United States v. Williams

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION
File Name: 08a0183n.06
Filed: April 4, 2008
No. 06-4134
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, )
) ON APPEAL FROM THE
Plaintiff-Appellee, ) UNITED STATES DISTRICT
) COURT FOR THE NORTHERN
v. ) DISTRICT OF OHIO
)
GLENN WILLIAMS, )
)
Defendant-Appellant. )
__________________________________________
BEFORE: MARTIN, GIBBONS, and GRIFFIN, Circuit Judges.
GRIFFIN, Circuit Judge.
Defendant Glenn Williams appeals from his convictions for possession of a controlled
substance with intent to distribute, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841, and being a felon in possession
of a firearm, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). He argues that the district court erred in denying
his motion to suppress evidence obtained during an August 17, 2005, search of his home by a SWAT
team of Canton, Ohio, police officers. Specifically, Williams contends that suppression was required
because the search warrant was not supported by probable cause, the SWAT team used a no-knock
entry without permission by the warrant-issuing magistrate, and because statements he made during
his arrest were elicited in violation of Miranda. Finding each of these arguments to lack merit, we
affirm Williams’s convictions.
No. 06-4134
United States v. Williams
I.
In 2005, Detective James Daniel, assigned to the Canton Police Department’s vice unit and
responsible for investigating drug complaints and undercover operations of drug purchases, received
“[t]wo or three” complaints of illegal drug activity occurring at 1539 Bryan Avenue in Canton, Ohio.
Daniel followed these complaints by speaking with a confidential informant (“CI”), who told him
that the resident of the Bryan Avenue home sold crack cocaine from the house. The CI provided
reliable information to a different detective during prior unrelated investigations.
Daniel began surveillance on Bryan Avenue on July 22, 2005, watching the house on ten
separate dates. During this period, Daniel observed “people stopping basically for short times, many
short trips to the residence,” which was consistent with his past observations of other houses used
to sell crack cocaine. Daniel then used the CI to conduct three controlled purchases of crack cocaine
at the Bryan Avenue house. The informant identified Williams as the seller. A search of Williams’s
criminal history revealed that Williams had been convicted of aggravated robbery in 1997 and later
charged, though not prosecuted, for felonious assault and discharging a weapon into a home or
school.
Based on this information, Daniel requested a search warrant for the Bryan Avenue house.
Because of Williams’s criminal history, and because Daniel’s experience had informed him that
people who sell crack cocaine often carry firearms and present a danger to police officers, Daniel
sought a no-knock warrant. The affidavit stated that Daniel performed surveillance and assisted in
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the controlled buys from July 22, 2004, until August 16, 2004. The Canton Municipal Court granted
Daniel’s request for the warrant.
A SWAT team of Canton police officers executed the search warrant on the Bryan Avenue
house on August 17, 2005. The officers did not knock and announce their presence before entering.
They found defendant Williams asleep on a couch in the front room of the house. After the officers
handcuffed Williams and seated him upright on the couch, Detective Ryan Davis noticed Williams
reach repeatedly for a ceramic plate that was visible underneath the front of the couch. Because in
Davis’s experience such plates are often used for cutting crack cocaine and therefore tend to have
razor blades on them, he instructed the police officers to remove Williams from the couch. As they
were doing so, Davis asked Williams whether there were any weapons in the house. Williams
replied that a weapon was upstairs; a subsequent search of the upstairs revealed Williams’s response
to be false. As the officers continued to move Williams away from the couch, Williams then stated
that a firearm “was actually underneath the couch.” This turned out to be true.
On September 28, 2005, Williams was charged in a two-count indictment in the United States
District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, alleging one count of possessing with the intent to
distribute a controlled substance, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1), and one count of being a
felon in possession of a firearm, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g). Williams then filed a pretrial
motion to suppress evidence obtained during the August 17 search of his home, contending that the
search was not supported by probable cause, that the police improperly failed to knock and announce
their presence, and that his statement concerning the location of the gun was taken in violation of
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Miranda. After the district court denied Williams’s motion, Williams entered into a plea agreement
wherein he preserved his right to appeal the court’s denial of his motion to suppress. The district
court entered judgment against Williams and sentenced him to a term of 120 months of
imprisonment on each count, to be served concurrently. Williams now appeals.
II.
Williams first argues that any evidence obtained as a result of the search of his home should
have been suppressed because the search was not supported by probable cause. On review of the
sufficiency of the affidavit, the question “‘is whether the magistrate had a substantial basis for
finding that the affidavit established probable cause to believe that the evidence would be found at
the place cited.’” United States v. Greene, 250 F.3d 471, 478 (6th Cir. 2001) (quoting United States
v. Davidson, 936 F.2d 856, 859 (6th Cir. 1991)). “Probable cause exists when there is a ‘fair
probability,’ given the totality of the circumstances, that contraband or evidence of a crime will be
found in a particular place.” Greene, 250 F.3d at 479 (internal quotation omitted). We give the
probable cause determination of the warrant-signing magistrate “great deference,” as its findings
“should not be set aside unless arbitrarily exercised.” United States v. Weaver, 99 F.3d 1372, 1376
(6th Cir. 1998) (internal quotation omitted). Furthermore, we conduct our review of the
magistrate’s determination in a “commonsense, rather than hypertechnical manner,” Greene, 250
F.3d at 479, and judge the sufficiency of the affidavit on the totality of the circumstances, rather than
engaging in line-by-line scrutiny. United States v. Woosley, 361 F.3d 924, 926 (6th Cir. 2004).
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Williams’s probable cause challenge is predicated on the dates listed in the affidavit that
identified when Detective Daniel conducted surveillance of Williams’s residence and executed
controlled purchase buys through the CI. The affidavit stated that the surveillance operations and
controlled purchases occurred in July and August of 2004, one year before the execution of the
search warrant. Thus, according to Williams, the evidence supporting Daniel’s request for a warrant
was stale.
When apprised of the discrepancy between dates, Daniel testified that it was the result of a
“clerical error,” and that the investigation occurred in 2005 rather than 2004. The district court
accepted Daniel’s explanation:
The issue that has been raised by counsel as to the discrepancy in the date, the court
is convinced after hearing the testimony, that any discrepancy in the date, primarily
the discrepancy that relates to whether or not the events in question, the observations,
the controlled buys, occurred in 2004 as opposed to 2005. I believe that matter has
been adequately addressed through the testimony, it is clearly a scribner’s [sic] error
and has no direct bearing on the validity on the search warrant.
We review the district court’s finding for clear error, see United States v. Miggins, 302 F.3d 384, 397
(6th Cir. 2002), and Williams has not offered any evidence to contradict the court’s finding on this
issue.
Williams offers no other challenge to the magistrate’s probable cause determination, with
good reason. The affidavit was supported by a statement from a reliable CI that defendant was
selling crack cocaine from his house on Bryan Avenue, by Daniel’s detailed surveillance of the house
in which he observed repeated vehicle and foot traffic consistent with the sale of crack cocaine, and
by three controlled purchases conducted by the CI and supervised by Daniel. This provided more
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than a sufficient basis for the magistrate to conclude that a “fair probability” existed that drug
contraband would be found at the Bryan Avenue house. Thus, Williams’s probable cause challenge
to the warrant is without merit.1
III.
Williams next argues that the district court should have suppressed the evidence seized
during the search of his home because the SWAT team entered Williams’s house without first
knocking and announcing its presence. The government responds that, even assuming the SWAT
team did commit a knock-and-announce violation, Williams’s argument is foreclosed by Hudson v.
Michigan, 547 U.S. 586 (2006).
The government is correct. In Hudson, Detroit police officers forcibly entered the
defendant’s home after waiting only three to five seconds after knocking and announcing their
presence. Id. at 588. This, conceded the government on appeal, was a knock-and-announce
violation. Id. at 590. Despite the police’s error, the Supreme Court held that the exclusionary rule
did not apply because the officers inevitably would have discovered the evidence upon the execution
of the valid search warrant they had obtained. Id. at 593-94. Rather than suppression of the
1
Even assuming that the affidavit lacked probable cause, there is no evidence indicating that
Detective Daniel and the SWAT team executed the search warrant in bad faith or without reasonable
grounds to believe that the warrant was properly issued, such that the Leon good faith exception
would not apply. See United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 925 (1984) (providing for good-faith
exception to warrant requirement); United States v. Rice, 478 F.3d 704, 711-12 (6th Cir. 2007)
(explaining that Leon exception is inapplicable where officer’s reliance on warrant’s validity was
not objectively reasonable).
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evidence, the Court held that the proper remedy for a failure to knock and announce is a civil action
brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Id. at 597-98.
Because suppression is not an available remedy for Williams’s knock and announce claim,
we need not consider whether the SWAT team was required to announce its presence and therefore
deny Williams’s claim.
IV.
Finally, Williams argues that the district court should have suppressed his statement made
concerning the location of a firearm in his house. The government contends that the statement is
admissible under the public safety exception to Miranda. We agree.
We explained recently the public safety exception in the following manner:
Under the familiar rule of Miranda v. Arizona, “the prosecution may not use
statements, whether exculpatory or inculpatory, stemming from custodial
interrogation of the defendant unless it demonstrates the use of procedural safeguards
effective to secure the privilege against self-incrimination.” 384 U.S. 436, 444
(1966). However, when officers ask “questions necessary to secure their own safety
or the safety of the public” as opposed to “questions designed solely to elicit
testimonial evidence from a suspect,” they do not need to provide the warnings
required by Miranda. New York v. Quarles, 467 U.S. 649, 659 (1984).
United States v. Williams, 483 F.3d 425, 428 (6th Cir. 2007). This exception applies “when officers
have a reasonable belief based on articulable facts that they are in danger.” Id. (quoting United
States v. Talley, 275 F.3d 560, 563 (6th Cir. 2001)).
In Williams, we set forth the standard the government must satisfy in order for custodial
statements, made prior to the issuance of any Miranda warnings, to be admissible under the Quarles
public safety exception. “For an officer to have a reasonable belief that he is in danger,” and thus
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for the exception to apply, “he must have reason to believe (1) that the defendant might have (or
recently have had) a weapon, and (2) that someone other than police might gain access to that
weapon and inflict harm with it.” Id. at 428. We explained further that the public safety exception
applies “if and only if” each of these two conditions is met. Id. We conclude that the government
has met its burden to satisfy the two requirements.
First, the police officers plainly had a reasonable belief that Williams might possess a
weapon. Williams had a criminal history that suggested not only that he possessed weapons, but also
that he was willing to use force, as evidenced by his aggravated robbery conviction and his arrest for
discharging a weapon into a home or school. Moreover, Williams was a suspected dealer of crack
cocaine and, as Detective Daniel testified at the motion to suppress hearing, in Daniel’s experience
“the majority of people who traffic, especially in cocaine, own a gun or have a gun . . . at their
ready.” We have often recognized the propensity of drug traffickers to carry firearms. See United
States v. Till, 434 F.3d 880, 884 (6th Cir. 2006) (affirming district court’s evidentiary ruling that
drugs found in possession of the defendant constituted relevant evidence “because of the propensity
of people involved with drugs to carry weapons”); United States v. Swafford, 385 F.3d 1026, 1030
(6th Cir. 2004) (holding admissible police officer’s testimony that firearms are commonly used in
drug trafficking); see also United States v. Estrada, 430 F.3d 606, 613 (2d Cir. 2005) (“We have
often recognized that firearms are tools of the drug trade that are commonly kept on the premises of
major narcotics dealers.”). Under these circumstances, it was reasonable for Detective Davis to
believe that Williams might have a weapon at the time of the arrest.
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It was also reasonable for Davis to believe that someone other than the police might gain
access to a weapon and inflict harm with it. Williams argues that because he was not questioned by
Davis until after he was placed in handcuffs, he was no longer a threat to grab any potential weapon.
The Quarles public safety exception, however, has long permitted questions posed to a defendant
in handcuffs.
Most notably, in Quarles itself, the defendant was chased and placed in handcuffs before the
arresting officer noticed that the defendant was wearing an empty holster. Quarles, 467 U.S. at 652.
When the officer asked the defendant where the gun was, the defendant nodded in the direction of
empty cartons and responded that the “gun is over there.” Id. The officer found a loaded .38-caliber
revolver in the direction pointed to by the defendant. Id. In recognizing the public safety exception
to Miranda, the Court held that the defendant’s statement and the gun were admissible. Id. at 659-
60.
Similarly, our sister circuits in interpreting Quarles have held that the public safety exception
applies to inquiries made when the defendant is handcuffed. See, e.g., United States v. Lackey, 334
F.3d 1224, 1228 (10th Cir. 2003); United States v. Edwards, 885 F.2d 377, 384 n.4 (7th Cir. 1989);
see also Estrada, 430 F.3d at 613 (holding that public safety exception applied when police asked,
while handcuffing the defendant, whether any guns were present). But see United States v.
Brathwaite, 458 F.3d 376, 382 n.8 (5th Cir. 2006) (finding public safety exception inapplicable
where the defendants were handcuffed outside of their house and police officers asked whether any
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guns were “in the house”). Thus, the fact that Williams was handcuffed at the time of his statement
does not foreclose the application of the Quarles exception.
Here, when Davis encountered defendant, he observed Williams reaching towards a ceramic
plate underneath the couch, which Davis feared had razor blades on it. As a response to Williams’s
movement, Davis instructed other police officers to move Williams away from the couch. It was at
this time that Davis asked Williams, for “safety reasons,” whether there were any weapons involved
in order “to make sure there [were] no weapons in [a nearby chair or couch] before we move a
suspect to it.” It is evident from this context that Davis’s question was not posed as an investigatory
interrogation, but rather as an attempt to prevent Williams from gaining access to a dangerous
weapon. Accordingly, we hold that the district court did not err in denying Williams’s motion to
suppress his statement and evidence of the officer’s discovery of the firearm underneath the couch.
V.
For these reasons, we affirm the denial of Williams’s motion to suppress and his resulting
convictions.
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