United States v. Sanford, 14–2860.

• Decision Date: 25 November 2015
• Docket Number: No. 14–2860.,14–2860.
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. Gregory SANFORD, Defendant–Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

806 F.3d 954

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee,

v.Gregory SANFORD, Defendant–Appellant.

No. 14–2860.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued Oct. 6, 2015.

Decided Nov. 25, 2015.

K. Tate Chambers, Greggory R. Walters, Office of the United States, Peoria, IL, Micah Ritchey Reyner, Office of the United States, Rock Island, IL, for Plaintiff–Appellee.

Daniel J. Hillis, Office of the Federal Public Defender, Springfield, IL, Thomas W. Patton, Office of the Federal Public Defender, Peoria, IL, for Defendant–Appellant.

Opinion

POSNER, Circuit Judge.

Chicago is a major destination city for illegal drugs originating in Central and South America. Interstate 55, which runs from LaPlace, Louisiana, to Chicago, is part of the network of north-south and west-east highways used by drug dealers to deliver their illegal drugs to the Windy City. See, e.g., National Drug Intelligence Center, National Drug Threat Assessment 2006,“Drug Transportation Corridors,” www.justice.gov/archive/ndic/pubs 11/18862/transport.htm; Kathy Sweeney, “I–Team: I–55 Drug Busts,” Feb. 11, 2014, www.kfvs12.com/story/24695389/i–team–investigation–55–drug–busts (both visited Nov. 24, 2015). Drug dealers also use Interstate 55 to transport drugs from Chicago to other cities, such as Peoria (southwest of Chicago)—as we're about to see.

Shortly after midnight on February 28, 2012, an Illinois state trooper stopped a car that he had clocked speeding southbound on I–55 between Chicago and Peoria at 83 miles per hour—18 miles per hour over the speed limit. The stop led to a search of the car and the seizure of 1.5 kilograms of cocaine found in the search.

Gregory Sanford, one of two passengers in the car, was prosecuted in federal court for possessing and intending to sell the cocaine that had been found. He pleaded guilty after his motion to suppress the evidence of the cocaine was denied, and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. But his plea was conditional, Fed.R.Crim.P. 11(a)(2), and allowed him to appeal to challenge the legality of the search, as he has done. And since the conditional plea did not purport to affect his right to appeal the sentence, he has also appealed from the conditions of supervised release imposed by the district judge.

The trooper who stopped the car for speeding quickly learned that it had been rented 12 hours earlier in Peoria but that neither the driver of the car nor either of its two passengers had rented it or was authorized by the rental contract to drive it. (Apparently Sanford's brother had rented it.) The trooper asked each of the three occupants for identification, and having received it returned to his car to run a criminal-history check on each of them. The check revealed that Sanford and the other passenger were affiliated with the notorious Gangster Disciples street gang, that Sanford had a record of 19 arrests for a variety of offenses including drug offenses, and that the other passenger had a recent arrest for manufacturing cocaine. The trooper requested that a drug-sniffing dog be fetched to check the stopped car for drugs. The dog arrived, alerted, and the troopers (a second had arrived 14 minutes after the stop, to provide backup, and had been joined 5 minutes later by a third trooper, who brought the drug-detection dog) opened the trunk of the car and found the cocaine. They gave the driver a speeding ticket and arrested all three occupants but later released them when they denied knowledge of the drugs. Sanford, however, was re-arrested two months later, was indicted, and pleaded guilty as we said to possession with intent to sell the cocaine found in the car.

He contends that the search that revealed the cocaine was illegal because the car he was riding in had been stopped for speeding and therefore the driver should just have been given a speeding ticket and allowed to drive off. He insists that the trooper had no right to look up the driver's criminal history on the police car's computer, let alone the criminal histories of the passengers, for there was no reason to think them responsible for the driver's having been speeding. The trooper acknowledged that he doesn't usually search the criminal histories of drivers or passengers during stops for mere traffic violations, such as speeding. But he testified that his suspicions had been aroused by a combination of facts that he knew, or quickly learned when he stopped the car: drug couriers often use cars rented by third parties; I–55 is a known drug corridor; and the occupants were nervous and evasive, reluctant to speak, and made poor eye contact (unlike, the trooper testified, most persons in a car stopped by police for a traffic violation). In addition, although to drive from Peoria and Chicago and back again takes about four hours, the travelers had spent very little time in Chicago—enough time for a drug delivery or pickup, but not enough for a normal visit.

The trooper checked the occupants' criminal histories on the computer in his car—a procedure permissible even without reasonable suspicion, see United States v. Bracamontes,614 F.3d 813, 816 (8th Cir.2010); United States v. Purcell,236 F.3d 1274, 1278–79 (11th Cir.2001); United States v. McRae,81 F.3d 1528, 1535–36 n. 6 (10th Cir.1996)—indeed a procedure in itself normally reasonable, as it takes little time and may reveal outstanding arrest warrants. After checking for criminal histories the trooper waited for the arrival of the dog that he'd requested be brought to check for the presence of illegal drugs. While waiting he obtained additional suspicious information from the driver. She claimed to have been visiting Sanford's hospitalized grandmother, but also said that she and her passengers had left Peoria at 6 pm, which meant that the visit would have been late at night. And she couldn't name the hospital.

The total time from the initial stop of the car until the dog alerted for drugs was 26 or 27 minutes.

The district judge denied Sanford's motion to suppress the cocaine evidence mainly on two grounds: that as a passenger in the car rather than the owner, a renter, or the driver he had no standing to file such a motion, and that even if he had standing the delay had not made the search unlawful. In the judge's words,

I don't see that there is standing to challenge the search of the car given that he [Sanford] was a passenger.... Nothing in his name, no valid license to enter into the rental agreement, any indication other than his brother entered into the rental agreement. I don't think really the officer had any reason to think that Mr. Sanford had an interest in the vehicle other than the fact that he was told that his brother rented the car. The rental agreement indicated that there was no authorization available to anybody else to drive the car. To the extent that his brother renting the car and giving it to the defendant caused some interest that may cause standing, I believe still that the combination of the matters, the facts as addressed by [the prosecutor], the speeding created the probable cause to stop the car, and then the—asking questions, the third-party rental information, gathering the information from that, the computer screen info, was not any kind of an unreasonable extension of the stop, and then finally, as the officer testified to something about the parties given his experience, the late at night, again the third-party rental information, and then the dog sniff, created probable cause for the search. So the motion would be respectfully denied.

We are mindful that the Supreme Court, in Rakas v. Illinois,439 U.S. 128, 139–140, 99 S.Ct. 421, 58 L.Ed.2d 387 (1978), said that it was better to ask whether a person asserting a Fourth Amendment right has a personal “interest” that the search infringed than whether he has “standing” to challenge the search. But the two formulas come to the same thing, and cases continue to discuss Fourth Amendment “standing.” See, e.g., Brendlin v. California,551 U.S. 249, 259–60, 127 S.Ct. 2400, 168 L.Ed.2d 132 (2007); United States v. Padilla,508 U.S. 77, 80–82, 113 S.Ct. 1936, 123 L.Ed.2d 635 (1993); Minnesota v. Olson,495 U.S. 91, 101, 110 S.Ct. 1684, 109 L.Ed.2d 85 (1990)(concurring opinion); United States v. Wilbourn,799 F.3d 900, 908–10 (7th Cir.2015); United States v. Walton,763 F.3d 655, 660–66 (7th Cir.2014); United States v. Miller,799 F.3d 1097, 1103, 1107 (D.C.Cir.2015); United States v. Anguiano,795 F.3d 873, 878 (8th Cir.2015). There is no practical difference between the two usages.

The Fourth Amendment entitles people “to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures.” The last three “theirs”—houses, papers, and effects—have been understood compendiously as “property” in a sense not limited to the enumerated terms interpreted literally, and not even requiring ownership. E.g., Rakas v. Illinois, supra,439 U.S. at 141–43, 99 S.Ct. 421. More to the point, the Supreme Court has enlarged the scope of the Fourth Amendment to include the protection of privacy. See Minnesota v. Olson, supra,495 U.S. at 98–100, 110 S.Ct. 1684(“a houseguest has a legitimate expectation of privacy in his host's home” and therefore “can claim the protection of the Fourth Amendment”); United States v. Salvucci,448 U.S. 83, 91–92, 100 S.Ct. 2547, 65 L.Ed.2d 619 (1980)(“while property ownership is clearly a factor to be considered in determining whether an individual's Fourth Amendment rights have been violated, property rights are neither the beginning nor the end of this Court's inquiry” (citation omitted)). “[A] person can have a legally sufficient interest in a place other than his own home so that the Fourth Amendment protects him from unreasonable government intrusion into that place.” Rakas v. Illinois, supra,439 U.S. at 142, 99 S.Ct. 421. Yet even if you had no formal or informal property interest in the premises, you would still have grounds to resist a search or seizure of your person,...