W.D.Pa.: Def can’t repackage a losing 4A standing claim into a due process claim

A defendant can’t repackage a losing Fourth Amendment standing claim into a due process claim, at least via a 2255. United States v. Vega, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 214580 (W.D. Pa. Sep. 22, 2026):

Now, in his § 2255 motion, the defendant attempts to resurrect his Fifth Amendment and prosecutorial misconduct claims under the cloak of an ineffective assistance of counsel claim. The defendant recognizes that “this Court may have been on sound footing in ruling that [he] had no standing to challenge the government misconduct under the Fourth Amendment,” Def.’s Mem. at 22, but claims that he “was entitled to vindication of his rights under the Fifth Amendment,” id, and “[t]he absence of any expectation of privacy … was irrelevant to [his] claim that the government violated his rights under the Fifth Amendment.” Id. at 24. The Court does not agree.

Courts in this Circuit have rejected similar efforts to reframe search and suppression challenges by “repackaging” them as due-process claims. See e.g., McCulligan v. Mazurkiewicz, 2:12-cv-3271, WL 2449184, at *12 (E.D. Pa. June 6, 2013) (concluding that petitioner’s due process argument was “merely a repackaging of [his] Fourth Amendment claim with a due process label”). And, the Supreme Court has explained that, similar to its decisions under the Fourth Amendment, a defendant is precluded from succeeding on a substantive due process claim that is premised solely on some third-party’s constitutional rights. See United States v. Payner, 447 U.S. 727, 735 (1980) (in a case that raised a Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause claim and considered the supervisory power of federal courts, the Court held that “the supervisory power does not authorize a federal court to suppress otherwise admissible evidence on the ground that it was seized unlawfully from a third party not before the court”). Moreover, other circuit courts of appeal have been presented with a similar issue that the defendant raises with this Court and similarly held that the defendant lacked standing. See e.g., United States v. Anderson, 772 F.3d 969, 975 (2d Cir. 2014) (holding that the defendant’s substantive due process claim failed because it challenged the admissibility of “physical evidence obtained through a flagrantly illegal search directed at someone other than the defendant … notwithstanding the fact that the conduct of the [officers] was deceptive, coercive and illegal”); United States v. Dyke, 718 F.3d 1282, 1285, 1288 (10th Cir. 2013) (“[W]e are not to reverse convictions simply to punish bad behavior by governmental agents, but should do so only when the bad behavior precipitates serious prejudice to some recognized legal right of the particular defendant before us”); United States v. Teague, 469 F.3d 205, 210 (1st Cir. 2006) (rejecting the defendant’s claim that the use of evidence recovered through an illegal search of a third party’s vehicle violated the defendant’s due process rights); United States v. Noriega, 117 F.3d 1206, 1214 (11th Cir. 1997) (holding that “whatever harm Panamanian civilians suffered during the armed conflict that preceded [the defendant’s] arrest cannot support a due process claim in his case”); United States v. Valdovinos-Valdovinos, 743 F.2d 1436, 1437-38 (9th Cir. 1984) (per curiam) (holding that the defendants were “preclude[d] [] from raising due process violations allegedly suffered by third parties and because any due process violations in the instant controversy involved the Fifth Amendment rights of the two [undocumented persons], the defendant lacked standing to challenge the[] alleged violations”) (citation modified).5Link to the text of the note

Accordingly, consistent with the Court’s prior ruling concluding that the defendant lacked a reasonable expectation of privacy to challenge the warrant application and search of Drew’s Comfort Inn hotel room, see 2017 Suppression Order at 5-6, the Court again concludes that the defendant’s Fifth Amendment challenge would have failed an appellate challenge. Therefore, because the defendant’s claim lacks merit, the defendant cannot show that his appellate counsel was deficient, or that he suffered any prejudice as a result of his appellate counsel’s decision not to raise it as a separate merits argument in his appeal.