Defendant was riding a Greyhound bus from Denver to Indianapolis, and it had a bus change in Omaha. Luggage was pulled off the bus, and an interdiction officer noticed the new bag with defendant’s name on it. He also detected the smell of a masking agent. The officer had to communicate in Spanish with a translation app on the phone. The defense called a court certified translator that the translation could have been confusing to defendant. Nevertheless, the court finds the consent in Spanish off a smartphone app voluntary on the totality. The colloquy had been recorded. United States v. Garcia-Garcia, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 204049 (D. Neb. Oct. 17, 2017), adopted, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 203189 (D. Neb. Dec. 11, 2017):
Moreover, as stated above, the Court’s inquiry is “not whether the defendant subjectively consented, but whether ‘a reasonable officer would believe consent was given.'” Rodriguez, 834 F.3d at 940. Immediately after Defendant gestured to the passenger area of the bus, Investigator Finn pointed to the checked bag and asked Defendant if it was his bag. Investigator Finn verified that the luggage tag had Defendant’s name on it, and Defendant nodded to indicate it was his bag. Investigator Finn asked, “permite?” In response, Defendant put up his hands and stepped back. As Investigator Finn searched the checked bag, Defendant stood by silently and motionlessly, and took no affirmative action or otherwise indicated a desire for the search to stop. Investigator Finn reasonably could infer from Defendant’s gesture prior to the search, and subsequent conduct during the search, that he provided consent to the search of his checked bag. See Rodriguez, 834 F.3d at 940 (quoting Pena-Ponce, 588 F.3d at 584) (“Consent may be inferred from the defendant’s ‘words, gestures, or other conduct[.]'”); and Correa, 641 F.3d at 967 (concluding defendant’s “contemporaneous reaction to the search–compliance and silence–was consistent with consent.”).
Additionally, as discussed above, at the time Defendant provided this consent, he was in a public place, was not confronted by multiple officers, was not threatened, and was not handcuffed or detained in anyway. The entire duration of Investigator Finn’s encounter with Defendant from the initial contact until the search took place was only four and a half minutes. (Ex. 1 at 0:33-5:03). Upon review of the record, the undersigned magistrate judge concludes that the totality of the circumstances reflects Defendant’s consent was voluntary, and that a reasonable officer in Investigator Finn’s position would believe Defendant consented to the search. See United States v. Smith, 260 F.3d 922, 925 (8th Cir. 2001) (finding defendant voluntarily consented to search of his luggage at bus station where “the encounter occurred in a public place during daylight hours, … the entire episode leading up to the search lasted only a few minutes, [the defendant] expressed no reluctance to speak with the officers or to permit the search of his bag, and [where], at the very least, [the defendant] indicated his consent to the search by raising his hands.”).
by John Wesley Hall
Criminal Defense Lawyer and
Search and seizure law consultant
Little Rock, Arkansas
Contact: forhall @ aol.com / The Book www.johnwesleyhall.com
"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't." —Me
"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well." –Josh Billings (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things (1868) (erroneously attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, among others)
“I am still learning.” —Domenico Giuntalodi (but misattributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (common phrase throughout 1500's)).
"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government."
—Shemaya, in the Thalmud
"It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
—Charles Dickens, “The Old Curiosity Shop ... With a Frontispiece. From a Painting by Geo. Cattermole, Etc.” 255 (1848)
"A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect results, especially if one's attention is confined to the particular case at bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced."
—Williams
v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold,
J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984).
"The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws,
or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence." —Mapp
v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961).
"Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment."
—Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987).
"There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that
bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the
police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater
than it is today."
— Terry
v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting).
"The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their
property."
—Entick
v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765)
"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have
frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And
so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his
case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth
Amendment."
—United
States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting)
"The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated
here, has not–to put it mildly–run smooth."
—Chapman
v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).
"A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the
bottom of a turntable."
—Arizona
v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987)
"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly
exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth
Amendment protection. ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in
an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected."
—Katz
v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967)
“Experience should teach us to be most on guard to
protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born
to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded
rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men
of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
—United
States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)
“Liberty—the freedom from unwarranted
intrusion by government—is as easily lost through insistent nibbles by
government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose
it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark.”
—United
States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989)
"You can't always get what you want /
But if you try sometimes / You just might find / You get what you need."
—Mick Jagger & Keith Richards
"In Germany, they first came for the communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for
the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came
for me–and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
—Martin Niemöller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration
camp]
“You know, most men would get discouraged by
now. Fortunately for you, I am not most men!”
---Pepé Le Pew
"The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers,
is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which
reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that
those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being
judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting
out crime."
—Johnson
v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14 (1948)