United States v. Jenkins
| Citation | 984 F.3d 1038 |
| Decision Date | 08 January 2021 |
| Docket Number | No. 19-3023,19-3023 |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America, Appellee v. Deangelo Tyrone JENKINS, Appellant |
| Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (District of Columbia) |
Tony Axam Jr., Assistant Federal Public Defender, argued the cause for appellant. With him on the briefs was A. J. Kramer, Federal Public Defender.
Eric Hansford, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the cause for appellee. With him on the brief were Elizabeth Trosman and Elizabeth H. Danello, Assistant U.S. Attorneys.
Before: Henderson and Rogers, Circuit Judges, and Ginsburg, Senior Circuit Judge.
In the course of investigating a shooting, the police identified two automobiles that drove over three miles in tandem to the area, arrived shortly before shots were fired, and left immediately afterwards, driving rapidly back the same way they came. Appellant was later identified as the usual driver of one of the vehicles. Based on evidence collected during searches of his vehicle and person, appellant was charged with two counts of possession of a firearm by a felon, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g), and one count of simple possession of a controlled substance, 21 U.S.C. § 844(a). He conditionally pleaded guilty to the firearms charges, preserving his ability to appeal the denial of his motion to suppress evidence. Appellant contends that the police acted on evidence showing merely that his vehicle was near the shooting and associated with another car, which was insufficient to establish probable cause to seize and search his vehicle. Further, appellant contends that any probable cause to search his vehicle had dissipated by the time the police seized it 52 days after the shooting. Settled Fourth Amendment principles defeat appellant's challenges. Separately, appellant fails to show plain error occurred at his sentencing. Accordingly, we affirm the judgment.
The following facts are uncontested. On September 2, 2017, at approximately 6:56 p.m., ShotSpotter — a system that alerts the Metropolitan Police Department ("MPD") to the location of potential gunfire — indicated that twelve rounds had been fired at 1502 Tubman Road, S.E. Upon arrival, officers discovered three victims: one who was pronounced dead on the scene, and two others who neither saw the shooter nor identified a motive for the shooting. During the investigation, detectives interviewed the driver and passenger in another car that was near the scene of the shooting. The driver had observed a black Chrysler Crossfire by the mouth of an alley that was approximately 100 feet from where the shooting occurred. After passing the Crossfire and driving one more block, the witnesses heard gunshots. They drove out of the neighborhood to an intersection with Suitland Parkway, where the driver saw the Crossfire again, this time in the rearview mirror. The witnesses turned out onto Suitland Parkway, where they observed the Crossfire driving at a high rate of speed, followed closely by a white Infiniti SUV. The driver and passenger gave consistent accounts of these events to detectives, and the driver opined that the Crossfire and Infiniti were travelling together. The two vehicles turned off Suitland Parkway onto Firth Sterling Avenue, S.E., at which point the witnesses lost sight of them.
Using a license plate reader at the intersection of Suitland and Firth Sterling, and security cameras near the scene of the shooting, MPD Detective Thomas Roy developed additional information concerning the movements of the Crossfire and the Infiniti around the time of the shooting. Evidence showed that the two vehicles travelled together to the area of the shooting, arrived just before it occurred, left just afterwards, and remained together while fleeing the scene. Tag numbers recorded by the license plate reader identified the registered owner of the Crossfire as Lajuan Johns and the registered owner of the Infiniti as Tyrhonda Webster. Webster's current address was on Columbia Road N.W., and Lajuan Johns had a previous address on the same block. Detective Roy looked for the Infiniti on that block, without success; but in the same area he saw a man, Stephon Johns, in control of the Crossfire.
On October 10, 2017, Stephon Johns was the subject of a traffic stop in Texas. He was arrested pursuant to a District of Columbia arrest warrant for unlawful possession of a firearm and for a parole violation. The next day, Detective Roy located the Crossfire in the Providence Hospital parking lot and saw three bullet strikes on its rear. Five days later, detectives interviewed Webster, who confirmed that she owned the Infiniti but stated that appellant, her brother, was the exclusive driver of the vehicle. An MPD database indicated appellant had been driving the Infiniti on October 11, 2017, when it was involved in a traffic accident.
On October 24, 2017, detectives saw the Infiniti parked at the corner of 14th and Harvard Streets, N.W. The police seized the Infiniti, which was taken to the D.C. Department of Forensic Sciences while Detective Roy applied for a search warrant. Upon execution of the search warrant on October 25, Detective Roy found in the Infiniti a loaded .45 caliber Taurus handgun, appellant's driver's license, and a notice of infraction that he had received in Montgomery County on September 21, 2017. Appellant was arrested pursuant to a separate warrant on November 9, 2017, and the police recovered a loaded .357 caliber Ruger revolver from his waistband and a rock-like substance from his pants pocket that field-tested positive for cocaine.
Appellant was indicted on two counts of possession of a firearm by a person convicted of a felony, under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g), and one count of simple possession of a controlled substance, under 21 U.S.C. § 844(a). He moved to suppress the guns and drugs, arguing that they were fruits of an unlawful seizure of the Infiniti without probable cause. The district court denied the motion, concluding that there was probable cause to believe the Infiniti contained evidence of a crime and was itself an instrumentality of a crime. Having decided that the search of the Infiniti was lawful, the district court rejected appellant's argument that the evidence recovered during the search incident to his arrest was fruit of a poisonous tree. Alternatively, the district court ruled that the evidence from both searches would be admissible under the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule. Following appellant's conditional plea to the indictment, the district court sentenced him to 47 months’ imprisonment. He appeals.
It is long established that "there is a diminished expectation of privacy in automobiles, which often permits officers to dispense with obtaining a warrant before conducting a lawful search." Byrd v. United States , ––– U.S. ––––, 138 S. Ct. 1518, 1526, 200 L.Ed.2d 805 (2018) (citing California v. Acevedo , 500 U.S. 565, 579, 111 S.Ct. 1982, 114 L.Ed.2d 619 (1991) ). This "so-called ‘automobile exception’ to the warrant requirement," Acevedo , 500 U.S. at 566, 111 S.Ct. 1982, rests on two principal justifications: (1) the readiness with which vehicles can be moved out of the investigating jurisdiction and (2) the "pervasive and continuing governmental regulation" of vehicles. Collins v. Virginia , ––– U.S. ––––, 138 S. Ct. 1663, 1669–70, 201 L.Ed.2d 9 (2018) (quoting Dakota v. Opperman , 428 U.S. 364, 368, 96 S.Ct. 3092, 49 L.Ed.2d 1000 (1976) ). So "officers may search an automobile without having obtained a warrant so long as they have probable cause to do so." Id. at 1670 (citing California v. Carney , 471 U.S. 386, 392–93, 105 S.Ct. 2066, 85 L.Ed.2d 406 (1985) ). Officers have the option of either "carrying out an immediate search without a warrant" or "seizing and holding a car before presenting the probable cause issue to a magistrate." Chambers v. Maroney , 399 U.S. 42, 52, 90 S.Ct. 1975, 26 L.Ed.2d 419 (1970). "A police officer has probable cause to conduct a search when ‘the facts available to him would "warrant a person of reasonable caution in the belief’ " that contraband or evidence of a crime is present." Florida v. Harris , 568 U.S. 237, 243, 133 S.Ct. 1050, 185 L.Ed.2d 61 (2013) (alterations omitted) (quoting Texas v. Brown , 460 U.S. 730, 742, 103 S.Ct. 1535, 75 L.Ed.2d 502 (1983) (plurality opinion)). This test requires only "the kind of ‘fair probability’ on which ‘reasonable and prudent people, not legal technicians, act.’ " Id. (alteration omitted) (quoting Illinois v. Gates , 462 U.S. 213, 231, 238, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983) ).
Appellant frames his Fourth Amendment challenge in terms of whether the Crossfire could be linked to the shooting, whether the Infiniti could be linked to the Crossfire, and whether any probable cause had gone stale by the time the Infiniti was seized on October 24, 2017, which was 52 days after the shooting. The single question that the court must decide is whether the police had probable cause to seize the Infiniti on October 24.
Evidence collected from eyewitnesses, the Firth Sterling license plate reader, and security cameras established that the two vehicles drove together from miles away to within a few blocks of the shooting, arriving minutes before the shooting occurred; that the Crossfire was at the mouth of an alley approximately 100 feet from the shooting just before it occurred; and that after the shooting the two vehicles drove away together at a high rate of speed, returning along Suitland Parkway to the same area that they had come from. That particularly timed behavior is sufficient to establish a fair probability that the vehicles contained evidence about the shooting. Probable cause was bolstered by the Texas arrest of Johns, which supported an inference that he "could have been trying to escape the consequences of the homicide (whether police scrutiny or reprisals from rival groups)." Appellee's Br. 19. Likewise, the bullet strikes on the Crossfire...
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