United States v. Lebron

1

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff, v. SAMUEL LEBRON, Defendant.

No. 3:23-cr-00056-SLG-MMS

United States District Court, D. Alaska

September 13, 2024

ORDER RE MOTION TO SUPPRESS

SHARON L. GLEASON, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

Before the Court at Docket 35 is Defendant Samuel Lebron's Motion to Suppress. Defendant also moved for an evidentiary hearing at Docket 37. The Government responded in opposition at Docket 36. The motion was referred to Chief Magistrate Judge Matthew Scoble, who issued a Report and Recommendation which denied Mr. Lebron's motion for an evidentiary hearing and recommended denying Mr. Lebron's motion to suppress as to evidence seized after a search of his residence.^[1]Mr. Lebron objected to the Report and Recommendation at Docket 43; the Government replied to Mr Lebron's objections at Docket 45. The Court held oral argument on the motion to suppress on May 15, 2024, after which the parties submitted supplemental briefing.^[2]After a status conference on August 8 2024, the parties submitted additional supplemental briefing.^[3]

The matter is now before this Court pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1). That statute provides that a district court “may accept, reject, or modify, in whole or in part, the findings or recommendations made by the magistrate judge.”^[4]A court is to “make a de novo determination of those portions of the magistrate judge's report or specified proposed findings or recommendations to which objection is made.”^[5]But as to those topics on which no objections are filed, “[n]either the Constitution nor [28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)] requires a district judge to review, de novo, findings and recommendations that the parties themselves accept as correct.”^[6]However, even if no party objects to a final report and recommendation, “a district court's authority to review a magistrate judge's [findings and recommendations] is not conditioned on a party's making an objection” and “nothing in [28 U.S.C. § 636] precludes the district court from reviewing other finding or recommendations de novo if it chooses to do so.”^[7]The Court accepts in part and rejects in part the Report and Recommendation as explained below.

BACKGROUND

In February 2023, Mr. Lebron was on probation for a state conviction for misconduct involving a controlled substance.^[8]One of his probationary conditions was that he “shall submit to a search of their person, personal property, residence, vehicle or any vehicle over with [sic] they have control, for the presence of illicit drugs or drug paraphernalia.”^[9]Mr. Lebron was also on pretrial release for a pending charge of domestic violence.^[10]

On February 23, 2023, Probation Officers (“PO”) Hutchings and Farrar attempted a probation compliance check on Mr. Lebron at his residence after receiving a call about potential weapons and drugs on the premises.^[11]The next day, PO Hutchings and PO Farrar went to Mr. Lebron's residence for a compliance check home visit where they met Pretrial Enforcement Division (“PED”) Officers White and Brandt.^[12]The PED Officers were trying to verify the location of Mr. Lebron's third-party custodian because they had received information that the third-party custodian was not properly supervising Mr. Lebron.^[13]

The officers shortly realized that Mr. Lebron was not on the premises because he was reporting to the PED office across town.^[14]PO Hutchings asked the PED officers to “act under [his] authority to conduct a probation take home check from [Mr. Lebron's] current location [at the PED office] back to his listed residence.”^[15]PED Officers White and Brandt went to the PED office and detained, handcuffed, and searched Mr. Lebron.^[16]They found “some large pill capsules with a whiteish powder inside,” which Mr. Lebron represented were medication for blood pressure and Tylenol.^[17]The PED officers transported Mr. Lebron back to his residence, where PO Farrar informed Mr. Lebron that probation was conducting a check of his residence for drugs pursuant to Mr. Lebron's purported “warrantless search condition[]”^[18]Mr. Lebron provided the officers with a code to open the front door, which did not work.^[19]He then provided the officers with a key.^[20]

Upon searching a bedroom in the residence, PO Hutchings and PED Officer White found “a white crystalline substance . . . folded into a piece of currency,” which PO Hutchings believed to be methamphetamine.^[21]PO Hutchings decided to continue the search “because that amount would not constitute a new charge.”^[22]PED Officer White searched a suitcase in a closet; in the suitcase, PED Officer White found a gun and Crown Royal bag that contained small blue pills that PO Hutchings believed to be fentanyl.^[23]PO Farrar stopped the search, contacted local law enforcement, and told Mr. Lebron that he was under arrest for a probation violation.^[24]PO Farrar also read Mr. Lebron his rights pursuant to Miranda v. Arizona .^[25]Mr. Lebron was transported to jail.^[26]

LEGAL STANDARD

“The touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is reasonableness. The Fourth Amendment does not proscribe all state-initiated searches and seizures; it merely proscribes those which are unreasonable.”^[27]“A seizure conducted without a warrant is ‘per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment-subject only to a few specifically established and well delineated exceptions.'”^[28]“The government bears the burden of proving that a warrantless search or seizure falls within an exception to the warrant requirement.”^[29]

DISCUSSION

I. Search and Arrest of Mr. Lebron by Pretrial Enforcement Officers

Mr. Lebron challenges his detention and the search of his person and seizure of his property by the PED officers at the PED office as unconstitutional under Terry v. Ohio and its progeny.^[30]In his view, the PED officers lacked reasonable suspicion to detain and search him because the anonymous tips were uncorroborated and contained “little predictive information,” and there was “no reliable evidence that [Mr. Lebron] posed any kind of risk when detained at the PED office.”^[31]Mr. Lebron also challenges his arrest by the PED officers at the PED office.^[32]He maintains that his arrest was not supported by probable cause and, even if the probation officers had directed the PED officers to arrest Mr. Lebron, his arrest was unlawful because the probation officers themselves lacked a legal basis under state law to arrest Mr. Lebron without cause.^[33]

In response, the Government maintains that Terry is inapplicable and that, “[i]n any event, the search of [Mr. Lebron] by PED officers is not at issue, as it did not yield any evidence that will be offered at trial . . . .”^[34]In supplemental briefing, the Government contends that “[t]he PED officers had probable cause to believe that Lebron had violated his release conditions, which incorporated his probation conditions,” and “that he had been in unlawful contact with the victim, which was another volition [sic].”^[35]For support, the Government points to an attached exhibit purportedly showing that Mr. Lebron's pretrial release conditions were the same as his probationary conditions.^[36]However, the Government does not point the Court to a specific page of the ten-page exhibit and the exhibit-which is a copy of Mr. Lebron's “offender history”-does not sufficiently demonstrate Mr. Lebron's conditions of pretrial release. Therefore, the Government fails to meet its burden to show that the PED officers had the legal authority to detain, search, and arrest Mr. Lebron or to seize his property at the PED office.^[37]

Because the Government fails to establish that the warrantless search and arrest of Mr. Lebron by the PED officers complied with the Fourth Amendment, any evidence obtained by the PED officers during their search of Mr. Lebron at the PED office must be suppressed.^[38]

II. Search of Mr. Lebron's Residence

Mr. Lebron maintains that because the search and arrest at the PED office were unconstitutional, any evidence discovered at his residence is derivative of the illegal arrest and therefore should be suppressed as fruit of the poisonous tree.^[39]“[Probation officers were only able to enter and search Mr. Lebron's trailer,” he contends, because they had illegally arrested him and seized his house key.^[40]The Government responds that the search of Mr. Lebron's residence “was authorized by the probation terms and could have been conducted with or without his presence.”^[41]

“[T]he exclusionary rule encompasses both the ‘primary evidence obtained as a direct result of an illegal search or seizure' and, relevant here, ‘evidence later discovered and found to be derivative of an illegality,' the so-called ‘fruit of the poisonous tree.'”^[42]“The exclusionary rule requires a causal connection between the illegal conduct and the evidence sought to be suppressed.”^[43]“There are three exceptions to the exclusionary rule that implicate the causal relationship between the illegal act and discovery of the evidence: 1) the independent source doctrine; 2) the inevitable discovery doctrine; and 3) the attenuation doctrine.”^[44]“[T]he inevitable discovery doctrine allows for the admission of evidence that would have been discovered even without the unconstitutional source.”^[45]For the inevitable discovery exception to apply, the prosecution must “establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the information ultimately or inevitably would have been discovered by lawful means.”^[46] In Mr. Lebron's view, the inevitable discovery doctrine does not apply because the POs gained entry to Mr. Lebron's residence by using a key that was discovered during the unlawful search of Mr. Lebron at the PED office and because the probation search for drugs in the residence itself violated the Fourth...