United States v. Sanchez ( 2018 )

FILED
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS January 17, 2018
Elisabeth A. Shumaker
TENTH CIRCUIT
Clerk of Court
_______________________________________
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
No. 17-4000
v. (D.C. No. 2:15-CR-00690-JNP-PMW-1)
(D. Utah)
DAVID SANCHEZ,
Defendant - Appellant.
ORDER AND JUDGMENT *
_______________________________________
Before HARTZ, BALDOCK, and BACHARACH, Circuit Judges.
______________________________________
A grand jury in the United States District Court for the District of Utah
charged Defendant David Sanchez with one count of possessing methamphetamine
with intent to distribute, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1). Alleging a violation
of his Fourth Amendment rights, Defendant moved to suppress the methamphetamine
obtained from the rental car he was driving. Following an evidentiary hearing, the
district court denied the motion. Defendant then entered a conditional guilty plea
that preserved his right to challenge the suppression ruling. See Fed. R. Crim. P.
11(a)(2). The district court sentenced Defendant to 40 months imprisonment and 36
*
This order and judgment is not binding precedent except under the doctrines
of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. It may be cited, however,
for its persuasive value consistent with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 and 10th Cir. R. 32.1.
months of supervised release and Defendant appealed. Exercising jurisdiction under
28 U.S.C. § 1291, we affirm.
I.
The relevant facts are undisputed. On November 7, 2015, Utah Highway
Patrol Trooper Jared Withers detected a black Dodge Avenger speeding eastbound
on Interstate 70 near Green River, Utah. Trooper Withers stopped the speeding
vehicle, driven by Defendant. Upon approaching the vehicle, Trooper Withers
determined two passengers accompanied Defendant: Teresa Garcia, who occupied
the passenger’s seat, and a toddler, who was lying in the back seat without any safety
restraints. Trooper Withers explained the reason for the stop and asked Defendant
for his driver’s license and vehicle registration. Defendant handed Trooper Withers
a United States passport in Defendant’s name and an expired rental contract between
Enterprise Rent-A-Car and Alexis Fernandez, who was not in the vehicle. Neither
Defendant nor Garcia had authorization to drive the rental car and neither produced
a valid driver’s license. In fact, the rental contract stipulated, “NO OTHER
DRIVERS PERMITTED.”
After reviewing the rental contract, Trooper Withers asked Defendant to
accompany him to his patrol vehicle for additional questioning. While in the patrol
vehicle, Trooper Withers filled out a speeding citation and asked Defendant
questions about the rental contract, Alexis Fernandez, and his intended destination.
Although Defendant was not fluent in English, he was able to understand Trooper
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Withers’s inquiries enough to explain that he and Garcia were en route to Colorado
for a week, that his driver’s license was suspended from a DUI citation, and that his
friend, Alexis Fernandez, was in California.
While dispatch ran a driver’s license, warrant, and criminal history check on
Defendant, Trooper Withers walked his narcotic detector dog around the rental car.
The dog did not alert. Upon returning to the patrol vehicle, Trooper Withers
received information from dispatch confirming Defendant’s DUI conviction and
suspended driver’s license. Trooper Withers asked Defendant for his consent to
search the vehicle, even providing a consent form in Spanish to ensure Defendant
understood Trooper Withers’s request, but Defendant refused. Lacking Defendant’s
consent to search the rental car but still hoping to uncover drugs, Trooper Withers
turned his attention to Enterprise Rent-A-Car, the owner of the vehicle. Dispatch
contacted Enterprise to inform the company that Alexis Fernandez—the only
authorized driver on the rental contract—was not in the vehicle, to alert them the
vehicle was five days overdue, and to ask what Enterprise wanted Trooper Withers
to do regarding the vehicle. Since no authorized driver was in the vehicle and the
contract only authorized the vehicle’s operation within California, Nevada, and
Arizona, Enterprise determined the rental contract terms had been violated and
requested the vehicle be impounded. Trooper Withers relayed Enterprise’s request
and explained to Defendant and Garcia that the rental car needed to be inventoried
before it could be impounded.
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The Utah Department of Public Safety Policy Manual (UDPSPM) requires an
inventory when a vehicle is impounded. See UDPSPM § 504.5. Upon impound, “a
case number shall be assigned and a written inventory shall be made of the contents
of the vehicle, the trunk and any open or closed package, container, or
compartment.” Id. § 504.2.1. The purpose of the inventory procedure is to
“protect[] an owner’s property while in police custody, to provide for the safety of
officers, and to protect the Department against fraudulent claims of lost, stolen or
damaged property.” Id. § 504.5. The inventory policy allows officers to make
reasonable accommodations for a “driver/owner to remove small items of value or
personal need (e.g. cash, jewelry, cell phone, prescriptions) which are not considered
evidence or contraband” where removing such items “would not cause unreasonable
delay in the completion of a vehicle impound/storage or create an issue of officer
safety.” Id. § 504.7.
With the impound requested, Trooper Withers, Defendant, and Garcia turned
their attention to the inventory search. When Garcia requested to remove diapers and
other items for the child, Trooper Withers agreed but told Garcia to wait “a few
minutes” while he returned to his patrol vehicle. Flouting those instructions, Garcia
began to remove personal items from the back seat. When Trooper Withers realized
what Garcia was doing, he shouted, “Hey! No . . . let me see what you are grabbing.”
Following this exchange, Garcia placed one bag back in the rear seat, lifted the
toddler out of the car, and retrieved items from the front seat of the rental.
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Critically, at no point did either Defendant or Garcia ask to remove personal property
from the trunk or from the glove box.
Shortly after the exchange between Trooper Withers and Garcia, Trooper
Withers began to inventory the contents of the rental car. In the trunk, Trooper
Withers observed several plastic garbage bags filled with men’s clothing and a
leopard print bag filled with women’s clothing. Trooper Withers found a large,
square mass that he recognized as methamphetamine inside one of the plastic bags.
Based on this discovery, Trooper Withers arrested both Defendant and Garcia and
then continued to inventory the remainder of the vehicle’s contents. In total, Trooper
Withers located ten packages of methamphetamine in the trunk. Trooper Withers
completed the vehicle inventory in the glove compartment where he found two $1
bills and a straw that appeared to have methamphetamine residue on them. A tow
truck arrived shortly thereafter to tow the rental car to an impound lot.
Upon indictment for possessing methamphetamine with intent to distribute,
Defendant sought to suppress the evidence of drugs found in the rental car. In a
thorough written order, the district court denied Defendant’s motion. The court first
determined Defendant had standing to challenge the search. Second, the court
determined law enforcement properly undertook an inventory search of the vehicle.
Third, the court ruled that Trooper Withers’s motives for conducting the inventory
did not invalidate the lawful search. On appeal, Defendant argues the inventory
search was unlawful because (1) the UDPSPM inventory policy violates the Fourth
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Amendment and (2) Trooper Withers’s subjective intent to uncover evidence of a
crime invalidated the search. Notably, Defendant does not dispute the stop was
lawful, the decision to impound was lawful, and the inventory search was conducted
according to the standard inventory policy.
II.
When reviewing the denial of a motion to suppress, “we view the evidence
in the light most favorable to the Government and accept the district court’s factual
findings unless clearly erroneous.” United States v. Gilmore, 776 F.3d 765, 768
(10th Cir. 2015). We review de novo the legal question whether a seizure was
reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. United States v. Cortez-Galaviz, 495 F.3d
1203, 1205 (10th Cir. 2007). As a preliminary matter, the Government contends
Defendant does not have standing to challenge the search of his personal property
items within the car. Assuming without deciding that Defendant had standing to
challenge the inventory search, Defendant’s claim nevertheless fails because,
applying the appropriate standard of review, the inventory search was proper.
A.
When a vehicle is impounded, law enforcement officers follow standard
procedures of securing and inventorying the vehicle’s contents. South Dakota v.
Opperman, 428 U.S. 364, 369 (1976). Defendant argues the UDPSPM inventory
policy is inconsistent with the Fourth Amendment unless construed to permit the
search and seizure of personal property in a rental car only if the property owner is
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unavailable to maintain custody of his own property. The UDPSPM policy requires
a “thorough and accurate” inventory of “all property in a stored or impounded
vehicle.” UDPSPM § 504.5. The only discussion regarding the availability of the
driver or owner allows an officer to “make reasonable accommodations to permit a
driver/owner to retrieve small items of value or personal need.” UDPSPM § 504.7.
Therefore the policy does not, as Defendant argues, only allow the search and seizure
of personal property if the property owner is unavailable to retrieve it.
Since the policy allows officers to inventory the contents of an impounded
vehicle even when the property owner is present and available, we turn to whether
the policy violated the Fourth Amendment. Defendant appears to challenge the
inventory policy as unconstitutional for two reasons: (1) it does not further a
community caretaking function and (2) it does not allow a property owner who is
present and available to maintain custody of his personal property. In support of his
first proposition, Defendant cites South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U.S. 364 (1976)
and United States v. Sanders, 796 F.3d 1241 (2015). Opperman simply characterizes
impoundment as a law enforcement “community caretaking function[].” Opperman,
428 U.S. at 368 (“In the interests of public safety and as part of what the Court has
called ‘community caretaking functions,’ automobiles are frequently taken into
police custody.” (citation omitted)) (citing Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U.S. 433, 441
(1973)). Opperman does not come close to requiring an inventory search to be
justified by a community caretaking function. We decline to take the leap from
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describing impoundments as “community caretaking functions” to requiring every
inventory search to be justified by a community caretaking concern. Sanders goes
a step further and requires impoundments to be justified by a community caretaking
rationale. Sanders, 796 F.3d at 1248. As Sanders also noted, however, the standard
for impoundment is different than the standard for an inventory search. Id. at n.1.
It would be a vast expansion of Sanders to require inventory searches to be justified
by a community caretaking concern. We know of no case yet to do so, and we
decline to do so as well.
Second, Defendant challenges the policy as unconstitutional for requiring
inventory searches even if the property owner is present and available to retain
custody of his personal belongings. Defendant argues in that situation, no
justification exists to take inventory of the personal property. At the same time,
Defendant acknowledges the three purposes of an inventory search are: (1) to protect
the owner’s property while in police custody, (2) to protect the police against claims
of lost or stolen property, and (3) to protect the police from potential danger.
UDPSPM § 504.5. Although “an inventory search must be justified by the
administrative purposes of such searches,” Defendant does not adequately explain
how this inventory was not justified by the second and third purposes of an inventory
search. United States v. Tueller, 349 F.3d 1239, 1243 (10th Cir. 2003).
Furthermore, given Defendant never asked to claim his personal effects from
the vehicle before Trooper Withers began the search, Defendant essentially argues
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law enforcement is required to ask a driver whether he wants to remove items from
the vehicle prior to inventorying its contents. While giving Defendant an
opportunity to remove the plastic garbage bags would have been possible, “the real
question is not what ‘could have been achieved,’ but whether the Fourth Amendment
requires such steps; it is not our function to write a manual on administering routine,
neutral procedures of the stationhouse. Our role is to assure against violations
of the Constitution.” Illinois v. Lafayette, 462 U.S. 640, 647 (1983). The Fourth
Amendment simply does not require an officer to proactively ask an unauthorized
driver of a car who does not assert ownership of items within the car whether the
driver would like to remove items from the car before conducting an inventory. Such
a rule would undermine the purposes that justify an inventory search. See UDPSPM
§ 504.5. In addition, Defendant concedes, “Of course, if a person declines to take
custody of her own property, the community caretaking rationale might apply to
legitimately bring any property she chooses to leave in the car within the custody of
police.” Def. Br. at n.2. By failing to assert ownership over the plastic bags in the
trunk, Defendant declined to take custody of his property, which was properly
brought within custody of the police. We therefore find no merit in this argument.
B.
Defendant also argues Trooper Withers’s subjective intent to uncover evidence
of a crime invalidated the search. An inventory search is invalid only if it is
undertaken for the “sole purpose of investigation.” Colorado v. Bertine, 479 U.S.
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367, 372 (1987) (emphasis added). “While mixed motives or suspicions undoubtedly
exist in many inventory searches, such motives or suspicions alone will not
invalidate an otherwise proper inventory search.” United States v. Cecala, 2000 WL
18948, *2 (10th Cir. 2000) (unpublished). Here, Trooper Withers impounded the
vehicle because Enterprise requested the impound when it learned no authorized
driver was in the area. Although Trooper Withers stated he hoped to search the
vehicle for drugs, searching for drugs was not the sole motive for the inventory.
Once Enterprise requested the impound, Trooper Withers was required to conduct the
inventory search of the car and its contents. As a dual motive does not invalidate an
otherwise lawful impound and inventory, we hold Trooper Withers’s subjective
intent to uncover evidence of a crime did not invalidate the lawful search.
The district court’s denial of Defendant’s motion to suppress is therefore
AFFIRMED.
Entered for the Court,
Bobby R. Baldock
United States Circuit Judge
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