United States v. Merle Stephens ( 2023 )

USCA4 Appeal: 22-4280 Doc: 35 Filed: 07/25/2023 Pg: 1 of 4
UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 22-4280
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff – Appellee,
v.
MERLE BROOK STEPHENS,
Defendant – Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia, at
Harrisonburg. Elizabeth Kay Dillon, District Judge. (5:18-cr-00038-EKD-JCH-1)
Submitted: May 18, 2023 Decided: July 25, 2023
Before AGEE and HARRIS, Circuit Judges, and KEENAN, Senior Circuit Judge
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
ON BRIEF: Mark Bodner, Fairfax, Virginia, for Appellant. Christopher R. Kavanaugh,
United States Attorney, Roanoke, Virginia, S. Cagle Juhan, Assistant United States
Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Charlottesville, Virginia,
for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
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PER CURIAM:
Merle Brook Stephens appeals his conviction by a jury of possession with intent to
distribute methamphetamine and two related firearm charges. The jury found him guilty
on all counts after a three-day trial. The district court then sentenced Stephens to a
combined 192 months’ imprisonment followed by a term of supervised release. Finding
no error, we affirm.
On December 7, 2018, federal and state law enforcement officers carried out a
coordinated arrest operation at a Virginia motel in connection with a large drug conspiracy.
Stephens, a suspected member of the conspiracy, was detained and handcuffed in the motel
parking lot when he left his room. As authority for the arrest, officers relied on an
outstanding state warrant against Stephens for nonpayment of child support. While
Stephens sat detained in the parking lot, a state officer searched two backpacks Stephens
had been carrying. This search revealed a handgun and large amounts of
methamphetamine, which served as the bases for his charges of conviction.
On appeal, Stephens argues that the district court erred in denying his motion to
suppress the evidence seized from his backpacks. “When considering a district court’s
denial of a motion to suppress, we review the court’s factual findings for clear error and all
legal conclusions de novo.” United States v. Stover, 808 F.3d 991, 994 (4th Cir. 2015).
The district court first found that Stephens was lawfully arrested pursuant to a valid state
warrant. 1 The court then concluded that – regardless of whether the backpacks were
1
The court rejected Stephens’s argument that the officers’ failure to serve him with a copy
of his state warrant rendered the arrest and subsequent search unconstitutional. Cf. United
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properly searched incident to Stephens’s arrest under Arizona v. Gant, 556 U.S. 332 (2009)
– suppression was not required because the evidence would have inevitably been
discovered during a routine post-arrest inventory search.
“The inevitable-discovery doctrine” provides that “information obtained by
unlawful means is nonetheless admissible if the prosecution can establish by a
preponderance of the evidence that the information ultimately or inevitably would have
been discovered by lawful means.” United States v. Allen, 159 F.3d 832, 838 (4th Cir.
1998) (cleaned up). “The government meets its burden and this court can affirm on
inevitable-discovery grounds if the district court can assess the inevitability and
reasonableness of a hypothetical inventory search from testimony provided by a law-
enforcement official[.]” United States v. Bullette, 854 F.3d 261, 267 (4th Cir. 2017). Here,
two officers involved in Stephens’s arrest testified to departmental policies requiring an
inventory search of any items seized during an arrest, and each confirmed that Stephens’s
backpacks would have been searched pursuant to these policies. The district court credited
this unrebutted testimony, and we see no clear error in that determination.
Stephens also argues that the district court erred by failing to adequately address
alleged premature jury deliberations. During trial, a courtroom security officer informed
the court that “one or two of the jurors” had mentioned that they would like to see
Stephens’s face without a mask. J.A. 211. Defense counsel raised concerns that the jurors
may have been discussing the case prematurely. The court then asked if any jurors had
States v. Montieth, 662 F.3d 660, 670 (4th Cir. 2011) (“The constitutional requirement is
for the police to secure a valid warrant . . . and here they unquestionably did.”).
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requested that Stephens remove his mask, and only one juror responded that she had. At
the next break, the court reiterated its pretrial instructions “not [to] discuss this case with
anyone, including your fellow jurors,” and to “keep an open mind until all the evidence has
been received.” J.A. 253. “The district court has broad discretion in choosing how to
handle a claim of juror bias or misconduct,” United States v. Basham, 561 F.3d 302, 321
n.9 (4th Cir. 2009) (internal quotation marks omitted), and we see no abuse of that
discretion in the court’s actions here.
We dispense with oral argument because the facts and legal contentions are
adequately presented in the materials before this court and argument would not aid the
decisional process.
AFFIRMED
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