CA11: SW for motel room permitted search of small safe, too

Whether the consent was to “check” the room or “search” his hotel room, defendant understood it was for drugs and that permitted the officers to look where drugs might be found. A small safe was represented to contain only papers, but it rattled when shaken. When officers got a search warrant for the room, it did not mention the safe, but it still could be searched under a warrant for the room for drugs and paraphernalia. United States v. Rios, 434 Fed. Appx. 648 (11th Cir. 2011):

Additionally, the search warrant itself described the location of the hotel and specific directions to the room to be searched, including the room number. It authorized officers to search that room and to seize, among other things, “controlled substances[;] controlled substance residue”; equipment “used or reasonably believed to have been used to cut, weigh[,] package, store[,] and transport controlled substances”; and “firearms, firearms accessories, ammunition[,] or firearms storage devices.” Therefore, the warrant itself sufficiently described the place to be searched, and sufficiently described the things to be seized. See U.S. Const. amend. IV. And, because this was a “lawful search of fixed premises” for controlled substances and firearms, the officers had the authority to open the locked safe. Ross, 456 U.S. at 820-21; see also Jackson, 120 F.3d at 1228-29. Accordingly, the district court did not err in denying Rios’s motion to suppress.

. . .

We have no case law that squarely answers the question before us — whether it is a violation of the Fourth or Fifth Amendments for the government to comment at trial on a defendant’s refusal to consent to a warrantless search. But even if we were to assume, arguendo, that it was improper for the government to comment at trial on Rios’s refusal to consent to the search of the safe, we need not reach the question, because the government has shown that the error, if any, was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Gari, 572 F.3d at 1362.