CA2: Inconclusive x-ray by SW for body-packing drugs didn’t dissipate the PC for the SW

Defendant was arrested with probable cause, which he concedes, and officers got a search warrant for x-rays to see if he had drugs hidden in his body (“body packing”). After the x-ray was inconclusive, defendant was detained longer. The probable cause did not dissipate because the doctor performing the x-ray noted that a mass of drugs might not show on an x-ray if it had a similar density to the body’s organs or even the contents of his bowels. United States v. Pabon, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 17471 (2d Cir. Sept. 11, 2017):

In such circumstances, the probable cause to believe that Pabon was transporting narcotics had not dissipated, even taking into account the x-ray examination results. By the time Pabon was discharged from the hospital, the state police not only had the information they had collected prior to Pabon’s arrest, but they were also privy to Pabon’s objectively suspicious behavior, canine alerts to places where Pabon was either sitting or had been held, and Dr. Rademacher’s explanation of the import of the x-ray images and the relative effectiveness of that search method. The officers continued to have a reasonable basis for detaining Pabon, such that, even assuming arguendo that an obligation to release a suspect could, in some circumstances, arise, it did not do so here. Properly framed, the central question in this case is thus the one Gerstein and McLaughlin require us to ask: whether the state police officers unreasonably delayed obtaining a determination, from a state court judge, that there was probable cause to detain. See McLaughlin, 500 U.S. at 56. It is therefore to that question that we now turn.