United States v. Lustig, No. 14-50549 (9th Cir. 2016)
Annotate this CaseThe United States Supreme Court held in Riley v. California, that the Fourth Amendment requires law enforcement officers to obtain a warrant before they may search an arrestee’s cell phone. The court held that binding appellate precedent at the time of the searches in defendant's case, which was two years before the Riley decision, provided a reasonable basis to believe the searches were constitutional. Therefore, the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies to the evidence obtained from those searches. The court adopted its sister circuits’ test for evaluating harmlessness in the context of a conditional guilty plea and concluded that defendant must be given an opportunity to vacate his guilty plea if he so wishes because the Government has not met its burden of establishing harmlessness under that test. The court held that the standard that governs harmless error review in Rule 11(a)(2) appeals is whether the government has proved beyond reasonable doubt that the erroneously denied suppression motion did not contribute to the defendant’s decision to plead guilty. Accordingly, the court affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded.
Court Description: Criminal Law. The panel affirmed the district court in part, reversed in part, and remanded, in a case in which an officer conducted warrantless searches, incident to arrest, of cell phones found in the defendant’s pockets two years before the Supreme Court held that the Fourth Amendment requires law enforcement officers to obtain a warrant before they may search an arrestee’s cell phone. The panel held that binding precedent at the time of the searches provided a reasonable basis to believe the searches were constitutional, and that the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule therefore applies to the evidence obtained from those searches. The panel disagreed with the defendant’s contention that the delay between the initial searches and more comprehensive stationhouse searches undertaken four days later rendered the stationhouse searches unconstitutional. Rejecting the defendant’s contention that harmless error review does not apply in the context of a Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(a)(2) conditional guilty plea, the panel held that harmless error review applies to the district court’s concededly erroneous failure to suppress the fruit of searches of other cell phones found in the defendant’s car. The panel held that the standard that governs harmless error review in Rule 11(a)(2) appeals is whether the government has proved beyond a UNITED STATES V. LUSTIG 3 reasonable doubt that the erroneously denied suppression motion did not contribute to the defendant’s decision to plead guilty. The panel concluded that the government did not meet its burden of establishing harmless error, and remanded to allow the defendant to the opportunity to withdraw his guilty plea. Concurring, Judge Watford wrote that he does not think Rule 11(a)(2)—or basic principles of contract law governing plea agreements—permits any harmless error inquiry in this context. He wrote that if this court does anything other than affirm in full the denial of the defendant’s suppression motion, he is entitled to withdraw his guilty plea without more.
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