United States v. Tuton, No. 17-1493 (8th Cir. 2018)
Annotate this CasePatrolling I-30, Arkansas State Police Corporal Goodman stopped a Tornado bus for following too closely. Goodman regularly received High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area summaries that reported seizures from Tornado buses; traffickers were storing drugs in unlabeled luggage. Goodman observed that bus driver was “pretty nervous” and said he was driving to Milwaukee from southern Texas while passenger manifest indicated the destination was Chicago. Goodman thought it suspicious that the company would undertake a costly cross-country trip with only four passengers. The driver consented to a search and opened doors to a luggage compartment. Goodman saw six bags with name tags plus “a black bag all by itself with no apparent markings" and no name tag. Goodman opened the black bag and reached inside, feeling what he believed was a false bottom. While trying to access the hidden compartment, Goodman saw a tag bearing Tuton’s name trapped beneath the bag’s collapsed handle. Goodman stopped searching, requested a canine unit, and questioned the passengers. Goodman testified that Tuton was “very nervous,” said his journey began in El Paso, and gave answers that “didn’t make sense.” Goodman did not ask Tuton for consent to search. About four minutes after Goodman requested the canine unit, Corporal Rapert arrived with his dog, Hemi. Hemi jumped into the luggage compartment and immediately showed behavioral changes. Rapert concluded Hemi had given a “profound alert,” but did not give a “final indication” on any bag. Rapert advised Goodman that Hemi’s behavior provided probable cause to search. Officers searched all the bags and, in Tuton’s, found eight pounds of cocaine under the false bottom. The Eighth Circuit affirmed the denial of Tuton’s motion to suppress. Discovery of the cocaine was not caused by Goodman’s prior unlawful search of the bag; Hemi’s sniff and alert were unaffected by that search.
Court Description: Loken, Author, with Gruender and Kelly, Circuit Judges] Criminal case - Criminal law. Claim that police officer unconstitutionally seized defendant when the officer asked the driver of the bus in which defendant was riding if there was any contraband in the bus and if the officer could search the bus was without merit, as the driver consented to the search and defendant was not seized during the search; while defendant had a protected privacy interest in his properly tagged luggage stowed in the bus's luggage compartment, the officer's search of the bag under the mistaken belief it was abandoned, did not make his conduct after discovering the mistake (having a drug dog sniff the entire luggage compartment) unlawful, and all evidence suggests the officer's mistake was an isolated instance of negligence which occurred during a bona fide investigation; as a result, the exclusionary rule did not require suppression of the drugs found in the bag; the drug dog's general alert, under these circumstances, gave officers probable cause to search the handful of bags, including defendant's, contained in the compartment. Judge Kelly, dissenting.
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