United States v. Peoples, No. 16-2044 (8th Cir. 2017)
Annotate this CaseAfter pleading guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm, defendant appealed the denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained from a search of a motel room where he was staying. In this case, the motel clerk handed a law enforcement officer a key for the purpose of effecting an eviction, not to conduct a search. The court explained that it could not interpret Mo. Rev. Stat. 315.075 to require innkeepers to ignore police warnings of illicit conduct on hotel premises. Rather, the court must look to the specific facts behind police-initiated evictions. In this case, defendant did not offer, and the record does not convey, any evidence of bad faith on the part of the police. Therefore, the court found that the officer's entry into the motel room was for the lawful purpose of effecting defendant's eviction and the evidence observed during this initial entry was a valid basis for the subsequent search warrant. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's denial of defendant's motion to suppress.
Court Description: Shepherd, Author, with Benton, Circuit Judge, and Ebinger, District Judge] Criminal case - Sentencing. The district court erred in applying an enhancement under Guidelines Sec. 2G2.2(b)(3)(B) as the sentencing record does not support the conclusion that defendant actually engaged in file sharing after he uploaded an image to Google Picasa; applying the categorical approach, it is clear from looking at defendant's 2003 conviction for possession of a pornographic work involving minors in violation of Minnesota Statute Section 617.247, subd. 4 that the conviction necessarily relates to the possession of child pornography under federal law, and the district court did not err in applying the 15-year mandatory minimum sentence under 18 U.S.C. Section 2252(b)(1); remanded for resentencing without the Sec. 2G2.b(3)(B) enhancement. [ April 21, 2017
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