PRECEDENTIAL
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
____________________
No. 09-3865
____________________
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
v.
JIMMY LEE PIERCE,
Appellant
____________________
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF DELAWARE
(No. 1-08-cr-00126-001)
District Judge: Honorable Joseph J. Farnan, Jr.
____________________
Submitted under Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a)
May 11, 2010
____________________
Before: BARRY, ROTH, Circuit Judges and HAYDEN, *
District Judge
(Filed: October 1, 2010 )
Luis A. Ortiz, Esq.
Daniel I. Siegel, Esq.
Office of Federal Public Defender
800 King Street, Suite 200
Wilmington, DE 19801-0000
*
Honorable Katharine S. Hayden, United States District Judge
for the District of New Jersey, sitting by designation.
1
Counsel for Appellant
Edward J. McAndrew, Esq.
Office of the United States Attorney
1007 North Orange Street, Suite 700
P.O. Box 2046
Wilmington, DE 19899-0000
Counsel for Appellee
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OPINION OF THE COURT
____________________
HAYDEN, District Judge.
When a narcotics dog’s “alert” leads to the discovery of
drugs in an automobile during a lawful traffic stop, the law is
settled that its sniffs around the exterior of the car are not deemed
to be a search under the Fourth Amendment. What happens when
the dog jumps into the car?
Jimmy Lee Pierce was sentenced to a prison term of 300
months and 3 years supervised release on his conditional guilty
plea 1 to possession with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of
cocaine. Delaware State Police seized the drugs and $20,000 in
cash after searching the glove box in Pierce’s rented car in the
course of a lawful traffic stop. A trained narcotics dog, K-9 Cole,
alerted first to the exterior of Pierce’s car, and then, as his handler,
Corporal Alison Meadows, walked Cole around the car, he entered
1
“With the consent of the court and the government, a
defendant may enter a conditional plea of guilty or nolo
contendere, reserving in writing the right to have an appellate court
review an adverse determination of a specified pretrial motion. A
defendant who prevails on appeal may then withdraw the plea.”
Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(a)(2).
2
the front seat through the open driver’s door and alerted in the
areas of the passenger seat and glove box. Police then conducted
a warrantless search of the car and when they opened the glove
box, they found $20,000 and close to one kilo of cocaine.
Pierce moved to suppress. After conducting an evidentiary
hearing during which it reviewed a 42-minute videotape of the
traffic stop and related police activity, and took the testimony of
officers on the scene, the District Court found that K-9 Cole’s
actions, including jumping into the car through the open driver’s
door, were instinctive responses, and did not constitute a search.
Pierce raises a single issue on appeal: that Cole’s handler,
Corporal Meadows, facilitated the dog’s entry into the car by
extending the leash and, as a result, Cole’s interior sniffs were
transformed into a search. Pierce argues that a remand is required
for findings of probable cause for the search.
The District Court had jurisdiction pursuant to 18 U.S.C. §
3231. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We review
the factual findings of the District Court for clear error, and
exercise plenary review over the application of law to those facts.
I.
The traffic stop, which occurred on July 15, 2008, was
recorded by a camera mounted on the dashboard of the patrol car
driven by Corporal Douglas Brietzke, the Delaware State Trooper
who stopped Pierce for speeding. The DVD played at Pierce’s
evidentiary hearing records police activity from the moments
before Pierce’s car slows and stops on the shoulder of I-95, south
of the toll plaza in Newark, Delaware, to the return of the troop car
to headquarters, where a field test was conducted on the drugs
recovered from the car. The arresting officer, Brietzke and K-9
Cole’s handler, Meadows, testified at the hearing.
According to the testimony and as recorded on the video,
Pierce pulled over to the shoulder and Brietzke pulled in behind his
car. Wearing audio recording equipment throughout, Brietzke
walked up to the passenger side, and spoke to Pierce through the
open front passenger window. Brietzke observed “stains, trash,
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papers, and discarded food wrappers in the passenger seat area
. . . , giving the car a ‘lived-in look.’” (App. 5.) He testified to
seeing “many cell phones and small electronic devices, mostly
disassembled, sitting in the passenger seat, along with an open box
of No-Doz and a pack of Vivarin. Bird seed and children’s toys
were scattered in the back seat.” (App. 5-6.)
Pierce gave Brietzke a driver’s license with the name
“Richard Earl Teach III.” When asked for the car’s registration
and insurance, Pierce said that the car was rented by his girlfriend
and he did not have the rental documents with him. He explained
that he was traveling from Harlem where he had dropped off his
sister to see her boyfriend. When asked about the “clutter” in the
passenger seat, Pierce told Brietzke “that those items were not in
the seat earlier, when his sister was riding in the car.” (App. 6.)
Brietzke instructed Pierce to step out and walk to the rear of
the car. Pierce complied, leaving the driver’s door open. During
a pat-down search, Brietzke felt “‘what [he] believed to be paper
money.’” (App. 6.) Brietzke asked Pierce how much money he
had on him, and Pierce responded by pulling the money out of his
pocket. Brietzke testified that he saw “a wad of cash” that was
“broken down into increments of folds.” (App. 103.) Pierce said
that he had folded the money that way himself “[t]o count it, to
count it fast.” (App. 104.) Brietzke testified that he had seen
money folded like this by drug sellers. (App. 104.) All of this
activity appears in the video consistent with the testimony.
Pierce pulled out a car rental agreement from his pocket that
had the name “Tamara Lundy” as the renting party and described
the rented car as a grey Dodge Intrepid, which was not the car
Pierce was driving. (App. 105-06.) When Brietzke asked him the
name of his girlfriend, Pierce could not give her last name. (App.
7.) Brietzke returned the money and the rental agreement to Pierce
and instructed him to sit by the guardrail behind Pierce’s car while
he did a background check on the driver’s license. (App. 108;
App. 7.)
At this point, the video shows Meadows approach Pierce’s
car with the narcotics dog. Meadows testified she was there
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because Brietzke had requested that she perform “a K9
examination” of the car. (App. 139.) By way of background,
Meadows testified that she and K-9 Cole had been certified as a
team since 2004. Their original certification consisted of 320
hours of training, and they receive 8 hours of recertification
training on a monthly basis. (App. 136-38.) According to
Meadows, the signs that indicate a positive alert include sniffing;
“an increase in tail wag”; “getting excited”; and “taking deep
breaths.” (App. 141.)
Meadows described what happened after she gave Cole the
command to sniff.
In this specific scenario, K9 Cole responded to the
trunk area and then proceeded to the right side, the
passenger side of the target vehicle. . . . He then
went to the front passenger side door. At that point,
K9 Cole jumped up onto his hind legs and proceeded
to reach his nose into the vehicle. The passenger
side window was open at the time of the stop. He
was reaching toward the dashboard, if you will, area
of the vehicle.
If you recall from the video, Cole was walking and
suddenly his behavior changed. It occurred when he
went up high and proceeded to reach, sniff into the
vehicle. From that point on K9 Cole, I gave him his
lead. I rarely direct him and pull him in a specific
scenario or pull him in a certain direction. K9 Cole
retreated, came back towards the trunk of the
vehicle.
(App. 140.) Asked about her observations of Cole’s behavior on
the passenger side of the car, Meadows testified,
When the dog went up on his hind legs, I
immediately recognized that Cole has an odor. He’s
detected, for example, an odor. He has interests.
He’s on to something.
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(App. 140-41.)
Meadows and Cole then proceeded around the back of the
car and up the driver’s side, where Cole jumped in through the
open door. Meadows testified that Cole immediately stopped and
checked “the seams of the glove box and surrounding the air
vents.” (App. 141.) Meadows testified: “That to me is a very
major key indicator. It confirmed in my mind what the dog was
working towards when he was outside the vehicle on the passenger
side when he jumped up on the rear right and was attempting to go
sniff into the vehicle.” (App. 141-142.)
Cole jumped into the back seat and “continued to work,
sniffing the area. There was also food in the back seat of the car.
Bird seed was everywhere, for whatever reason, inside the vehicle.
I did pull him off of that food to stay focused on task . . . .” (App.
142.) Meadows testified that at that point, she “was certain that K9
Cole had detected the odor of narcotics. He had done his job.”
(App. 142.) Meadows and Cole walked around the front of the car,
where at the passenger side window, Cole “jump[ed] up twice on
his hind legs again reaching for an odor.” (App. 142.) At this
point, Meadows concluded the K-9 examination and reported to
Brietzke.
The video is consistent with Meadows’ testimony about
Cole’s actions, which are readily viewable when he is outside the
car. As she testified, the video shows that once Cole alerts in the
initial seconds of the search, when he is outside the passenger
window, Meadows gives him his lead as she testified it is her
practice to do. Cole then moves around the trunk of the car, up the
left side of it, and at the open door Cole goes right in. Once the
dog is inside, what can be seen through the back window of the
stationary car (Cole’s waving tail and general movements) supports
Meadows’ testimony about how the dog was behaving. While
Meadows and Cole are at the car, the video records Brietzke’s
comments on the results of the background check, which revealed
prior drug arrests. The video records Meadows telling Brietzke
how Cole had alerted, Brietzke relating the information on Pierce’s
prior arrests and dispositions, and the two officers discussing the
absence of any paperwork indicating that Pierce had the right to be
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driving the car. Brietzke confronts Pierce off camera about this,
telling him that the car could be stolen, which Pierce denies. Then
Brietzke and Meadows go over to the car and search it. They
testified that they found approximately one kilogram of cocaine
and over $20,000 in cash in the glove box. Brietzke arrested Pierce
at this point.
II.
The District Court found that Cole’s sniff was not a search
within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment because Cole
instinctively jumped in the car, on his own and without Meadows’
assistance, through a door Pierce left open. The District Court
found that the record evidence established that Meadows did not
“push, direct, or order Cole into the car,” and that Cole alerted to
the passenger’s side and dashboard area of the car once he was in
it. (App. 15.)
In determining that Cole’s “interior sniffs” were not a
search, the District Court was persuaded by the reasoning set forth
in United States v. Hutchinson, 471 F. Supp. 2d 497 (M.D. Pa.
2007), where the defendant, like Pierce, entered a conditional
guilty plea and preserved the issue of the legality of a K-9 dog’s
“interior sniffs,” which led to the recovery of substantial quantities
of marijuana from the back seat of the van he was driving. Indeed,
the District Court, Pierce, and the government agree that
Hutchinson, and the cases cited in it, provide the legal framework
for deciding when an interior dog sniff transforms into a “search.”
(App. 14; Appellant’s Br. 12; Appellee’s Br. 15-16.) Although we
affirmed in a not precedential opinion, we did not discuss this
issue. United States v. Hutchinson, 316 Fed. App’x 137 (3d Cir.
2009).
We find that the district court’s decision in Hutchinson
correctly applies the governing law to the facts germane to the
Fourth Amendment issue. The Supreme Court has addressed the
use of trained dogs to sniff for illegal drugs in various factual
contexts. In United States v. Place, 462 U.S. 696 (1983), the Court
applied the Terry stop-and-frisk principles to dog sniffs of luggage:
“[T]he canine sniff is sui generis. We are aware of no other
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investigative procedure that is so limited both in the manner in
which the information is obtained and in the content of the
information revealed by the procedure.” Id. at 707.
Consistently the Supreme Court has held that an exterior
canine sniff of a car during a lawful traffic stop does not amount to
a “search” under the Fourth Amendment. Illinois v. Caballes, 543
U.S. 405, 410 (2005) (“A dog sniff conducted during a concededly
lawful traffic stop that reveals no information other than the
location of a substance that no individual has any right to possess
does not violate the Fourth Amendment.”); Indianapolis v.
Edmond, 531 U.S. 32, 40 (2000) (stating that a dog sniff of the
exterior of a car is “much less intrusive than a typical search”)
(quotation omitted). The federal courts have followed suit. See
e.g., United States v. Branch, 537 F. 3d 328 (4th Cir. 2008) (a dog
sniff is not a search and therefore requires no additional
justification if it occurs during a lawful traffic stop); United States
v. Olivera-Mendez, 484 F.3d 505 (8th Cir. 2007) (exterior sniff
taking place during a traffic stop did not amount to a search even
though the dog jumped and placed his paws on the car several
times; sniff took less than a minute, the dog’s contact with car was
minimal and incidental, and the sniff did not involve entering the
car); United States v. Jensen, 425 F.3d 698 (9th Cir. 2005), cert.
denied, 547 U.S. 1056 (2006) (use of a drug-sniffing dog during
a valid traffic stop does not itself constitute a “search”); United
States v. Holloman, 113 F.3d 192 (11th Cir. 1997) (appellate court
affirmed the denial of defendant’s motion to suppress drugs seized
because the dog sniff was not a “search”; the defendant had refused
to permit a search after he was lawfully stopped).
It is also well-established that, looking at the totality of the
circumstances, a dog’s positive alert while sniffing the exterior of
the car provides an officer with the probable cause necessary to
search the car without a warrant. E.g., Karnes v. Skrutski, 62 F.3d
485, 498 (3d Cir. 1995) (“[I]t is clear that the drug dog’s alert
would present probable cause for a search.”); United States v.
Massac, 867 F.2d 174, 176 (3d Cir. 1989) (“When the alert was
given by the dog, we are satisfied that, at least when combined with
the other known circumstances, probable cause existed to arrest.”);
United States v. Williams, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 81010, at *25
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(W.D. Pa.2006) (“Once the ‘hit’ occurred, the officers had
probable cause . . . .”).
Moving to the particular issue before us, the interior sniffs
and alerts that led to the discovery of narcotics, both the
Hutchinson decision and the District Court’s opinion here rejecting
Pierce’s suppression arguments particularly relied on the Tenth
Circuit’s reasoning in United States v. Stone that a trained narcotic
dog’s instinctive action of jumping into the car does not violate the
Fourth Amendment. 866 F.2d 359, 364 (10th Cir. 1989). Perforce,
“instinctive” implies the dog enters the car without assistance,
facilitation, or other intentional action by its handler. The Tenth
Circuit recently reaffirmed Stone in United States v. Vasquez, 555
F.3d 923 (10th Cir. 2009), noting, “we have upheld the legality of
such a sniff during a lawful detention when, as here, (1) the dog’s
leap into the car was instinctual rather than orchestrated and (2) the
officers did not ask the driver to open the point of entry such as a
hatchback or a window, used by the dog.” Id. at 930 (citing Stone,
866 F.2d at 364; cf. United States v. Winningham, 140 F.3d 1328,
1330-31 (10th Cir. 1998)). The Eighth Circuit cited to Stone in its
reasoning in United States v. Lyons, 486 F.3d 367 (8th Cir. 2007),
where the K-9 dog under scrutiny, Capone, “stuck his head through
the open passenger-side window and then sat down beside the front
passenger door, his indication that he had found the strongest
source of the odor of narcotics.” Id. at 370. The officers then
searched the van and found 106 pounds of marijuana and a large
sum of cash. The circuit court held that the trooper handling a
narcotics dog performing a K-9 investigation “did not create the
opportunity for the dog to breach the interior of the vehicle.” Id.
at 373. Significantly, in Lyons the entire stop was recorded on
video, which the court found confirmed “the district court’s
determination that [Capone] would have ultimately indicated on the
van even if he had not stuck his head inside the window.” Id. See
also United States v. Williams, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12303, at
*22 (D. Minn. Feb. 1, 2010) (stating that “the fact that the
passenger window of the vehicle was open, creating an opportunity
for the dog to breach the interior of the vehicle, did not render the
search unlawful); United States v. McKoy, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS
20237, at *20 (D.D.C. 2007) (noting that the dog’s “conduct in
jumping into the [car] was instinctive and was not facilitated by
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police officers”); United States v. Watson, 783 F. Supp. 258, 265
(E.D. Va. 1992) (stating that there was “no evidence that the dog
was encouraged to jump in the car by its handler”).
Where decisions have held that an interior sniff was
unconstitutional, the courts have concluded that the officer
“facilitated or encouraged” the dog’s entry into the car. E.g.,
United States v. Winningham, 140 F.3d 1328, 1331 (10th Cir.
1998) (suppressing drugs found following an interior sniff where
the officers lacked any reasonable suspicion that the van contained
drugs; and where they opened the door, allowed the door to remain
open while waiting for the drug dog to arrive; and where the dog’s
handler unleashed the dog as they approached the van); State v.
Freel, 32 P.3d 1219, 1225 (Kan. Ct. App. 2001) (finding the
interior sniff to be a search, because the officer “encouraged the
dog to enter into the car when it had not alerted on the exterior”);
State v. Warsaw, 956 P.2d 139, 143 (N.M. Ct. App. 1997)
(distinguishing Stone, stating that the officer “reached into the
trunk to remove the glass-laden carpet because he expected the
narcotics dog to jump in there”).
From our review of the record, including the videotape, we
see no error in the District Court’s finding that Cole alerted to
narcotics found in Pierce’s glove box, jumped through an open
door and alerted to the front passenger seat and glove box area, and
in so doing acted instinctively and without facilitation by his
handler, Corporal Meadows. Her testimony that once Cole alerts,
she does not lead him but gives him his lead, is credible and visible
on the video. And we apply the considerable body of jurisprudence
examined above to conclude that Cole’s interior sniffs, as a natural
migration from his initial exterior sniffs, did not constitute a search
requiring a warrant or probable cause.
Moreover, because the video and testimony support the
District Court’s finding that Cole initially alerted to the outside of
Pierce’s car in the area of the front passenger seat, the remand that
Pierce is asking for would inevitably result in a pro forma exercise.
The District Court found that Cole alerted to the outside of the car
(see e.g., App. 13), which provides probable cause for a police
officer to search the interior of the car. See Massac, 867 F.2d at
10
176. Pierce does not challenge that finding. Whether one reasons
that Cole’s entry into the car and interior sniffs did not amount to
a search, or one reasons that Cole’s positive alert when he was
outside the open passenger window gave the officers probable
cause to search the car, the result is the same – Corporals Brietzke
and Meadows conducted a constitutional search that yielded the
contraband and cash. We affirm the reasoning adopted by the
District Court.
Finding no violation of the Fourth Amendment, we hold that
the District Court properly denied Pierce’s suppression motion and
we affirm the judgment of conviction.2
2
The government’s initial point in its brief is that Pierce
waived the argument he makes now, to wit that Meadows
facilitated Cole’s entry into the car by extending Cole’s leash.
Because we find the District Court’s reasoning embraced
Meadows’ conduct as a whole, and that it explicitly found
Meadows did not “facilitate” Cole’s entry into the car, Pierce’s
narrow argument before us is sufficiently connected to the
arguments he made before the District Court that there was no
waiver.
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