Court determines that a passenger in a validly stopped rented SUV had no standing to challenge the search of the vehicle which led to finding interior panels that had been tampered with, which, when opened, revealed meth. United States v. Resa, 552 F. Supp. 2d 720 (E.D. Tenn. 2008):<\/p>\n
In Smith<\/em>, the Sixth Circuit considered five factors which it found to militate, under the facts of that case, against application of the general rule depriving an unauthorized driver of a rental vehicle from asserting a privacy interest in the vehicle. Those factors were: (1) whether the defendant was a properly licensed driver, who could legally drive the vehicle in question; (2) whether the defendant was able to present the officer with a rental agreement and provide the officer with sufficient information regarding the vehicle; (3) whether the driver can identify some related individual who gave him possession of the vehicle (in Smith, it was the defendant’s wife) or whether the purported authorized driver is “some unrelated third party;” (4) whether the defendant’s related party had given him permission to drive the vehicle; and (5) most significantly, whether the defendant had a business relationship with the rental company such as having made a reservation, or presented it with a credit card number. Smith<\/em>, 263 F.3d at 586.<\/p>\n
Applying the factors identified in Smith<\/em> in the order enumerated in the preceding paragraph against the facts of the instant case, only the first clearly militates in favor of according to Mr. Resa standing to challenge the search of the vehicle. Analysis of the second, third and fourth factors requires the Court to weigh the testimony of Officer Choate regarding his assessment of the adequacy of the Defendants’ responses to his questions against the sufficiency of those responses as suggested by Mr. Resa’s counsel on cross-examination. The fifth factor, which the Sixth Circuit identified as the most significant, clearly militates against Mr. Resa being accorded standing to challenge the search.<\/p>\n
In balancing Officer Choate’s testimony regarding the second, third, and fourth factors against defense counsel’s suggestions, the Court is left with the fact that Officer Choate’s evaluation of the Defendants’ responses, was reasonable, if not clearly beyond question. This being the case, and given that the Smith court makes clear that a defendant seeking to suppress a search bears the evidentiary burden of establishing his standing to challenge the search, the Court is left to the conclusion that Mr. Resa has not sustained his evidentiary burden of establishing that he had a legitimate expectation of privacy in the subject rental vehicle so as to afford him what has been referred to as “standing” to challenge its search.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading