United States v. Clancy

• Decision Date: 12 November 2020
• Docket Number: No. 19-6367,19-6367
• Citation: 979 F.3d 1135
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Lamar CLANCY, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

979 F.3d 1135

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.Lamar CLANCY, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 19-6367

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Decided and Filed: November 12, 2020

ON BRIEF: Eugene A. Laurenzi, GODWIN, MORRIS, LAURENZI & BLOOMFIELD, P.C., Memphis, Tennessee, for Appellant. C. David Biggers, Jr., UNITED STATES ATTORNEY'S OFFICE, Memphis, Tennessee, for Appellee.

Before: SUTTON, THAPAR, and READLER, Circuit Judges.

SUTTON, Circuit Judge.

If the "robb'd that smiles steals something from the thief," William Shakespeare, Othello , act 1, sc. 3, what of the robbed that shoots back? When Lamar Clancy tried to rob a store at gunpoint, the store's employees responded in kind, shooting Clancy in the arm. The wound landed Clancy in the hospital, where police seized bloodied clothing they saw at his bedside. Clancy now appeals the convictions that sprang from the discovery of his clothing. We affirm.

I.

Clancy and a partner set out to rob a Boost Mobile store in Memphis, Tennessee, on December 8, 2017. Clancy wore a "[w]hite hoodie" and "red pants ... [with] white letters," along with "red shoes, [a] black mask, black gloves," and had a "silver gun." R.97 at 105. His partner wore "a black hoodie, black pants," a "black mask," and carried a gun too. R.97 at 79. Entering the store, they found the store's manager standing behind the counter with two other employees. Clancy pointed his weapon and said: "You know what time it is." R.97 at 102. Within seconds, the manager heard shots ring out. He and another employee grabbed their own guns and reflexively returned fire. Bullets flew, glass shattered, the robbers fled. "By the time I hit that door," said one customer, "it was like cowboys and Indians." R.97 at 132. One employee took a shot to the knee. The manager emerged unscathed.

Not so for Clancy. Within fifteen minutes of the robbery, a car pulled up to Methodist South Hospital. Two men dressed in black got the attention of an emergency technician, who found Clancy laying across the backseat with a gunshot wound to the arm. Once hospital workers rolled him into the trauma room, the two other men left. Clancy wore a "white, lightcolor jacket," "red pants with a white ... lettering," "red" shoes, and a black glove. R.98 at 20, 26, 108. Once he made it to the trauma room, medical personnel stripped off his clothes and piled them on the floor.

Meanwhile, Memphis police arrived at the Boost Mobile store. They heard descriptions of the suspects, including the one who wore "red jogging pants with a white stripe," a white sweatshirt, and a "black ski mask." R.98 at 61, 67. Before long, the officers learned that Methodist South had just admitted a shooting victim. Two officers went to the hospital and walked into the emergency department, where they found Clancy and saw his clothing on the floor, "out in the open" and visible from the hallway outside his room. R.98 at 90. Red pants with a white stripe. Red Nikes. White sweatshirt. Black ski mask. The clothes raised suspicions.

Hospital staff airlifted Clancy to another hospital for treatment. After he left, crime scene investigators arrived at Methodist South's emergency department. They went to the trauma room and found Clancy's bloodied clothes in a plastic bag. A crime scene investigator removed the clothes from the bag, then photographed each piece and put them in a paper sack.

The Government charged Clancy with two counts: attempted Hobbs Act robbery, see 18 U.S.C. §§ 1951, 2, and use of a firearm related to a crime of violence, see id. § 924(c). Clancy moved to suppress the clothing evidence, but the district court denied his motion. The jury found Clancy guilty on both counts.

II.

Motion to suppress the clothing . The Fourth Amendment protects "persons, houses, papers, and effects" from "unreasonable searches and seizures[.]" U.S. Const. amend. IV. Government officials ordinarily must obtain a warrant before seizing a person's private property. United States v. Jacobsen , 466 U.S. 109, 113–14, 104 S.Ct. 1652, 80 L.Ed.2d 85 (1984). But there's an exception for evidence in "plain view"—for evidence that an officer saw from a lawful vantage point, the "incriminating character" of which was "immediately apparent," and for which the officer had "a lawful right of access to the object itself." Horton v. California , 496 U.S. 128, 136–37, 110 S.Ct. 2301, 110 L.Ed.2d 112 (1990) (quotation omitted).

The context of this plain-view sighting goes a long way to resolving the appeal. The officer responded to an emergency call from the hospital, which notified him that it had received a shooting victim. It's hardly surprising—it's indeed expected—that police will respond to emergency departments when shooting victims show up. That's because officers are duty bound to investigate crimes, especially "reported shooting[s]." United States v. Davis , 690 F.3d 226, 234 n.13 (4th Cir. 2012) (upholding police presence in an emergency room by an officer "lawfully fulfilling his duty to investigate a reported shooting"); Sheffield v. United States , 111 A.3d 611, 620 (D.C. 2015) (noting that police were lawfully present in a hospital room "on official business to investigate a reported shooting"); State v. Rheaume , 179 Vt. 39, 889 A.2d 711, 714 (2005) (explaining that police are "emergency workers" who "as a matter of course" show up in emergency rooms); Craft v. Commonwealth , 221 Va. 258, 269 S.E.2d 797, 799–800 (1980) (pointing out that the officers went to the hospital to "investigat[e] an attempted robbery in which it had been reported that the robber had been shot"); see also State v. Thompson , 222 Wis.2d 179, 585 N.W.2d 905, 911 (Wis. Ct. App. 1998) ; People v. Torres , 144 Ill.App.3d 187, 98 Ill.Dec. 630, 494 N.E.2d 752, 755 (1986) ; State v. Cromb , 220 Or.App. 315, 185 P.3d 1120, 1126 (2008) ; Dombrovski v. State , Nos. A-7238, 4253, 2000 WL 1058953, at *3 (Alaska Ct. App. Aug. 2, 2000) ; Buchanan v. State , 432 So.2d 147, 148 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1983).

This all makes considerable sense. With time of the essence, any hope of catching a suspect turns on nimble law enforcement willing to drop everything and rush to the hospital to gather information. Waiting for the shooting victim—who may well be a suspect—to leave the hospital runs the risk of losing track of him and, worse, of allowing him to strike again.

In this context, the seizure of Clancy's bloodied clothing readily satisfies the plain-view exception. Begin with the lawful vantage point from which the officer viewed the evidence. This was not "a constitutionally protected area." Florida v. Jardines , 569 U.S. 1, 5, 133 S.Ct. 1409, 185 L.Ed.2d 495 (2013) (quotation omitted). A cognizable search simply does not occur when officers "merely look[ ] at what is already exposed to view[.]" Arizona v. Hicks , 480 U.S. 321, 328, 107 S.Ct. 1149, 94 L.Ed.2d 347 (1987). The officer saw Clancy's clothing from a common area, not unlike the "open common hallway[s]" of apartment buildings. United States v. Dillard , 438 F.3d 675, 684 (6th Cir. 2006). Recall that Clancy's clothing was "out in the open" and visible to those passing by his room. R.98 at 48. That's where the officer saw his clothes: from "the hallway, looking in." R.100 at 18–19. Anyone who has spent time in a hospital knows that emergency department corridors are major arteries filled with doctors, nurses, family members, and visitors alike. The officer who viewed Clancy's clothes from that vantage point did not violate Clancy's Fourth Amendment rights by walking these busy halls like everyone else.

Turn to the incriminating nature of Clancy's clothes. It's enough that the officers immediately had probable cause to believe the seized property was evidence of a crime. Hicks , 480 U.S. at 326–28, 107 S.Ct. 1149. The police radio broadcast painted a clear picture: red jogging pants with a white stripe, a white sweatshirt, and a black ski mask. That's just what the officer saw: red jogging pants with a white stripe and a white sweatshirt. More still, he saw the black ski mask, a giveaway that Clancy wasn't merely a gunshot victim in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The officers also had lawful access to Clancy's clothes. That requirement "guard[s] against warrantless entry onto premises," preventing officers from trespassing on private property merely because they spot incriminating evidence there. Boone v. Spurgess , 385 F.3d 923, 928 (6th Cir. 2004) ; see also Collins v. Virginia , ––– U.S. ––––, 138 S. Ct. 1663, 1672, 201 L.Ed.2d 9 (2018). No such trespass occurred in the hospital room. Clancy had been airlifted by the time officers seized the clothing they found in his trauma room. And we are hard-pressed to see how the officers trespassed at all. It's "routine" operating procedure for officers to show up at the hospital when its emergency department receives a shooting victim. R.100 at 51; see Davis , 690 F.3d at 234 n.13 ; Sheffield , 111 A.3d at 620.

Resisting this conclusion, Clancy claims that patients have a reasonable expectation of privacy in hospital rooms. Maybe yes; maybe no—and perhaps more likely no in an emergency room. Compare Jones v. State , 648 So.2d 669, 677 (Fla. 1994), with Davis , 690 F.3d at 238 n.19 and State v. Morgan , 193 Wash.2d 365, 440 P.3d 136, 139–40 (2019). But it makes no difference here. While the officers eventually entered Clancy's room, they could see his bloodied clothing from the hallway—a public thoroughfare, not a private space. No incursion on Clancy's reasonable expectation of privacy led to their discovery of his clothes. And even if Clancy did maintain a reasonable expectation of privacy in his hospital room during treatment, remember that the officers seized his clothing after medical personnel airlifted him away. There is no reason to think his privacy expectation would persist after he left the hospital and medical personnel began preparing the room for new patients. Cf. United States v. Lanier , 636 F.3d...