D.V.I.: Border search on flight from Atlanta proper

Defendant could not claim automatic standing to challenge the police questioning of his wife. State v. Shuffelen, 149 Wn. App. 1048, 208 P.3d 1167 (2009), ordered published June 8, 2009.*

The search warrant was quite broad, but there is no claim that the officers abused the breadth of the warrant to seize things that should not have been seized or that the search was conducted unreasonably. The warrant was also issued with probable cause, considering the great deference given warrants. United States v. Hale, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 55645 (S.D. Ohio January 27, 2009).*

Border search on entry into the Virgin Islands on a flight from Atlanta was proper. David v. Gov’t of the V.I., 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 55593 (D. V.I. App. Div. June 25, 2009):

David has failed to present, and the Court is unaware of, any valid legal authority for the proposition that the border between the U.S. Virgin Islands to the mainland operates only one-way. On the contrary, a person who enters the U.S. Virgin Islands from the continental United States, like a person traveling in the opposite direction, is considered to have crossed a border within the meaning of the border search exception to the warrant requirement. See United States v. Chabot, 531 F. Supp. 1063, 1069 (D.V.I. 1982) (explaining that the U.S. Virgin Islands is a “customs zone” separate and apart from the United States, Puerto Rico, and other United States possessions, and thus the border search exception applies to persons entering St. Croix from Puerto Rico); see also United States v. Herbert, 886 F. Supp 524, 32 V.I. 308 (D.V.I. 1995) (applying the Third Circuit’s reasoning in Hyde to conclude that “sections 3 and 4 of the 1917 Organic Act of the Virgin Islands thus create a two-way ‘customs’ border between the Virgin Islands and the mainland”).

Because it is impractical to expect that searches can be conducted at the exact moment a person crosses a border, the border search “exception applies not only at the physical boundaries of the United States, but also at the ‘the functional equivalent’ of a border.” United States v. Whitted, 541 F.3d 480, 485 (3d Cir. 2008) (quoting Almeida-Sanchez, 413 U.S. at 272-73). An international airport, such as the Cyril E. King airport in St. Thomas, may be considered the functional equivalent of a border for Fourth Amendment purposes. See Almeida-Sanchez, 413 U.S. at 273 (acknowledging that “a search of the passengers and cargo of an airplane arriving at a St. Louis airport after a nonstop flight from Mexico City would clearly be the functional equivalent of a border search”).

The search of David’s luggage occurred at the Cyril E. King airport in St. Thomas, shortly after David arrived on his flight from Atlanta, Georgia. Nothing in the record suggests that the search of David at the airport was highly intrusive or posed a serious threat to David’s dignity or privacy.