Maldonado

• Decision Date: 19 July 2012
• Docket Number: Case No. 12–CR–0054 (PJS/SER).
• Citation: 879 F.Supp.2d 1022
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. Edgar Rafael BARRAZA–MALDONADO, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Minnesota

879 F.Supp.2d 1022

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff,

v.Edgar Rafael BARRAZA–MALDONADO, Defendant.

Case No. 12–CR–0054 (PJS/SER).

United States District Court, D. Minnesota.

July 19, 2012.

Jeffrey S. Paulsen, United States Attorney's Office, for plaintiff.

Daniel L. Gerdts, Attorney At Law, for defendant.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

PATRICK J. SCHILTZ, District Judge.

Defendant Edgar Rafael Barraza–Maldonado is charged with one count of possessing cocaine with intent to distribute in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1) and (b)(1)(A). Relying on the Supreme Court's recent decision in United States v. Jones, ––– U.S. ––––, 132 S.Ct. 945, 181 L.Ed.2d 911 (2012), Barraza moves to suppress all of the evidence obtained as a result of law enforcement's warrantless installation of a Global Positioning System (“GPS”) device on a 2006 Nissan Maxima (“Maxima”) and law enforcement's use of that device to track the Maxima as Barraza drove it from Arizona to Minnesota. Moreover, Barraza seeks to suppress physical evidence that was obtained as a result of two searches of the Maxima on January 22, 2012, and statements that Barraza made to law enforcement following those searches. See ECF Nos. 18 and 22. Barraza further moves for the disclosure of the identity of a government informant for purposes of conducting a pretrial interview. See ECF No. 16.

This matter is before the Court on Barraza's objection to Magistrate Judge Steven E. Rau's May 11, 2012 Report and Recommendation (“R & R”), 2012 WL 2952357. Judge Rau concluded that, because Barraza did not own or possess the Maxima at the time that an agent of the Drug Enforcement Agency (“DEA”) installed the GPS device, and because Barraza did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the location of the Maxima on the public roadways, Barraza lacked “standing” to challenge the installation and monitoring of the GPS device. SeeR & R at 10 [ECF No. 35]. Alternatively, Judge Rau found that, even if Barraza had “standing,” and even if use of the GPS device violated Barraza's constitutional rights, any evidence discovered as a result of the use of the device does not have to be excluded because the DEA agent who installed and monitored the device relied on then-binding appellate precedent authorizing his actions. SeeR & R at 11–12 (citing Davis v. United States, ––– U.S. ––––, 131 S.Ct. 2419, 2429, 180 L.Ed.2d 285 (2011) (“Evidence obtained during a search conducted in reasonable reliance on binding precedent is not subject to the exclusionary rule.”)).

Moreover, as to the initial search of the Maxima—a roadside search that was conducted without a warrant a few minutes after the Maxima was pulled over by Minnesota state troopers—Judge Rau concluded that the search was lawful under the inventory-search exception to the warrant requirement. SeeR & R at 13–14. And as to the subsequent search of the Maxima—a warrantless search that was conducted at a nearby garage to which the Maxima had been towed following the trafficstop—Judge Rau concluded that the search was lawful because Barraza voluntarily consented to the search. SeeR & R at 14–15. Even if Barraza did not consent to the search, Judge Rau said, law-enforcement agents nevertheless had probable cause to search the Maxima because a drug-detection dog had alerted to the presence of illegal drugs in the vehicle on the roadside before the tow truck arrived. SeeR & R at 16. Finally, Judge Rau concluded that Barraza failed to meet his burden to demonstrate the need for the government to identify its informant at this time. SeeR & R at 17–18.

The Court has conducted a de novo review. See28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1); Fed.R.Crim.P. 59(b)(3). Based on that review, the Court agrees with Judge Rau's recommended dispositions and much of his analysis. Specifically, the Court agrees that the installation and monitoring of the GPS device did not violate Barraza's rights under the Fourth Amendment and that, even if his rights were violated, the exclusionary rule does not require suppression of the evidence. The Court disagrees, however, with Judge Rau's analysis with respect to the inventory-search and consent exceptions to the warrant requirement. Having carefully reviewed the record, the Court concludes that the government failed to prove that the troopers' initial roadside search complied with standardized police procedures, as would be necessary to invoke the inventory-search exception. The Court is also unable to find that Barraza voluntarily consented to the subsequent search at the garage, given that he signed the consent-to-search form immediately following the troopers' unlawful roadside search. That said, because the physical evidence seized during the troopers' search of the Maxima at the garage resulted from an independent and lawful source—namely, the drug-detection dog's alert, which provided probable cause to justify a warrantless search under the automobile exception—the physical evidence need not be suppressed. Accordingly, the Court adopts the R & R to the extent that it is consistent with this order and writes separately to explain those matters as to which the Court departs from the R & R.

The Court adopts all of the factual findings set forth on pages three through seven of the R & R, save for the following statement: “Prior to the tow truck's arrival, Trooper Schneider performed a search of the Maxima in accordance with Minnesota State Patrol impound procedure and policy.” R & R at 6. The R & R's factual findings will therefore not be repeated here.

A. GPS Installation and Monitoring

1. Lawfulness under the Fourth Amendment

The Fourth Amendment protects the “right of people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” U.S. Const. amend. IV. Warrantless searches are “per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment—subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions.” Arizona v. Gant, 556 U.S. 332, 338, 129 S.Ct. 1710, 173 L.Ed.2d 485 (2009) (internal quotations omitted). In United States v. Jones, ––– U.S. ––––, 132 S.Ct. 945, 181 L.Ed.2d 911 (2012), the Supreme Court unanimously agreed that law enforcement's warrantless installation of a GPS device on Jones's vehicle—and law enforcement's subsequent use of that device to monitor Jones's every movement in the vehicle over a four-week period (generating over 2,000 pages of data)—constituted an unlawful “search” for Fourth Amendment purposes. The Justices divided five to four, however, on the reasons for their conclusion.

Writing for the majority, Justice Scalia relied on a trespass-based theory, holding that a “search” occurs for purposes of the Fourth Amendment whenever the government physically intrudes on “persons, houses, papers, and effects” to obtain information. See id. at 949. Reviving the Supreme Court's historical focus on property rights and common-law trespass, Justice Scalia explained that the Supreme Court's more recent reasonable-expectation-of-privacy test—first articulated in Justice Harlan's concurrence in Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967)—“has been added to, not substituted for, the common-law trespassory test.” Jones, 132 S.Ct. at 952 (emphasis in original).¹ Because Jones was in possession of the vehicle when the government “trespassorily inserted the information-gathering device,” id. at 952, explained Justice Scalia, Jones's “Fourth Amendment rights do not rise or fall with the Katz formulation,” id. at 950. Rather, because the government trespassed for the purpose of obtaining information, the government searched—and because the government searched without a warrant, the search was unlawful. Id. at 949.²

Concurring in the judgment, Justice Alito (writing for himself and three others) rejected the majority's reliance on “18th-century tort law,” id. at 957, finding the appropriate question to be whether, under Katz, Jones's “reasonable expectations of privacy were violated by the long-term monitoring of the movements of the vehicle he drove,” id. at 958. Justice Alito concluded that, while “relatively short-term monitoring of a person's movements on public streets accords with expectations of privacy that our society has recognized as reasonable,” law enforcement's tracking of Jones's every movement in his vehicle for four weeks violated Jones's reasonable expectation of privacy. Id. at 964 (Alito, J. concurring in judgment) (“We need not identify with precision the point at which the tracking of this vehicle became a search, for the line was surely crossed before the 4–week mark.”).

Barraza contends that, when the DEA installed the GPS device on the Maxima, the DEA committed a trespass—and thus, under the trespassory test applied by the Jones majority, the actions of the DEA constituted an unlawful “search” for purposes of the Fourth Amendment.³ Because that is true, Barraza says, it is irrelevant whether installation of the GPS device also violated his reasonable expectation of privacy.

To successfully invoke the Jones majority's trespassory test, though, Barraza must be able to maintain an action for trespass, and to be able to maintain an action for trespass, Barraza must have had some type of legally protected property interest in the Maxima at the time that the GPS device was installed. All nine justices in Jones appeared to share this understanding of the trespassory test.

In the majority opinion, Justice Scalia took pains to explain that, even though the vehicle that Jones drove was registered to his wife, Jones was the “exclusive driver” and therefore “had at least the property rights of a bailee” at the time that the GPS device was installed. Jones, 132 S.Ct. at 949 n. 2. In fact, Justice Scalia specifically relied on Jones's possession of the vehicle at the time that the GPS device was installed to explain why the majority's approach in Jones was consistent with two of the Supreme Court's earlier cases...