United States v. Shawn Quinney ( 2009 )


Menu:
  •                          RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION
    Pursuant to Sixth Circuit Rule 206
    File Name: 09a0350p.06
    UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
    FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
    _________________
    X
    Plaintiff-Appellee, -
    UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
    -
    -
    -
    No. 07-4055
    v.
    ,
    >
    -
    Defendant-Appellant. -
    SHAWN QUINNEY,
    -
    N
    Appeal from the United States District Court
    for the Northern District of Ohio at Toledo.
    No. 05-00807—David A. Katz, District Judge.
    Argued: July 31, 2009
    Decided and Filed: October 1, 2009
    *
    Before: GILMAN, COOK, and FARRIS, Circuit Judges.
    _________________
    COUNSEL
    ARGUED: Jeffrey Paul Nunnari, LAW OFFICE, Toledo, Ohio, for Appellant. David
    O. Bauer, ASSISTANT UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Toledo, Ohio, for Appellee.
    ON BRIEF: Jeffrey Paul Nunnari, LAW OFFICE, Toledo, Ohio, for Appellant. David
    O. Bauer, ASSISTANT UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Toledo, Ohio, for Appellee.
    GILMAN, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which COOK, J., joined.
    FARRIS, J. (p. 7), delivered a separate concurring opinion.
    _________________
    OPINION
    _________________
    RONALD LEE GILMAN, Circuit Judge. Shawn Quinney appeals the district
    court’s denial of his motion to suppress the key evidence used against him. Quinney was
    *
    The Honorable Jerome Farris, Senior Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the
    Ninth Circuit, sitting by designation.
    1
    No. 07-4055        United States v. Quinney                                         Page 2
    indicted on two counts of manufacturing and passing counterfeit currency. He pled
    guilty to both counts, but preserved his right to contest the district court’s decision
    denying Quinney’s motion to suppress a printer and two statements that he made to law
    enforcement authorities. For the reasons set forth below, we REVERSE the judgment
    of the district court and REMAND the case for further proceedings consistent with this
    opinion.
    I. BACKGROUND
    Quinney was under investigation by special agents from the United States Secret
    Service for manufacturing and passing counterfeit currency. Two agents visited
    Quinney’s home and obtained his consent to look in his bedroom, where they observed
    a printer. Quinney, who was then 19 years old, admitted to the agents that he had passed
    bogus bills, but denied printing them.
    Later that afternoon, after receiving information from two witnesses that Quinney
    had in fact printed the counterfeit bills, the agents returned to his residence. During the
    second visit, the agents seized the printer without obtaining either consent or a search
    warrant. Quinney was not home at the time, and his stepfather, with whom he lived,
    testified that the agents simply announced that they were seizing the printer without
    seeking even the stepfather’s permission.
    The agents then located Quinney and interviewed him in their car. He was not
    placed under arrest or warned of his Miranda rights at that time. The agents informed
    him that they had seized his printer and were sending it to forensics for examination. In
    addition, they told him that two witnesses had implicated him as the manufacturer of
    counterfeit bills. At some point during this second interview, Quinney gave the agents
    a written confession of guilt. He was interviewed a third time a week later at the agents’
    office and wrote a one-page supplement to his earlier confession. The parties dispute
    whether the agents advised Quinney of his Miranda rights during this third interview.
    Quinney was charged with manufacturing counterfeit currency, in violation of
    18 U.S.C. § 471, and uttering counterfeit currency, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 472. He
    No. 07-4055        United States v. Quinney                                         Page 3
    moved to suppress evidence of the printer and the statements he made during his second
    and third interviews with the agents. The motion was denied by the district court.
    Quinney then pled guilty to both counts, but preserved his right to appeal the denial of
    the motion to suppress. He was sentenced to five months of imprisonment and three
    years of supervised release.
    On his prior appeal, this court concluded that the district court had applied an
    incorrect standard of review in analyzing the motion to suppress. The district court’s
    decision was therefore vacated and the case remanded for further consideration. Using
    the proper standard of review, the district court again denied the motion to suppress,
    concluding that the printer was admissible under the inevitable-discovery doctrine. The
    court also concluded that both Quinney’s original written confession and its one-page
    supplement were properly admissible. Quinney now appeals once again.
    II. ANALYSIS
    A.     Standard of review
    Where the issue on appeal is the denial of a motion to suppress, we review the
    district court’s findings of fact under the clear-error standard and its conclusions of law
    de novo. United States v. Hurst, 
    228 F.3d 751
    , 756 (6th Cir. 2000).
    B.     Seizure of the printer
    Quinney challenges the seizure of his printer and the admissibility of the
    subsequent statements he made to the government, alleging that the district court
    misapplied the inevitable-discovery doctrine. Under this doctrine, “[i]f the prosecution
    can establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the information ultimately or
    inevitably would have been discovered by lawful means . . . [,] then the deterrence
    rationale has so little basis that the evidence should be received.” United States v.
    Alexander, 
    540 F.3d 494
    , 502 (6th Cir. 2008) (quoting Nix v. Williams, 
    467 U.S. 431
    ,
    444 (1984)). This court in Alexander addressed a situation where law enforcement
    authorities had arrested the defendant in his home while serving a search warrant. Under
    questioning from the authorities, Alexander revealed where he had hidden a package of
    No. 07-4055        United States v. Quinney                                       Page 4
    drugs, but did so before he received his Miranda warnings. Alexander later moved to
    suppress the drugs on the basis that their production was tainted by his inadmissible
    statement, but this motion was denied under the inevitable-discovery doctrine because
    the authorities had a valid search warrant and would have discovered the drugs anyway
    while searching the house. 
    Id. at 499,
    502.
    In the present case, the government argues that the inevitable-discovery doctrine
    applies because the agents had probable cause to obtain a search warrant at the time the
    printer was seized. The government repeatedly cites United States v. Kennedy, 
    61 F.3d 494
    (6th Cir. 1995), in support of its argument, but we find that case easily
    distinguishable. Kennedy, like Alexander, in fact provides a good example of the type
    of case that the inevitable-discovery doctrine is meant to address. In Kennedy, the
    government conducted a warrantless search of a mislabeled suitcase, left unclaimed at
    an airport, that was found to contain cocaine. The Kennedy court concluded that the
    cocaine would have been inevitably discovered because, if the government had not
    performed the illegal search, the suitcase would have been opened by airline personnel
    in an effort to locate the owner. 
    Id. at 500.
    Although the Kennedy court did not discuss
    the outer boundaries of the inevitable-discovery doctrine, the case most certainly does
    not apply to the facts presently before us.
    The case that does apply to the facts before us is this court’s decision in United
    States v. Haddix, 
    239 F.3d 766
    (6th Cir. 2001). In Haddix, the police conducted a
    warrantless search of the defendant’s residence after a police helicopter spotted
    marijuana plants growing behind the dwelling, and after police on the ground saw
    electric lines leading to out-buildings, the previously spotted marijuana plants, and a
    semi-automatic assault rifle on the premises, all before entering the residence. 
    Id. at 766-67.
    This court in Haddix held that the warrantless search and seizure of the
    evidence was unlawful and that the evidence must be suppressed. 
    Id. at 768-69.
    Analogous to the situation in Haddix, the agents in the present case had probable cause,
    based on the statements of two witnesses, to obtain a search warrant for the seizure of
    the printer. But instead of actually obtaining a warrant, they seized the printer without
    No. 07-4055           United States v. Quinney                                      Page 5
    one. As the court said in Haddix, “[l]et it be absolutely clear: this is untenable” because
    the “position of the United States would completely obviate the warrant requirement.”
    
    Id. at 768
    (internal quotation marks omitted).
    Supporting this conclusion is a line of cases that demonstrates this circuit’s
    commitment to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement, and that rejects the
    government’s attempt to circumvent the requirement via the inevitable-discovery
    doctrine. See, e.g., United States v. Johnson, 
    22 F.3d 674
    , 683 (6th Cir. 1994) (rejecting
    the logic that “simply because the police could have obtained a warrant, it was therefore
    inevitable that they would have done so,” noting that such a ruling “would mean that
    there is inevitable discovery and no warrant requirement whenever there is probable
    cause”); United States v. Buchanan, 
    904 F.2d 349
    , 356-57 (6th Cir. 1990) (rejecting the
    government’s contention that a warrantless search was permissible because agents had
    collected information that would have supported a search warrant); United States v.
    Griffin, 
    502 F.2d 959
    , 961 (6th Cir. 1974) (“The assertion by police (after an illegal
    entry and after finding evidence of crime) that the discovery was ‘inevitable’ because
    they planned to get a search warrant and had sent an officer on such a mission, would
    as a practical matter be beyond judicial review.”); United States v. Bowden, 240 F.
    App’x 56, 63 (6th Cir. 2007) (“Doubtless, the inevitable-discovery doctrine does not
    permit police, who have probable cause to believe a home contains contraband, to enter
    a home illegally, conduct a warrantless search and escape the exclusionary rule on the
    ground that the ‘police could have obtained a warrant yet chose not to do so.’”)
    (emphasis in original, internal brackets and citations omitted). Given that Haddix and
    the other cases cited above emphatically reject the government’s reliance on the
    inevitable-discovery doctrine under the circumstances presented here, we conclude that
    the district court erred in not granting Quinney’s motion to suppress evidence of the
    printer.
    No. 07-4055        United States v. Quinney                                        Page 6
    C.     Quinney’s post-seizure statements
    We now turn to the remainder of Quinney’s motion to suppress. The record
    below reveals that the district court evaluated the potential admissibility of Quinney’s
    second and third statements to the agents based on the mistaken belief that the printer
    was properly admissible in evidence. Accordingly, we are remanding this case with
    instructions for the district court to conduct a hearing to reevaluate whether these post-
    seizure statements should also be suppressed as “fruit of the poisonous tree.” See Wong
    Sun v. United States, 
    371 U.S. 471
    , 488 (1963).
    III. CONCLUSION
    For all of the reasons set forth above, we REVERSE the judgment of the district
    court and REMAND the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
    No. 07-4055         United States v. Quinney                                        Page 7
    _________________________
    CONCURRENCE
    _________________________
    JEROME FARRIS, Circuit Judge, concurring.              The trial court properly
    recognized this as not a typical suppression situation. As the majority points out, the
    inevitable discovery doctrine typically applies to bar suppression of evidence that, if not
    for the tainted investigation, would inevitably have been “discovered” or “uncovered.”
    See United States v. Alexander, 
    540 F.3d 494
    , 502 (6th Cir. 2008) (quoted by the
    majority 
    opinion, supra
    ); United States v. Leake, 
    95 F.3d 409
    , 412 (6th Cir. 1996).
    In this case, the police were on premises with consent of the accused when they
    “discovered” or “uncovered” the printer. The police did not seize the printer at that time
    as the accused had admitted passing counterfeit notes, but denied other involvement.
    Two later interviewed witnesses (one of whom was Quinney’s brother) identified
    Quinney as the counterfeiter. The police thereafter returned to seize the printer and did
    so, even though they had neither a warrant nor consent to search. One can speculate
    about why the police failed to obtain a warrant before making the seizure, but nothing
    in the record justifies this failure.
    I therefore join the majority.