Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Tenth Circuit US v. Jones 11-3104

Decision here.

   Officers of the Missouri Highway Patrol were conducting a marijuana investigation.  Essentially, the plan was that they would engage in surveillance of hydroponics stores, follow suspicious customers home (as long as those customers lived in Missouri.  This operation was being conducted in Kansas City, Missouri), and then do a knock and talk.  According to the sergeant who was running the show, this sort of operation had led to about 100 knock and talks, and the vast majority of those had led to the discovery of marijuana grows.

   Anyway, the officers followed Jones to his house after watching him make a purchase at a hydroponics store.  None of them noticed when the crossed the border into Kansas City, Kansas.  Oops.

   They met with Jones in the alley behind his house, and told him that they were there for his marijuana plants.  Jones responded "Oh, shit," and then asked how they knew he had marijuana plants.  They told him "Because you just said 'oh, shit.'"  Then they asked for his license, checked for warrants, and started angling for consent to search his house.  Jones didn't actually tell them that they could search his house, but he also didn't tell them they couldn't as they followed him up to his door and inside.  He also didn't tell them that they had to leave once they were inside, he just showed them one room and then shrugged (the court record says "raised his hands with his palms up as if to signal that there was nothing for the officers to see," but I think that sounds like a shrug).

   Then Jones went into another room where he grabbed a long gun and pointed it at the officers.  The officers opened fire, wounding Jones, and then retreated from the house.  When they called for backup, they learned they were outside of their jurisdiction.  The real cops showed up to take over the investigation, and got a warrant for Jones' house.  Jones was indicted for manufacturing a controlled substance and brandishing a firearm during a drug offense.  He conditionally pled guilty after the district court refused to suppress the evidence, and then appealed the suppression ruling.

   Jones' arguments were as follows: 1- The officers violated the Fourth Amendment by detaining him outside of their jurisdiction.  2- The officers' accusatory tone ("We're here for your marijuana plants") meant that their initial contact with him was a seizure, and they did not have reasonable suspicion.  3- He did not consent to the entry into his home.  And 4- because it was obtained using information that should have been suppressed, the Kansas officers' search warrant was invalid.

   The Court ruled that the officers didn't violate the Fourth amendment by operating outside of their jurisdiction.  This is sort of a tricky point... the officers were definitely violating state law (Kansas state law, in this case), and that's not good, but violations of state law aren't a Fourth Amendment issue (unless, of course, state law is violated in a way that also violates the Fourth Amendment directly).  Therefore, state law violations don't create suppression issues.

   As far as the initial contact being a seizure, the question is whether or not under the totality of the circumstances a reasonable person would have felt free to terminate the encounter.  The officers' accusatory tone during the initial confrontation ("We're here for your pot plants") didn't rise to that level, so Jones was not seized at that point.  He was seized when the officers took his driver's license, but by then they had reasonable suspicion which justified the seizure for Fourth Amendment purposes (even if not for state law purposes...).

   Although Jones did not directly tell the officers that he consented to their entry into his house, consent can be implied by one's actions (it doesn't have to be explicity stated).  In this case, the Court held that allowing the officers to walk up to the door, unlocking it without being told to, and leading the officers into the house communicated Jones' consent.  Jones argued that the consent was involuntary for the same reasons that he argued he was unreasonably seized (the accusatory tone), and the court rejected this argument for the same reason: a single accusation doesn't rise to a level of coercion that would make consent involuntary.

   Finally, since the court didn't agree with any of Jones' arguments about the allegedly improper conduct of the Missouri cops, none of the information was tainted.  The Kansas cops were entitled to to rely on it in their warrant application.  The denial of Jones' motion to suppress was affirmed.

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