United States v. Bumphus, No. 17-CO-441

• Decision Date: 21 May 2020
• Docket Number: No. 17-CO-441
• Citation: 227 A.3d 559
• Parties: UNITED STATES, Appellant, v. James BUMPHUS, Appellee.
• Court: D.C. Court of Appeals

227 A.3d 559

UNITED STATES, Appellant,

v.James BUMPHUS, Appellee.

No. 17-CO-441

District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Argued September 28, 2017

Decided May 21, 2020

Chrisellen R. Kolb, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Channing D. Phillips, United States Attorney at the time the brief was filed, and Elizabeth Trosman and Marina A. Torres, Assistant United States Attorneys, were on the brief, for appellant.

William Collins, Public Defender Service, with whom Samia Fam and Shilpa Satoskar, Public Defender Service, were on the brief, for appellee.

Before Fisher, Beckwith, and Easterly, Associate Judges.

Dissenting opinion by Associate Judge Fisher at page 571.

Easterly, Associate Judge:

The government appeals an order in which the trial court (1) determined that James Bumphus's Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures was violated when the police seized his car and then delayed several days without "any legitimate explanation, however small" before searching the vehicle, and (2) suppressed the gun recovered in the eventual search. We affirm the trial court's suppression ruling.

I. Facts

The government presented one witness at the suppression hearing: Sergeant Jason Bagshaw, then a thirteen-year employee of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). Sergeant Bagshaw testified that, based on a tip from a confidential informant that gave the police probable cause to believe Mr. Bumphus had a handgun in his Lincoln Aviator, the police stopped Mr. Bumphus on a Friday evening around 9:30 p.m. Mr. Bumphus had just parked his car when the police pulled up behind him. After Mr. Bumphus got out of his car but before he was told the reason for the stop, he threw his keys to an unidentified person who left the scene. Sergeant Bagshaw testified that the police immediately detained Mr. Bumphus and placed him in handcuffs. Because the car was locked and Sergeant Bagshaw testified he was "unable to get a Slim Jim" to open the car door without a key, Sergeant Bagshaw "opted to tow [the car]" and then search it.¹ The police held Mr. Bumphus in handcuffs for at least two and a half hours, until the tow truck arrived after midnight. As Mr. Bumphus's car was being towed away and after he had been released from handcuffs, Mr. Bumphus asked whether he could remove some personal items—his child's backpack and his wife's purse, which contained her cell phone—from the car. Sergeant Bagshaw told him he could not.

For the next four days, from early Saturday morning until late in the day on Tuesday, the police held the car at an MPD storage facility. On Tuesday afternoon, Sergeant Bagshaw requested and obtained a warrant to search the car; at around 5:30 p.m. he opened the car with a "Slim Jim" and found a handgun. Sergeant Bagshaw testified that he "had to apply" for a search warrant "since no one would cooperate" with a search of the car on the scene. He further testified that he could not get a warrant over the weekend because Superior Court judges and Assistant United States Attorneys work on the weekends only "under emergency circumstances," and this was not an emergency because the car was in a secure location. Although Sergeant Bagshaw understood that Superior Court judges and AUSAs work "on Mondays," he agreed that he continued to "h[o]ld on to the car without bothering to search it" on the Monday after the seizure. Despite Mr. Bumphus's specific request to remove some personal possessions from the car, Sergeant Bagshaw testified that "[t]here was nothing [that] indicated" Mr. Bumphus or his family had "an absolute necessity" to regain possession of any of these items. Notwithstanding his knowledge that Mr. Bumphus's wife's purse contained her cellphone, he also expressed the view that "there [was] nothing in [the purse] that you cannot live without for four days." Sergeant Bagshaw added that while he eventually returned the items to the family, "[o]ne could argue that I did not need to return them necessarily," though he later admitted returning them was the "right thing" to do.

At a hearing on the suppression motion, the court observed that the police, having seized the vehicle without a warrant, did not have authority to "indefinitely retain possession of" it. Focusing on the delay between seizing the car and searching it, the court asked the government to explain why the delay was reasonable in this case. The court indicated that it was skeptical that the reason for the delay—the officer's asserted belief that the family did not need their personal possessions for a few days—constituted diligence and further observed that Superior Court judges "do hear emergency matters" over the weekend "as they relate to arrests and search warrants." Although the prosecutor agreed with the latter observation, she defended the officer's assessment that there was not an "emergency"; she also suggested that the officer may have had a legitimate reason for his inaction, noting, "I don't know the officer's case load and I don't know the [Emergency] Judge's case load." The court responded that it needed to "stick to the record": it found that the officer "did not say any of those things [about case loads]" and that, even accepting a delay over the weekend, he "d[id] not state[,] [‘]I thought about [getting a warrant]. But[ ] I got pulled [in]to a number of work obligations that needed to get priority and that is the reason I did not go to get the search warrant on that Monday.[’]"

Ultimately the trial court orally ruled that, "in viewing all of the circumstances here, I don't think that the delay was reasonable based upon the testimony of this officer." The court emphasized that in this case, the officer "did not ... state that on or during that four[-]day period[ ] that he was looking into other issues that related to the case; or that he was investigating something further; or even that he had other work that was pulling him." The court concluded that, although "in some cases four days may be reasonable[,] ... under these facts and circumstances, I don't think that it was reasonable." Accordingly, the court stated that it intended to grant Mr. Bumphus's motion to suppress.

In its written order memorializing its ruling, the trial court determined that the MPD had had probable cause to stop and search Mr. Bumphus's vehicle, but the delay between seizing and searching Mr. Bumphus's car "violated [his] Fourth Amendment right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures," even though the search warrant eventually obtained by Sergeant Bagshaw was valid.² The court made clear that it understood the Fourth Amendment imposes neither a requirement that searches be conducted contemporaneously with seizures nor a preset outer time limit on conducting constitutional searches. Rather, relying on United States v. Johns , 469 U.S. 478, 105 S.Ct. 881, 83 L.Ed.2d 890 (1985), the court explained that any "delay must be reasonable under the circumstances." After quoting from Sergeant Bagshaw's testimony, the court found that in Mr. Bumphus's case, the record was both "devoid of any indication of police diligence or necessity" for the delay in searching the car, and "utterly lacking in any legitimate explanation, however small," for the delay in applying for a warrant—deficiencies the court deemed "crucial."³ Again quoting from Sergeant Bagshaw's testimony, the court further determined that the actions of the police demonstrated an "outright disregard for the adverse effect such a delay might have on the possessory interests of the vehicle's owner."⁴ The court concluded these interests were "great": "Not only does the dispossession of the vehicle itself limit its owner's ability to go about his or her daily activities, the additional deprivation of the cell phone, purse, and backpack—things many people would consider necessities of daily life—also constitutes a serious invasion of an individual's possessory interests." "On this record" and "[u]nder the[ ] specific circumstances" of this case, the trial court ruled that "the detention of Mr. Bumphus'[s] vehicle was an unreasonable seizure under the Fourth Amendment, and the fruits of that seizure must be suppressed."

II. Standard of Review

In reviewing a trial court's ruling on a suppression motion, "we accept the trial court's findings of fact unless they are clearly erroneous[,] and we review the facts and reasonable inferences therefrom in the light most favorable to the prevailing party." Hooks v. United States , 208 A.3d 741, 745 (D.C. 2019). We review the trial court's legal conclusions, including whether the seizure was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment and whether exclusion was required, de novo. Id. ; see also Jones v. United States, 168 A.3d 703, 717 (D.C. 2017).

III. The Unreasonableness of the Extended Seizure and Delayed Search

"The touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is reasonableness ...." Goines v. United States , 964 A.2d 141, 144 (D.C. 2009) (internal quotation marks omitted). Because government seizures may deprive a person of a significant possessory interest, seizures that are reasonable at their inception may become unreasonable over time. United States v. Jacobsen , 466 U.S. 109, 124 & n.25, 104 S.Ct. 1652, 80 L.Ed.2d 85 (1984). Determining whether an extended seizure is reasonable requires balancing the government's justification for the prolonged intrusion on an individual's possessory interests against the "nature and quality" of those interests. United States v. Place , 462 U.S. 696, 703, 708–09, 103 S.Ct. 2637, 77 L.Ed.2d 110 (1983) (holding extended seizure and delayed search of initially lawfully seized luggage was unreasonable under the circumstances, id. at 709–10, 103 S.Ct. 2637 ); see Johns , 469 U.S. at 480–81, 486–88, 105 S.Ct. 881 (holding extended seizure and delayed search of a lawfully seized truck and its cargo was reasonable under the circumstances of that case but explicitly stating that it was not foreclosing challenges to delayed...