United States v. Timothy W. Hines

387 F.3d 690, 2004 U.S. App. LEXIS 22600, 2004 WL 2422002
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
DecidedNovember 1, 2004
Docket03-4045
StatusPublished
Cited by22 cases

This text of 387 F.3d 690 (United States v. Timothy W. Hines) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eighth 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. Timothy W. Hines, 387 F.3d 690, 2004 U.S. App. LEXIS 22600, 2004 WL 2422002 (8th Cir. 2004).

Opinion

HANSEN, Circuit Judge.

Timothy W. Hines was convicted of conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamine in excess of 50 grams (Count One) and possession of pseudoephedrine with the intent to manufacture a controlled substance (Count Two). See 21 U.S.C. §§ 841 and 846 (2000). Because of his prior drug conviction, Hines was sentenced to a mandatory statutory sentence of life in prison on Count One and a concurrent sentence of 240 months in prison on Count Two. On appeal, Hines argues that the district court 1 erred when it denied his pretrial motions to suppress evidence, statements, and a pre-trial identification. After careful review, we affirm the judgment of the district court.

On May 9, 2001, William Cummins, an employee of a Walgreens pharmacy in In *693 dependence, Missouri, called the police. Mr. Cummins reported that a particular customer had been in the store twice that day, each time purchasing ten boxes of cold medicine containing pseudoephedrine, a compound used in the illicit manufacture of methamphetamine. Mr. Cummins also reported that he had seen the customer in the store on previous occasions making similar purchases. He described the customer as a heavyset, balding white man, wearing an artificial leg with a Harley Davidson emblem on it. From the description, Detective Bill Sweeney suspected Hines, who had been named numerous times in other narcotics investigations as someone involved in the manufacture of methamphetamine. Detective Sweeney interviewed Mr. Cummins at Walgreens and showed him a single photograph of Hines, whom Mr. Cummins immediately identified as the person who had purchased the cold medicine. Mr. Cummins also gave a description of and the license plate number for the vehicle that the customer had been driving. The vehicle was registered to Timothy Hines of 812 N. Woodland Road, Independence, Missouri.

On June 12, 2001, officers from the Kansas City Metro Methamphetamine Task Force and the Independence, Missouri, Police Department Drug Enforcement Unit went to 812 N. Woodland. Hines shared the residence with 82-year-old Freda Brummet, who owned the home. Hines did work on the property in exchange for a room in the basement. Ms. Brummet signed a consent to search form giving the officers permission to search the residence, listed on the form as “a single family dwelling and one attached single garage/outbuilding.” In fact, the garage was not attached to the house.

Not long after the officers arrived, they seized a filled syringe from Hines’s shirt pocket and placed Hines under arrest. Hines was given a written advisory of his rights, pursuant to Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), which he initialed. The officers then questioned Hines, and Hines made several statements. Upon searching the house and the garage, the officers found and seized numerous items associated with the manufacture of methamphetamine.

On August 23, 2001, Detective Steve Cook, of the Jackson County Drug Task Force, presented Mr. Cummins (the Independence, Missouri, Walgreens employee) with a six-person photo lineup. Mr. Cum-mins again identified Hines’s picture and described Hines as a white male wearing a prosthetic leg with a Harley Davidson emblem on it.

Hines filed a motion to suppress statements, evidence, and the one-person photo identification that took place on May 9, 2001. Because the government indicated that it was not going to use the one-person photo identification at trial, the issue on the motion became whether the May 9, 2001, procedure was so suggestive as to taint any later identification. The magistrate judge held a hearing and filed a report recommending that the district court deny all of Hines’s motions. 2 The district court adopted the magistrate judge’s report and recommendation.

We first consider whether the one-person photo lineup presented to Mr. Cummins was so unduly suggestive as to give rise to a very substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification that tainted the later photo identification on August 23, 2001, and the in-court identification by Mr. Cummins. Because this claim implicates a defendant’s constitutional right to procedural due process, we review de novo. *694 United States v. Williams, 340 F.3d 563, 567 (8th Cir.2003); United States v. Davis, 103 F.3d 660, 669 (8th Cir.1996).

In this case, we assume, as did the district court, that the first identification procedure used was impermissibly suggestive. Thus, we go on to “examine the totality of the circumstances to determine whether the suggestive procedure[ ] created ‘a very substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification.’” Williams, 340 F.3d at 567 (quoting Simmons v. United States, 390 U.S. 377, 384, 88 S.Ct. 967, 19 L.Ed.2d 1247 (1968)). We consider “ ‘the opportunity of the witness to view the criminal at the time of the crime, the witness’ degree of attention, the accuracy of his prior description of the criminal, the level of certainty demonstrated at the confrontation, and the time between the crime and the confrontation.’ ” Williams, 340 F.3d at 567 (quoting Manson v. Brathwaite, 432 U.S. 98, 114, 97 S.Ct. 2243, 53 L.Ed.2d 140 (1977)). As the district court observed, the facts are undisputed that Mr. Cummins saw Hines in the store twice on the day that the first identification was made; Mr. Cummins remembered seeing Hines in the store previously; he was able to give the police a reliable and distinct description of Hines; and he was able to provide the police with a description of and a license plate number for Hines’s vehicle. We agree with the magistrate judge and the district court that, even assuming that the first identification procedure was impermissibly suggestive, the totality of the circumstances indicate that it did not create a substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification that tainted any later identification. We hold that the district court did not err in denying the motion to suppress based upon the one-photo identification procedure used on May 9, 2001.

We next consider Hines’s argument that the search violated the Fourth Amendment because the officers did not obtain valid consent to search the 812 N. Woodland residence. We will affirm a district court’s order denying a defendant’s motion to suppress “ ‘unless the decision is unsupported by substantial evidence, is based on an erroneous view of the applicable law, or in light of the entire record, we are left with a firm and definite conviction that a mistake has been made.’ ” United States v. Welerford, 356 F.3d 932

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Bluebook (online)
387 F.3d 690, 2004 U.S. App. LEXIS 22600, 2004 WL 2422002, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-timothy-w-hines-ca8-2004.