United States v. John Pickens, Jr., No. 22-1292 (8th Cir. 2023)
Annotate this Case
A jury convicted Defendant of possessing at least five kilograms of cocaine. Defendant retained new counsel and moved for judgment of acquittal or a new trial, raising numerous issues. The district court denied the motion. Defendant appealed. His principal argument, raised for the first time in the post-verdict motion, is that law enforcement violated the Fourth Amendment by using expired tracking warrants to locate him when he was arrested returning to the Twin Cities from a trip to Chicago with thirteen pounds of cocaine in his vehicle.
The Eighth Circuit affirmed. The court explained that it is undisputed that the Fourth Amendment argument at issue was an issue reasonably available for a pretrial motion to suppress that Defendant did not raise. However, the court agreed to review for plain error.
The court reasoned that nothing seriously affected the fairness or integrity of this prosecution. Whether the tracking warrants expired when Defendant was arrested, interviewed, and released on October 7 is an issue the court does not decide. However, it is hardly free from doubt, so any error in not reaching the issue was not plain. Moreover, Defendant fled when the police attempted to stop him on November 1, leading them on a hazardous high-speed chase that provided probable cause to arrest Defendant for resisting arrest, failing to stop after a collision, and reckless driving. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court’s denial of Defendant’s motion for judgment of acquittal or a new trial based on the alleged expiration of the tracking warrants.
Court Description: [Loken, Author, with Gruender and Grasz, Circuit Judges] Criminal case - Criminal law. By failing to raise an issue concerning the expiration of tracking warrants in a pretrial motion, defendant waived the issue; as the court's prior cases are inconsistent as to whether such a failure is a waiver or results in plain error review, the court will review the issue for plain error; the issue of whether the warrants expired when defendant was arrested, interviewed and released in an unrelated matter is hardly free from doubt, and the district court did not plainly err in not reaching the issue; further, when defendant fled from officers, he provided grounds for a legitimate arrest; his flight, together with officers' knowledge that he had posed with bricks of narcotics, provided at least arguable probable cause to conduct a warrantless search of his vehicle pursuant to the Fourth Amendment automobile exception; claim of prosecutorial misconduct based on presentation of false testimony rejected as without basis in the record; defendant requested and consented to the giving of the curative instruction he now challenges, and the claim is waived; claim of ineffective assistance of counsel at trial would not be considered on appeal.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.