United States v. Baxter

951 F.3d 128

UNITED STATES of America, Appellant

v.Steven BAXTER

No. 18-3613

United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.

Argued December 11, 2019

Filed: February 21, 2020

John M. Pellettieri [ARGUED], United States Department of Justice, Appellate Section, Room 1264, 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC 20004, Everard E. Potter, Office of United States Attorney, 5500 Veterans Drive, United States Courthouse, Suite 260, St. Thomas, VI 00802, Counsel for Appellant

Joseph A. DiRuzzo, III [ARGUED], Daniel Lader, DiRuzzo & Company 401, East Las Olas Boulevard, Suite 1400, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301, Michael L. Sheesley, P.O. Box 307728, St. Thomas, VI 00803, Counsel for Appellee

Before: SMITH, Chief Judge, McKEE and SHWARTZ, Circuit Judges

OPINION OF THE COURT

SMITH, Chief Judge.

Steven Baxter allegedly mailed two packages from South Carolina to St. Thomas, United States Virgin Islands. Upon arrival in St. Thomas, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents opened the packages and discovered that they contained guns. Baxter was apprehended and charged with two counts of illegal transport of a firearm. During his criminal proceeding, he moved to suppress the guns as the fruit of unreasonable searches which violated his Fourth Amendment rights. The District Court of the Virgin Islands agreed and granted the motion to suppress. The Government has appealed.

For the reasons that follow, we conclude that CBP permissibly conducted the searches pursuant to the border-search exception to the Fourth Amendment. Because the searches did not violate Baxter’s constitutional rights, we will vacate the order granting the motion to suppress and remand for further proceedings.

I.

A.¹

On March 31, 2017, CBP K-9 Officer Joseph Lopez was working at the Cyril E. King Airport in St. Thomas with his trained and certified canine, Bo. Per his routine daily duties, Lopez brought Bo into a cargo plane to inspect mail that was incoming to the Virgin Islands (also, "the VI"). Bo alerted to a package, signaling in a manner indicating the presence of drugs. The package purportedly had been sent by Jason Price, whose address was in South Carolina, and had been mailed to a Mekelya Meade in St. Thomas. It was labeled priority mail and weighed 3 pounds 2.2 ounces.

Officer Lopez reported the package to CBP Officer Richard Kouns, who removed it from the plane. Officer Kouns opened the box and brought out a piece of clothing that smelled strongly of marijuana, although no drugs were found in the package. When Officer Kouns returned the item to the box, a magazine and round of ammunition fell to the floor. The officers inspected the package more thoroughly and discovered the unassembled parts of a gun.

A few days later, on April 3, 2017, a postal inspector contacted CBP regarding another package which bore the same names and addresses as the March 31 package.² Officers Lopez and Kouns responded to the call and procured the package. Because of the addresses and the weight of the package,³ Officer Kouns suspected it might contain another gun and decided to x-ray it. The x-ray revealed items that appeared to be a gun and ammunition. Officer Kouns then opened the package and discovered what were indeed a gun and ammunition.

The CBP officers contacted Homeland Security. Homeland Security Special Agent Alicia Blyden arranged a controlled delivery of the two packages. Authorities ultimately apprehended Steven Baxter as the alleged sender of the packages, and a grand jury charged him with two counts of illegal transport of a firearm under 18 U.S.C. § 922(a)(5).

B.

Baxter moved to suppress the guns, claiming that CBP’s warrantless searches of the two packages violated his Fourth Amendment rights.⁴ After a hearing, the District Court initially denied suppression with respect to the March 31, 2017 search and ordered additional briefing as to the April 3, 2017 search. Subsequently, on November 26, 2018, the District Court vacated its earlier partial denial and issued a detailed forty-two page opinion granting the suppression motion in its entirety. United States v. Baxter , No. 2017-24, 2018 WL 6173880 (D.V.I. Nov. 26, 2018).

In its opinion, the District Court observed that the packages sent from South Carolina to St. Thomas "never left United States territory." Id. at *8. The District Court posited that, under the Fourth Amendment, the packages "remain protected from a warrantless search unless ... they are transferred to a foreign territory."⁵ Id. at *7. The District Court acknowledged that, while the Virgin Islands is not a "foreign territory" or a "foreign country," id. at *7–*9, nonetheless "[a]rguably ..., some type of border—or an approximation of one—exists" between the mainland United States and the VI for certain customs purposes. Id. at *14. But it concluded that searches at that customs border for purposes of enforcing customs laws are less important "than the interest of the United States in enforcing its own Constitution."⁶ Id .

Our Court’s decision in United States v. Hyde , 37 F.3d 116 (3d Cir. 1994), established the applicability of the border-search exception to the Fourth Amendment at the customs border between the mainland United States and the Virgin Islands.⁷ Because the border-search exception permits the Government to conduct warrantless searches at the Virgin Islands customs border, the District Court had to distinguish Hyde . It did so by relying on the direction that the packages were traveling—i.e. , from the mainland to the Virgin Islands—not from the Virgin Islands to the mainland, as was the case in Hyde .

According to the District Court, 19 U.S.C. § 1467⁸ authorizes customs inspections of persons and items upon entry into the United States, but "[t]he Court is aware of no statutory authority authorizing similar inspections of persons or items entering the United States Virgin Islands from the United States mainland." Baxter , 2018 WL 6173880, at *15. In addition, the District Court weighed the interests at play and concluded that the balance is different than that struck in Hyde . The District Court weighed the Government’s interest in conducting the searches for customs enforcement purposes against individuals’ personal privacy interest in mailed packages and determined "that the government’s interest in conducting the type of search at issue here is less compelling than the government’s interest in conducting the searches at issue in Hyde . In addition, the intrusion on privacy here is more significant than the intrusion presented in Hyde. " Id. at *14 n.7. Thus, it concluded that, when traveling into the Virgin Islands, the personal interest prevails, and "the warrantless searches of the sealed mail packages in this matter were not reasonable." Id .

The District Court reiterated, "[i]t is axiomatic that those things that originate in, and stay within, the territory of the United States remain free from border searches." Id. at *15. Accordingly, the District Court granted Baxter’s motion to suppress the firearms.

II.

A.

The Government timely appealed. We have jurisdiction over the Government’s appeal of the order suppressing evidence pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3731. We review the District Court’s legal conclusions de novo . See Hyde , 37 F.3d at 118.

B.

Because we disagree with the District Court’s conclusion that Hyde is inapposite, we begin by turning our attention to that case. In Hyde , three individuals were attempting to board a flight from St. Thomas to Miami, Florida. After the individuals were stopped by Customs, inspectors conducted pat-downs and discovered cocaine taped to their bodies under their clothes. The defendants moved to suppress the cocaine as the fruit of unconstitutional searches. The District Court granted the suppression motions. On appeal, the Government argued that the warrantless searches were constitutional under the border-search exception to the Fourth Amendment. We agreed, concluding that an individual "may be subjected to a routine customs search prior to departure in the absence of any degree of suspicion that the individual is engaged in wrongdoing." 37 F.3d at 118.

We first acknowledged the general rule that "warrantless searches are presumptively unreasonable." Id. (quoting Horton v. California , 496 U.S. 128, 133, 110 S.Ct. 2301, 110 L.Ed.2d 112 (1990) ). But we also pointed out that searches at a border are, and always have been, a fundamentally different category of search. Border searches are one of those "limited situations [in which] the government’s interest in conducting a search without a warrant outweighs the individual’s privacy interest." Id. As such, "searches at a border, without probable cause and without a warrant, are nonetheless ‘reasonable.’ " Id. at 118. Indeed, we reasoned that going back to our country’s founding, the very first Congress—the same Congress that proposed the Bill of Rights—specifically authorized warrantless border searches for the purpose of collecting customs duties, and "did not intend such searches to come within the prohibitions of the Fourth Amendment." Id. at 119.

We observed in Hyde that the Supreme Court has recognized, explained, and reaffirmed the border-search exception in several cases. See id. at 119–20 (citing cases). Historically, the Government’s broad power to conduct border searches has been necessary to prevent smuggling and to prevent prohibited articles from entering the country. See United States v. 12 200-Ft. Reels of Super 8MM Film , 413 U.S. 123, 125, 93 S.Ct. 2665, 37 L.Ed.2d 500 (1973). Border-search jurisprudence demonstrates that the Supreme Court has "faithfully adhered to" the view that "border searches were not subject to the warrant provisions of the Fourth Amendment and were ‘reasonable’ within the meaning of that Amendment." United States v. Ramsey , 431 U.S. 606, 617, 97 S.Ct. 1972, 52 L.Ed.2d 617 (1977). The border-search exception is grounded in the sovereign’s right to control "who and what may enter the country," and for...