United States v. Ferebee

Citation957 F.3d 406
Decision Date22 April 2020
Docket NumberNo. 18-4266,18-4266
Parties UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. Quentin Javon FEREBEE, Defendant - Appellant.
CourtUnited States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (4th Circuit)

ARGUED: Ann Loraine Hester, FEDERAL DEFENDERS OF WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA, INC., Charlotte, North Carolina, for Appellant. Anthony Joseph Enright, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Charlotte, North Carolina, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Anthony Martinez, Federal Public Defender, FEDERAL DEFENDERS OF WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA, INC., Charlotte, North Carolina, for Appellant. R. Andrew Murray, United States Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Charlotte, North Carolina, for Appellee.

Before AGEE and FLOYD, Circuit Judges, and TRAXLER, Senior Circuit Judge.

Affirmed by published opinion. Senior Judge Traxler wrote the majority opinion, in which Judge Agee joined. Judge Floyd wrote a dissenting opinion.

TRAXLER, Senior Circuit Judge:

Quentin Javon Ferebee, a convicted felon, entered a conditional guilty plea to unlawful possession of a firearm, see 18 U.S.C. § 922(g), and was sentenced to 10 months’ imprisonment and two years’ supervised release. Ferebee’s plea preserved his right to appeal the district court’s denial of Ferebee’s motion to suppress. We find no reversible error and affirm.1

I.

On March 23, 2017, Ferebee was visiting his friend Shana Dunbar at her house in Charlotte, North Carolina. Dunbar was on probation for a state offense, although Ferebee was unaware of that fact. Ferebee was sitting on the sofa in the living room with a marijuana blunt in his hand when law enforcement officials arrived to conduct a warrantless search, as authorized by the terms of Dunbar’s probation. A black backpack was on the floor, leaning against the sofa where Ferebee was sitting. Probation Officer Jason Bensavage asked Ferebee to stand up so he could check the sofa for weapons. Ferebee stood up, picked up the backpack with his left hand, and held it out as another officer patted down Ferebee.

When Officer Bensavage asked Ferebee if he had any weapons on him or in the bag, Ferebee "stated that the bag was actually not his." J.A. 48. Officer B.M. Sinnott arrested Ferebee for possession of marijuana and began placing Ferebee in handcuffs. As Ferebee was being handcuffed, Officer Bensavage searched the sofa and found a handgun under the cushions. Detective Thomas Grosse took the backpack from Officer Sinnott, who took Ferebee outside, leaving open the door to the house as they exited. Detective Grosse remained in the house and searched the backpack less than a minute after Officer Sinnott took Ferebee outside. Detective Grosse found Ferebee’s identification card inside the backpack, along with a firearm, marijuana, and drug paraphernalia.

Officers transported Ferebee to the police station after learning of his prior felony conviction. At the station, Ferebee told police, among other things, that the backpack and the gun inside it belonged to him.

Ferebee was indicted on a charge of unlawful possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. He pleaded not guilty and sought to suppress the evidence recovered from the backpack and his statements to the police. Ferebee contended that he had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the backpack and that the warrantless search violated his Fourth Amendment rights. At the conclusion of the hearing on the motion to suppress, the district court issued an oral ruling denying the motion, concluding that Ferebee lacked standing to challenge the search after denying ownership of the backpack and, alternatively, that the search was a lawful search incident to arrest. The district court subsequently issued a written order denying the motion. The written order included analysis that was not contained in the oral ruling. Ferebee thereafter pleaded guilty but preserved his right to appeal the denial of his suppression motion. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(a)(2).

Ferebee challenges both portions of the district court’s analysis on appeal. As to the question of standing, Ferebee relies on the "collective knowledge" doctrine to argue that his disavowal of ownership of the backpack does not prevent him from challenging the search because the officer who actually searched the backpack did not hear Ferebee deny ownership. As to the search-incident-to-arrest question, Ferebee argues that the warrantless search was improper because he was outside the house and handcuffed when the backpack was searched.

II.
A.

We begin with the "collective knowledge" doctrine. When considering the existence of probable cause for warrantless searches or arrests, questions sometimes arise as to whether probable cause must be established only through the information personally known by the arresting or searching officer, or whether information known by other officers may also be factored into the equation. Although some circuits permit the aggregation of individual bits of independent knowledge, see United States v. Massenburg , 654 F.3d 480, 494 (4th Cir. 2011), this circuit limits application of the doctrine to cases where the search or arrest is directed by an officer who himself has sufficient knowledge to amount to probable cause:

[T]he collective-knowledge doctrine simply directs us to substitute the knowledge of the instructing officer or officers for the knowledge of the acting officer ; it does not permit us to aggregate bits and pieces of information from among myriad officers, nor does it apply outside the context of communicated alerts or instructions.

Id. at 493 ; see United States v. Laughman , 618 F.2d 1067, 1072-73 (4th Cir. 1980) ("The law seems to be clear that so long as the officer who orders an arrest or search has knowledge of facts establishing probable cause, it is not necessary for the officers actually making the arrest or conducting the search to be personally aware of those facts.").

In this case, Officer Bensavage testified that Ferebee told him the backpack was not his and that Officer Sinnott then handed the backpack to Detective Grosse, who searched the backpack shortly thereafter. Detective Grosse did not hear Ferebee disclaim ownership, and there is no evidence in the record that Officer Bensavage gave any instructions to Grosse. Ferebee thus contends that the collective-knowledge doctrine prevents us from attributing Officer Bensavage’s knowledge to Detective Grosse. And because Detective Grosse did not know that Ferebee had disclaimed ownership of the backpack, Ferebee argues that the warrantless search was unreasonable. We disagree. As we will explain, the collective-knowledge doctrine simply has no bearing on the propriety of the search in this case.

B.

As the Supreme Court has long made clear, "Fourth Amendment rights are personal rights which ... may not be vicariously asserted." Rakas v. Illinois , 439 U.S. 128, 133-34, 99 S.Ct. 421, 58 L.Ed.2d 387 (1978) (internal quotation marks omitted). The "capacity to claim the protection of the Fourth Amendment depends ... upon whether the person who claims the protection of the Amendment has a legitimate expectation of privacy in the invaded place." Id. at 143, 99 S.Ct. 421. "In order to demonstrate a legitimate expectation of privacy, [a defendant] must have a subjective expectation of privacy, and that subjective expectation must be reasonable." United States v. Bynum , 604 F.3d 161, 164 (4th Cir. 2010) (alteration and internal quotation marks omitted).

The requirement that the defendant have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the property -- often characterized as whether the defendant has "standing" to challenge the search -- is not jurisdictional, but it is nonetheless a threshold inquiry that is preliminary to and distinct from the question of whether a warrant was required: "The concept of standing in Fourth Amendment cases can be a useful shorthand for capturing the idea that a person must have a cognizable Fourth Amendment interest in the place searched before seeking relief for an unconstitutional search ...." Byrd v. United States , ––– U.S. ––––, 138 S. Ct. 1518, 1530, 200 L.Ed.2d 805 (2018) (emphasis added); id. at 1526 ("Whether a warrant is required is a separate question from the one the Court addresses here, which is whether the person claiming a constitutional violation has had his own Fourth Amendment rights infringed by the search and seizure which he seeks to challenge." (emphasis added)(internal quotation marks omitted)); United States v. Bellina , 665 F.2d 1335, 1339 (4th Cir. 1981) ("[T]he threshold question in every suppression case is the existence of a reasonable expectation of privacy in the area searched." (internal quotation marks omitted)). Accordingly, if the individual seeking to challenge a search does not have a legitimate expectation of privacy in the property or place being searched, the individual lacks "standing" and the inquiry ends without consideration of the merits of the search claim.

"The law is well established that a person who voluntarily abandons property loses any reasonable expectation of privacy in the property and is consequently precluded from seeking to suppress evidence seized from the property." United States v. Leshuk , 65 F.3d 1105, 1111 (4th Cir. 1995) ; accord United States v. Stevenson , 396 F.3d 538, 546 (4th Cir. 2005). That rule makes sense, as one who abandons property would have no subjective expectation that the property would remain private, nor would society recognize any such expectation as reasonable. For purposes of challenging a search, this court and most others treat a disavowal of ownership of property as an abandonment of the property. See United States v. Han , 74 F.3d 537, 543 (4th Cir. 1996) ("Denial of ownership ... constitutes abandonment."); Leshuk , 65 F.3d at 1107, 1111 (defendant who disavowed ownership of backpack and garbage bag found in field where marijuana was growing lacked a reasonable expectation of privacy and therefore could not challenge...

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