United States v. Mercedes-Abreu

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, v. EDUARD MERCEDES-ABREU, RAQUEL RODRIGUEZ, Defendants.

Crim. No. 18-0006 (ADC)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO

February 28, 2020

OPINION & ORDER

Before the Court is defendant Eduard Mercedes-Abreu's ("Mercedes") Motion to Suppress, which is joined by Mercedes' wife and co-defendant, Raquel Rodríguez ("Rodríguez," collectively, "defendants"). ECF Nos. 61, 62, 75. The government opposed the motion to suppress. ECF No. 64. The Court conducted an evidentiary hearing on the matter during which Puerto Rico Police Department ("PRPD") Homicide Division Agent Pedro Medina-Negrón ("Agent Medina") and PRPD K-9 Handler, Agent Rodney Enrique Ortíz ("Agent Ortíz") testified. ECF No. 68. For the following reasons, the Court hereby GRANTS the motion to suppress. ECF No. 61.

I. Background¹

Defendants are charged with one count of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute controlled substances, one count charging the illegal possession with intent to distributecontrolled substances, and one count of possession of firearms in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. ECF No. 14. Mercedes is also charged with one count of being a prohibited person in possession of firearms. Id.

The charges arise out of an investigation that occurred at defendants' home in Canóvanas, Puerto Rico on December 30, 2017. ECF Nos. 61, 64. That day, around 11:30 a.m., Rodríguez and Joan López ("López")² drove to Rodríguez's home, pulled into the driveway, and observed three armed men, two of whom wore masks, exit the garage, get into a car, and drive away. Id.; Gov. Ex. 2. A neighbor's home surveillance video later confirmed Rodríguez's account and López's factual summary of the events, which she included in a sworn statement describing the encounter. Gov. Ex. 2. When Rodríguez and López entered the home, they found Rodríguez's brother-in-law's deceased body slumped in an execution-style position on the living room floor, surrounded by a pool of blood. ECF Nos. 61, 64; Gov. Ex. 2. Rodríguez contacted PRPD and her husband, Mercedes. Mercedes arrived at the home minutes later and PRPD arrived shortly thereafter, around noon. ECF No. 61. Agent Medina arrived at about 12:50 p.m. Agent Medina's narrative of the events during cross-examination follows.

Upon his arrival, Agent Medina first spoke outside the home with Sergeant Melvín Ruiz, who was in custody of the scene. See ECF No. 68. The sergeant informed Agent Medina that his team had conducted a safety sweep of the interior and exterior of the premises and confirmed there were no assailants or other victims in the area. However, when Agent Medina entered thehome, he observed that one bedroom remained closed and locked and had not been subject to the initial safety sweep ("the locked bedroom"). Agent Medina requested the key for that room, which was locked from the outside with a padlock. While Agent Medina acknowledged the house had been secured and there was no risks to him or others he still understood it was important to unlock and search this room to ensure there were no assailants inside. Agent Medina described this as constituting standard procedure.

Rodríguez directed Agent Medina to the key located on the kitchen counter. Agent Medina entered the room with his weapon drawn, taking all safety precautions. Agent Medina looked inside the closet, which he described as large enough for a person to hide, and around the bed. He visually scanned the room and announced "clear" after confirming there were no people inside. At this point all premises had been fully secured. After that, the forensic officers entered the room to take photographs. Agent Medina estimated that the forensics team took around 600 photographs during their inspection of the home.

Agent Medina testified that while he conducted the safety sweep of the locked room, he observed several notable items in plain sight. He described seeing raw rice on the floor, a gun magazine on top of the dresser, a large amount of cash in a gray bag on the floor, and bags of rubber bands, boxes of ziplock bags, and empty instant coffee packets on the bed. He also described finding a large quantity of rice in plain view in the kitchen trashcan. Agent Medina explained that rice and coffee are often used to conceal the smell of drugs and that the size of the coffee packets he observed—approximately one pound bags—matched his professional experience with the size of coffee bags used in drug trafficking. He also noted that, in his experience, ziplock bags, rubber bands, firearms, and cash are associated with drug trafficking. He confirmed with defendants that they did not have gun permits. He also noted that these drug-related items, along with the execution position of the victim's body, changed his initial theory that the murder may have been home-invasion related to a theory that it was drug-trafficking related.

Upon these observations, he requested a deeper search of the home for evidence of weapons and drug trafficking. He called in a K-9 unit. Around 5:00 p.m., Agent Ortíz arrived at the home with his narcotics-detecting canine, Rex. Def. Ex. A-25-A. Agent Ortíz informed Agent Medina that Rex alerts to the presence of drugs by laying down. Agent Ortíz testified that Rex also regularly positively alerts to the presence of firearms, surmising it may be because narcotics often come into contact with firearms.

Agent Ortíz and Rex began searching the home. When Agent Medina, Agent Ortíz, Rex, and forensic investigators entered the master bedroom around 5:10 p.m., the dog alerted at a closed suitcase in a closet, bearing Rodríguez's name on the luggage tag. Def. Ex. A-27-A. Rex also alerted at an area in a closet obscured by hanging clothing. Id. at A-28-A. After moving the clothing, officers found a rifle and pistol on the floor, leaning against the wall. Id. at A-31-A; A-33-A.

At 10:05 p.m., the General Court of Justice, Carolina Part granted Agent Medina's application for a search warrant to open the suitcase and search the entire home for further evidence of drug trafficking. ECF No. 61 at 24. Agent Medina's sworn statement in support of the warrant application states, in relevant part,

There was in fact a lifeless body in the area of the living room, with much blood, with casings and projectiles around the body. . . . At some time during the process I realize[d] that in the kitchen waste basket as well as on the floor of the living room and in the bedrooms there was raw rice in large amounts. Inside the waste basket there was a shoe box full of rice and with the written numbers 157.700. Upon entering into one of the bedrooms we found on the bed empty Café Crema wrappers, there was an altar of a religious nature and a black firearm magazine on the dresser, several boxes of Ziplock bags, several transparent bags with pressure seals full of rubber bands (liguillas). There was in addition a large sum of money in cash.

Upon observing all of the preceding I understood because of my experience as a police agent that at the location there could be the presence of controlled substances and firearms because the use of coffee is used to conceal the smell of the controlled substances. Because of that reason I requested the presence of a K-9. Agent Rodney Ortíz, badge 26768, from the canine unit came to the scene, AND THE DOG Rex 53, badge 33038. The agent from the canine unit starts a search in the bedrooms, and upon entering the marital bedroom the dog went into the "walk-in closet" and alerted to a big black or very dark blue colored suitcase BRAND American Uni with a travel tag in the name of Raquel Rodríguez from a flight to Santo Domingo. Subsequently in that same "walk-in closet" it alerted in the place where there was women's and men's clothing hanging and upon moving the clothing I observed a rifle and a pistol.

Id. at 25-26.

A state court judge signed the search warrant that evening at approximately 10:05 p.m. Id. at 24. While executing the warrant, the government found twenty-two bricks of cocaine in the suitcase and several other stashes of money in the house, among other things. Id. at 20-21.

Defendants argue that law enforcement agents found the majority of the items underlying Agent Medina's probable cause statement through unconstitutional warrantless searches. Id. at 3. Defendants challenge the exigency of searching the bedroom that was locked from the door's outside (interior of the house) while the interior of the house and its perimeter had been cleared and secured. They also claim that the majority of the items described in the warrant—the rice, guns, gun magazine, cash, and coffee bags—were not in plain view, despite Agent Medina's testimony and sworn statement to the contrary. Id. at 2. In support of these arguments, defendants obtained the metadata for all photographs taken by law enforcement agents and introduced a series of photographs at the evidentiary hearing that were taken by the forensics team during the investigation on December 30, 2017. Def. Ex. A-1 to A-44; A-1-A to A-44-A. The government stipulated to the admissibility of all photographs, along with the metadata indicating when the photographer captured each photo.³ The Court will discuss below what is established by the photographs and Agent Medina's testimony regarding the taking of said photographs. See infra § III.

II. Legal Standard

The Fourth Amendment "protects '[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.'"⁴ City of Los Angeles v. Patel, 135 S. Ct. 2443, 2452 (2015) (alteration in original) (quoting U.S. Const. amend. IV). "It further provides that 'no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause.'" Id. (quoting U.S.Const. amend. IV). The Supreme Court "has repeatedly held that 'searches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by [a] judge or [a] magistrate [judge], are per se unreasonable . . . subject only...