CA1: Driver’s connection to vehicle was tenuous; no standing

The vehicle in this case was stopped for a traffic offense, and Martin was driving and defendant was a passenger, but both, it turned out, gave false names, defendant using his brother’s. After they were released, the officer got more information and realized the false names. He looks for it and pulled the vehicle over again, and defendant was now driving and Martin was the passenger. The court concludes there is no bright line rule for standing in this situation, and it concludes defendant has no standing despite being the driver. United States v. Almeida, 748 F.3d 41 (1st Cir. 2014):

No bright-line rule determines whether a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy in a vehicle; instead the court considers a number of factors:

ownership, possession, and/or control; historical use of the property searched or the thing seized; ability to regulate access; the totality of the surrounding circumstances; the existence or nonexistence of a subjective anticipation of privacy; and the objective reasonableness of such an expectancy under the facts of a given case. We look, in short, to whether or not the individual thought of the place (or the article) as a private one, and treated it as such.

United States v. Aguirre, 839 F.2d 854, 856-57 (1st Cir. 1988) (citations omitted). In applying these factors to the facts before us, we take guidance from our decisions in United States v. Lochan, 674 F.2d 960 (1st Cir. 1982), and United States v. Sanchez, 943 F.2d 110 (1st Cir. 1991).

. . .

In this case, although Almeida was driving part of the time, apparently with Martin’s permission, he had “only a casual possession” of the truck. Id. at 113. He did not own it, and he has shown no pattern of repeated use or control over the truck that would allow us to conclude that his possession of the truck was anything more than “informal and temporary.” Id. at 114. Almeida argues that we should infer an expectation of privacy from the fact that there was incriminating evidence in the truck: “Considering that the contents of the truck … formed much of the condemnatory evidence produced at trial, it is logical that [Almeida] bore a reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to the area searched and the items seized.” This argument goes nowhere. The existence of incriminating evidence does not by itself create a reasonable expectation of privacy. If it did, the Fourth Amendment would apply to any search that reveals incriminating evidence. That is obviously not the case. See United States v. Hershenow, 680 F.2d 847, 855 (1st Cir. 1982) (“[A] legitimate expectation of privacy means more than a subjective expectation of keeping incriminating evidence hidden.”)

Considering the relevant factors as applied in Sanchez and Lochan, we conclude that Almeida has failed to meet his burden of proof establishing that he had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the truck. Thus, he cannot bring a challenge under the Fourth Amendment to the evidence recovered from the truck, either in the course of Drouin’s warrantless search or the subsequent inventory search. We therefore affirm the district court’s order denying the motion to suppress with respect to this issue.