US v. Watson

• Decision Date: 09 January 1992
• Docket Number: Crim. No. 91-00404-A.
• Citation: 783 F. Supp. 258
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Virginia
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. Omar WATSON, Defendant.

783 F. Supp. 258

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. Omar WATSON, Defendant.

Crim. No. 91-00404-A.

United States District Court, E.D. Virginia, Alexandria Division.

January 9, 1992.

Cory Justin Smith, U.S. Attys. Office, Alexandria, Va., for plaintiff.

Becky J. Moore, Land, Clark, Carroll & Mendelson, Alexandria, Va., for defendant.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

CACHERIS, Chief Judge.

Defendant, Omar Watson, was indicted in September of 1991 in the Eastern District of Virginia on one count of possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine, a violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1), and one count of interstate travel in aid of racketeering, a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1952(a). This matter is before the court on Defendant's Motion to Suppress the fruits of four searches conducted by officers from the Alexandria Police Department on the evening of September 24, 1991. The first search was of the Defendant, Omar Watson's, hotel room. The second search was of his person. The third search was of his luggage, and the fourth search was of his automobile. For the reasons set forth below, the Defendant's Motion to Suppress is granted as to the fruits of the searches of the Defendant's hotel room, the Defendant's person, and the Defendant's luggage. The Motion to Suppress is denied as to the fruits of the search of the Defendant's automobile.

I

Under the pseudonym of Dean Jones, the Defendant checked into room 827 of the Embassy Suites Hotel in Alexandria, Virginia at 5:16 p.m. on September 20, 1991. At check-in, he indicated that the length of his stay was uncertain and that he would be paying day-by-day.¹ (Sawyer, Tr. at 7; Watson, Tr. at 112.) Subsequently, Mr. Watson would stop by the front desk, or somebody would stop by for him, and pay the room charge for the next day. Although official hotel policy is that guests must pre-pay their room charges for the next day by 12:00 p.m. the prior day, Mr. Watson paid for his room at a variety of different times throughout his stay. On September 21st he paid at 4:45 p.m. On September 22nd he paid at 3:12 p.m. On September 23rd, at Mr. Watson's request, a friend of his, Shawn Purvis, paid for the room at 10:09 p.m. (Purvis, Tr. at 107.)

On September 24th, the hotel's assistant general manager, Starr Sawyer, realized that the hotel was selling out. She checked the hotel records and noticed that the Defendant was "due out" that day. (Sawyer, Tr. at 9.) Around 3:45 p.m. or 4:00 p.m., Ms. Sawyer went up to the room to see if it was occupied or vacant and noticed a few items in the room. According to her testimony, she then left the room, returning at 10:00 p.m., (Sawyer, Tr. at 11), when she had only a few rooms left to sell. At that point, she determined that, because there were so few items in the room and because the hotel had not heard from the Defendant all day long, he was not coming back. (Sawyer, Tr. at 11.) Ms. Sawyer observed the following items of personal property in the room: a suitcase with side pockets sitting on the bed, (Sawyer, Tr. at 10-13; King, Tr. at 37; Watson, Tr. at 117), a maroon suit hung in the closet, approximately four neckties hung in the closet, a bottle of listerine, a deck of cards, and "little miscellaneous things ... scattered throughout." (Sawyer, Tr. at 12, 29).

Pursuant to hotel policy, she began to inventory the items in the room so that she could, in her words, "secure them in lost-and-found until someone inquires for them." (Sawyer, Tr. at 23.) Upon opening one of the side-pockets of the suitcase she discovered "a large wad of bills." (Sawyer, Tr. at 13.) At that point, she ceased searching, re-keyed the room, and returned to the front desk to validate the address the Defendant had provided on his registration card. Defendant had given an address of 2500 Tara Street, Linwood, Illinois. (King, Tr. at 38.) Upon investigation, Ms. Sawyer found that there was no such address in the state of Illinois. (Sawyer, Tr. at 14-15; King, Tr. at 38-39.) She then questioned her staff regarding their knowledge of the Defendant. They told her that "someone other than the male who is registered to the room had paid for the room on each of these days," (Sawyer, Tr. at 15), and that the Defendant had many visitors and phone calls to the room at odd hours. (Sawyer, Tr. at 15-16.) At approximately 10:00 p.m., (King, Tr. at 55; Duquette, Tr. at 81-82), she called the Alexandria Police and described her suspicions to them. (Sawyer, Tr. at 16.)

Narcotics investigators George King, Harold Duquette, and Linda Erwin were dispatched to the hotel. Upon their arrival, they met Ms. Sawyer who again described the situation and then, at approximately 10:15 p.m., escorted them to room 827. (King, Tr. at 36-37.) She used her key to let them in, and gave them permission to look around. (King, Tr. at 38-39.) After she showed them the money in the suitcase, Officer Duquette radioed for a canine officer with a drug-sniffing dog to come and search the room for narcotics. (Duquette, Tr. at 75.) While the officers were waiting for the narcotics dog to arrive, they conducted what Officer King termed a "cursory" search of the room. (King, Tr. at 39.) As part of that search, the officers searched the maroon suit which Ms. Sawyer had taken out of the closet and placed on the bed. (Sawyer, Tr. at 19.) In one of the pants pockets, the officers found a folded brown piece of paper containing approximately one-half gram to a gram of powder cocaine. (King, Tr. at 40.)

At this point, Ms. Sawyer was notified by radio that the Defendant was at the front desk. (King, Tr. at 41.) Ms. Sawyer left and, about ten minutes later, the officers met the Defendant at the door to the room. Mr. Watson testified that he had returned to the hotel and went to the front desk to leave a deposit on his room while the bellman was unloading his car. The hotel records indicate that Mr. Watson paid for his room on September 24th at 10:33 p.m. (Defendant's Exhibit 1.) While Mr. Watson was paying, the hotel clerk informed him that there was a problem with the room and that the manager would have to open it. Mr. Watson finished paying and returned to his car to put it in the garage. The bellman insisted, however, that he would take care of the car and that Mr. Watson should leave it where it was. Mr. Watson and the bellman proceeded to the elevator and ascended to the eighth floor. When they got off the elevator, Mr. Watson looked across the open atrium and saw that the manager had not arrived at room 827. At the same time, the bellman received a call on the radio that required him to return to the lobby. Mr. Watson doesn't know whether the bellman took the cart with him or left it outside the elevator. Mr. Watson proceeded to walk around the triangle-shaped atrium the shortest distance between the elevator and the room. (Watson, Tr. at 119-124.) He gave the following account of what happened next:

I proceeded down the hallway, made the turn, came all the way down this hallway, and when I got to the room, since no one was there to let me in, I kept going, just moseying, like moseying around the hallway. I kept going to the end of the hallway and just looked at the coke machine, and by that time I turned around and just started to walk back. And I seen the door open and the — Detective Duquette stepped out of the room. As he turned around he looked down the hallway that I assume he was expecting me to come.

(Watson, Tr. at 125.)

Officer Duquette testified that, after waiting fifteen minutes for Mr. Watson to come up to the room, he stepped outside the room and walked over to the railing. Mr. Watson then approached Officer Duquette, catching him off guard, "because he was coming from the opposite direction where the entrance is." (Duquette, Tr. at 77.) According to Mr. Duquette, the following exchange occurred between him and Mr. Watson:

He asked me if I worked for the hotel, and I said yes, I do. He said what are you doing in my room. I said I've been waiting for you. Then I pulled out my badge, said I was a police officer, put your hands up against the wall.

(Duquette, Tr. at 77.)

Officer Duquette ushered Mr. Watson into the room where Officer King asked Mr. Watson whether the room was his and, upon receiving an affirmative answer, placed Mr. Watson under arrest.² Officer King then proceeded to search Mr. Watson. As part of the search, he reached into Mr. Watson's pants pocket and pulled out, among other things, a dollar bill, folded in thirds, from which a white powdery substance was seeping. (King, Tr. at 44.) A field test confirmed that the substance was cocaine. After the search of Mr. Watson's person, Officer King sat him in a chair in the room. The chair was located in front of a window that looked out onto the hallway. (King, Tr. at 45; Watson, Tr. at 129.) Mr. Watson was not handcuffed at this time.³ As he was being seated in the chair, the bellman came to the room with the cart. The bellman left the cart outside the window and walked away.⁴ At this point, the luggage cart was fifteen to eighteen feet away from the Defendant. (King, Tr. at 70-71.) One or more of the police officers later pushed the cart into the room. (Watson, Tr. at 129-30; Duquette, Tr. at 93.)

After Mr. Watson was placed under arrest, Officer Duquette went downstairs to meet the canine officer and to find handcuffs. Mr. Watson's car was sitting in the drive-through with the driver's side door open and the canine officer had it under observation. (Duquette, Tr. at 78, 97.) Officer Duquette asked the canine officer to do a search of the car. The drug-sniffing dog proceeded to climb into the car where he "started biting on the passenger seat, indicating that he hit on some type of narcotic smell, either on that seat or underneath it." (Duquette, Tr. at 79.) Officer Duquette then popped the trunk lever located next to the driver's seat. (Duquette, Tr. at 79, 97.) The dog jumped in the trunk and bit on a plastic foam food container....