United States v. Thibeault ( 2021 )

FILED
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
June 1, 2021
FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT
Christopher M. Wolpert
Clerk of Court
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
No. 20-6105
v. (D.C. No. 5:19-CR-00081-C-1)
(W.D. OK)
SHAWN MICHAEL THIBEAULT,
Defendant - Appellant.
ORDER AND JUDGMENT *
Before HARTZ, SEYMOUR and MURPHY, Circuit Judges
Shawn Michael Thibeault was indicted for possession with intent to distribute
more than twenty-five kilograms of cocaine in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(A). He
moved to suppress all evidence seized during the inventory of his vehicle. The district
court denied his motion and he pled guilty, reserving his right to appeal the denial of his
motion to suppress. Exercising jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. § 3731, we affirm.
*
This order and judgment is not binding precedent except under the doctrines of law of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.
BACKGROUND
On February 8, 2019, Shawn Thibeault was driving a 2015 silver Volvo with a
Tennessee license plate east on Interstate 40 in the vicinity of El Reno, Oklahoma. On
that same date, in the same vicinity, an agent with the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics
(OBN) was working interdiction. The agent initiated a traffic stop of the silver Volvo for
speeding. Mr. Thibeault was alone in the vehicle and admitted that he had set his cruise
control to a speed that exceeded the posted limit. The agent ran a routine check on his
license and discovered there was an outstanding warrant for Mr. Thibeault’s arrest in
Montana. The agent initially believed it was a non-extradition warrant so he gave Mr.
Thibeault a warning and allowed him to continue on his way. Immediately thereafter,
however, the dispatcher clarified that the warrant was in fact a nationwide extradition
warrant. The agent then pulled Mr. Thibeault over a second time and arrested him on the
outstanding Montana warrant. Because Mr. Thibeault was the driver and sole occupant
of the vehicle, a tow truck was summoned and an inventory was taken before the vehicle
was towed from the shoulder of the highway.
Mr. Thibeault objected to the agents taking an inventory of the contents of his
vehicle, stating that he did not give his permission for a “search.” The agent explained
that it was not a “search” but merely an inventory of the contents of the vehicle, which
was necessary because he, as the driver and sole occupant, was being arrested and taken
into custody. Under these circumstances, it was necessary to impound the vehicle and
inventory the contents. While completing the inventory, the agents discovered a large
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quantity of cash, which they told Mr. Thibeault they would place in a bag and send with
him to the county jail to ensure that nothing happened to it. At that point, Mr. Thibeault
stated that he was more concerned with “important art in the car” and other property that
he claimed was “worth 20 grand.” 1 In completing the inventory, the agents opened the
trunk where they found golf clubs, miscellaneous clothing and a suitcase containing
approximately twenty-five kilograms of cocaine.
Mr. Thibeault was thereafter indicted for possession with intent to distribute
cocaine. He moved to suppress the all evidence seized during the inventory of his
vehicle, contending that the impoundment of the vehicle was objectively unreasonable in
violation of the Fourth Amendment. More specifically, he challenged the legality of the
decision to impound the vehicle and the method by which the inventory was conducted.
The district court denied his motion to suppress and this appeal followed.
STANDARD
“We review the district court’s findings of fact for clear error, viewing the
evidence in a light most favorable to the district court’s findings.” United States v.
Trujillo, 993 F.3d 859, 864 (10th Cir. 2021) (citation and quotation marks omitted). The
determination of reasonableness of the impoundment, however, is a question of law
which we review de novo. Id. The burden is upon the government to demonstrate the
reasonableness of the impoundment. Id.1
The OBN dash cam video of the agent’s interaction with Mr. Thibeault was recorded
and submitted as evidence. See Aplt. App. at 61.
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ANALYSIS
Mr. Thibeault challenges the legality of the agent’s decision to impound his car for
two reasons – that ONB did not have a standardized policy relating to impoundment of
vehicles and that the car, parked on the shoulder of the highway, was not a public safety
hazard sufficient to justify the community caretaking exception to a warrantless search.
There is no dispute that OBN had a written policy regarding decisions to impound
vehicles. Mr. Thibeault argues, however, that the policy is constitutionally deficient
because the “OBN policy provides no direction to the individual OBN agents on whether,
how, or when to exercise the discretion afforded to them in the OBN policy.” Aplt. Br. at
32. We disagree. The OBN policy specifies that “Agents are authorized to remove, or
cause vehicles to be removed when the operator of the vehicle has been physically
arrested and the vehicle would be left unattended in a public access area or public way.”
Aplt. App. at 97. That is precisely the situation here. Mr. Thibeault was a Tennessee
resident, driving alone, when he was stopped for speeding on a busy interstate highway in
Oklahoma. A routine license check revealed an outstanding Montana felony warrant for
his arrest. Based on that, the agent was duty bound to arrest Mr. Thibeault and because
he was driving alone far from his home in Tennessee, leaving his vehicle parked on the
shoulder of the interstate highway was not an option.
The district court found that “OBN’s impoundment policies do not lack the
appropriate standards, and the agents were justified in concluding that the car needed to
be impounded as a potential safety hazard if left on the side of the highway.” Id. at 201.
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This is entirely consistent with our precedent: “When an unoccupied vehicle would
impede traffic” and the “owner cannot readily arrange for someone to drive it away, law-
enforcement officers may impound the vehicle.” Trujillo, 993 F.3d at 864.
Mr. Thibeault also challenges the inventory search as failing to follow
standardized procedures, claiming that the inventory of the vehicle was a pretext for a
generalized search. Again, we disagree. At the hearing on the motion to suppress, the
agent testified: “That’s just our standard operating procedure. When we arrest somebody
and there is not a licensed driver to take the car from there on, we inventory it and we
impound it.” Aplt. App. at 254. Moreover, OBN policy provides: “All vehicles that
come under the control of the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics will be inventoried for
safety and security reasons.” Id. at 98.
As pointed out by the district court, an inventory search is “a well-defined
exception to the warrant requirement” under the Fourth Amendment because it protects
an owner’s property, insures against claims of lost, stolen or vandalized property and it
protects the police from danger. Id. at 200 (quoting Illinois v. Lafayette, 462 U.S. 640,
643 (1983) and Colorado v. Bertine, 479 U.S. 367, 372 (1987)). The district court
acknowledged that an inventory search is “reasonable only if conducted according to
standardized procedures” and is not simply a ruse for general rummaging designed to
discover incriminating evidence. Id. at 200-201. See also Trujillo, 993 F.3d at 865-866.
Here, the government demonstrated a reasonable, non-pretextual community caretaking
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rationale which justified the decision to impound. 2 Once the decision had been made to
impound the vehicle, OBN policy required that an inventory be taken. The district court
found “that [the] established procedures [were] constitutionally sufficient . . . particularly
given that Defendant told the agents that he had valuable items in the car, there was
nothing improper about them performing a thorough inventory search.” Aplt. App. at
202. Based on this, the district court concluded that under OBN policy the decision to
impound as well as the method by which the inventory was taken was constitutionally
sufficient. Id. at 202. We agree. Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s denial of
Mr. Thibeault’s motion to suppress.
Entered for the Court
Stephanie K. Seymour
Circuit Judge
2
This was particularly true in light of the fact that Mr. Thibeault told the agent there was
“important art” in the car as well as other property “worth 20 grand.” See Aplt. App. at
61, Dash Cam Video of second stop, at 9:15-9:22.
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