S.D.N.Y. Arrest of defendant permitted search of hotel room

A Bronx motel room search was found to be without exigent circumstances, as much as the government tried, but sustained on a strained reading of inevitable discovery because defendant’s arrest made the room searchable. Defendant was wanted for a murder two weeks earlier upstate, and his hotel room was staked out, but the police got impatient, twice considering search warrants. United States v. Stokes, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 31513 (S.D. N.Y. March 7, 2012)*:

This is a tale of nine guns, a misguided prosecutor whose poor judgment jeopardized the safety of the public he is tasked to protect, and a motel clerk, who, by simply doing his job, has prevented the Fourth Amendment and its exclusionary rule from becoming a suicide pact.

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Defendant makes much of the fact that the officers made a strategic decision not to obtain a warrant in order to evade Defendant’s right to counsel. The officers’ subjective reason for proceeding without a warrant is not relevant to MacDonald’s objective test. However, the surrounding facts do bear on the exigent circumstances determination. For instance, Detective Perrotta had time to make two separate attempts to secure a warrant prior to entering room 57; there were no exigencies between the time the Marshals located the Defendant and the time of the warrant requests, and nothing happened after Detective Perrotta’s second conversation with ADA Chase to create a newfound urgency in apprehending the Defendant. Moreover, when Detective Perrotta decided to approach Defendant without a warrant, his mission shifted from effecting a quick arrest to reasoning with the Defendant and trying to convince him to cooperate. The Court cannot see any urgent need to enter the motel room where the officer’s goal was to talk first and then detain. Ultimately, the officers had nothing more than probable cause to arrest a murder suspect. That probable cause, standing alone, is not enough get the officers into the motel room and, as a result, is not enough to sustain the Government’s burden of proof with respect to the exigent circumstances exception to the exclusionary rule.

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Even if Defendant left the bag in his room, a proposition the Court finds highly unlikely considering his demonstrated concern about protection from retaliation for Kareem Porter’s stabbing, then cleaning staff would have found the open bag of firearms along with the ammunition, ring, and documents that were in fact recovered when they went into the room to prepare it for another guest. Just as he did with the ammunition, ring, and documents, the Court has no doubt that Mr. Patel, in the ordinary course of business, would have turned the firearms over to law enforcement. In other words, the fact that additional ammunition was inevitably discovered in room 57 gives the Court a high level of confidence that the firearms would have been inevitably discovered as well. Defendant makes two points in opposition. First, Defendant argues that his arrest did not terminate his rental of room 57, which was paid through July 13, 2010, and therefore he had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the room post-arrest such that police could not search property recovered by motel cleaning staff without a warrant. However, Defendant cites no authority in this Circuit in support of his argument, and at least one court had made findings to the contrary. See United States v. Wyche, 307 F. Supp. 2d 453, 460-61 (E.D.N.Y. 2004) (“Wyche having been taken into custody on the basis of the witness identification, the police would have seized his luggage from his motel room. (It is unlikely that the motel owner would allow Wyche to indefinitely keep his belongings there.) … Wyche’s three weapons would have inevitably, and lawfully, been discovered in his duffel bag when the bag was later inventoried at the Fifth Precinct after Wyche’s arrest.”). Thus, if cleaning staff entered room 57 after Defendant’s arrest but prior to the expiration of the rental period, found the bag of firearms, and turned it over to the police, there is no authority in this Circuit preventing law enforcement from searching the bag. Indeed, it is not at all clear that Defendant’s expectation of privacy in a pre-paid motel room survives his arrest such that police could not enter the room or search items recovered from that room. See United States v. Rahme, 813 F.2d 31, 34-35 (2d Cir. 1987) (holding that “when a hotel guest’s rental period has expired or been lawfully terminated, the guest does not have a legitimate expectation of privacy” in the room or articles therein (emphasis added)); see also Patel Decl. ¶ 2 (noting motel policy of entering rooms to clean after tenants “check out or otherwise cease their stay”).

Another self-fulfilling prophecy: We arrest you, then we can search your hotel room because you’re not going back to it. That borders on the absurd, and is a clear manipulation of the Fourth Amendment. Let’s just call this the “9-guns-in-a-motel-room exception to the Fourth Amendment.”