United States v. Knapp

• Decision Date: 05 March 2019
• Docket Number: No. 18-8031,18-8031
• Citation: 917 F.3d 1161
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. Stacy Jo KNAPP, a/k/a Stacy Jo Rafay, a/k/a Stacey Jo Knapp, Defendant - Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit

917 F.3d 1161

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff - Appellee,

v.Stacy Jo KNAPP, a/k/a Stacy Jo Rafay, a/k/a Stacey Jo Knapp, Defendant - Appellant.

No. 18-8031

United States Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit.

FILED March 5, 2019

Josh Lee, Assistant Federal Public Defender (Virginia L. Grady, Federal Public Defender, with him on the briefs), Denver, Colorado, for Appellant.

Nicole M. Romine, Assistant United States Attorney (Mark A. Klaassen, United States Attorney, with her on the brief), Cheyenne, Wyoming, for Appellee.

Before HOLMES, McKAY, and KELLY, Circuit Judges.

KELLY, Circuit Judge.

Defendant-Appellant Stacy Knapp entered a conditional plea of guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm, 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(1) & 924(a)(2), and she was sentenced to 36 months’ imprisonment and three years’ supervised release. The conditional plea allowed her to appeal the district court’s denial of her motion to suppress, and in the event it is successful, to withdraw her guilty plea. Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(a)(2). Exercising jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we reverse and remand.

Background

The parties do not dispute the material facts found by the district court. Ms. Knapp called the police to report a theft at a grocery store in Gillette, Wyoming. 3 R. 18–19. Officers responded to the call, apprehended the theft suspect, and took a statement from Ms. Knapp in the grocery store. Id. at 19. During their investigation officers gave police dispatch Ms. Knapp’s name. Id. Dispatchers discovered that Ms. Knapp had an outstanding warrant for her arrest and informed Officer Zachary Parker. Id. at 19–20. By then Ms. Knapp had already left the grocery store, so Officer Parker went to the grocery store parking lot to find Ms. Knapp. Id. at 20.

Officer Parker found Ms. Knapp in the driver’s seat of a parked pickup truck outside the store. Id. He instructed her that she could not leave because he had to arrest her. Id. at 21. Ms. Knapp exited the truck and followed Officer Parker back into the grocery store. Id. Ms. Knapp voluntarily retrieved her purse from the seat of the truck when she followed Officer Parker back to the grocery store. Id. at 21–22. Because the officers were still concluding their theft investigation, Officer Parker asked Ms. Knapp to sit on a chair outside a bank office located within the store. Id. at 23.

Once Ms. Knapp sat down, Officer Parker moved her purse, which was closed by a zipper, a few chairs away from her. Id. at 24. Ms. Knapp then asked her friend who was also present to take her purse, so she would not have to take it to jail. Id. at 25. This raised the officers’ suspicions. Id. at 70–71. When her friend — who was originally willing to take her purse — declined, after being warned by Officer Jacob Foutch that taking it could be illegal, she tried to have her boyfriend take it or leave it in the truck she had been driving. Id. at 25–26, 41, 67–68. However, Officer Parker refused to let her leave her purse in the truck. Id. at 26, 70–71. Officer Parker then asked for her consent to search the purse but she refused. Id. at 41–42. The officers then placed Ms. Knapp in handcuffs behind her back, and Officer Foutch led her outside while Officer Parker carried the purse. Id. at 42–43; 1 Supp. R., Ex. C (Subpoena 17-06882 File 4, Body Cam Video of Officer Jake Foutch), at 29:30–30:00.

The officers and Ms. Knapp walked to Officer Parker’s patrol vehicle, and Ms. Knapp stood in front of the hood facing Officer Foutch. 3 R. 43. Officer Parker placed the purse on the hood of his patrol car. Id. at 28. At that time, Ms. Knapp stood near the bumper of the patrol car, the purse was on the hood near the windshield (about three to four feet from Ms. Knapp), and Ms. Knapp stood handcuffed facing away from the car and toward Officer Foutch. Id. at 28, 43, 56–57. Ms. Knapp’s friend was on the opposite side of the patrol vehicle. Id. at 28. Next, after Officer Foutch threatened that she would be guilty of a felony for bringing drugs to a detention center, Ms. Knapp told him she was carrying a pistol in her purse. 1 R. 50, 55. At that point the officers searched the purse and found her pistol. When they searched the purse, three officers were present. See 3 R. 29.

Ms. Knapp was charged with one count of unlawfully possessing a firearm after a felony conviction in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(1) and 924(a)(2). 1 R. 10. She moved to suppress the firearm on Fourth Amendment grounds, arguing that the search was unreasonable and that her statement acknowledging the presence of the firearm was inadmissible derivative evidence. Id. at 12–17. The government argued that the search was proper under the search incident to arrest and inevitable discovery exceptions. Id. at 18–24; 3 R. 87–89. Without reaching the inevitable discovery issue, the district court concluded that the search incident to arrest exception applied and consequently denied the motion to suppress. 1 R. 163.

The district court, noting that the case presented a "difficult choice," 3 R. 107, held that the search satisfied both the spatial and temporal proximity requirements essential for a search incident to arrest. 1 R. 160, 162. The district court reasoned that Ms. Knapp’s purse was approximately three feet away from her when it was searched, and thus she could have gained access. Id. at 160. It reasoned that any delay between the arrest and the search (some 12 to 13 minutes) was necessitated by the officers conducting a theft investigation and allowing Ms. Knapp to make arrangements for her truck; there were no other intervening events separating the arrest from the search. Id. at 162.

On appeal, Ms. Knapp argues that (1) the search of her purse was not truly incident to her arrest given intervening events, and (2) the search incident to arrest exception does not apply because (a) the police chose to put Ms. Knapp in proximity with her purse, and (b) Ms. Knapp could not have accessed the purse’s contents at the time of the search. The government responds that given a lawful arrest, Ms. Knapp’s first argument is in essence an attack on the district court’s contrary factual finding. The government further responds that law enforcement did not artificially create the circumstances justifying a search of the purse incident to arrest, and law enforcement properly searched the purse incident to an arrest because the purse was on her person at the time of the arrest.¹

Discussion

This court reviews de novo whether a search or seizure was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. United States v. Sanders, 796 F.3d 1241, 1243–44 (10th Cir. 2015). It reviews the district court’s factual findings for clear error, and when reviewing the denial of a motion to suppress, it views the evidence in the light most favorable to the government. United States v. Serrato, 742 F.3d 461, 470 (10th Cir. 2014).

The Fourth Amendment provides that "[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated." In general, warrantless searches are per se unreasonable. Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 357, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967). The warrantless search rule, however, is subject to several exceptions. One exception allows arresting officers to "search the person of the accused when legally arrested." Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 392, 34 S.Ct. 341, 58 L.Ed. 652 (1914). Case law has developed to allow not only the search of the arrestee’s person, but also the area within the arrestee’s "immediate control." Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 763, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969). This authority is justified by the need to disarm the suspect and preserve evidence. United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 234, 94 S.Ct. 467, 38 L.Ed.2d 427 (1973).

Whether a search is "of the person" or of the area within the arrestee’s "immediate control" — that is, "the area from within which he might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence" — is a critical distinction.² Chimel, 395 U.S. at 763, 89 S.Ct. 2034. In United States v. Robinson, the Court held that a search of an arrestee’s person incident to arrest need not be justified on a case-by-case basis. Robinson, 414 U.S. at 235, 94 S.Ct. 467. Although the Court did not address whether areas within the arrestee’s immediate control are also categorically subject to warrantless searches incident to arrest, it noted that searches of the arrestee’s person and searches of the area within the arrestee’s immediate control are "two distinct propositions" that "have been treated quite differently." Id. at 224, 94 S.Ct. 467. The Court later reinforced this distinction, albeit in dicta, by noting that arrests create a reduced expectation of privacy in an arrestee’s person, but not in possessions within her immediate control. United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1, 16 n.10, 97 S.Ct. 2476, 53 L.Ed.2d 538 (1977), abrogated on other grounds by California v. Acevedo, 500 U.S. 565, 111 S.Ct. 1982, 114 L.Ed.2d 619 (1991) ; see also Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373, 134 S.Ct. 2473, 2483, 189 L.Ed.2d 430 (2014) (justifying the rule in Robinson by balancing the arrestee’s expectation of privacy in her person with the need to prevent harm to the officers and destruction of evidence). It thus stands to reason that searches of areas within an arrestee’s immediate control must be justified on a case-by-case basis by the need to disarm or to preserve evidence. See United States v. Morgan, 936 F.2d 1561, 1578 n.2, 1579 (10th Cir. 1991) (Seymour, J., dissenting); cf. United States v. Pacheco, 884 F.3d 1031, 1043 n.9 (10th Cir. 2018) (noting that Robinson authorizes only a "limited search of items found during [a] pat-down" incident to a lawful arrest).

Because the validity of Ms. Knapp’s arrest is not at issue, this appeal turns on (1) whether the search of her purse was one of her person for the purposes of Robinson, and (2) if the search was not of her...