United States v. Marco Perez

506 F. App'x 672
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
DecidedFebruary 4, 2013
Docket11-50389
StatusUnpublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 506 F. App'x 672 (United States v. Marco Perez) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Marco Perez, 506 F. App'x 672 (9th Cir. 2013).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM *

Marco Joshua Perez pled guilty to possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1) and 841(b)(1)(A). His plea was conditioned on his right to appeal the district court’s denial of his motions to suppress evidence recovered from a search of his track and subsequently of his home. We hold that the district court erred in determining that the consent to search Perez’s vehicle was voluntary. The district court made no further finding with respect to whether the agents would have gone to Perez’s home had they not seen the evidence seized during the illegal search. Because a hearing is necessary to determine whether this illegal search prompted the officers’ visit to Perez’s home, we remand to the district court for further findings on this issue. 1

Involuntary Consent

As our precedent makes clear, the “government bears the heavy burden of demonstrating that the consent was freely and voluntarily given.” United States v. Chan-Jimenez, 125 F.3d 1324, 1327 (9th Cir.1997) (citation omitted). The government did not meet that burden here. We consider five factors to determine whether consent was voluntarily given: “(1) whether the person was in custody; (2) whether the officers had their guns drawn; (3) whether a Miranda warning had been given; (4) whether the person was told that he had the right not to consent; and (5) whether the person was told that a search warrant could be obtained.” United States v. Reid, 226 F.3d 1020, 1026 (9th Cir.2000) (citation omitted). The district court did not engage in an analysis of each of these five factors, but it nonetheless found the consent given by the driver of Perez’s truck, Garcia, to have been voluntarily given. An analysis of these factors makes clear, however, that Garcia’s con *674 sent was involuntary and the search was, therefore, illegal.

As to the first factor, Garcia may not have been under arrest in all respects, but he was de facto in custody because he was ordered out of the vehicle, frisked, seated, and forbidden to rise. He was told, ‘You can’t stand up because we[’]re ordering you to sit down.” See United States v. Curtis, 568 F.2d 643, 646 (9th Cir.1978) (“If the person reasonably believes that he cannot leave freely, he is considered in custody!.]”) (quoting United States v. Luther, 521 F.2d 408, 410 (9th Cir.1975)). As to the second factor, Garcia testified that when he was asked to step out of the vehicle, he saw “guns drawn by uniform[ed] police officers.” The third and fourth factors favor a finding of involuntariness because Garcia was not advised of his right to refuse to consent or given a Miranda warning. He was also denied his right to call his lawyer, despite his repeatedly asking to do so. Perez’s case meets four of the five factors. In Reid, this court found consent to be involuntary on facts very similar to this case: “the officers ordered [the individual] up against the sliding glass door, placed him in a spread eagle position, frisked him, and then handcuffed him[,] ... at least one officer had his gun drawn[,] ... [and] the officers neither read [the individual] his Miranda rights nor informed him that he had the right not to consent to the search.” 226 F.3d at 1027. In light of Reid and the totality of the circumstances, Garcia’s consent was involuntary and the resulting search of Perez’s truck illegal. The district court clearly erred in concluding otherwise.

Fruits of the Illegal Search

Because the consent to the vehicle search was involuntary, we must next determine what, if any, evidence should be suppressed as a fruit of the illegal search. The only evidence directly obtained as a result of that search was Perez’s home address and Garcia’s cell phone. Because the police were also able to obtain Perez’s address from the “independent source” of checking the registration of the vehicle, the address need not be suppressed. United States v. Beardslee, 197 F.3d 378, 386 (9th Cir.1999). Nor does Perez have standing to challenge the $3,976 in cash and the criminal case number seized from Garcia’s person. The contrary is true, however, of the photographs and text messages from the cell phone indicating that drug transactions were in progress. This evidence was seized and searched during the illegal search of Perez’s truck and, thus, constitutes “the fruit of the poisonous tree.”

Perez seeks the suppression of the evidence seized from his home. This evidence was obtained after the officers went there, according to officer Segura’s declaration, in order to “ask him if he gave Garcia permission to be in possession of his vehicle and to see if he would give [the officers] consent to search his residence for drugs.” The officers’ suspicion that Perez might have drugs at his home seems to have arisen, at least in part, as a result of their seeing the incriminating photographs and text messages on Garcia’s phone.

In Wong Sun v. United States, the Supreme Court made clear that in determining the “fruit of the poisonous tree” question, we ask “whether, granting establishment of the primary illegality, the evidence to which instant objection is made has been come at by exploitation of that illegality or instead by means sufficiently distinguishable to be purged of the primary taint.” 371 U.S. 471, 488, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963) (citation omitted). In cases in which we deal with *675 evidence obtained indirectly, as here, “we have stated the test to be whether the illegal activity tends to significantly direct the investigation to the evidence in question.” United States v. Chamberlin, 644 F.2d 1262, 1269 (9th Cir.1980) (citations omitted) (emphasis added); see also United States v. Davis, 332 F.3d 1163, 1171 (9th Cir.2003). The record before us does not disclose whether the illegally seized evidence from Garcia’s phone “tend[ed] to significantly direct the investigation” to the search of Perez’s home. Chamberlin, 644 F.2d at 1269 (citations omitted).

The Supreme Court addressed similar circumstances in Murray v. United States 487 U.S. 533, 108 S.Ct. 2529, 101 L.Ed.2d 472 (1988).

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Bluebook (online)
506 F. App'x 672, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-marco-perez-ca9-2013.