United States v. Gould , 326 F.3d 651 ( 2004 )

United States Court of Appeals
Fifth Circuit
F I L E D
REVISED APRIL 12, 2004 March 24, 2004
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT Charles R. Fulbruge III
Clerk
No. 02-30629
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
KELLY DONALD GOULD,
Defendant-Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Louisiana
Before KING, Chief Judge, GARWOOD, JOLLY, HIGGINBOTHAM, DAVIS,
JONES, SMITH, WIENER, BARKSDALE, EMILIO M. GARZA, DEMOSS,
BENAVIDES, STEWART, DENNIS, CLEMENT and PRADO, Circuit Judges.*
GARWOOD, Circuit Judge:
In this felon-in-possession prosecution (18 U.S.C. §
922(g)(1)), the Government appeals the district court’s granting of
the motion to suppress filed by defendant-appellee Kelly Donald
*
Judge Pickering was not a member of the court when this case was submitted to the court
en banc and did not participate in the decision.
Gould (Gould).
Louisiana deputy sheriffs, having received on October 17,
2000, a telephone warning that Gould, known to be a convicted felon
with a reputation for violence, was planning to kill two local
judges, went that same evening to the approximately 14 x 60 foot
trailer where Gould lived to talk to him, not then intending to
arrest him. The officers, who had neither a search nor an arrest
warrant, were admitted by another resident of the trailer, Dennis
Cabral, who said Gould was asleep in his bedroom. The officers
entered and proceeded down the hall towards the bedroom Cabral had
indicated. The bedroom door was open, but the officers did not see
Gould, and they then conducted a brief protective sweep for him,
looking under the bed and opening the door to each of the two
bedroom closets, in one of which they saw in plain view, but did
not then seize, three rifles. They promptly then ran outside and
later found Gould hiding in the woods. In subsequent questioning
Gould stated he was keeping the rifles for their owner, a female
acquaintance. Gould was then arrested, executed a consent to
search, and the rifles were then seized.
The district court, granting the motion to suppress the
weapons, held that although “Cabral had apparent authority to
consent to the search of the mobile home . . . he had no apparent
authority to consent to a search of the master bedroom.” The
Government sought to invoke the “protective sweep” doctrine of
2
Md. v. Buie, 110 S. Ct. 1093 (1990). However, the district
court, though recognizing that the officers “needed to locate the
defendant for their own safety, so they could make sure he did not
launch a surprise attack from a hidden location,” construed our
opinion in United States v. Wilson, 36 F.3d 1298, 1306 (5th Cir.
1994), as having “explicitly restricted the use of the ‘protective
sweep’ exception to the warrant requirement to searches incident to
arrest,” and thus held that “[b]ecause the ‘protective sweep’ was
not conducted as an incident to arrest, however, the search of the
closet in the master bedroom was illegal.” In denying the
government’s motion for reconsideration, the district court
summarized and confirmed its prior ruling:
“[T]his court noted the defendant’s violent past, and did
not dispute that the officers were justified in viewing
the defendant as a violent and potentially dangerous
individual. Furthermore, the officers’ search of the
master bedroom did not exceed the acceptable scope of a
protective sweep, which extends only to a cursory
inspection of those spaces where a person may be found,
and lasts no longer than is necessary to dispel the
reasonable suspicion of danger. However, this court
found that the initial search was illegal, because it did
not meet the requirement that a protective sweep must be
incident to an arrest.”
A panel of this court affirmed. United States v. Gould, 326
F.3d 651 (5th Cir. 2003). The panel concluded that it was bound by
Wilson, the most reasonable reading of which was that it laid down
an across-the-board, bright-line rule that, whatever the other
circumstances of a particular case might be, the “protective sweep”
doctrine was always inapplicable if the sweep was not incident to
3
an arrest. Gould at 654-55. The panel, however, suggested the
appropriateness of considering en banc “whether this Circuit should
adhere to Wilson’s ipso facto disallowance of all protective sweeps
not incident to an arrest.” Id. at 655, et seq. We then voted the
case en banc. United States v. Gould, 335 F.3d 376 (5th Cir.
2003).
I.
WHETHER A PROTECTIVE SWEEP MUST ALWAYS BE INCIDENT TO AN ARREST
We turn initially to the primary issue now before us, namely
whether there is an across-the-board, hard and fast per se rule
that a protective sweep can be valid only if conducted incident to
an arrest. We hold there is not.
We begin, of course, with the Supreme Court’s opinion in Buie.
And that opinion does, indeed, begin with the statement that “[a]
‘protective sweep’ is a quick and limited search of premises,
incident to an arrest and conducted to protect the safety of police
officers or others.” Id. at 1094. But there was no dispute in
Buie that the sweep was incidental to arrest, and nothing in Buie
states that if the officers were otherwise lawfully in the
defendant’s home and faced with a similar danger such a sweep would
have been illegal. The Buie Court had no occasion to so state as
the sweep there was indisputably incident to the arrest. We note
that in United States v. Knights, 122 S. Ct. 587 (2001), likewise a
home search case, the Court describes as “dubious logic” the
4
argument “that an opinion upholding the constitutionality of a
particular search implicitly holds unconstitutional any search that
is not like it.” Id. at 590.
We do not suggest that Buie did not emphasize the fact of
arrest. It indeed did. But it did so because the arrest exposed
the officers to danger. Buie at 1098. However, Buie gives no
indication that circumstances other than arrest which expose police
officers to a comparable degree of danger could not also justify a
similar protective response (at least where those circumstances are
not the product of police illegality or misconduct). Similarly,
Buie notes that the arrest there was pursuant to a warrant, so the
officers were lawfully on the premises for a proper purpose. Id.
at 1096 (citing Payton v. New York, 100 S. Ct. 1371 (1980)) and
1097. But nothing in Buie suggests that the result would have been
different had the police otherwise properly entered the house as,
for example, pursuant to a proper consent rather than a warrant.
Cf. Payton at 1374-75 (“We now . . . hold that the Fourth Amendment
. . . prohibits the police from making a warrantless and
nonconsensual entry into a suspect’s home in order to make a
routine felony arrest”) and 1378 (“we are dealing with entries into
homes made without the consent of any occupant”). Moreover, Buie
makes clear that neither the arrest nor the warrant sufficed to
justify the sweep there, which occurred after the arrest and was of
an area of the home well removed from the place of arrest, an area
5
in which the defendant retained a Fourth Amendment protected
privacy interest. Id. at 1097, 1099 (citing the holding in Chimel
v. California, 89 S. Ct. 2034 (1969), that a search incident to an
in-home arrest may not extend beyond the area from within which the
arrestee might then obtain a weapon). Rather, the sweep in Buie
was evaluated on a general Fourth Amendment reasonableness
standard, and was justified, in reliance on the principles of Terry
v. Ohio, 88 S. Ct. 1868 (1968), and Michigan v. Long, 103 S. Ct. 3469
(1983), where there was reasonable suspicion that the area swept
harbored a person posing a danger to the officers present and the
sweep was limited to a cursory inspection of places where a person
may be found and lasted no longer than necessary to dispel the
reasonable suspicion of danger nor longer than what it takes to
complete the arrest and leave the house. Buie at 1096-99.
In Buie, two men, one wearing a red running suit, committed an
armed robbery and later that day an arrest warrant respecting that
offense was issued for Buie and another man (no search warrant was
ever issued). Two days thereafter the police, by having a
telephone call made to Buie’s house which was answered first by a
female and then by Buie, ascertained that Buie was at home, and
then proceeded to his house, entered it and looked for Buie on the
first and second floors. Then Officer Rozar went to the top of the
basement stairs and shouted into the basement stating “‘this is the
police’” and “ordering anyone down there to come out.” Id. at
6
1095. Then,
“Buie emerged from the basement. He was arrested,
searched and handcuffed by Rozar. Thereafter, Detective
Joseph Frolich entered the basement ‘in case there was
someone else’ down there. He noticed a red running suit
lying in plain view on a stack of clothing and seized
it.” Id. (emphasis added).
The Maryland Court of Appeals reversed Buie’s robbery
conviction holding that the trial court erred by denying his motion
to suppress the running suit because Frolich’s sweep of the
basement was supported neither by a search warrant nor by probable
cause to believe that a serious and demonstrable potentiality for
danger existed there; reasonable suspicion did not suffice. Buie
v. State, 550 A.2d 79 (Md. 1988). The Supreme Court vacated and
remanded, holding that reasonable suspicion sufficed, and that
probable cause was not required, for such a protective sweep.
Buie, 110 S. Ct. at 1094-95.
The Supreme Court, though acknowledging that the arrest
warrant authorized the police to search for Buie anywhere in the
house, including the basement, “until the point of Buie’s arrest,”
id. at 1096 (emphasis added), nevertheless expressly recognized
that “[o]nce he [Buie] was found, however, the search for him was
over, and there was no longer that particular justification for
entering any rooms [i.e., the basement] that had not yet been
searched” and that “Buie had” a Fourth Amendment protected
“expectation of privacy in those remaining areas of his house.”
7
Id. at 1097. This conclusion likewise plainly followed from Chimel
v. California, 89 S. Ct. 752 (1969), which, as Buie noted, “held
that in the absence of a search warrant, the justifiable search
incident to an in-home arrest could not extend beyond the
arrestee’s person and the area from within which the arrestee might
have obtained a weapon.” Buie at 1099. See also id. at 1098
(rejecting argument “that entering rooms not examined prior to the
arrest is a de minimis intrusion that may be disregarded”).
The Buie Court thus noted that at “[i]ssue in this case is
what level of justification the Fourth Amendment required before
Detective Frolich could legally enter the basement to see if
someone else was there.” Id. at 1096. To resolve that issue the
Court invoked the general reasonableness standard of the Fourth
Amendment, balancing the intrusion on the protected interests
against the promotion of legitimate governmental interests,
particularly as guided by Terry and Michigan v. Long. Buie thus
states:
“It goes without saying that the Fourth Amendment
bars only unreasonable searches and seizures [citation
omitted]. Our cases show that in determining
reasonableness, we have balanced the intrusion on the
individual’s Fourth Amendment interests against its
promotion of legitimate governmental interests.
[citations omitted]. Under this test, a search of the
house or office is generally not reasonable without a
warrant issued on probable cause. There are other
contexts, however, where the public interest is such that
neither a warrant nor probable cause is required.
[citations omitted].
8
The Terry case is most instructive for present
purposes. . . . Applying that balancing test, it was held
that although a frisk for weapons ‘constitutes a severe,
though brief, intrusion upon cherished personal
security,’ [citation omitted] such a frisk is reasonable
when weighed against the ‘need for law enforcement
officers to protect themselves and other prospective
victims of violence in situations where they may lack
probable cause for an arrest.’
. . .
The [Michigan v.] Long Court expressly rejected the
contention that Terry restricted preventative searches to
the person of a detained suspect. [citation omitted]. In
a sense, Long authorized a ‘frisk’ of an automobile for
weapons.
The ingredients to apply the balance struck in Terry
and Long are present in this case. . . . In Terry and
Long we were concerned with the immediate interest of the
police officers in taking steps to assure themselves that
the persons with whom they were dealing were not armed
with, or able to gain immediate control of, a weapon that
could unexpectedly and fatally be used against them. In
the instant case, there is an analogous interest of the
officers in taking steps to assure themselves that the
house in which a suspect is being, or has just been,
arrested is not harboring other persons who are dangerous
and who could unexpectedly launch an attack. . . .
. . . we hold that there must be articulable facts which,
taken together with the rational inferences from those
facts, would warrant a reasonably prudent officer in
believing that the area to be swept harbors an individual
posing a danger to those on the arrest scene. This is no
more and no less than was required in Terry and Long, and
as in those cases, we think this balance is the proper
one.” Buie at 1096-98 (emphases added; footnote
omitted).1
1
Buie also recognizes as a special category of permissible sweep, one without even
reasonable suspicion, of “closets and other spaces immediately adjoining the place of arrest from
within which an attack could be immediately launched.” Id. at 1098 (emphasis added). The Buie
opinion language concerning the requirement for reasonable suspicion appearing in the
penultimate sentence of the quotation set out in the text above applies to sweeps of areas
9
We recognize that, as stated in United States v. United States
District Court, 92 S. Ct. 2125, 2134 (1972), and reiterated in
Payton at 1379-80, 82, “physical entry of the home is the chief
evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed”
and “the Fourth Amendment has drawn a firm line at the entrance to
the house.”2 However, Buie makes clear that that worthy principle
does not preclude application in the in-home sweep context of the
general reasonableness standard calculated by balancing the
intrusion on Fourth Amendment interests against the promotion of
legitimate governmental interests, including those of officer
safety. Indeed, Buie expressly noted and rejected the Maryland
Court of Appeals’ refusal to apply the reasonable suspicion
standard of Terry and Long on the ground that “the sanctity of the
home” required a more demanding standard. Id. at 1096. We also
note that recently the Supreme Court in Knights applied the same
“[b]eyond” those “immediately adjoining the place of arrest.” Id. at 1098 (emphasis added). No
one has ever contended that the sweep in the present case is within that special category as to
which not even reasonable suspicion is required (and which may or may not depend on the fact of
arrest). We accordingly do not further address this special category and this opinion’s subsequent
discussion of protective sweeps generally should be understood as not referring to it.
2
The Fourth Amendment provides:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,
against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants
shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and
particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be
seized.”
10
general reasonableness, balancing test in upholding a home search,
stating “[t]he touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is
reasonableness, and the reasonableness of a search is determined
‘by assessing, on the one hand, the degree to which it intrudes
upon an individual’s privacy and, on the other, the degree to which
it is needed for the promotion of legitimate governmental
interests.’” Knights at 591 (quoting Wyoming v. Houghton, 119 S.
Ct. 1297, 1300 (1999)).3
Applying this balancing principle, and mindful of Buie’s heavy
reliance on Terry and Long, neither of which involved an arrest, we
hold that arrest is not always, or per se, an indispensable element
of an in-home protective sweep, and that although arrest may be
highly relevant, particularly as tending to show the requisite
potential of danger to the officers, that danger may also be
established by other circumstances. We note in this connection the
statements in Long that “if a suspect is ‘dangerous,’ he is no less
dangerous simply because he is not arrested”, id. at 3481, and “the
officer remains particularly vulnerable in part because a full
custodial arrest has not been effected.” Id. at 3482 (emphasis
3
Knights upheld a reasonable suspicion based law-enforcement (nonprobation related)
investigative search without a warrant of a probationer’s home where a condition of probation
was a blanket agreement to consent to searches.
We also observe that in Terry, the Court stated that the “inestimable right of personal
security belongs as much to the citizen on the streets of our cities as to the homeowner closeted in
his study to dispose of his secret affairs,” Terry at 1873, and (as Buie noted, 110 S. Ct. at 1098), it
rejected the notion that the weapons pat-down there was merely a “petty indignity,” stating that,
to the contrary, it was “a serious intrusion upon the sanctity of the person.” Id. at 1877.
11
added). Buie does state that “the risk of danger in the context of
an arrest in the home is as great as, if not greater than, it is in
an on-the-street or roadside investigatory context” such as in
Terry or Long. Buie at 1098. Buie gives two reasons for that
conclusion: first, in the Terry and Long frisk context the
confrontation has “not escalated to the point of arrest” which
involves “taking a person into custody for the purpose of
prosecuting him,” and, second:
“unlike an encounter on the street or along a highway, an
in-home arrest puts the officer at the disadvantage of
being on his adversary’s ‘turf.’ An ambush in a confined
setting of unknown configuration is more to be feared
than it is in open, more familiar surroundings.” Id.
While the first reason focuses on arrest, the second does not and
seems equally applicable to a police investigatory confrontation in
the home as to an in-home arrest. Accordingly, in the in-home
context it appears clear that even without an arrest other
circumstances can give rise to equally reasonable suspicion of
equally serious risk of danger of officers being ambushed by a
hidden person as would be the case were there an arrest.4
4
Knowles v. Iowa, 119 S. Ct. 484 (1998), relied on by Gould, does not point in a contrary
direction. There the Court held that a routine traffic stop of an automobile for speeding, for
which no arrest was made and only a citation was issued–where there was no reasonable suspicion
of danger–“does not by itself justify . . . a full field-type search” of the car, even though “a full
search of the passenger compartment” would be authorized “pursuant to a custodial arrest.” Id.
at 488 (emphasis added). There the Court expressly recognized that with reasonable suspicion of
danger the officer could conduct a “patdown” both of any occupant of the vehicle and “of the
[vehicle’s] passenger compart” under Terry and Long. Id. All Knowles says is that while arrest
alone may often be enough to give rise to meaningful concern for officer safety (or destruction of
evidence), in the absence of arrest there must be some other circumstances giving rise to
12
Several decisions of other circuits have upheld an in-home
Buie protective sweep even though not incident to an arrest. In
United States v. Patrick, 959 F.2d 991 (D.C. Cir. 1992), the D.C.
Circuit dealt, as we do here, with a consent entry case and upheld
the protective sweep of a bedroom in the apartment which the party
authorizing entry (the court assumed arguendo) had no right to
authorize search of, even though the sweep was not incident to an
arrest. The court stated:
“We first note that, even if Smith could not have
consented to the search of Patrick’s bedroom, he could,
as lessee of the apartment, unquestionably give the
police authority to search the rest of it. Once the
police were lawfully on the premises, they were
authorized to conduct a protective sweep based on their
reasonable belief that one of its inhabitants was
trafficking in narcotics. . . .We think the holding in
Buie, notwithstanding the search there was conducted
pursuant to a warrant and not consent, supports the
police search here. Accordingly, the police validly
entered the bedroom when they looked through the open
door and saw Patrick inside.” Id. at 996-97 (emphasis
added).
Similarly, in United States v. Taylor, 248 F.3d 506 (6th Cir.
2001), another consent entry case, the court likewise upheld a
protective sweep not incident to an arrest, stating:
“Taylor argues that a protective sweep is authorized
only when it is made incident to a lawful arrest.
Therefore, he contends, because Hill had not been
arrested when the officers made their cursory search of
Taylor’s apartment, the sweep was per se invalid. In
contrast, the government argues that while Buie and Biggs
[United States v. Biggs, 70 F.3d 913 (6th Cir. 1995)]were
each decided in the factual context of officers making an
reasonable suspicion of danger.
13
arrest, nothing in those opinions indicates that an
arrest is a mandatory prerequisite for conducting a
protective sweep of the area. The government further
points out that the Buie decision was based upon the
reasoning set forth in the Supreme Court’s earlier
decisions in Terry and Long, both of which were
investigative stop cases.
We believe the government presents the more
compelling argument.” Id. at 513.
In United States v. Garcia, 997 F.2d 1273 (9th Cir. 1993), the
court similarly upheld a protective sweep in a consent entry case
where no arrest was made until after the sweep discovered guns in
plain view.5
Also noteworthy is United States v. Daoust, 916 F.2d 757 (1st
Cir. 1990), an opinion by then Judge (now Justice) Breyer. There
the officers, looking through a window into the kitchen of a home,
observed a particularly described pistol hanging over the kitchen
sink. They then procured a search warrant to search for that
particular pistol. Armed with that warrant, they went into the
house, but did not confine themselves to going to the kitchen where
they knew the gun described in the warrant was, but rather
conducted a protective sweep of all the rooms in the house,
discovering in those other rooms other weapons (not covered by the
warrant) in plain view. There was no arrest or attempted arrest.
The First Circuit held that nevertheless the protective sweep was
justified under Buie.
5
Another consent entry case with a similar result is U.S. v. Koubriti, 199 F. Supp. 2d 656
(E.D. Mich. 2002).
14
The cases in which the courts have indicated that protective
sweeps must always be incident to arrest, are mostly ones involving
situations where the entry into the house was itself illegal.6
Having held that an in-home protective sweep is not
necessarily or per se invalid, regardless of other circumstances,
merely because it is not incident to an arrest, we accordingly
6
In U.S. v. Davis, 290 F.3d 1239 (10th Cir. 2002), there was an illegal, warrantless entry
into the house, which the court held was not justified by exigent circumstances. The
constitutionality of the protective sweep is addressed only in a brief footnote, n.4 at 1242-43,
where it is rejected because there was no arrest, quoting the first sentence of Buie, and also
apparently because it was not narrowly confined to a cursory visual inspection of places where a
person might be hiding, as required by Buie.
U.S. v. Reid, 226 F.3d 1022 (9th Cir. 2000), was likewise an illegal entry case, the court
holding that the consent to entry had been coerced and that there were no exigent circumstances.
The court went on to observe that protective sweep did not apply because there was no arrest and
no facts demonstrated that a reasonably prudent officer would have believed that the apartment
harbored an individual posing a danger to the officers. Id. at 1027. This was a split decision, and
does not cite the Garcia case in which the Ninth Circuit had held that a protective sweep need not
be incident to an arrest.
Gould also cites U.S. v. Johnson, 170 F.3d 708 (7th Cir. 1999). That case involved a pat-
down search and detention of a person after he had stepped out of the apartment, there was no
entry into the apartment, and “no one had consented to a police entry.” Id. at 719. The police
did not have a warrant and there was “no reason to believe that Johnson [who was patted down]
was carrying a weapon or any kind of illegal substances at the moment he emerged from the
apartment, and Johnson himself took no action himself to make them fearful for anyone’s safety.”
Id. at 714. Because the detention and pat-down of Johnson was without reasonable suspicion, it
was held invalid. Id. at 720. There were three opinions, including a dissent by Judge Easterbrook
and a special concurrence by Judge Evans. While the opinion of Judge Wood does contain some
references to Buie, and the fact that the pat-down of Johnson was neither incident to an arrest nor
a cursory visual inspection of those places in which a person might be hiding, id. at 716, the issues
and factual context of Johnson make it completely inapposite here.
15
disapprove of the language to the contrary in Wilson.7 We note,
however, our agreement with Wilson’s ultimate determination that
the challenged search of the wastebasket and seizure of the
checkbook in it could not be justified as a protective sweep. In
the first place, there was no evidence in Wilson indicating any
danger was posed; Wilson was suspected only of stealing from the
mail and nothing suggested he (or anyone else present) was
dangerous or violent or anything of the kind. In the second place,
as Wilson itself properly observes, “the seizure of the checkbook
from the wastebasket was not within the narrow ambit of a ‘cursory
visual inspection’ of a place where a person could be hiding.”
Wilson at 1035-36 (citing Buie, 110 S. Ct. at 1099).8
Thus, in the present case the district court erred as a matter
of law in holding, in its understandable reliance on the language
in Wilson, that a protective sweep could never be valid, regardless
of other circumstances, unless incident to an arrest, and on that
sole basis granting the motion to suppress.
7
We observe that in Wilson the panel either did not cite or did not have available to it the
opinions in Patrick, Taylor, Garcia and Daoust. Essentially, Wilson simply assumed that Buie
always requires that the sweep be incident to arrest.
8
Wilson also correctly states that the plain view doctrine did not apply, because the
checkbook was not in plain view in the bathroom and because the only thing incriminating about
the checkbook was the names on the checks, and they were not visible because of the checkbook
cover; the incriminating character of the evidence was not immediately apparent. Id. at 1036.
16
II. OTHER PROTECTIVE SWEEP REQUIREMENTS
We now turn to the other requirements for a valid in-home
protective sweep and their applicability here.
A. Other requirements generally
First, it is at least implicit in Buie that although the
protective sweep may extend to areas of the home where the police
otherwise (i.e., apart from the protective sweep doctrine) then
have no right to go, nevertheless when undertaken from within the
home, the police must not have entered (or remained in) the home
illegally and their presence within it must be for a legitimate law
enforcement purpose.9
Further, the protective sweep must be supported “by a
reasonable, articulable suspicion”, Buie at 1099, “that the area to
be swept harbors an individual posing a danger to” those on the
scene. Id. at 1100.
Next, the legitimate protective sweep may not be “a full
search” but may be no more than “a cursory inspection of those
9
Normally, absent a warrant the police may not enter a home except with consent or in
“exigent circumstances.” See, e.g., Payton, at 1378; Mincey v. Arizona, 98 S. Ct. 2408, 2413
(1978); U.S. v. Jones, 239 F.3d 716, 719-20 (5th Cir. 2001); U.S. v. Howard, 106 F.3d 70, 73-75
(5th Cir. 1997); U.S. v. Rodea, 102 F.3d 1401, 1404-05, 1408-09 (5th Cir. 1996); U.S. v. Rice,
51 F.3d 495, 500-01 (5th Cir. 1995). Whether (or if so to what extent and under what
conditions) the doctrine of “protective sweep” authorizes a warrantless, non-consensual entry into
a home that would not be authorized under the more general doctrine of “exigent circumstances”
is unclear. See, e.g., U.S. v. Wilson, 306 F.3d 231, 238-39 (5th Cir. 2001); U.S. v. Watson, 273
F.3d 599, 602-03 (5th Cir. 2001); U.S. v. Merritt, 882 F.2d 916, 921 (5th Cir. 1989); Kirkpatrick
v. Butler, 870 F.2d 276, 281-83 (5th Cir. 1989). We do not address that question here since
under the district court’s adequately supported findings the officers’ entry into the mobile home
was legal as pursuant to valid consent.
17
spaces where a person may be found.” Id. at 1099.
Finally, the sweep is subject to two time limitations. First,
it may “last[] no longer than is necessary to dispel the reasonable
suspicion of danger,” id.; and, second, it may last no longer than
the police are justified in remaining on the premises. See id.
(“and in any event no longer than it takes to complete the arrest
and depart the premises”); see also id. at 1098 (police permitted
“to take reasonable steps to ensure their safety after, and while
making, the arrest”).
B. Relevant facts and findings here
1. Introduction
In our review of the district court’s suppression order, we
observe that the only witnesses at the suppression hearing were
three of the deputy sheriffs who were present on the scene, who
were called by the Government, and Cabral, the sole defense
witness. The district court explicitly credited the testimony of
the deputies and refused to credit Cabral’s.10
2. Officers were legally within the mobile home
The testimony of the officers was to the effect that Cabral
met them at the entrance to the mobile home, that they told him
10
The district court stated “this court finds that the detectives’ version of the events of
October 17, 2000 is more credible” and “the consistent testimony of these detectives who were
sequestered during the evidentiary hearing is more credible than the testimony of the defendant’s
friend and partner [Cabral], who was allegedly involved in the murder plot and who has been
convicted of several crimes.”
18
they were looking for Gould and wanted to speak to him. Cabral
said that Gould was in his bedroom, indicating where it was, was
probably asleep, and that they were welcome to come in and check it
out. The officers entered, walked toward Gould’s bedroom, noticed
the door was open but did not see Gould, so conducted a brief
protective sweep of the bedroom and its two closets, in one of
which the guns were observed in plain view.11 The district
11
For example, Deputy Ard testified:
“Q. And you spoke to Mr. Cabral and told him why y’all wanted to be there?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Okay. As I understand it, he said that Gould was in his bedroom?
A. Right.
Q. Did he say it’s okay to go search Kelly Gould’s bedroom?
A. He said, he’s in his bedroom. You are more than welcome to come in and check it
out.
Q. All right. But he specifically talked about being in his bedroom, right? He wasn’t in
Dennis Cabral’s bedroom?
A. No. He said, his bedroom – if you looking at the trailer, he’s to the left. He said, his
bedroom is in the back. He’s in there, and he’s probably asleep.”
Deputy Brown gave similar testimony, viz:
“A. . . . We asked him [Cabral] if Kelly Gould was home, and he said, yes, he is.
I believe he’s asleep in his bedroom, and he pointed toward the north end of the
trailer where the only bedroom is on that side of the trailer.
We asked him for permission to come inside the residence to see if Kelly
Gould was in the trailer. We wanted to speak with him. We did not have any
intentions of arresting him at that time. We just simply wanted to talk to him
19
about the incidents that we’ve talked about so far. He said, sure. No problem.
Come in.”
...
“Q. Did you in fact enter the trailer at the invitation of Mr. Cabral?
A. Yes, we did.”
...
“When we entered, we immediately went to the left to the direction where Dennis
Cabral had pointed to the bedroom, went toward the bedroom door, which is the
only bedroom on that end of the trailer.
When we got to the bedroom, the door of the bedroom was open; so looking for
him strictly for officer safety reasons, due to the allegations of wanting to kill
police officers, and judges, and those – also the incident that occurred in the
courtroom or the Judge’s office earlier that day, officer safety was, you know, a
predominate issue in our mind. So we entered his bedroom, which the door was
open. We looked on the floor. We looked in a closet area to the right of the bed,
any place that he could physically hide his body. There was a closet to the left.
The closet door was partially open, but not good enough for me to see inside for a
person. I opened the door up, looked briefly to see if he was there, never entering
the closet itself, and standing in the corner was three weapons, three rifles.”
...
“Q. Okay. So, did you ask him [Cabral] if Kelly Gould was there?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. Okay. And he told you, he’s in the back?
A. He told me that he was in his bedroom. He believed him to be asleep. He
pointed in the direction to his right, which would have been to my left.”
...
“Q. Okay. So the only information he gave you was that Kelly Gould was there? He
didn’t
invite you to come in?
20
court found that “Cabral consented to the entry of the detectives
into the trailer to search for the defendant” and that “the
detectives were reasonable in believing that Mr. Cabral was
authorized to consent to the search.” However, the court found
A. That is not correct. He did let us come in when we asked him, do you mind if we
come in
and see if he’s there.
Q. Uh-huh.
A. He said, sure. Come in. No problem. And we entered.
Q. All right. And he pointed to the back bedroom where Kelly Gould was?
A. He pointed to the back bedroom that he identified as Kelly Gould’s bedroom.
Q. Did you ask permission to go in that bedroom?
A. No, sir.
Q. You didn’t? All right.
A. But when I approached the bedroom, Kelly Gould’s bedroom, the door was open.
Q. The door of the bedroom was open?
A. That is correct.
Q. You were able to look into the bedroom and look around?
A. Yes.
Q. You went into the bedroom?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. Okay. Did you look under the bed?
A. I looked for any place that I thought a human person could be hiding possibly.”
21
that “[b]ecause there was no indication that Mr. Cabral lived in
the master bedroom, he had no apparent authority to consent to a
search of the master bedroom.” We conclude that the only
reasonable construction of the credited testimony is not only that
Cabral consented to the officers’ entry into the mobile home to
look for Gould but also that this consent, at least by the clearest
implication, extended to the master bedroom. This is so because,
although the officers did not specifically and separately mention
the bedroom in asking to come in, they did state they wanted to
talk to Gould and asked if they could come in to see if he was
there, and Cabral responded that Gould was likely asleep in his
bedroom, pointing to it, and stating “you are more than welcome to
come in and check it out.” Cabral, however, lacked any authority,
actual or apparent, to consent to a search of the master bedroom
(although he had at least apparent authority to otherwise consent
to a search of the mobile home), and for that reason the search of
the master bedroom had to be justified as a protective sweep, just
as did the search of the basement in Buie. The district court
declined to justify the search of the bedroom on that basis solely
because the sweep was not incident to an arrest.
We recognize that protective sweeps following a consent entry
may in certain circumstances pose Fourth Amendment concerns not
present in cases where the initial entry is pursuant to a warrant.
For example, concerns might arise respecting a consent to entry
22
requested for a stated common purpose but actually intended not for
that purpose but rather for the purpose of gaining access in order
to then make a protective sweep of the entire home for unrelated
reasons and thus circumvent the warrant requirement. Concerns of
a similar character might also arguably arise where the consent to
entry is given expressly or implicitly only as to a limited area
but the protective sweep extends clearly beyond that area without
anything having developed since entry suggestive of greater or more
imminent danger than that initially apparent just prior to entry.
We do not purport to now ultimately resolve hypothetical cases of
those varieties, for the mentioned kinds of concerns are not
meaningfully implicated here. The credited evidence does not show
and the district court did not find that the officers sought entry
for any purpose other than what they stated to Cabral, namely to
see if Gould was there and to talk to him, and Cabral, knowing that
purpose, consented to the entry. Moreover, the consent which he
purported to give was not either expressly or implicitly limited,
but rather, by the clearest implication, extended to the master
bedroom. Finally, after the officers entered the mobile home and
proceeded down the hall towards the master bedroom and approached,
but before they arrived at, its entrance, they observed that the
bedroom’s door was open; Gould was not in his bed asleep, as Cabral
had just represented, nor was Gould otherwise visible, so the
danger and imminence of ambush then dramatically increased,
23
justifying the few seconds’ “sweep” looking under the bed and
opening the two bedroom closet doors.
We decline to adopt any across-the-board rule that a
protective sweep can never be valid where the initial entry to the
home is pursuant to consent, even where the consent does not of
itself legally authorize the entry into the area swept. Any such
rule either would require officers to forego any and all consent
entries or would prevent them, once having so entered, from taking
reasonable, minimally intrusive, means for self-protection when
reasonable suspicion of the danger of ambush arises. Applying the
general reasonableness standard of Buie and Knights we hold that
the Fourth Amendment imposes no such Hobson’s choice. We note that
a “knock and talk” police investigatory practice has clearly been
recognized as legitimate. See, e.g., United States v. Jones, 239
F.3d 716, 720 (5th Cir. 2001). Certainly, the officers were in the
mobile home for a legitimate governmental purpose, namely
questioning Gould about the information they had received earlier
that day, in two telephone calls from Gould’s employee (or co-
worker) Forehand, an individual otherwise unknown to them, that
Gould, known to be a person prone to violence, was planning to kill
two local judges. As the district court recognized, “the officers
had a legitimate governmental interest in questioning the defendant
about the information they had received.”
In its opinion denying the Government’s motion for
24
reconsideration, the district court faulted the officers on the
basis that “[t]he officers could have approached the defendant as
he left his mobile home one day, or they could have followed him in
any other public place, without necessitating the entry into his
residence,” and that accordingly the officers “created the
dangerous situation by approaching and entering the mobile home.”
Although not explicitly addressed by the district court this raises
the question of the potential applicability of our cases holding
that although exigent circumstances may justify a warrantless
probable cause entry into the home, they will not do so if “the
exigent circumstances were manufactured by the agents.” See, e.g.,
United States v. Rico, 51 F.3d 495, 502 (5th Cir. 1995). We have
indicated that this involves two levels of inquiry, first whether
the officers deliberately created the exigent circumstances with
the bad faith intent to avoid the warrant requirement, and second,
even if they did not do so in bad faith, whether their actions
creating the exigency were sufficiently unreasonable or improper as
to preclude dispensation with the warrant requirement.
Id.(recognizing that in United States v. Socey, 846 F.2d 1439, 1449
(D.C. Cir.), cert. denied, 109 S. Ct. 152 (1988), the D.C. Circuit
rejected going beyond the first level of inquiry). Here, there is
no finding and no evidence to suggest that the officers acted with
the intent to create an emergency to circumvent the warrant
25
requirement.12 We need not and do not here determine whether or to
what extent the second (or “reasonableness”) level of inquiry in
our manufactured exigent circumstances cases, which involve
situations where the entry into the home otherwise contravenes the
Fourth Amendment, should be applicable to situations such as the
present one where the entry is pursuant to a valid, non-pretextual
consent as above described. This is because even under that second
level of inquiry the officers’ actions here may not be deemed to
have been improper. Our exigent circumstances cases have
consistently held in this regard that “we will not second-guess the
judgment of law enforcement officers where reasonable minds may
differ.” United States v. Howard, 106 F.3d 70, 76 (5th Cir. 1997);
United States v. Rodea, 102 F.3d 1401, 1410 (5th Cir. 1996); Rico
at 505. Here there is absolutely no testimony that the tactics or
procedures followed by the officers were unreasonable or contrary
to standard or good law enforcement practices (or to the policies
or practices of their jurisdictions). There is no evidence that
the officers ever observed Gould away from his home so that they
could have followed him and approached him in a public place, or
that they had any idea of where he might be other than the mobile
home. The information that the officers received on the evening of
October 17 was that Gould, known as a dangerous and violent person,
12
Had the officers acted with such improper motive or intent, we assume such would have
invalidated the sweep.
26
was planning to kill two particular local judges. Clearly,
reasonable officers could conclude that the appropriate course of
conduct was to go directly to the mobile home, which is where
Forehand told them Gould was, rather than wait until “one day”,
which might well be a day after someone was killed.13
We conclude that the officers were legally within the mobile
home for a legitimate governmental purpose when the protective
13
In its original opinion the district court found that “[t]he detectives would not have
arrested the defendant if they had not found the firearms in the closet, because they would have
had no probable cause that he had committed a crime” (emphasis added). This was doubtless
based on, among other things, the testimony of Officer Brown who stated that prior to seeing the
guns in the closet “I had no knowledge there was weapons in the house.” However, in its opinion
denying the Government’s motion for reconsideration, the court states, without referring to its
initial opinion, that
“. . . the officers could have obtained a valid search warrant based on the
information provided to them by Mr. Forehand. Mr. Forehand informed the
officers that, while at the mobile home one day, the defendant had retrieved a
twenty-two caliber rifle, equipped with a scope, from his bedroom and showed it
to him. Mr. Forehand also reported that Gould described additional weapons that
he owned. (See Affidavit of Officer Leonardo Moore, East Baton Rouge
Sheriff’s Office, p. 3). With this information and the officers’ knowledge that the
defendant was a convicted felon, the officers should have obtained a search
warrant for the mobile home . . . .”
The only cited support is the referenced affidavit of Moore, which is dated July 25, 2001, and is
attached to the original criminal complaint in this case. As the Government has consistently
pointed out, while the Moore affidavit does state that Forehand so advised the officers, it is clear
from the affidavit itself, as well as from the record as a whole, that he did so only on being
questioned by the officers at the trailer after Gould’s arrest. On this appeal, Gould has
consistently recognized that that is the case, and has indeed emphasized that the officers did not
have probable cause to arrest Gould until they saw the guns in the closet. Thus, in oral argument
to the panel Gould’s counsel asserted that before looking into the closet “they [the officers] had
no information as the Government pointed out that he had a gun” and “[t]hey [the officers] didn’t
know about the guns.” Similarly, at oral argument to the en banc court Gould’s counsel stated
“keep in mind, these folks [the officers ] had no probable cause. They didn’t even know there
were guns in the house.” Accordingly, we disregard the district court’s search warrant finding as
it is clearly based on a misapprehension of the evidence. We need not and do not determine what
the legal effect of this finding would have been.
27
sweep was undertaken.
3. The officers had reasonable suspicion of danger
When the open bedroom door revealed that Gould was not in bed,
as had just previously been represented to the officers, or
otherwise visible to them, a reasonable basis for suspicion arose
that Gould, whom they had been informed was prone to violence and
was plotting to kill two judges, might be hiding in the room and
posing an imminent danger to the officers. Gould has not
challenged this, and the district court found that the officers
“needed to locate the defendant for their own safety, so they could
make sure he did not launch a surprise attack from a hidden
location” and that the bedroom sweep lasted “no longer than . . .
necessary to dispel the reasonable suspicion of danger.” This
element of a legitimate protective sweep is clearly satisfied.
Judge Smith’s dissent asserts that the district court’s
conclusion that the officers were justified in viewing Gould as a
threat to their safety is based on the court’s concededly erroneous
statement in its opinion on reconsideration that Forehand had told
the officers in his call earlier that day that Gould had firearms
at the trailer, so the officers, knowing Gould was a convicted
felon, could, and hence should, have first procured an arrest
warrant. Judge Smith then asserts that because the officers lacked
such knowledge (in its initial opinion, the district court found
that the officers lacked probable cause to arrest Gould until they
28
saw the firearms in the bedroom closet, see note 13, supra) they
had no legitimate safety concern justifying the protective sweep
when they saw Gould was not in his bed. Judge Smith’s reasoning in
this respect basically confuses probable cause with reasonable
suspicion. In Buie the Supreme Court expressly rejected the
Maryland Court of Appeals’ holding that a protective sweep required
“probable cause to believe” there was “‘a serious and demonstrable
potentiality for danger,’” id. at 1096, and went on to hold that
the reasonable suspicion standard of Terry and Long governed. Here
there is no evidence that the officers had been specifically told
that Gould had weapons at the trailer. On the other hand, the
credited – indeed the undisputed – testimony is that the officers
had been told by Forehand that Gould “had planned to go on a
killing spree killing judges, police officers, and minority groups
. . . and that he was going to go to some type of place after he
did these incidents and hide from the police, and those kinds of
things, and snipe anybody out that tried to come in and take him
into custody.”14 That a person is planning to go on such a wide
killing spree – and thereafter “snipe” at those who might try to
take him into custody – certainly suggests that that person has, at
the least, ready access to lethal weapons.15 As a matter of law,
14
The officers also knew Gould had several arrests and at least one felony conviction for a
crime of violence and was known for violent behavior.
15
Nothing in the record intimates that the officers had any information even suggesting that
Gould did not have or have ready access to a firearm or firearms or other lethal weapons.
29
the credited testimony establishes that the officers had the
requisite reasonable suspicion of enhanced danger when they, at
night on Gould’s turf, saw that Gould was not in his bed asleep, as
Cabral had just told them he was.16
4. The sweep was properly limited in scope and duration
The district court found that “the officers’ search of the
master bedroom did not exceed the acceptable scope of a protective
sweep, which extends only to a cursory inspection of those spaces
where a person may be found, and lasts no longer than is necessary
to dispel the reasonable suspicion of danger.” The credited
evidence clearly supports these findings and satisfies those
elements of a legitimate protective sweep.
If the fact that Gould was not in his bed or otherwise visible
in the bedroom can be taken as signifying a refusal on his part to
talk to the officers and in that sense a termination of their
16
Where the relevant historic facts are undisputed (or are established by adequately
supported district court findings) whether or not there is reasonable suspicion is a question of law.
See, e.g., Blackwall v. Burton, 34 F.3d 298, 305 (5th Cir. 1994); United States v. McSween, 53
F.3d 684, 687 n.5 (5th Cir. 1995); 5 LaFave, Search and Seizure (3d Ed.) § 11.7(c) at 406-07 (“.
. . the clearly erroneous standard is applied to severable underlying facts while the de novo
standard is applied to the ultimate question whether those facts add up to reasonable suspicion”).
Moreover, it is clear that the district court never found there was not the requisite reasonable
suspicion. On the contrary, it described its holding as follows: “[t]his court noted the defendant’s
violent past, and did not dispute that the officers were justified in viewing the defendant as a
violent and potentially dangerous individual . . . the officers’ search of the bedroom did not
exceed the acceptable scope of a protective sweep, which . . . lasts no longer than is necessary to
dispel the reasonable suspicion of danger.” (emphasis added).
30
consent to be in the mobile home for that purpose,17 nevertheless
that does not mean that the officers could not conduct the sweep.
They did not have to go back out of the mobile home without taking
some brief, minimally intrusive steps to protect themselves against
ambush as they were on the way out. In Buie effectuating arrest
was the only justification for being in the home, but the sweep of
the basement was not commenced until Buie was already arrested,
searched and handcuffed on the first floor. Buie at 1095. The
court made clear that the sweep authority extended until the
officers not only complete the arrest but also “depart the
premises,” id. at 1099, and that the officers were permitted “to
take reasonable steps to ensure their safety after, and while
making, the arrest.” Id. at 1098 (emphasis added). Indeed, here,
just as the brief sweep of the bedroom was completed the officers
heard someone yell that Gould had departed the mobile home through
a back door, and they “immediately” likewise departed the bedroom
and went outside looking for Gould.18
17
And it is not clearly evident that that is so. There was certainly reasonable suspicion that
Gould was hiding under the bed or in the closets, but such suspicion does not exclude the
reasonable possibility that he had innocently stepped outside without intending to avoid the
officers. Reasonable suspicion is just that, it is not probable cause or a more likely than not
standard, and it does not exclude other reasonable possibilities.
18
Officer Brown testified:
“After I determined immediately that he wasn’t in the room, I started to
exit the bedroom, and at that time somebody in – and I don’t remember who it was
at this time – yelled, I think he just ran out of the back door, which is nearby, near
the bedroom area. So I looked and, sure enough, the back door was wide open.
So immediately I jumped out the back door looking to see if I could get a visual on
31
The challenged protective sweep was properly limited in scope
and duration.
Conclusion
We hold that a protective sweep as authorized by Buie need not
always be incident to an arrest. The district court erred in
holding otherwise. Applying the standards and limitations
articulated in Buie and the general reasonableness criteria of the
Fourth Amendment, we conclude that the protective sweep here was
valid. The district court’s suppression order is accordingly
REVERSED.
him to try to locate him.”
32
E. GRADY JOLLY, Circuit Judge, concurring in part and dissenting in
part:
I agree that a protective sweep need not be conducted incident
to arrest to be valid under the Fourth Amendment. The
constitutionality of such searches must be assessed under a
standard of general reasonableness, in consideration of the factors
discussed by the majority.
I also agree that the “knock and talk” is usually a legitimate
law enforcement tool, and that the officers in this case were
legally in Gould’s home based on Cabral’s consent.
Under the totality of the circumstances, however, it was
unreasonable for the police to enter Gould’s bedroom and search his
closets, essentially for the reasons discussed by Judge Smith. It
seems to me that if the door to the bedroom had been closed -- or
even if Gould had been in the room -- the search could have been
justified by the majority on basically the same grounds (risk of
ambush, etc.) it has used to justify the search of an open room in
the absence of the subject.
I therefore would affirm the suppression of the evidence.
33
JERRY E. SMITH, Circuit Judge, dissenting:
I respectfully dissent from the majority’s result and from
much of its analysis, largely on the basis ably expressed by Judge
DeMoss in dissent. I agree, however, with the majority’s con-
clusion that United States v. Wilson, 36 F.3d 1298 (5th Cir. 1994),
is in error and must be overruled.
Maryland v. Buie, 494 U.S. 325 (1990), is no exception to the
longstanding view that “[t]he touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is
reasonableness, and the reasonableness of a search is determined
‘by assessing, on the one hand, the degree to which it intrudes
upon an individual’s privacy and, on the other, the degree to which
it is needed for the promotion of legitimate governmental inter-
ests.’” United States v. Knights, 534 U.S. 112, 118-19 (2001)
(quoting Wyoming v. Houghton, 526 U.S. 295, 300 (1999)). Buie es-
tablished that a search very much like the present one was reason-
able; that conclusion alone is an insufficient basis for deciding
(as the panel in this case was precedent-bound to do) that the
present search is presumptively invalid, no matter how reasonable.
The majority correctly identifies a number of the factors that
are important to assessing the reasonableness of the officers’ deci-
sion to conduct a protective sweep. SomeSSsuch as the requirement
that the search be performed for the safety of the officers; the
necessity of having articulable facts from which an officer rea-
34
sonably could apprehend danger; the importance of limiting the
search to a cursory visual inspection of those places that could
hide a person; and the cap on the duration of the searchSScome dir-
ectly from Buie, 494 U.S. at 333-36. OthersSSsuch as the legitimacy
of the officers’ presence and purpose on the scene; the validity and
scope of their consent to enter the home; the requirement that facts
justify the sweep arise after officers obtain consent to enter for
a conversation; and the potentially pernicious effect of allowing
officers to themselves create the justification for a sweepSSare
reasonable and insightful attempts to compensate for the critical
distinction between this case and Buie: the absence of an arrest or
arrest warrant.19
A faithful application of these principles does not, however,
lead to the conclusion that the protective sweep was reasonable.
At best, it seems we are ill-equipped to reach that conclusion,
relying as we must on nothing more than a paper record compiled un-
der the mistaken impression that the reasonableness of the search
was wholly irrelevant to its constitutionality. This matter should
be remanded so that the rule that the majority properly crafts can
be applied in a hearing convened for the purpose of elucidating
those facts that bear directly on the reasonableness of the sweep.
19
See slip op. at 24-25 (legitimacy of purpose); id. at 23-24 (validity and scope of
consent); id. at 23 (concern that sweeps will be attempted after obtaining consent but before new
facts indicate a heightened danger); id. at 25-27 (potential that sweep would be improper if of-
ficers unnecessarily created dangerous situation).
35
Solely on the basis of the scant record now on appeal, the
sweep was unreasonable, so the order granting the motion to suppress
should be affirmed. Although I agree with most of the persuasive
critiques found in Judge DeMoss’s forceful dissent, and although I
share his concern that there is no such thing as valid consent where
the consenting party has no idea that the officers will then be
entitled to conduct a search, I write separately to focus on one
particularly serious flaw in the majority’s analysis.
I start with a point also made by Judge DeMoss: The majority
puffs this court’s assessment of the “knock and talk” strategy, tak-
ing what was once “not inherently unreasonable,” United States v.
Jones, 239 F.3d 716, 720 (5th Cir. 2001), and making it something
that has “clearly been recognized as legitimate.” Slip op. at 25
(citing only Jones as authority). That is quite a transformation
in only three years’ time.
I doubt even the majority would contend that this now “clearly
. . . legitimate” tactic, which consists primarily of approaching
a suspect at his home to seek his voluntary cooperation in an inves-
tigation, presents the compelling sort of interest found in the
officers’ duty to execute an arrest warrant. Officers use “knock
and talk” encounters as just one of the many available investigative
tools, and they do so hoping that they will be able to determine
whether there even exists the probable cause that is necessary to
obtain an arrest or search warrant.
36
In seeking the proper balance between privacy and the promotion
of legitimate governmental interests, Houghton, 526 U.S. at 300, it
may well be that our decisions “mean that the police use a tactic
like ‘knock and talk’ somewhat less frequently, but that may be the
price of compliance with the Fourth Amendment.” United States v.
Johnson, 170 F.3d 708, 718 (7th Cir. 1999). There are other lawful
ways for police to pursue their investigation without testing the
limits of the Fourth Amendment, includingSSas the district court
foundSSby returning another day when Gould was present and amenable
to speaking with them.
I make this point only to highlight a significant principle
that the majority opinion recognizes but fails to invoke: However
high the government’s interest in protecting its officers, there
must be some other legitimate purpose for which officers secure
themselves. See slip op. at 25. A search that does nothing more
than allow the officers safely to remain in a place where they have
no reason or right to be will, of necessity, be unreasonable in all
but the rarest of circumstances. The majority’s assessment that the
police have a legitimate interest in pursuing “knock and talk”
encounters suffices to create a justification for the officers’
presence in Gould’s trailer, and it plays a large role in the even-
tual conclusion that this search was reasonable in light of all the
circumstances.
Yet, even assuming the majority correctly assesses the legiti-
37
macy of the “knock and talk” technique, a reasonable officer would
have known, before entering Gould’s bedroom, that the original pur-
pose of the encounter would not be realized that day. At best, from
the officers’ perspective, Gould was not home and was unable to
discuss the allegations made against him. At worst, he was hiding
and did not wish to speak with them.20
As Judge DeMoss rightfully recognizes, slip op. at 7-8 (DeMoss,
J., dissenting), the majority glosses over this error by assessing
the legitimacy of the officers’ purpose and the reasonableness of
their fear at two different points in time. Slip op. at 25, 28-29.
It is true that at one point, the officers were in the mobile home
with a valid purpose: to discuss with Gould the serious allegations
against him. It is equally true that the officers were, at another
point, in the bedroom with a legitimate fear: that Gould was hiding
in a closet and posed a threat to their safety. But there is no
consanguinity between these points. The legitimate purpose of the
encounter had all but evaporated by the time the majority concludes
the officers possessed a valid fear.
The officers had no reason to enter Gould’s bedroom if Gould
was not therein, voluntarily cooperating. An empty room serves no
investigative purpose where the entire focus of the investigation
is on having a conversation. This fact is illustrated by the action
20
The fact that Gould was found hiding in the woods, wearing only his boxer shorts,
adequately attests to the fact that the latter of these two possibilities was the more realistic that
day.
38
taken by the officers as soon as the room was secure: They left it.
Inasmuch as the sweep served no purpose other than to secure a room
in which the officers had nothing to do, it was unreasonable and in
violation of the Fourth Amendment.
The majority has a rejoinder to that argument: Regardless of
whether the officers should have known that their quest for a
“knock and talk” encounter had been rendered fruitless, they none-
theless possessed a compelling interest in securing the mobile home
so they could safely depart from it. Slip op. at 29-30. I agree
that this is one of two articulated justifications for the sweep in
Buie,21 and, if supported by the record, conceivably could serve to
make the sweep reasonable as well. The record, however, flatly re-
futes that view. Moreover, the majority’s assertion to the contrary
is based in large part on a factual finding that it previously
overturns as being clearly erroneous.
There is no dispute that Cabral lacked even the apparent au-
thority to consent to the entry into Gould’s bedroom. Slip op.
at 22-23. As a result, the sweep must be justified on the basis of
the threats facing the officers at the instant before they entered
that room. Id. That is to say, once the officers observed that
Gould was not in his bedroom (which they could not enter without his
consent, nor had an investigative reason to enter without his
21
See Buie, 494 U.S. at 335-36 (“The sweep lasts no longer than is necessary to dispel the
reasonable suspicion of danger and in any event no longer than it takes to complete the arrest and
depart the premises.”).
39
presence), their decision to enter and conduct a sweep is reasonable
only if they would have faced a greater danger by not entering. The
majority appears to conclude that it was not only safer, but
obviously so, for the police to enter the room that potentially
housed a danger, than it was to retreat the few feet toward the
doorway they had used only an instant before.
We are not faced here with Daedalus’s Labyrith or the Minotaur
lurking somewhere inside. The officersSSone of whom already had his
gun drawnSSwere in a fourteen-by-sixty-foot trailer home, and there
is every indication that they had as plain a view of their path to
retreat as they did of the empty bedroom.22 The government has not
even argued, in its briefs, that the officers were unable to depart
safely.
Instead, the government’s posture throughout this case is that
there was no need to flee, because the officers still were conduct-
ing a valid “knock and talk” investigation. As I have shown, and
as the majority tacitly concedes, slip op. at 29, that claim is in-
consistent with the scope of the “knock and talk” technique, which
has, as its central premise, the presence of a voluntarily coop-
erating witness. To compensate for the absence of any investigative
22
Here again, the sparse record inhibits the court’s ability truly to assess whether the
sweep was a reasonable alternative to a safe retreat. At en banc oral argument, significant time
was devoted to the question whether this was a single-wide or double-wide trailer home, and
what effect that might have on the officers ability to leave the scene safely. It is apparent that
such questions became relevant only after the court determined that Wilson was not good law,
and there should be no great surprise in finding that a district court’s memorandum addressing an
entirely different question provides poor fodder on which to graze.
40
purpose to the sweep, the majority instead has adopted the notion
that there was a greater danger in retreating than there was in
sweeping, a claim not supported by the district court’s findings of
fact, to which we ordinarily should defer.
As the majority correctly observes, the officers knew Gould had
a violent past and was alleged to have been making threats against
government officials. But all those facts were known to the
officers before they decided even to enter the house. If that alone
placed them in an unjustified state of danger, that was so as much
at the time they elected to enter the mobile home as when they chose
to sweep. If the majority’s new rule is taken to countenance a
sweep whenever police seek voluntary consent to enter a building
that they already perceive to be intolerably dangerous, Judge DeMoss
is surely correct to assign this investigative technique the new
moniker: “knock, enter, maybe talk, and search.” Slip op. at 6
(DeMoss, J., dissenting).23
Apparently, however, this is not the point the majority is
23
There is no basis for the majority’s conclusion, slip op. at 12, that this situation was
inherently dangerous, as the Supreme Court described the in-home arrest in Buie. In Buie, 494
U.S. at 333, the Court recognized the danger an officer faces when forced to effect a con-
frontational encounter on his “adversary’s ‘turf.’” Here, although the majority correctly
recognizes that a “knock and talk” encounter does not include the potentially explosive
confrontation of an arrest, slip op. at 12, it nevertheless concludes that the encounter is dangerous
by virtue of being on the adversary’s turf. Id.
This completely mistakes the fact that in a “knock and talk” encounter, there is no
adversary. The whole point is to approach a citizen and learn something through voluntary
cooperation.
41
attempting to make, for it unambiguously requires officers to justi-
fy the sweep on the basis of evidence that was discovered after they
obtained consent to enter. Slip op. at 23. Nevertheless, though
the majority laudably imposes this limitation on its new rule, the
majority has not faithfully applied that rule to the present record.
The only fact to which the majority points for its explanation
of how the officers went from the point of being safe enough to
enter the room to the point of being threatened enough to justify
a sweep, is the finding that Gould was not in the bedroom where
Cabral said he would be. The most natural inference to draw from
that fact is that Gould was not home, or that if he was home, he
wanted nothing to do with the officers.
Even assuming the reasonableness of the belief that Gould in-
stead was preparing to ambush the officers as they left the
sceneSSsomething he chose not to do when they entered the home, and
was far more likely to do when the officers drew nearer in their
search for himSSthat would pose a threat to the officers only when
they were outside the bedroom, if they also believed Gould was in
possession of a firearm. This is the unambiguous basis on which the
district court determined that “the officers were justified in
viewing the defendants as a danger to their safety,” a statement
that immediately follows the paragraph in which the court states
that the officers knew, before they arrived at the scene, that Gould
had a firearm. But the majority cannot possibly reach the same
42
conclusion, because its opinion also states that the district court
clearly erred when it found that the officers knew about the weapon!
Slip op. at 27 n.13.
As a result, there is no basis in the record for the majority’s
contention that it was more dangerous for the officers to leave the
room instead of entering a confined area that they suspected housed
a threat, and start poking around. That is a theory that was
manufactured out of whole cloth at the en banc oral argument.
If the majority genuinely suspects that this might have been
the case, the best it can do is remand so the record can be de-
veloped with an eye to the correct governing legal standard. As the
court correctly determines today, that standard is not just whether
the sweep was made incident to arrest (as Wilson erroneously led the
district court to believe), but rather whether the sweep was a
reasonably necessary, minimally intrusive means of securing an area
in which the officers needed to perform a task of compelling
importance.
The majority recites, then loses sight of, the well-established
maxim that “physical entry of the home is the chief evilagainst
which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed.” Payton v.
New York, 445 U.S. 573, 585 (1980). Because the majority thereby
gives insufficient respect to the constraints of the Fourth
Amendment, I respectfully dissent.
43
DeMoss, Circuit Judge, dissenting, joined by Stewart, Circuit Judge.
Because the majority opinion essentially creates another
exception to the constitutional requirement that nonconsensual
warrantless searches are unreasonable and this newly created
exception is overly broad and unnecessary, I respectfully dissent.
This case presents the difficult issues of: (1) whether the
protective sweep exception defined by the Supreme Court in Maryland
v. Buie, 494 U.S. 325 (1990), is limited to situations involving the
execution of an arrest warrant as we held in United States v.
Wilson, 36 F.3d 1298 (5th Cir. 1994); and if not (2) whether the
search in this case was reasonable. In addressing these two issues,
I think the majority makes three significant errors. First, the
majority’s starting point in its Fourth Amendment analysis
concerning a warrantless search of a home is faulty and therefore
the majority does not fully account for the lack of consent in this
case. Second, the majority’s reliance on the so-called “clearly”
legitimate “knock and talk” police investigatory tactic is misplaced
and therefore the majority’s holding leads to an end-run around the
Fourth Amendment’s protections. Third, the majority has
misconstrued the holding of the Supreme Court in Buie. I will
address these three errors in order.
I.
The Fourth Amendment provides:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons,
houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable
searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no
Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported
by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the
place to be searched, and the persons or things to be
seized.
U.S. Const. amend. IV. Further, “[i]t is a ‘basic principle of
Fourth Amendment law’ that searches and seizures inside a home
without a warrant are presumptively unreasonable.” Payton v. New
York, 445 U.S. 573, 586 (1980) (citing Coolidge v. New Hampshire,
403 U.S. 443, 477-78 (1971)). Additionally, the “physical entry of
the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth
Amendment is directed.” United States v. United States District
Court, 407 U.S. 297, 313 (1972). Accordingly, our law dictates that
unless some exception applies, the search at issue in this case, a
warrantless nonconsensual search of Kelly Gould’s bedroom in his
home, must be found unconstitutional.
The majority is correct that the Supreme Court has outlined a
“general reasonableness approach” that can be applied in Fourth
Amendment cases and which requires balancing the intrusion on the
protected interests against the promotion of legitimate governmental
interests. See, e.g., United States v. Knights, 534 U.S. 112, 118-
19 (2001). This reasonableness inquiry, however, is to be conducted
within the bedrock legal boundaries outlined above, i.e., a
nonconsensual warrantless search of a home is presumed unreasonable.
Id. at 121 (describing what the Fourth Amendment normally requires).
The inquiry conducted in Knights, that the majority purports to rely
on in this case, is in fact within these legal boundaries because
45
unlike in this case, the defendant in Knights was on probation and
as a term of his probation had consented in writing to unannounced
searches of his home. Id. at 114. The Supreme Court found the
“probation search condition” a “salient circumstance” and thus both
the intrusion on the defendant’s expectation of privacy was less and
the governmental interest was greater, i.e., heightened concerns due
to the fact that probationers are more likely to engage in criminal
conduct, making the search at issue in that case constitutional.
Id. at 118. Therefore, unlike in this case, where there is no
probation and no general consent agreement, the Supreme Court’s
reasonableness inquiry in Knights is well within established Fourth
Amendment jurisprudence.
Unfortunately, the majority opinion skips some significant
concerns in this case and does not address the established legal
principles I have already outlined. The majority’s inquiry starts
by giving too little credence to Gould’s privacy interest and the
intrusion of the officers coming into his house late in the evening
to look for him when they had no factual basis whatsoever for
assuming he would be agreeable to talking to them or that he was
even present. When a search is performed pursuant to consent, the
government has the burden of proving that the individual who gave
consent had the authority to do so and that the search was conducted
within the scope of that consent. United States v. Ibarra, 965 F.2d
1354, 1356 n.2 (5th Cir. 1992) (en banc). “The standard for
46
measuring the scope of a suspect’s consent under the Fourth
Amendment is that of ‘objective’ reasonableness--what would the
typical reasonable person have understood by the exchange between
the officer and the suspect?” Florida v. Jimeno, 500 U.S. 248, 251
(1991). The majority opinion emphasizes that the officers were
legitimately in the home. The record, however, is clear that the
officers did not have consent to enter Gould’s bedroom. Even
resolving all factual disputes and making all credibility
determinations in favor of the government, the testimony at the
suppression hearing indicated that Cabral thought Gould was either
in the backyard working out or in his (Gould’s) bedroom. As
officers went back to the bedroom they may have thought Gould was
possibly there but they testified that he did not appear to be
present and they understood that they never had consent to enter the
bedroom. The legitimacy of the officers’ presence, if legitimate
at all, ended at the threshold to the bedroom door.24 The majority
seems to wash over this concern by not fully addressing the issue
and instead references the very distinguishable Knights holding.
24
The majority indicates that the protective sweep allowed the officers to go into an area
that they did not have consent to enter, i.e., the bedroom. Consent is an issue concerning the
officers’ legitimacy to be on the premises and where this legitimacy begins and ends is a
significant issue which the majority discusses in a contradictory fashion. For instance, if the
officers had consent, they certainly exceeded the scope of the consent when they entered the
bedroom. On the other hand, if the protective sweep exception allows the officers to enter the
bedroom then the original consent validating their presence in the residence certainly did not
understand this to be within the scope of the consent and therefore the consent was invalid and
the officers’ presence was not legitimate in the first place. Under the majority’s view there is no
way to resolve the issues regarding consent.
47
This case, however, is different than Knights because here the
consent did not extend to the entire residence. If the majority
believes the search was based on consent then that should be the
holding, rather than creating an additional unnecessary and overly
broad exception to the warrant requirement.25 In summary, because
the majority starts from the wrong place, it ends in the wrong place
and hence its Fourth Amendment analysis is flawed.
II.
In satisfying its first requirement of this newly created
exception to the protections afforded by the Fourth Amendment, i.e.,
that the officers were legally present in the mobile home, the
majority relies on the “knock and talk” police investigatory tactic
mentioned in United States v. Jones, 239 F.3d 716, 720 (5th Cir.
2001). The majority refers to this practice as being “clearly . .
. recognized as legitimate.” The “knock and talk” tactic is hardly
well-established law.26 The Fifth Circuit case establishing the
25
Of course, such a holding would be contrary to the district court’s finding that Cabral did
not have authority to consent to the search of Gould’s bedroom and after all, it is Gould’s privacy
interest that is at stake in this case.
26
There are two aspects of Jones which make it a very weak decision upon which to posit
a new exception to the Fourth Amendment. First the gun in Jones was lying in plain view on a
kitchen table visible to the police officer standing outside the screen door of the entrance to the
apartment. Id. at 719. The district court in Jones found that this hand gun in plain view was an
“exigent circumstance,” justifying the officer’s entry into the apartment without a warrant. Id. at
720. No such circumstance exists here in Gould. Secondly, it is noteworthy that Jones has never
been discussed or cited by the Supreme Court. Several other circuits have cited Jones but only
the Sixth Circuit has really examined the Jones case and indicated some agreement with the Fifth
Circuit’s “knock and talk” concept. United States v. Carter, 315 F.3d 651, *4 n.6 (6th Cir. 2003)
(continued...)
48
concept of “knock and talk” merely states that “[t]his investigative
tactic is not inherently unreasonable.” Jones, 239 F.3d at 720.
Use of the “knock and talk” tactic may be reasonable in some
cases, e.g., police may follow-up on a lead and approach a citizen,
seeking the citizen’s cooperation. In this case, however, the
officers conducted an intrusive search of a bedroom with neither
consent, nor search warrant, nor arrest warrant, nor any exigent
circumstances. The majority has created an exception that permits
an officer to ask for permission to enter a home from a third party
who may have authority to consent to only part of the home but not
all of the home and then immediately contend that he, the officer,
is so apprehensive about his own safety that he must conduct a
protective sweep of areas where he has no consent to be, when the
officer had no obligation or duty to enter the home in the first
place. This new exception is really a “knock, enter, maybe talk,
and search” police investigatory tactic, all conducted without a
warrant, and resulting in an end-run around the protections afforded
by the Fourth Amendment.
In addition, the majority has not stated why their new
exception is necessary or why we should not find that the officers
created a situation that resulted in a Fourth Amendment violation
when they in fact had many other permissible ways to pursue their
26
(...continued)
(vacated for rehearing en banc). This Sixth Circuit opinion, however, has now been vacated
because the case was heard en banc, but there is presently no subsequent opinion available.
49
investigation, i.e., seeking a search warrant based on the
informant’s tip. The majority does address the issue of exigent
circumstances that can sometimes make a warrantless search
permissible. This search, however, as the majority agrees, is not
based on any exigency. In fact, as the district court noted the
officers “could have approached the defendant as he left his mobile
home one day, or they could have followed him and approached him in
any other public place without necessitating the entry into his
residence.” Just as there was no consent, there was no exigent
circumstance to support this search.
Recognizing that the officers cannot create the exigency, we
evaluate the reasonableness of the officers’ conduct not at the
point of the search but prior to the point when the encounter
escalates making a search necessary or a foregone conclusion.
United States v. Munoz-Guerra, 788 F.2d 295, 298 (5th Cir. 1986).
Therefore, in this case, the officers’ conduct is not evaluated at
the point when they are searching for Gould because according to the
government the officers are concerned that Gould might ambush them.
Instead the reasonableness of the conduct is evaluated at the point
in time when the officers call for Gould and he does not answer
because according to the officers’ testimony he does not appear to
be in his room. United States v. Gould, 326 F.3d 651, 652 (5th Cir.
2003). At that point in time, it is more reasonable to assume Gould
is either not present or if present does not wish to talk to the
50
officers, than that Gould is about to unleash some surprise attack
on the officers. Likewise, it is unreasonable for the officers,
under no duty to execute an arrest warrant and not having consent,
to go into Gould’s bedroom to seek him out. The officers had no
duty to persist, and in fact the officers had no authority to
persist, in their search for Gould.
Of course, the government does not argue that the officers were
searching for Gould wishing to talk to him because such a search is
not within the protective sweep exception. Rather the government
argues the officers were afraid Gould would attack them. This
argument is contrary to the undisputed facts in the record that
indicate Gould was at best avoiding the officers and at worst
unaware of the officers because he was in the backyard. And
although the officers knew of Gould’s violent past, there is nothing
in the record to establish that Gould would be waiting for the
officers in order to ambush them. Because the officers could not
obtain the cooperation of Gould or because Gould actually was not
present, the officers’ use of the “knock and talk” tactic, by
definition, was unsuccessful and therefore the officers should have
pursued their investigation by other means and not by an illegal
search.
The majority is worried that affirming the district court’s
decision to grant the motion to suppress will mean that law officers
cannot use the “knock and talk” tactic if they are apprehensive of
being ambushed. But voluntary engagement with law officers and not
51
an ambush situation is precisely what the “knock and talk” tactic
requires and to define the tactic as broadly as the majority has is
essentially to do away with the warrant requirement. In other
words, in some situations, such as this case, the “knock and talk”
tactic progressed as far as lawful when Gould was non-responsive or
not present. At that point, the officers should have pursued other
means to continue their investigation–-that is what the Fourth
Amendment requires. The majority’s opinion is an unreasonable
extension of the “knock and talk” tactic and does not fully account
for the well-established Fourth Amendment principle that a
warrantless nonconsensual search of a home is presumed unreasonable
and in this case there was no exigency and nothing necessitating the
intrusion into Gould’s bedroom.
III.
We decided to review en banc the Gould case to determine:
(1) whether the rule established in Wilson that a protective sweep
of a home was limited to an arrest situation, as defined by the
Supreme Court in Buie, was correct; and (2) if the protective sweep
exception to the search warrant requirement is not limited as Wilson
and Buie indicate, whether the warrantless search of Gould’s bedroom
was reasonable.
The majority characterizes the rule outlined in Wilson as a
“bright-line” rule; Wilson, however, directly follows the precise
language used by the Supreme Court in its definition of the
52
protective sweep exception in Buie. See Wilson, 36 F.3d at 1305-06.
The protective sweep exception as outlined in Buie requires the
following three elements. First, the officers must be executing an
arrest warrant in a suspect’s home. See generally Buie, 494 U.S.
325 (mentioning over 65 times the concept of arrest in a home when
defining a protective sweep). Second, the officers must perceive
some danger from another person or persons. Id. at 332-36
(indicating that not every in-home arrest will justify a protective
sweep and listing several factors that are used to validate the
reasonableness of the perceived danger, such as the nature of the
crime for which the arrest is being executed, the likely presence
of cohorts, and the time and place of arrest). Third, the search
may only be a quick and limited cursory inspection of those places
another person might be hiding. Id. at 335-36. Here, the majority
has ignored the first two elements and only addressed the third.27
Of course, there is good reason for the limited definition as
outlined in Buie and tracked by this Court in Wilson. Such a
27
The Supreme Court has never expanded the concept of the protective sweep from its
original limited definition in Buie. In fact, there are only three Supreme Court cases even citing
Buie, none of which include a discussion of the contours of the protective sweep. See Richards v.
Wisconsin, 520 U.S. 385, 394 (1997); United States v. James Daniel Good Real Property, 510
U.S. 43, 67 (1993); Horton v. California, 496 U.S. 128, 140 (1990). The only slightly relevant
citation occurred in Richards where the Supreme Court addressed the appropriate balance
between legitimate law enforcement concerns at issue in the execution of search warrants and
individual privacy interests affected by no-knock entries. 520 U.S. at 394. The Richards Court
cited Buie for its allowance of “a protective sweep of a house during an arrest where the officers
have ‘a reasonable belief based on specific and articulable facts that the area to be swept harbors
an individual posing a danger to those on the arrest scene.’” Id. (citing Buie, 494 U.S. at 337)
(emphasis added).
53
definition avoids the quagmire that the majority finds itself in
after rejecting the language in Buie and Wilson. The majority is
forced to fashion a new exception with alternative elements that are
vague; and as such the new exception swallows the rule that a
warrant is generally required for an in-home search. After
fashioning a new exception the majority is then forced to apply its
vague standards and determine if the search at issue here was
reasonable. Because the district court did not address the
reasonableness of the search, it would seem more appropriate to me
for this Court to remand the case for a more detailed inquiry into
the complicated and extremely fact specific issue of reasonableness.
See Buie, 494 U.S. at 337 (noting that remand was required to
determine if the protective sweep, although conducted in the context
of the execution of an arrest warrant, was based on a reasonably
perceived threat of danger from an additional person and was a
limited cursory inspection as defined by the Supreme Court). Remand
to address this complicated inquiry, however, would not be necessary
if the holding of Buie is followed.
First, the element that the officers must be executing an
arrest warrant in a home in order to conduct a protective sweep
cannot be so easily disposed of and an alternative substituted for
it. As the Buie court noted:
The risk of danger in the context of an arrest in the
home is as great as, if not greater than, it is in an on-
the-street or roadside investigatory encounter. . . . A
protective sweep . . . occurs as an adjunct to the
54
serious step of taking a person into custody for the
purpose of prosecuting him for a crime. Moreover, unlike
an encounter on the street or along a highway, an in-home
arrest puts the officer at the disadvantage of being on
his adversary’s “turf.”
494 U.S. at 333; see also Knowles v. Iowa, 525 U.S. 113, 117 (1998)
(finding that the danger to the officers “flows from the fact of the
arrest, and its attendant proximity, stress, and uncertainty”). In
place of this element the majority substitutes the following
element: the police presence in the home must be for a legitimate
law enforcement purpose. The majority’s element is an inadequate
substitution. There are many legitimate law enforcement purposes
that may permit officers to do something short of conducting a
warrantless search, e.g., enter a home for the purpose of talking
to the person who gave the officers consent and had authority to
consent to the entry. Such a legitimate purpose does not somehow
give the officer carte blanche to then search the house.28 In the
protective sweep situation, as defined by Buie, the officers must
have more than a legitimate purpose to be in the home, the officers
must have a compelling reason, i.e., be in the house under the
obligation to execute an arrest warrant. This requirement is, in
fact, the essence of the Buie holding and this requirement is a
limiting factor on the officers’ conduct that is missing from the
majority’s opinion.
28
See the discussion of the problems with the majority’s analysis of consent in section I of
this dissent.
55
Second, Buie is not about fear of the person to be arrested.
494 U.S. at 328 (noting that Buie was already arrested when the
protective sweep was conducted). Such a fear or concern for officer
safety is already sufficiently protected by allowing the officers
to actually execute the arrest warrant and search for the person
subject to the arrest if necessary. See, e.g., Chimel v.
California, 395 U.S. 752, 763 (1969) (addressing both the threat
posed by the arrestee and the scope of a search incident to an
arrest). Buie is about a reasonable, articulable suspicion “that
the area to be swept harbors an individual posing a danger to those
on the arrest scene.” Buie, 494 U.S. at 337. Here, there is no
such fear, and the majority opinion allows the officers to do
something they normally would need a warrant to do, search a
residence which they do not have consent to search and where the
resident is either not present or not interested in talking to them.
Again, the majority’s neglect of this requirement leads to an overly
broad new exception to the Fourth Amendment.
The majority opinion mentions two temporal limitations on the
protective sweep that were articulated in Buie. These limitations
are: that the protective sweep “last[] no longer than is necessary
to dispel the reasonable suspicion of danger and in any event no
longer than it takes to complete the arrest and depart the
premises.” Buie, 494 U.S. at 335-36. The majority, changing the
language of these limitations slightly, neglects the fact that these
56
limitations depend on the arrest and the officers search for someone
other than the arrestee and therefore apart from these requirements
the limitations are hollow and void of any objective criteria, i.e.,
the duration of the arrest, by which to evaluate the officers’
conduct. Under the majority’s view these limitations are
meaningless and this again points out the vagueness of the majority
holding in this case.
Finally, in my view this case should have never been prosecuted
in federal court. The original criminal conduct which precipitated
the arrest was strictly local in nature: one Louisiana resident
(Forehand) reported to the sheriff of one Louisiana parish (and not
to the FBI, the DEA, the ATF, or the U.S. Marshall Service) that
another Louisiana resident (Gould) had made oral threats to kill two
Louisiana judges (not federal judges) and some other Louisiana
residents (not residents of another state) apparently because of a
proceeding of some sort in a Louisiana court (not a federal court)
relating to a state law claim (not a federal question). If the
admonitions in United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995) and
United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598 (2000) about drawing a line
between local and national interests have any meaning at all, then
this criminal investigation would have undoubtedly fallen on the
local side of the line. All of the law enforcement actors in this
case were state officers.
Furthermore, I think it would be ridiculous to conclude that
57
the firearms found as a result of a warrantless search in Gould’s
closets in Gould’s bedroom in Gould’s trailer home in the woods of
rural Louisiana had any effect whatsoever, much less a substantial
effect, on interstate commerce as Lopez and Morrison require for a
federal prosecution. Lopez, 514 U.S. at 562-63; Morrison, 529 U.S.
at 608-09.
The events which precipitated this case occurred on October 17,
2000. The federal indictment in this case was not handed down until
August 9, 2001, more than 9 months later, which clearly indicates
that the federal indictment was an afterthought. To better
understand this anomaly and what actually happened during this
period, I have prepared from the record a factual chronology of the
events in this time frame which is attached as Exhibit A to this
dissent.
From the chronology in Exhibit A, I would suggest that the
following conclusions should be readily drawn:
A. The dismissal on March 5, 2001, of the state
solicitation for murder charge for “no probable
cause” pulls the rug out from under the government’s
assertion that Gould’s “threats to kill” were
sufficiently real and immediate to justify talking
with him even without any warrant; and
B. The decision of the state court on July 25, 2001, to
grant Gould’s motion to suppress pulls the rug out
from under the subsequent federal indictment based
on identical facts; and should have been disclosed
to the federal district court addressing the federal
suppression hearing. Had it been, the federal
district court might well have based its decision on
the alternate ground that the state had already
ruled the seizure of the firearms was
58
unconstitutional.
In summary, the Fourth Amendment is the keystone that holds up
the arch of our Bill of Rights which in turn is the unique
contribution of our founding fathers to our system of government
which has now survived longer than any other representative
government in the world. In his famous dissent in Olmstead v.
United States, Justice Brandeis called privacy-which he defined as:
”the right to be let alone”-“the most comprehensive of rights and
the right most valued by civilized men.” 277 U.S. 438, 478
(1928)(Brandeis, J., dissenting). Justice Brandeis argued that the
framers knew that Americans wanted protection from governmental
intrusion not only for their property, but also for their thoughts,
ideas and emotions. Take away the Fourth Amendment and the right
of privacy disappears.
The deputy sheriffs here in Gould made no attempt to develop
a sworn affidavit in writing from the purported informant,
Forehand,29 and they therefore made no attempt to get either a
search warrant or an arrest warrant from an independent third party
magistrate on the basis of probable cause. I have no doubt that the
29
After giving oral reports over the telephone to the deputy sheriffs about Gould and after
being present at Gould’s trailer house on the night of Gould’s arrest, Forehand disappears from
the investigation and processing of this trial. Forehand never gave a written statement to the
deputy sheriffs and did not testify for the government at the suppression hearing so the
government’s case as to the need for the police to interview Gould (i.e., Gould’s threats to kill
state judges) is based entirely on the hearsay testimony of the deputy sheriffs. There is nothing in
this record that demonstrates the reliability or credibility of Forehand as a previous informant of
the sheriff’s department.
59
deputy sheriffs believed that they were acting reasonably and with
good intentions. But the old adage warns us that “the road to hell
is paved with good intentions.” In my judgment, that is precisely
where the majority opinion wants to put us-by unhooking the
“protective sweep” from its connection with the execution of an
arrest warrant in a home, which is where the Supreme Court framed
the concept. In my view the gambit of getting permission to enter
a citizen’s home in order to talk to someone and then conducting a
protective sweep search under the guise of sensing danger to the
investigating officer will effectively eliminate the need for
complying with the Fourth Amendment and at that point we will all
be, literally and figuratively, on the road to hell.
Conclusion
The majority opinion creates a new exception to the Fourth
Amendment that is overly broad and unnecessary. The district
court’s granting of the motion to suppress in this case should be
affirmed. For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.
60
EXHIBIT A
CHRONOLOGY
1. On October 17, 2000, the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Officers
on the scene arrested Gould and charged him with the state
crime of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. See LA.
Rev. Stat. Ann. § 14:95.1 (West 2004), in Cause No. 15571, 21st
Judicial District Court, Livingston Parish.
2. On October 18, 2000, an arrest warrant was issued out of the
East Baton Rouge Parish charging Gould with Solicitation for
Murder. See LA. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 14:28.1 (West 2004).
3. Gould was in the custody of the East Baton Rouge Parish from
October 18, 2000, until March 5, 2001, when no probable cause
was found for the Solicitation for Murder charge.
4. On March 5, 2001, Gould was returned to the custody of the
Livingston Parish on the felon in possession charge.
5. On May 31, 2001, Gould filed a motion to suppress evidence
obtained without a warrant in Cause No. 15571 in the 21st
Judicial District Court of Louisiana. Gould’s motion was based
on his argument that all physical evidence and any statements
to be used against him were obtained without a search warrant
and without his consent. An evidentiary hearing was held on
Gould’s motion to suppress on July 25, 2001, at which one of
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the officers who arrested Gould on October 17, 2000, testified.
At the end of this hearing the state judge granted Gould’s
motion and bond was set and the case was continued until
September 19, 2001. No. 15571, Louisiana v. Kelly Gould.
6. Also on July 25, 2001, a federal criminal complaint was filed
in the United States District Court for the Middle District of
Louisiana charging Gould with being a felon in possession of a
firearm in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). The person who
swore out the affidavit was an agent of B.A.T.F. not one of the
deputy sheriffs that was present on October 17, 2000, at
Gould’s arrest. This affiant was apparently unaware of the
fact that the state complaint on the solicitation for murder
charge had been dismissed and the fact that the state felon in
possession charge had been put on hold after the granting of
Gould’s motion to suppress since he made no mention of those
proceedings.
7. Gould made his state bond on July 26, 2001, and was released
from state custody.
8. On August 9, 2001, Gould was indicted by a federal grand jury
on the federal gun charge.
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9. On August 17, 2001, there was a federal detention hearing and
following the hearing Gould was ordered detained on the federal
charges.
10. On September 19, 2001, the 21st Judicial District Court of
Louisiana continued the state case against Gould subject to
reassignment to another judge.
11. On December 19, 2001, the federal district court held a hearing
concerning Gould’s motion to suppress. At this hearing there
was testimony from the following local law officers: Detective
Jim Brown who was in charge of the case for the Livingston
Parish Sheriff’s Office testified; his partner the night of the
visit to Gould’s trailer, Officer Jason Ard testified; and
Lieutenant Carl Krester, who had been assigned the case from
the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office and was also present at
Gould’s trailer, testified for the government. Dennis Cabral
who worked with and lived with Gould and was present the night
of the search testified for the defense. The B.A.T.F. agent
who swore out the federal complaint on July 25, 2001, did not
testify. Likewise, Forehand did not testify.
12. On April 2, 2002, the federal district court granted Gould’s
federal motion to suppress.
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13. After granting the motion to suppress the federal district
court continued the trial date indefinitely pending the
government’s appeal of the granting of the motion to suppress.
14. Gould’s motion to be released on bond pending appeal was denied
on June 3, 2002, and according to the record Gould has remained
in federal custody.
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