Tenth Circuit US v. Ruiz 10-333

Decision here,

   There really isn't anything too surprising in this case.

   Ruiz rented space in an airplane hangar to store his plane.  He was acting suspicious, so the airport employees called the police.  The police ran a dog on the outside of the plane, which detected the odor of drugs, and then they got a warrant for the plane.  They found drugs.

   Later, the police were called to a residence that Ruiz had formerly rented.  He had abandoned the property, and left a note informing his landlords that he was abandoning the property (he also asked them to hang on to his stuff until he could collect it).  The landlords had found some suspicious property left behind, and they called the police.  The police found drugs.

   Ruiz moved to suppress the drugs found in both cases, saying that he had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the hangar and in the residence.  The court held that Ruiz did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the hangar, because it was space that he shared with other rental customers (and which he did not have 24 hour access to, although the manager who consented to the search did).  The court also held that Ruiz had abandoned the rental property, and no longer had a reasonable expectation of privacy there (his former landlords did have standing, but they also consented to the search).  And so the judgement of the lower courts was affirmed.

   This one seemed pretty obvious to me. I'm surprised that the case made it as far up as the tenth circuit.

Tenth Circuit US v. Rochin 11-2024

Decision here.

   First off, the thing that stands out the most about this decision is the way that it's written.  Court decisions are usually very dry, this one is less so.  Enjoy.

   Facts: A cop in New Mexico stopped Rochin for driving with an expired license plate.  During the stop, the officer was informed by dispatch that this car was suspected in a drive by shooting.  Rochin was unable to provide his license, insurance, or registration.  The officer asked (instead of ordered at gunpoint) Rochin to get out of the car, and then he searched him for weapons.  See Terry v. Ohio.  Whilst searching Rochin for weapons, the officer felt some unidentifiable hard cylindrical items in his pocket.  The officer asked Rochin "¿quién es?" by which he probably meant "¿qué es?"

   Rochin answers "No sabe," and the officer removed the hard cylindrical objects from Rochin's pockets to ensure that they were not weapons.  As it turns out, they were drug paraphernalia (pipes).  Rochin was arrested, his car was searched, and he was convicted of some shit.  Rochin moved to suppress the drug paraphernalia (and therefore the arrest, and everything that followed), suggesting that the officer exceeded the scope of a Terry search when he removed the items from his pockets.  The court held that the officer could have reasonably feared that the objects were weapons, and therefore it was reasonable for him to investigate further when he was unable to identify them after first discovering them.

Tenth Circuit Koch v. Dell City 10-6105

Decision here.

   An officer in Oklahoma arrests Koch for obstruction for not answering questions (he was asking about the whereabouts of an elderly woman in Koch's care for a welfare check).  Charges are dropped, and Koch sues.  The officer is somehow granted qualified immunity.  After this case, it's probably clearly established that you can't arrest someone for refusing to answer questions, so don't do that.

Tenth Circuit US v Chavez 10-2273

Decision here.

   This decision relates in part to a motion to suppress evidence, and in part to sentencing guidelines.  I'm really not all that interested in sentencing guidelines, so I'll only be discussing half of the case here.

   The facts: Police in New Mexico were dispatched to a call of a disturbance in a Wal-Mart parking lot, with people urinating and (gasp!) littering.  Officers arrived as Chavez was driving away, and a Wal-Mart employee flagged them down and pointed out the car that Chavez was driving away in.  Chavez was detained for the investigation of the disturbance.

   During the officers' contact with Chavez, they noticed indicia of intoxication and Chavez failed the field sobriety tests (much as I would right now, so you might have to forgive a little rambling).  Rather than arrest him for DUI, they threatened to arrest him and then asked for consent to search the car and interrogated him about the ownership of the car (Chavez said it was his friend's car, but the registration listed to another name that Chavez was unable to explain).  At various points during the investigation, Chavez consented to the search, denied consent, then consented to a K9 searching the outside of his car (the dog arrived half an hour into the stop), then the inside of his car, and then refused to consent to a search of his trunk after the K9 alerted.  Eventually, Chavez was arrested for DUI and the car was impounded.  Later the police ran a K9 on the outside of the car again, which alerted on the trunk, then obtained a search warrant for the trunk where they found cocaine.

   That last part makes more sense if you know that the Carroll doctrine doesn't apply in NM, because the NM constitution affords more protection against search & seizure of automobiles than the federal constitution.

   Anyway, Chavez was charged with possession with intent to distribute, and suddenly the DUI was the least of his problems.  He filed a motion to suppress the cocaine on several grounds: 1- there was no reasonable suspicion to stop him in the first place, 2- the police had no probable cause to arrest him for DUI 3- the scope of his detention was unreasonable, and 4- his consent to search the car was involuntary (and not attenuated from the illegal stop and arrest),

   Before we get to the court's opinion, here's mine (it's my blog, after all): 1- fuck off.  The police were responding to a call of a disturbance, and the reporting party pointed to Chavez's car, identifying it as the suspect vehicle.  There was reasonable suspicions.  2- fuck off.  The police had probable cause to arrest Chavez for DUI.  Frankly, I'm not sure why they didn't just skip over making threats to arrest him and just arrest him.  I don't do that... if I've got enough to take you, I'm taking you now.  If I don't have enough to take you, I'm not taking you.  But I don't mess around with telling people repeatedly that they're "this close" to going to jail.  What's the point? 3- Chavez almost has a point.  Extending a detention for 30 minutes to get a dog is probably unreasonable, except that the police had PC to arrest at that point so they can extend the stop all day if they want to. 4- Chavez DOES have a point.  The consent to search was clearly involuntary... If I tell you that you're an inch from going to jail and then ask you for consent to search something, who could possibly miss the implied threat?  I don't know if the evidence should have been suppressed, though, since if the police were to just go ahead and make the arrest that they had PC for then they would have likely found it during an inventory of the car...

   Here's what the court says: 1- The stop was justified by reasonable suspicion.  2- The police had PC to arrest Chavez for DUI.  3- Because the police had PC to arrest, the court doesn't care about the extension of the stop.  PC isn't always required to extend a stop, but it is sufficient (although the court does note that even if there hadn't been PC, the extension of the stop would have been reasonable.  The court and I disagree on this, but when the court and I disagree, the court wins). 4- Since the stop and arrest were both reasonable the court didn't see fit to address Chavez's consent argument at all.

   So there you go.  Although I don't much care for the way this call was handled, I do like the court's take on it.

Colorado Court of Appeals People v. King 08CA1123

Decision here.

   I've got nothing to say about this one.  The decision says that a search warrant for a residence doesn't automatically confer the authority to conduct a strip search of the occupants of said residence (unless it says it does).  Happy reading.

US Supreme Court Perry v. New Hampshire (10-8974)

Read the decision here.

   When I first heard about this case, I thought the Supreme Court was going to rule on whether or not show-up field identifications were permissible.  After I read the decision, it turned out that wasn't quite the issue (but close enough).

   Here's the facts: Police in New Hampshire were investigating a call of suspect breaking into cars.  While an officer waited with the suspect in the parking lot, another officer met with the reporting party.  When asked to describe the suspect, the reporting party instead walked over to her window and pointed the suspect out.  He was subsequently arrested and charged with... doesn't really matter.  He was convicted, and he appealed.  The defendant (Perry) wanted the court to suppress his identification as the suspect because the manner in which the identification was carried out was too suggestive and therefore unreliable.

   A couple of things stood out for me about this case.  First, this wasn't a typical field identification.  There's a somewhat formal process in place for those... a suspect is detained, and then a witness is brought to the suspect after being informed that the person being detained may or may not be the person the police are looking for, and care is taken to make sure that we don't say anything suggestive to the witness or talk them into making an identification that they aren't really sure of.  Voila!  Field identification.  That isn't what happened in this case, though... the police never gave that kind of advisement, and they never asked the witness to look at Perry.  They just asked her to describe the suspect and then she pointed him out on her own.  The second point that stood out for me was that a month after the arrest the police showed the same witness a photo line-up which included Perry, and she couldn't pick him out.  I'm not really sure why they did that, especially so late in the game.

   Anyway, Perry wanted the eyewitness identification to be suppressed because it was unreliable.  In previous cases, the court has held that eyewitness identifications will be suppressed when the police obtain that identification using procedures that are so unnecessarily suggestive that they create a substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification.  Even when procedures are unnecessarily suggestive, the identification might be allowed in court if there are sufficient indicia of reliability to mitigate the improper procedure.  But that's the exact opposite of the instant case.  In Perry, there was nothing suggestive about the police procedures.  The identification was suggestive because of factors outside of police control, and unreliable because they had an unreliable witness to work with (and because eyewitness identifications are inherently unreliable).

   The court held that the reason for suppressing unnecessarily suggestively obtained identifications is to discourage police conduct.  More importantly, the court held that simple unreliability is not a reason to suppress evidence; it is the jury's role to weigh the evidence and decide what is reliable and what is not.  The proper way for the defense to undermine unreliable evidence isn't to use the exclusionary rule, but to educate the jury on the unreliability of the evidence (which they did, and Perry was convicted anyway).  So the field identification in this case was properly admitted into evidence.  

   So like I said, show up identifications aren't quite the issue in this case, after all.  Although this case would still be on point for a show up... here's my take (not necessarily the court's): when we do a show up identification, the process is inherently suggestive.  We do what we can to mitigate that (by telling the witness that the person detained may not be the suspect, and by being careful not to ask leading questions or reveal other evidence to the witness), but we're still taking a witness to see some guy who (hopefully) matches the suspect description and is surrounded by cops.  That's okay because it's necessary, but also because we're relying on other indicia of reliability to make sure that the identification is solid (indicia like the level of certainty the witness expresses, the degree to which the suspect matches the descriptions that witnesses have already given, the suspect's proximity to the crime scene, and the level of familiarity between the suspect and the witness).  We're leaning very heavily on all of that to overcome the necessary suggestiveness of the field ID procedure.  This is why it kills me when cops bring every witness they can find for a show up... seems to me like it would be better practice to just bring one or two to establish PC (or not), and then let the other witnesses identify the suspect later through less suggestive means (like a photo array).

Intro

   I'm kinda excited about this project.

   Like it says in the "about the honorable court" page, I'm a cop.  My choice of career makes staying current on case law important to me.  I think that it should be a higher priority for police in general, but none of the departments that I've worked for have offered any programs to make staying current easy.  Every so often, your supervisor will discuss a recent case (which they may or may not interpret correctly).  Maybe once a year you'll go to a legal update class where someone will try to condense twelve months of statutory and case law changes into a couple of easily digestible hours.  Either way, you're going to miss a lot of important information.  Fortunately, thanks to the magic of the internet, it's not all that hard to go to the horse's mouth.  So I've been following the courts on my own by subscribing to legal blogs and watching the courts' web sites for new decisions.

   I've been pretty happy with that approach, but it wasn't complete.  I wanted a database that help me keep track of the decisions that I was reading, maybe even one that would help like-minded people benefit from my research.  Hopefully, that's what this blog will be.  I'll begin by posting some of the recent decisions that I've read, and I'll update the blog whenever another interesting case crosses my monitor.  Maybe a little later I'll go back further and add some old cases that should still be required reading for people in my field.  Most of the posts on this blog will be a link to a court decision along with a few paragraphs explaining my understanding of that decision.  If something is particularly interesting, or if you've got a different understanding of the decision than I do, then I'd love to hear from you in the comments for that post.  After all, i'm no more qualified than the next guy to interpret these decisions, and I could benefit from everyone else's take on the law as much as they could benefit from mine.