United States v. Randolph, CRIMINAL ACTION NO. 02-114 (E.D. Pa. 5/28/2002)
| Decision Date | 28 May 2002 |
| Docket Number | CRIMINAL ACTION NO. 02-114. |
| Parties | UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, v. KENNETH RANDOLPH. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Pennsylvania |
Surprising as it may seem, a commonplace law enforcement situation presents a legal issue which, as far as we can tell, presents a question of first impression. Specifically, does a fugitive from a halfway house have any Fourth Amendment expectation of privacy that would require a warrant before his room could be searched?
As will be seen, our resolution of this question is greatly assisted by the Supreme Court's decision last December in United States v. Knights, 122 S.Ct. 587 (2001). Before turning to this legal issue, however, we shall set forth the underlying facts as we have found them after considering the evidence adduced at the suppression hearing on May 23.
It is undisputed that on March 27, 1995 defendant Kenneth Randolph was sentenced to five to ten years' imprisonment for armed robbery, burglary and criminal conspiracy in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County. As he was taken into custody for these offenses on March 25, 1994, the minimum term of his sentence expired on March 25, 1999.
As a result of the action of the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole, Randolph was in 1999 transferred to custody at GPCCC/Kintock at 1347 Wood Street in Philadelphia. Among his May 27, 1999 conditions of parole to this facility was the requirement that he reside at Kintock for nine months. Notwithstanding this specific condition, it is also undisputed that on July 17, 1999 he without permission left the Kintock Group halfway house and never returned.
Upon learning that Randolph had without authorization left the Kintock facility, his parole agent, Ms. Robin Taylor, initiated the paperwork that ultimately resulted in the Parole Board's formal declaration that Randolph was delinquent. Agent Taylor entered Randolph's delinquency on the N.C.I.C. system as well as completed a "wanted" poster, soliciting Randolph's arrest from law enforcement agencies in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.
As a result of information supplied to Agent Taylor from a confidential informant, on April 25, 2000 Agent Taylor and seven other parole officers went to the home of Randolph's sister, Felicia, at 1942 So. 57th Street in Philadelphia. Agent Taylor arrived at the house armed with an order of the Parole Board to detain Randolph for an initial period of forty-eight hours, an order later that day made without time limit by the Parole Board's warrant to commit and detain.
We credit Agent Taylor's testimony that she knocked on the door of Felicity Randolph's house at about 7:30 a.m. on April 25, 2000. Ms. Randolph's daughter, Melissa, answered the door, and called her mother downstairs. Ms. Randolph let the three officers in, and admitted to them that "Kenny is upstairs." Given the presence of at least one small child, Ms. Randolph expressed her concern that her brother's apprehension be done without any use of firearms.1
Agent Taylor and two of her colleagues went up the stairs and found Randolph in the hall, wearing only his boxer shorts. Randolph welcomed the officers by holding out his arms in such a way as to invite handcuffing, which Agent Taylor promptly obliged. Recognizing that Randolph had been convicted of robbery with the use of a firearm, Agent Taylor then made a protective sweep of the bedroom where Randolph had been sleeping with his girlfriend.
Upon entering the then-unoccupied bedroom — which Agent Taylor knew Randolph would have to re-enter in order to get dressed — she saw a cell phone and pager in plain view. Randolph's possession of these items was in violation of specific conditions of his parole, which provided that he was "not to possess, on your person, property, or residence, any electronic paging devices such as pagers, cell phones, digital phones, etc."2 When Agent Taylor neared the cell phone, Randolph blurted out, "Oh, that cell phone doesn't even work." Agent Taylor then looked under the bed which occupied much of the room, and found a 9mm semiautomatic Llama firearm, which was loaded. Further search of the room uncovered body armor (in violation of Count # 2 of Randolph's special conditions of parole) as well as drug paraphernalia, such as a scale and vials.
After the arrest, Randolph was subjected to charges in the state system, as well as to violation hearings before the Parole Board. On September 18, 2000, after a hearing, the Parole Board recommitted Randolph for eighteen months of additional custody. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania having made no progress in prosecuting Randolph for his violation of the Uniform Firearms Act, this case was federalized and Randolph was indicted earlier this year for being a felon in possession of a firearm that had travelled in interstate commerce, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1).
In advance of the trial that was to have started today, Randolph on April 24, 2002 filed a motion to suppress the physical evidence obtained on April 25, 2000 and to suppress certain statements he made that day.3
As Randolph has invoked the Fourth Amendment, we must consider a threshold question before deciding whether this constitutional right was violated. That is to say, we must first consider whether Randolph enjoyed any Fourth Amendment rights before we analyze whether they were not honored.
In essence, Randolph claims that the April 25, 2000 search was unlawful because it was not incident to a lawful arrest. He claims that the parole agents did not have reasonable suspicion to arrest him at the place they did since it was predicated on the report of an unreliable, and undisclosed, confidential informant. We reject this claim for a number of reasons.
As mentioned at the outset of this Memorandum, we have found no case, and none has been brought to our attention, dealing with what, if any, Fourth Amendment protections convicted fugitives like Randolph may have. We know, however, from the Supreme Court's recent decision in Knights, supra, that probationers have fewer rights than citizens who have never been sentenced for any crime. We also know from Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S. 517 (1984) that defendants who are in full custody have no Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches within the confines of their prison cells. See id. at 525-26 ().
At a minimum, it is inconceivable that a convicted fugitive could be in any better Fourth Amendment position than a probationer. As Chief Justice Rehnquist noted about such defendants in Knights:
Although the Fourth Amendment ordinarily requires the degree of probability embodied in the term `probable cause,' a lesser degree satisfies the Constitution when the balance of governmental and private interests make such a standard reasonable. See, e.g., Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88, S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968); United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 95 S.Ct. 2574, 45 L.Ed.2d 607 (1975). Those interests warrant a lesser than probable-cause standard here. When an officer has reasonable suspicion that a probationer subject to a search condition is engaged in criminal activity, there is enough likelihood that criminal conduct is occurring that an intrusion on the probationer's significantly diminished privacy interests is reasonable.
The Chief Justice predicated treating probationers differently because "`the very assumption of the institution of probation' is that the probationer `is more likely than the ordinary citizen to violate the law.'" Id. at 592, quoting Griffin v. Wisconsin, 483 U.S. 868, 880 (1987). The Chief Justice then cited Department of Justice studies which confirmed the common sense expectation that "[t]he recidivism rate of probationers is significantly higher than the general crime rate." Id. Probationers also have powerful incentives "to conceal their criminal activities and quickly dispose of incriminating evidence" because of their awareness of the swift consequence of detected probation violations "in proceedings in which the trial rights of a jury and proof beyond a reasonable doubt, among other things, do not apply", id. In view of these realities, the community may reasonably tip the Fourth Amendment balance differently than it does for those who enjoy the presumption of innocence:
The State has a dual concern with a probationer. On the one hand is the hope that he will successfully complete probation and be integrated back in to the community. On the other is the concern, quite justified, that he will be more likely to engage in criminal conduct than an ordinary member of the community. The view of the court of Appeals in this case would require the State to shut its eyes to the latter concern and concentrate only on the former. But we hold that the Fourth Amendment does not put the State to such a choice. Its interest in apprehending violators of the criminal law, thereby protecting potential victims of criminal enterprise, may therefore justifiably focus on probationers in a way that it does not on the ordinary citizen.
The question here devolves into whether, by unlawfully becoming a fugitive on July 17, 1999, Randolph won himself more rights than he would have had if he had remained in custody at the Kintock Group. Phrased this way, it does seem more than a little odd to suggest that the law should, in effect, give inmates constitutional rewards for fleeing their fetters. Thus, it would seem that to avoid that perverse result, a sensible rule would only require that all law enforcement officers need to do is to...
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