United States v. Alfonso Villa Guillen

FILED
NOT FOR PUBLICATION
AUG 09 2016
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, No. 15-50286
Plaintiff - Appellee, D.C. No.
2:13-cr-00608-JAK-25
v.
ALFONSO GERARDO VILLA MEMORANDUM*
GUILLEN,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Central District of California
John A. Kronstadt, District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted July 7, 2016
Pasadena, California
Before: VANASKIE,** MURGUIA, and WATFORD, Circuit Judges.
1. The district court correctly concluded that officers lacked sufficient
justification for the warrantless protective sweep of Alfonso Gerardo Villa
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
** The Honorable Thomas I. Vanaskie, United States Circuit Judge for
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, sitting by designation.
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Guillen’s apartment. The government asserts that Guillen’s suspected involvement
in a large drug-trafficking organization and his refusal to reveal whether anyone
was in the apartment gave officers cause to fear for their safety and to believe
evidence would be imminently destroyed. But there was no evidence to suggest
that anyone other than Guillen was in the apartment at the time. See United States
v. Suarez, 902 F.2d 1466, 1468 (9th Cir. 1990). Therefore, even if officers did
have probable cause to believe there was evidence of a crime inside the residence,
there was no reasonable basis for believing that exigent circumstances existed. See
id. at 1467–68.
2. The district court did not err in denying Guillen’s motion to suppress
evidence obtained by the search conducted pursuant to a warrant. Even after
striking the information obtained during the improper protective sweep, see United
States v. Barajas-Avalos, 377 F.3d 1040, 1054, 1058 (9th Cir. 2004), the warrant
affidavit provided a sufficient factual basis to establish probable cause.
The warrant affidavit detailed a longstanding investigation that had already
established the South Gate truck yard as a base of operations for the Castro drug-
trafficking organization. The affidavit also recounted that on October 16, 2012,
officers: intercepted phone calls discussing an upcoming drug transaction;
observed Dolores Gallegos arriving at the South Gate truck yard in accordance
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with the timeline set out in the phone calls; and saw items being loaded into the
back of Gallegos’s truck in circumstances similar to those that had previously led
to the seizure of over 1,500 pounds of methamphetamine. The officers followed
Gallegos to an apartment in Anaheim, where she parked her truck in a garage.
These facts established probable cause to believe that Gallegos may have
transported drugs to the Anaheim apartment.
The next day, officers observed Guillen arrive at the Anaheim apartment and
pull his truck into Gallegos’s garage, just after an unknown male moved Gallegos’s
truck from the garage. Officers observed Guillen walking with Gallegos outside
the Anaheim apartment. The officers then followed Guillen as he drove to his
apartment in Ontario.
We need not decide whether these observations of Guillen, without more,
would have been sufficient to establish probable cause to search his Ontario
apartment. Shortly after Guillen left his apartment (which he had entered for only
seconds), the officers stopped Guillen and told him that they were conducting a
narcotics investigation and were in the process of obtaining a search warrant for his
home and vehicle. Guillen responded by asking the officers how much time he
was looking at, and he advised the officers that they would “find a lot of stuff” in
his apartment. These statements, in conjunction with the officers’ previous
Page 4 of 4
observations, established a fair probability that contraband would be found inside
Guillen’s home and vehicle. See Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 238–39 (1983).
The statements may be used to determine whether probable cause existed even if
Guillen should first have been administered Miranda warnings. See United States
v. Patterson, 812 F.2d 1188, 1193 (9th Cir. 1987).
3. Since the search conducted pursuant to a warrant of Guillen’s Ontario
apartment was valid, the arrest warrant and criminal complaint were supported by
probable cause. Therefore, Guillen’s post-arrest statements were not fruit of the
poisonous tree and the district court properly refused to suppress them.
AFFIRMED.
Appellant’s September 21, 2015, Motion to File Physical Exhibits Under
Seal is GRANTED.