Under Federal law it is not necessary to hold a hearing on motions to suppress evidence unless their is a factual dispute that can not be settled without a hearing. In U.S. v. D’Andrea the First Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a conviction and remanded the case to the trial court for the court’s denial of a motion to suppress without a hearing.

Kendra D’Andrea and Willie Jordan were charged with child abuse. D’Andrea accidentally sent photographs showing sexual abuse of her child to the mother of Jordan’s child in California instead of sending them to her boyfriend, Jordan. Apparently it was her practices to take sexually inappropriate pictures, post them on a limited access web page, and send them to Jordan.

When the mother of his child, identified as the “Tipster” in the appellate decision got the pictures she called the anonymous tip line run by the Massachusetts Department of Social Services (DSS). The Tipster helped DSS access the site and DSS agents provided copies of some of the pictures to the police. D’Andrea and Jordan were indicted and moved to suppress the evidence on Fourth Amendment grounds. The District Court denied the motion without a hearing.

The prosecutor put forth three reasons to justify the search. First, they claimed that since the Fourth Amendment only governs searches performed by governmental agents, the initial search by the Tipster was legal and nothing more was obtained by the Social Services search. ¹ Second, they claimed that exigent circumstances existed allowing the search. Third, they argued that the evidence would have been discovered whether or not DSS illegally searched the site and therefore the illegal search was immaterial.

The court found that there was insufficient evidence to support these theories and a hearing was necessary to determine if the Fourth Amendment was violated. As to the first claim it is necessary for the government to prove that the DSS search did not exceed the scope of the private scope. The record did not provide any evidence of whether or not the DSS search was more intrusive than the Tipster’s search. Therefore without an evidentiary hearing the private search doctrine does not justify the DSS search.

As to the second reason given by the government, exigent circumstances, their was no evidence of imminent danger to the child. There was no evidence that the abuse was continuing or that more would happen in the future.

As to the claim of inevitable discovery the appellate court also found insufficient evidence on the record to show that the government would have obtained the information without the illegal search. Therefore the court ordered the case remanded to the trial court for an evidentiary hearing on whether or not the search of the website was legal or whether, if it was not legal, the evidence would have been discovered in any case.

“SJ” a fifteen year old girl found nude pictures of herself on her guardian’s computer. She also found a hidden camera in the bathroom. She reported her findings to the police.

They performed a “knock and talk” at the residence of Jon R. Hughes. ¹

Prior to the “knock and talk” the police learned that Hughes’ mental state was very fragile and that he needed involuntary hospitalization. They did not plan to arrest him at the end of the “knock and search.” Instead they planned to get consent to search his computer and to hospitalize him.

Eventually he was arrested and raised search and Miranda issues before the Federal Court. The officers twice interview Hughes.The first time was during the “knock and search/” The court ruled that Miranda warnings were not necessary. Miranda warnings are only mandated when there is a interrogation and the person is effectively in custody. In this case the Court ruled that Hughes was not in custody. The interview occurred in his home. The police did not plan to arrest him and he was not arrested on that day. His mental state was poor. In fact he had an anxiety attack in the middle of the interview. But that standing alone does not show that the interview was involuntary.

Hughes claimed that his consent to search the computer was not voluntary due to his mental state. The court founhd that Hughes consent to search the computer or his lack thereof was immaterial. By the time the officers requested his consent he had already given them enough information to get a search warrant. Therefore under the theory of inevitable discovery his consent was immaterial.

Last year the Supreme Court held in Arizona v. Gant that law enforcement officials cannot search a vehicle, pursuant to a legal arrest when the suspect is out of the vehicle and is not within hand’s reach of the passenger compartment of the automobile.

Prior to the decision in Gant,Indianapolis police detained Dewayne Cartwright for driving a vehicle without a light illuminating the automobile license. He stopped his car in a grocery store parking lot but not in a legal spot. Cartwright was unable to produce a driver’s license and the police were unable to confirm the name he provided. They arrested him for driving without a license and providing a false name. After the arrest and following, then current, Seventh Circuit procedure, prior to Gant, the officers searched the car pursuant to a legal arrest. ¹ A gun was found in the back seat and Cartwright was charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. He plead guilty, preserving his right to appeal the search of the vehicle, and he was sentenced to 84 months in prison.

Of course under Gant the search would be illegal. But the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the search on inevitable discovery grounds. The Fourth Amendment does not ban all searches occurring without a search warrant. It states: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, . . . ” Thus it only prohibits “unreasonable” searches and seizures. As a result the courts have developed a number of exceptions to the warrant requirement. One of those exceptions allows for inventory searches of vehicles prior to their seizure. In order to protect the police from claims of theft of the contents of a vehicle, a city may develop procedures to permit the search and inventory of a vehicle prior to storing a towed vehicle. Indianapolis had a well developed written policy providing for inventory searches. It allowed a vehicle to be searched if the driver was driving without a license and no passenger in the car had a license and is capable of driving the car. Cartwright’s passenger, Ciera Golliday, did not have a license even though she owned the car.

Another approved exception to the warrant requirement is the eventual discovery rule. It provides that evidence is admissible at trial even if it was seized illegally.if law enforcement officers, using their normal procedures, would eventually discover the evidence legally. The Seventh Circuit upheld the search since even though the search was illegal as a search pursuant to an arrest under Gant the gun would have eventually been discovered when the car was inventoried.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the suppression of evidence seized from Michael Young’s hotel room at the Hilton Hotel in San Francisco. Young was a guest in room 13575 at the Hilton. Hilton staff accidentally gave him the key to room 13572. The guest in room 13572 claimed that his room was burglarized. The staff of the hotel assumed that Young was the thief even though there was some question as to whether the theft occurred prior to Young getting the wrong key.

Hotel security searched Young’s room while he was out. None of the items allegedly stolen from Room 13572 were found. But they did find a gun. It was against hotel rules to have guns on the property but Young had not been told the rule. They temporarily locked the room and when Young returned late that night they called the police. Officer Koniaris was outside the building and he responded. He spent 20 to 30 minutes talking to Young. Young told Koniaris that Young had a state prison record. Koniaris handcuffed Young to a bench in the security office. He called his sergeant who told him that he could not search Young’s room without a search warrant. Instead of getting a search warrant he watched while hotel security searched the room and showed him the gun. He then seized the gun and arrested Young.

The search of the room and the seizure of the gun was clearly illegal. Like a house, a search warrant is absolutely necessary to search a hotel room. There was some question about the Hilton’s policy in evicting guests. But it was not the policy to evict people found with guns. The guns were to be kept in a secure place. While it may have been the policy to evict people who committed crimes at the hotel, there is no evidence that he was evicted and while he had been temporarily locked out of the room his property was still in the room. There seems to be little question that at the time of the search Young still had a legitimate expection of privacy in the room.

The remaining question is whether the gun would been seized despite Koniaris’ illegal seizure of the weapon. The dissent by Judge Ikuta argues that the inevitable discovery exception to the exclusionary rule applies. However the inevitable discovery exception does not apply when the evidence could only have been seized legally if a search warrant had been obtained and the police did not get the search warrant. The purpose of the exclusionary rule is to act as a disincentive to police overreaching and the police should not be able to benefit from the failure to comply with the Fourth Amendment’s search warrant requirement. Therefore the majority upheld the District Court’s suppression of the gun found in Young’s room.