United States v. Rodriguez

• Decision Date: 13 May 2022
• Docket Number: 21-20150
• Citation: 33 F.4th 807
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff—Appellee, v. Erik RODRIGUEZ, Defendant—Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

33 F.4th 807

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff—Appellee,

v.Erik RODRIGUEZ, Defendant—Appellant.

No. 21-20150

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

FILED May 13, 2022

Lauretta Drake Bahry, Carmen Castillo Mitchell, Assistant U.S. Attorneys, U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of Texas, Houston, TX, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Marjorie A. Meyers, Federal Public Defender, Scott Andrew Martin, Assistant Federal Public Defender, Federal Public Defender's Office, Southern District of Texas, Houston, TX, for Defendant-Appellant.

Before Davis, Smith, and Engelhardt, Circuit Judges.

Jerry E. Smith, Circuit Judge:

Before the court is Erik Rodriguez's motion to suppress a revolver found in the pocket of a jacket he left in a friend's car. That motion presents not only novel and difficult questions of Fourth Amendment standing but also far more prosaic questions of Fourth Amendment substance. The questions in the latter category suffice to resolve the case, so that is where we turn. Whether a defendant in Rodriguez's position had Fourth Amendment standing to challenge the search in question will wait for another day. Instead, we affirm on the ground that the search was a legal protective sweep.

I.

Rodriguez was a passenger in a car driven by his friend. Police noticed the car straddling two lanes of traffic, so they began to follow it. They observed that there were two men in the car and that both were wearing hooded jackets. The passengers appeared intently interested in the police car and were shifting in their seats. The officers found that activity suspicious.

Having already observed a traffic violation, they decided to execute a stop.

The police activated their lights, but at first the vehicle did not pull over. Instead, it passed two driveways before pulling into a third—an apartment complex with a reputation for gang activity. Once in the complex, the vehicle continued to roll forward before stopping after a blip from the officers' siren. As the officers exited their cruiser and approached the vehicle, the driver initially opened his door, then remained in the car and rolled down his windows, as instructed. The officers noticed an infant in the back seat.

The officers removed both Rodriguez and the driver. The driver was still wearing his jacket, but Rodriguez was no longer wearing his—even though the temperature was in the forties. Neither man had a driver's license, and the driver admitted that one of his IDs was fake. The officers thus detained both men and placed them, in handcuffs, in the back of their patrol car, even though Rodriguez was not suspected of any crime.

As one officer ran the driver's IDs, the other searched the vehicle's passenger compartment. He discovered a jacket on the backseat floorboard—its color matched Rodriguez's pants, but the officer testified that he did not immediately "put two and two together" and consider that the jacket belonged to Rodriguez. The officer found a revolver in the jacket's pocket.

Rodriguez and the driver gave the officers permission to use their phones to call family members to pick up the car and baby. But in addition to making the calls, an officer also, without permission, went through the phones. As he did, he observed "MS-13 material" that appeared to implicate Rodriguez. Both Rodriguez and the driver were arrested for state crimes—the driver for tampering with a government document and Rodriguez for unlawfully carrying a weapon in connection with gang activity.

Rodriguez turned out to be an illegal alien, meaning that, regardless of any connection to MS-13 or other gangs, his possession of the revolver was a federal crime. He was thus charged with violating 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(5)(A).

Rodriguez filed a motion to suppress, maintaining that the search of the vehicle violated his Fourth Amendment rights and that his questioning during the stop violated his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights. After an evidentiary hearing, the district court ordered the suppression of statements made by Rodriguez, reasoning that they were taken in violation of Miranda v. Arizona , 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966). It also suppressed evidence gained from the search of Rodriguez's phone, which the court concluded violated Riley v. California , 573 U.S. 373, 134 S.Ct. 2473, 189 L.Ed.2d 430 (2014). But it did not suppress the gun—the court ruled that the stop of the vehicle and detention of the passengers had been reasonable, and Rodriguez "neither had nor claimed any ownership or possessory interest or reasonable expectation of privacy in the" vehicle because he had been merely a passenger. Rodriguez thus had no standing to challenge the search.

With the gun admitted, Rodriguez pleaded guilty and was sentenced to time served plus three years' supervised release. Rodriguez appeals the conviction, maintaining that the district court erred by denying his motion to suppress.

II.

"When reviewing the denial of a motion to suppress evidence, this court reviews the district court's factual findings for clear error and the district court's conclusions ... de novo."

United States v. Perez , 484 F.3d 735, 739 (5th Cir. 2007). Rodriguez does not challenge any of the district court's factfindings. Thus, as the government concedes, the only questions before us are legal ones that we review de novo.

III.

A Fourth Amendment inquiry typically proceeds in two parts: A court first asks whether the defendant had standing to challenge the search and then, if the answer is yes, asks whether the search was reasonable. In other contexts, that order would be not just typical but mandatory. Standing is a matter of jurisdiction, and courts must assess their jurisdiction before turning to the merits. See Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Env't , 523 U.S. 83, 94, 118 S.Ct. 1003, 140 L.Ed.2d 210 (1998).

But Fourth Amendment standing is a different matter. "The concept of standing in Fourth Amendment cases can be a useful shorthand ... but it should not be confused with Article III standing ...." Byrd v. United States , ––– U.S. ––––, 138 S. Ct. 1518, 1530, 200 L.Ed.2d 805 (2018). To the contrary, Fourth Amendment standing "is not a jurisdictional question and hence need not be addressed before addressing other aspects of the merits of a Fourth Amendment claim." Id.

Thus, we are not bound to decide whether Rodriguez had standing to challenge the search of his jacket. Instead, the usual rule applies, and we may affirm the judgment for any reason supported by the record. See Palmer ex rel. Palmer v. Waxahachie Indep. Sch. Dist. , 579 F.3d 502, 506 (5th Cir. 2009) ; United States v. Ibarra-Sanchez , 199 F.3d 753, 758 (5th Cir. 1999). Thus, we may affirm if we conclude, as we do, that that search was lawful.

That course is particularly appropriate here in light of the novelty of the Fourth Amendment standing questions. Rodriguez presents two theories in support of Fourth Amendment standing, and precedent does not definitively answer either.

First, Rodriguez maintains that he had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the jacket. "Typically," a passenger in a car, as distinct from the driver, "lacks standing to complain of its search." United States v. Roberson , 6 F.3d 1088, 1091 (5th Cir. 1993). But this circuit has recognized an exception for a passenger's personal luggage. "The owner of a suitcase located in another's car may have a legitimate expectation of privacy with respect to the contents of his suitcase." United States v. Buchner , 7 F.3d 1149, 1154 (5th Cir. 1993). Rodriguez maintains that the same logic extends to the pockets of the jacket he had removed and left in the vehicle. But jackets are not exactly like suitcases, and neither party, nor this court, has located any precedent squarely addressing Rodriguez's theory.¹

Second, Rodriguez maintains that he has standing to challenge the search because it qualifies as a trespass. Because he did not advance that theory before the district court, it is subject to the demanding standard of plain-error review. See Puckett v. United States , 556 U.S. 129, 135, 129 S.Ct. 1423, 173 L.Ed.2d 266 (2009).

Rodriguez relies primarily on United States v. Richmond , 915 F.3d 352 (5th Cir. 2019), which itself interprets United States v. Jones , 565 U.S. 400, 132 S.Ct. 945, 181 L.Ed.2d 911 (2012). Those cases hold that, in addition to the more familiar reasonable-expectation-of-privacy test described above, a defendant can show Fourth Amendment standing if the government has committed a common-law trespass as part of an investigation. See id. at 408–09, 132 S.Ct. 945. But the recent vintage of those cases leaves us with few authorities interpreting them, and we do not have the benefit of the district court's assessment.

All of that is to say that the question of Rodriguez's standing is difficult. Admittedly, "judges may not invoke judicial modesty to avoid difficult questions." Holder v. Hall , 512 U.S. 874, 966, 114 S.Ct. 2581, 129 L.Ed.2d 687 (Stevens, J., dissenting). But neither is it "the role of the federal courts to answer legal questions unless specific cases need answers." Greenless v. Almond , 277 F.3d 601, 607 (1st Cir. 2002). In keeping with that principle, we reserve for another day the theories of Fourth Amendment standing presented by Rodriguez; we turn instead to a question to which our precedents provide a more certain answer.

IV.

Turning to the merits of the search of Rodriguez's jacket, we conclude that the search was reasonable. Specifically, it was justified by the protective-sweep exception to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement.²

The protective-sweep exception was first articulated in the vehicular context in Michigan v. Long , 463 U.S. 1032, 103 S.Ct. 3469, 77 L.Ed.2d 1201 (1983). The Court allowed police "to conduct an area search of the passenger compartment [of a vehicle] to uncover weapons, as long as they possess an articulable and objectively reasonable belief that the suspect is potentially dangerous." Id. at 1051, ...