Vasquez v. United States

• Decision Date: 02 November 1981
• Docket Number: No. 80-1910,80-1910
• Citation: 70 L.Ed.2d 396,102 S.Ct. 528,454 U.S. 975
• Parties: Orlando VASQUEZ v. UNITED STATES
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

454 U.S. 975

102 S.Ct. 528

70 L.Ed.2d 396

Orlando VASQUEZ

v UNITED STATES

No. 80-1910

Supreme Court of the United States

November 2, 1981

On petition for writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

The petition for writ of certiorari is denied.

Opinion of Justice STEVENS respecting the denial of the petition for writ of certiorari.

Practical considerations preclude the Court from explaining its reasons for denying petitions for certiorari. See Maryland v. Baltimore Radio Show, Inc., 338 U.S. 912, 70 S.Ct. 252, 94 L.Ed. 562 (opinion of Frankfurter, J., respecting the denial of the petition for writ of certiorari). Opinions dissenting from the denial of certiorari are answered so rarely that they may some- times create an unwarranted impression that the Court is not administering its certiorari docket in a responsible way.¹ Because I was concerned that Justice REHNQUIST's opinion in Davis v. Jacobs, et al., 454 U.S. 911, 102 S.Ct. 417, 70 L.Ed.2d 226, might create such an impression, I thought it appropriate to write in response. A similar concern prompts me to write in this case.

Justice BRENNAN's dissenting opinion correctly points out that there are substantial arguments favoring a grant of certiorari. There are, however, at least three countervailing considerations militating in favor of a denial of certiorari that do not clearly emerge from a reading of the dissenting opinion.

First, there is no allegation in the petition for certiorari that there is a conflict between the decision of the Court of Appeals, CA2, 638 F.2d 507, in this case and any other Federal Court of Appeals decision. Often the law develops in a more satisfactory fashion if this Court withholds review of novel issues until differing views have been expressed by other federal courts.²

Second, it is not clear that petitioner has standing to object to the seizure of evidence in this case. At issue is the legal- ity of a warrantless search of the fourth-floor apartment at 633 Grand Street in Brooklyn, N. Y. The landlord at 633 Grand testified both at the suppression hearing and at trial that a man named Jorge Osorio, and not petitioner, had rented and lived in the fourth floor apartment. Petitioner himself introduced into evidence two utility bills addressed to Jorge Osorio at 633 Grand Street. Moreover, petitioner challenged on appeal the sufficiency of the evidence against him on the grounds that it had not been shown that he was the renter of the apartment, or that he was a knowing participant in a conspiracy.³

Third, Judge Kearse's thorough opinion for the Court of Appeals, which occupies 55 printed pages of the appendix to the certiorari petition, demonstrates that the decision of the court was based on the totality of the specific factual circumstances of this case.⁴ It is often appropriate to decline to review a decision that turns on details of the evidence that are not likely to be duplicated in other cases. Unfortunately, to assess fairly the import of the decision of the Court of Appeals, one must review at some length the detailed facts underlying that decision.

The search at issue arose out of a police surveillance at 633 Grand Street on the evening of November 29, 1979. During the early hours of the evening, police officers arrested three sets of individuals as a result of that surveillance, each of which was in possession of a large quantity of cocaine. Amparo Medina left the building at 633 Grand carrying a large handbag, eluded the police, and returned home; police later arrested Medina and her husband Fernando after Fernando left the Medina home and officers found one pound of cocaine in his car. Clara and Hernando Mesa next exited 633 Grand; police arrested the Mesas after finding one-half pound of cocaine in their car. Within a short period of time, Carlos Sanchez left 633 Grand with a shopping bag; police arrested Sanchez after finding a pound of cocaine in the bag. The police made each of these arrests outside of the view of individuals remaining at 633 Grand.

After arresting Sanchez, the police observed three men, later identified as Jaramillo, Parra, and Uribe, leave 633 Grand. The officers stopped the three men, and led them around the corner and out of sight of anyone remaining inside. Although it was a cold night, Jaramillo had come outside wearing only a shirt, pants, and slippers with no socks; Jaramillo also did not carry any keys. The officers asked Jaramillo and Parra what apartment they had been in. The men replied that they had been visiting a woman in the second-floor apartment, and Jaramillo agreed to accompany the officers to that apartment. While Jaramillo and the officers were en route to the apartment, petitioner and Essau Correa exited 633 Grand and were detained by the police.

Jaramillo led the officers to the second-floor apartment, and Dora Wright, the landlord of the building, opened the door. Several officers, with guns drawn, immediately entered and fanned out through the apartment, checking each room for other persons. Jaramillo asked Wright in Spanish to tell the police that he had been with her earlier, but she replied that this was not so. Instead, Wright stated that throughout the day Jaramillo and others had been in and out of the fourth-floor apartment. As the officers spread through the apartment to assure themselves that it was not the scene of the narcotics operation, Dora Wright, her mother, and her baby all began to scream. By all accounts, the scene was tumultuous, and the three were still screaming 10-15 minutes later.

At this point, the officers decided to enter the fourth-floor apartment. The officers testified that they feared that additional persons might be in the apartment who might be aware of the activities of the police and would destroy evidence. To avoid a planned forced entry, Wright gave the officers a key.

On entering each room of the fourth-floor apartment, the officers seized a series of items. From an open foyer closet, the officers seized white powdery substances wrapped in clear plastic bags, some of which were inside an open plastic garbage bag and others of which were in an open traveling bag. In the center bedroom they seized a number of documents from an open box. In the rear bedroom they found, exposed to open view, a pound of cocaine, a triple-beam scale, and a large piece of glass covered with cocaine residue. They also found, in an open box lying in a metal cabinet, 16 bottles of Mannitol, 2 strainers, assorted boxes of plastic bags, a set of weights, and a scale. An officer also seized a pistol that he found as he "absentmindedly reached between the mattress and the box spring" of a bed on which he was sitting.

The initial check of the apartment was completed in a few minutes. The officers remained, however, for an additional 16 hours.

In response to petitioner's motion to suppress evidence seized from the apartment, the District Court ruled that only those items observed in plain view during the initial cursory inspection of the apartment were admissible. The court sup- pressed the items seized from the box inside the metal cabinet, the documents seized after the initial entry, and the gun found under the mattress. On appeal, the Court of Appeals upheld the admission into evidence of items seized during the initial cursory inspection of the premises.

In light of the suppression of certain evidence by the District Court, the only issue that is now presented is whether the police were entitled to enter the fourth-floor apartment without a warrant to make a cursory inspection of the premises. In considering the resolution of this issue by the Court of Appeals, it is illuminating to state in full the discussion and limited holding of the court:

"The circumstances at 633 Grand Street present a very close question. Siegel testified that the agents were concerned that people remaining in the apartment might destroy evidence there, and there was some basis for this. Jaramillo and Parra had tried to divert the officers' attention from the fourth floor by telling them they had come from the second floor; and Wright revealed that Jaramillo's conversation with her in Spanish, when the agents went to her second-floor apartment, asked her to confirm this misdirection. Such attempts at diversion suggested that the fourth floor apartment contained evidence, or other persons, or both. It is true that one officer who placed his ear to the door of that apartment heard no sounds from inside, but there was another basis for believing that one or more persons remained in the apartment. It was a cold night, and Jaramillo had come outside wearing only a shirt, pants, and slippers with no socks. He had no key with him, and it could be inferred that there was someone in whatever apartment he had come from—the fourth floor apartment according to Wright to let him back in. It was therefore reasonable to infer that evidence could well be destroyed if the persons remaining there were alerted to the agents' activities.

"By the time the agents determined that Jaramillo's designation of the second floor was a red herring, there was ample cause to believe that any remaining occupant of the fourth floor would have been alerted. For most of the evening the agents had managed to effect their arrests and investigatory stops out of the line of sight of the apartment. The last stops, however, had been made in front of the building. Then, when Jaramillo's claim that he had been on the second floor was being investigated, there was an extended commotion resulting from the involvement of the apparently unsuspecting Mrs. Wright and the entry of several agents into her apartment in the expectation, based on Jaramillo's statement, that they were at the scene of the cocaine operation.

"We do not accept [petitioner's] contention that a security check was improper because the duration of the commotion would have allowed the destruction of...