United States v. Gamache , 792 F.3d 194 ( 2015 )

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 14-1546
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Appellee,
v.
RANDOLPH LEO GAMACHE,
Defendant, Appellant.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MAINE
[Hon. John A. Woodcock, Jr., U.S. District Judge]
[Hon. Margaret J. Kravchuk, U.S. Magistrate Judge]
Before
Torruella, Selya and Lynch,
Circuit Judges.
Stephen C. Smith, with whom Lipman & Katz was on brief, for
appellant.
Margaret D. McGaughey, Assistant United States Attorney, with
whom Thomas E. Delahanty II, United States Attorney, was on brief,
for appellee.
July 6, 2015
SELYA, Circuit Judge. Defendant-appellant Randolph Leo
Gamache labors to drape this appeal in a fabric woven out of
interesting constitutional questions arising under the Fourth and
Fifth Amendments. But federal courts have no roving writ to
address legal questions merely because those questions are
intriguing. The case before us is susceptible to resolution
through the application of two familiar exceptions to the warrant
requirement of the Fourth Amendment: the consent doctrine and the
plain view doctrine. Following that well-trodden path to its
logical conclusion, we affirm the district court's denial of the
appellant's motion to suppress.
I.
Background
We rehearse the relevant facts as supportably found
below and chronicle the travel of the case.1 On July 30, 2012,
two armed police officers (Scott Scripture and Ed Leskey) arrived
at the appellant's home in Orono, Maine, to serve a temporary order
1A magistrate judge made the first appraisal of the
appellant's motion to suppress. The district court, on de novo
review, later adopted the magistrate judge's findings and
recommendation. See United States v. Gamache, No. 13-21, 2013 WL
3324217, at *1 (D. Me. July 1, 2013). For present purposes, we
take an institutional view and refer to the determinations below
as those of the district court. See, e.g., United States v.
Hughes, 640 F.3d 428, 431 n.1 (1st Cir. 2011).
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for protection from abuse stemming from an ex parte complaint filed
by his former wife. See Me. Rev. Stat. tit. 19-A, § 4006(2). The
appellant opened his front door and motioned for the officers to
enter. Once inside, Officer Scripture read aloud the material
portions of the protection-from-abuse order, including a provision
prohibiting the appellant's possession of firearms. See id.
§ 4006(2-A). He then gave the appellant a copy of the order, which
contained a note in bold-face type and capital letters warning
that any violation of the order was punishable as a crime. See
id. § 4011(1)(A). A second order, attached to the first, required
the appellant to surrender any firearms in his possession
immediately upon service. The appellant signed that order,
acknowledging receipt of service.
Officer Scripture proceeded to inquire whether the
appellant had any firearms in his apartment. The appellant pointed
to the living room wall, where two shotguns — one of which was an
unregistered sawed-off shotgun — were clearly visible and
prominently displayed. The district court credited Officer
Scripture's sworn statement that he would have seen the firearms
from his vantage point had the appellant not pointed them out.
See United States v. Gamache, No. 13-21, 2013 WL 3324217, at *2
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(D. Me. July 1, 2013); see also id. at *1 n.1 (overruling objection
to this factual finding).
Officer Leskey removed the two shotguns from the wall,
and the appellant turned over two other guns. The entire
interaction lasted about forty minutes and was
"nonconfrontational." Id. at *6. At no point did the officers
conduct a search of the apartment.
On two subsequent occasions, detectives went to the
appellant's home to question him about the sawed-off shotgun. The
appellant made incriminating statements to the detectives,
admitting, among other things, that he had used a hacksaw to
shorten the barrel of the shotgun and that he knew that it was
unlawful for him to trim the barrel to less than 18 inches. These
interviews were "conversational" and "relaxed." Id. at *2.
In due season, a federal grand jury charged the appellant
with a violation of federal law, to wit, possessing an unregistered
shotgun with a barrel measuring less than 18 inches. See 26 U.S.C.
§ 5861(d); see also id. § 5845(a)(1). The appellant moved to
suppress the sawed-off shotgun and his statements about it on
Fourth and Fifth Amendment grounds. He maintained that his
relinquishment of the sawed-off shotgun was coerced under penalty
of state criminal sanctions and that his subsequent admissions
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were fruit of the poisonous tree. See Wong Sun v. United States,
371 U.S. 471, 487-88 (1963).
The district court referred the matter to a magistrate
judge who reviewed a paper record, found the facts, and recommended
denial of the appellant's motion. Timely objections were filed.
See Fed. R. Crim. P. 59(b)(2). On de novo review, the district
court adopted the magistrate judge's proposed findings and
recommendation, declining to suppress the challenged evidence.
See Gamache, 2013 WL 3324217, at *1.
In short order, the appellant entered a conditional
guilty plea, see Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(a)(2), reserving the right to
appeal the suppression ruling. The district court accepted the
conditional plea and sentenced the appellant to three years'
probation. This timely appeal followed.
II.
Analysis
In reviewing the disposition of a motion to suppress, we
accept the district court's findings of fact unless they are
clearly erroneous, deferring to reasonable inferences drawn from
the discerned facts. See United States v. Paneto, 661 F.3d 709,
711 (1st Cir. 2011). The district court's ultimate constitutional
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conclusions are subject to de novo review. See United States v.
Zapata, 18 F.3d 971, 975 (1st Cir. 1994).
The appellant submits that, despite his ready
relinquishment of his sawed-off shotgun, his cooperation with the
police was actually coerced. In his view, he was given a Hobson's
choice: either comply with the served orders (thereby turning over
evidence of a known violation of federal law) or refuse to comply
with the orders (thereby risking prosecution under state law).
Caught between Scylla and Charybdis, his thesis runs, he cannot be
deemed to have voluntarily consented to the seizure of the shotgun.
Under the circumstances, his surrender of it amounted to compelled
self-incrimination in violation of the Fifth Amendment and, thus,
the act of relinquishment, to the extent that it demonstrated his
possession of the illegal weapon, could not be used against him in
a criminal case. Cf. Fisher v. United States, 425 U.S. 391, 410
(1976) (holding that act of producing evidence may, in some
circumstances, trigger Fifth Amendment safeguards). By the same
token, the officers' seizure of the shotgun transgressed the Fourth
Amendment. And, finally, he posits that the inculpatory statements
made during the follow-up interviews must be suppressed as
byproducts of the antecedent (and unlawful) police conduct. See
Wong Sun, 371 U.S. at 487 (suppressing statements derived from
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arrest taken in violation of Fourth Amendment); United States v.
Downing, 665 F.2d 404, 409 (1st Cir. 1981) (applying "fruits"
doctrine to antecedent Fifth Amendment violation).
The appellant's argument raises a number of potentially
interesting legal questions concerning the use of incriminating
evidence seized without a warrant but under the auspices of a court
order. But we are mindful that "[c]ourts should strive to avoid
gratuitous journeys through forbidding constitutional terrain,"
Ernst & Young v. Depositors Econ. Prot. Corp., 45 F.3d 530, 538
(1st Cir. 1995), and the appellant's intricate web of
constitutional claims need not be addressed today. Here, there is
a valid and independent legal theory upon which the admission of
the sawed-off shotgun against the appellant can be grounded.
Accordingly, its exclusion is not required. See Nix v. Williams,
467 U.S. 431, 443 (1984) (explaining that when "challenged evidence
has an independent source, exclusion of such evidence would put
the police in a worse position than they would have been absent
any error or violation"). To be specific, the officers' consensual
entry into the appellant's dwelling did not offend the Fourth
Amendment and, once they were lawfully inside, the warrantless
seizure of the sawed-off shotgun was lawful under the plain view
doctrine. We explain briefly.
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The Fourth Amendment does not forbid any and all
warrantless incursions on the person and property of an individual.
Rather, it forbids only "unreasonable searches and seizures." U.S.
Const. amend. IV. Although a warrantless entry into an
individual's residence is presumptively unreasonable, a valid
consent to the entry by a person with apparent authority vitiates
any Fourth Amendment concern. See Illinois v. Rodriguez, 497 U.S.
177, 181 (1990). Whether consent was voluntarily given is a
factbound inquiry, the answer to which is normally reviewable for
clear error. See United States v. Laine, 270 F.3d 71, 74 (1st
Cir. 2001).
The court below found that "[t]he officers were admitted
to the residence with [the appellant's] voluntary consent."
Gamache, 2013 WL 3324217, at *4. The appellant does not seriously
contest this finding. Nor could he: he has admitted that upon the
officers' arrival, he opened his front door and affirmatively
signaled for the officers to enter. Two other considerations cinch
the matter: the record is barren of any evidence that might support
an inference that this gesture was induced through force, pressure,
or deception; and the consensual entry took place before the state-
court orders were served. Viewed against this backdrop, the
district court's finding of voluntary consent to the officers'
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entry into the apartment is not clearly erroneous. See Robbins v.
MacKenzie, 364 F.2d 45, 49 (1st Cir. 1966) ("An ordinary person
who knocks on a door and receives assent may properly consider
himself an invited guest, and would be so considered by the courts
. . . .").
Still, consent to enter a home does not, by itself, give
law enforcement officers carte blanche to rummage through the
premises and perform a general search. After all, a warrantless
search may not exceed the scope of the consent obtained. See
United States v. Marshall, 348 F.3d 281, 286 (1st Cir. 2003).
Here, however, once the officers were lawfully present in the
appellant's apartment, another exception to the Fourth Amendment's
warrant requirement came into play.
We refer, of course, to the plain view doctrine. "The
theory of [the plain view] doctrine consists of extending to
nonpublic places such as the home, where searches and seizures
without a warrant are presumptively unreasonable, the police's
longstanding authority to make warrantless seizures in public
places of such objects as weapons and contraband." Arizona v.
Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 326-27 (1987) (citing Payton v. New York, 445
U.S. 573, 586-87 (1980)). As we have explained, the plain view
doctrine permits the warrantless seizure of an item if the officer
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is lawfully present in a position from which the item is clearly
visible, there is probable cause to seize the item, and the officer
has a lawful right of access to the item itself. See United States
v. Sanchez, 612 F.3d 1, 4-5 (1st Cir. 2010); United States v.
Jones, 187 F.3d 210, 219-221 (1st Cir. 1999).
The court below determined that the circumstances
presented here satisfied these three requirements. We review a
district court's determination as to the applicability vel non of
the plain view doctrine only for clear error. See United States
v. Rutkowski, 877 F.2d 139, 141 (1st Cir. 1989). In this instance,
the district court's conclusion is not clearly erroneous.2 We need
not tarry over the first element of the plain view framework: the
officers were lawfully present in the appellant's abode pursuant
to his voluntary consent, and the sawed-off shotgun was openly
displayed on an interior wall in plain view.
In a feeble effort to contest this element, the appellant
notes that the officers did not actually see the sawed-off shotgun
until after the appellant pointed it out. That is true as far as
2 The government contends that the appellant waived any
objection to the district court's application of the plain view
doctrine by failing adequately to address the issue in his opening
brief. Because the government prevails on the merits of the plain
view inquiry, we see no need to pursue the question of waiver.
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it goes — but it does not take the appellant anywhere near his
desired destination. The Fourth Amendment is concerned only with
infringements upon reasonable expectations of privacy, and
"persons cannot reasonably maintain an expectation of privacy in
that which they display openly." Vega-Rodriguez v. P.R. Tel. Co.,
110 F.3d 174, 181 (1st Cir. 1997). It follows, we think, that an
individual cannot frustrate the application of the plain view
doctrine by the simple expedient of pointing out openly visible
contraband before the police have a chance to note the presence of
the contraband. Cf. United States v. Sparks, 291 F.3d 683, 691
(10th Cir. 2002) ("[B]ecause [the defendant] left the driver's
side door of his truck open, he had no legitimate expectation of
privacy shielding that portion of the interior of his truck which
could have been viewed from outside the vehicle by either
inquisitive passersby or diligent police officers." (internal
quotation marks omitted)). What controls here is the undisputed
fact that the sawed-off shotgun was clearly visible from the
officers' lawful vantage point.
The probable cause element presents something of a
wrinkle — but a wrinkle that can easily be ironed out. The officers
did not immediately recognize that one of the displayed shotguns
had a barrel measuring less than 18 inches in length. Thus,
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probable cause to seize the sawed-off shotgun had to stem from the
prohibition on the appellant's continued possession of it — a
prohibition memorialized in the state-court orders.
Noting that the appellant never resisted compliance with
the orders, the district court found probable cause by resorting
to a hypothetical. See Gamache, 2013 WL 3324217, at *4. Had the
appellant refused to relinquish the firearms, the court reasoned,
the officers would have had probable cause to believe that a crime
under state law was being committed and that the shotguns were
evidence of that crime. See id.We believe that this approach unnecessarily complicates
the matter. Under the express language of the orders, the
appellant lost his right to possess any firearms the moment that
he was properly served. Even if the appellant might avoid a
conviction for violating the orders at that time, cf. United States
v. Baird, 721 F.3d 623, 631 (1st Cir. 2013) (requiring an "innocent
possession" instruction "where the elements of a crime are
technically satisfied for a brief interlude and yet where the
circumstances are such that conviction would be unjust"), his
possession of the firearms after service, however brief, violated
the orders and, thus, constituted a crime under Maine law, see
United States v. Teemer, 394 F.3d 59, 63 (1st Cir. 2005) ("[T]he
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briefest moment of possession may be enough for a conviction.").
Translated into the idiom of the plain view doctrine, this means
that the officers had probable cause to seize the sawed-off shotgun
(and any other openly visible firearms, for that matter) as
evidence of that crime.
We are left with only the third element of the plain
view framework. With respect to that element, the district court
found that once the officers were inside the apartment, the served
state-court orders gave them lawful access to the clearly visible
shotguns. See Gamache, 2013 WL 3324217, at *4. The appellant has
not challenged this factual finding on appeal and, therefore, we
accept it without further elaboration.
As a final matter, we return to the appellant's argument
that his subsequent admissions should have been suppressed as fruit
of the poisonous tree. Because there was no antecedent
constitutional violation (and, thus, no poisonous tree), this
argument necessarily fails.
III.
Conclusion
We need go no further. The officers were lawfully in
the appellant's home by virtue of his voluntary consent; and once
they had served the orders there, they were entitled to seize
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firearms that were in plain sight (such as the sawed-off shotgun).
Consequently, the district court did not err in denying the
appellant's motion to suppress.
Affirmed.
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