UNITED STATES v. RUIZ (2024)

ORDER DENYING DEFENDANT'S MOTION TO SUPPRESS

Before the Court is Jesus Ruiz's motion to suppress. ECF No. 50. After careful consideration, that motion is DENIED.

I. BACKGROUND

A. Procedural history

Ruiz was charged by indictment with conspiracy to distribute controlled substances (Count 1) and distribution of a controlled substance (Count 2). ECF No. 2 at 1-2. Ruiz filed a motion to suppress, arguing drug evidence seized in his home should be suppressed because police searched the home without a search warrant. See ECF No. 50 at 1.

B. Relevant facts

The Rock Island Police Department (“Rock Island PD”) assisted the United States Marshals with apprehending Ruiz on an arrest warrant on November 30, 2021. ECF No. 50-3 at 1. Officer Kenneth Yingling, a parole officer with the Illinois Department of Corrections (“IDOC”) and a member of the United States Marshals Fugitive Task Force (“Task Force”), testified at the March 27, 2024 evidentiary hearing that IDOC issued a parole warrant for Ruiz because he had been charged with aggravated assault in Illinois. Ruiz's registered parole host site was at 1308 7th Street in Rock Island, Illinois.

Five members of the Task Force and three Rock Island PD officers surrounded Ruiz's home to apprehend him on the parole warrant. Yingling observed movement inside the house establishing that someone was in the home. When officers knocked on the front door, they observed two people flee to the back of the home. Defense Exhibit D contains a Rock Island PD officer's bodycam footage.¹ The bodycam officer was positioned behind the home with two other officers. See Ex. D at 1:32. The bodycam officer also noticed movement in the house through the window. Id. at 1:47. He told the officer next to him that people may be going to the basement. Id. at 1:54. Ruiz then emerged through the back door. Id. at 2:08. The bodycam officer ordered Ruiz to the ground and handcuffed him on the sidewalk outside the back door. Id. at 2:19. Ruiz told the bodycam officer that one person was upstairs in the home. Ex. D at 2:36. Officers began entering the home through the back door. Id. at 2:33. Yingling testified that officers entered through the front door of the home after Ruiz was arrested. An officer walked Ruiz to the front of the home in handcuffs after he was arrested. Id. at 3:28.

The bodycam officer entered the home through the back door and began looking for other occupants. Id. at 3:51. He went to the basement with a Task Force member. Id. at 4:05. The bodycam officer located a man in the basement and arrested him. Ex. D at 4:25. This man was later identified as Ricardo Martinez. ECF No. 50-3 at 1. The bodycam officer continued looking in the basement for people after Martinez was arrested. Ex. D at 5:32. He went to the main floor after clearing the basement. Id. at 6:05. A Task Force member was standing in a room with another handcuffed person. Id. at 6:11. This man was later identified as Jose Acevez-Garcia. ECF No. 50-3 at 1.

The bodycam officer left the home to tell another Rock Island PD officer to transport Ruiz to the jail. Ex. D at 7:05. When the bodycam officer returned to the home, a Task Force member told him there was “dope in plain view upstairs on the bed.” Id. at 7:51. The bodycam officer asked a Task Force member if he had a search warrant for the house. Id. at 8:20. The Task Force member told him “no,” but another Task Force member told him that “this was parole so we can search.” Id. at 8:25. Yingling testified that parole officers had authority to search the home. He believed Ruiz had signed a consent to search during the initial host site visit. Yingling believed he could search the home based on that authority.

Yingling said a “protective sweep” of the home was conducted after Ruiz had been arrested. He explained officers must do this after the fugitive is arrested to protect officers and to determine if other people in the home are wanted, if there are weapons or drugs in the home, or if there are victims in the home. Officers searched anywhere a body could be found. While searching, Yingling found a clear tote with suspected marijuana in a closet. Another Task Force member found marijuana in a suitcase in the basement. Yingling testified the suitcase was large enough to fit a person inside. Task Force members notified Rock Island PD officers what they had found. Detective Paul Girskis of the Rock Island PD obtained a search warrant just before noon, ECF No. 50-3 at 2—approximately two hours after the arrest warrant was executed. See ECF No. 50-2 at 1. Task Force members secured the scene until Rock Island PD obtained the search warrant and took over.

During execution of the search warrant, officers found nine pounds of cannabis inside a tote at the bottom of the staircase leading to the second floor, ECF No. 50-3 at 1, twenty-four pounds of cannabis in a suitcase in the basement, eight pounds of cannabis in a garbage bag in the basement, .87 grams of cocaine in a plastic bag on the bed in the upstairs bedroom, and a folded dollar bill with cocaine residue on the same bed. ECF No. 50-3 at 2. Officers also found 145.8 grams of cocaine in a speaker box in the main floor bathroom, a digital scale, a large amount of cash, and numerous cell phones. Id.

II. DISCUSSION

Ruiz argues that “[b]ecause the residence was searched absent a search warrant and without an applicable exception to the search warrant requirement the search was unreasonable.” ECF No. 50 at 1. The Court disagrees for three reasons. First, the officers lawfully discovered drugs in plain view during their protective sweep of the home. Second, even if the protective sweep was unlawful, Yingling and other Task Force members still had authority to search Ruiz's home based on his parole status. Lastly, the good faith exception to the exclusionary rules applies.

A. Protective sweep

The officers’ protective sweep of Ruiz's home was constitutional. The Fourth Amendment protects “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” U.S. Const. amend. IV. “[S]earches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by judge or magistrate, are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment—subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions.” Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 357, 88 S. Ct. 507, 514, 19 L. Ed. 2d 576 (1967) (footnotes omitted). One exception to the warrant requirement is a “protective sweep.” United States v. Alatorre, 863 F.3d 810, 813 (8th Cir. 2017). A protective sweep is “a quick and limited search of premises, incident to an arrest and conducted to protect the safety of police officers or others. It is narrowly confined to a cursory visual inspection of those places in which a person might be hiding.” Id. (quoting Maryland v. Buie, 494 U.S. 325, 327 (1990)).

Protective sweeps are allowed under the Fourth Amendment when “the searching officer possesse[d] a reasonable belief based on specific and articulable facts which, taken together with the rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant[ed] the officer in believing that the area swept harbored an individual posing a danger to the officer or others.” Id. (quotation and citation omitted; emphasis original). Protective sweeps are authorized “for unknown individuals in a house who may pose a threat to officers as they effectuate an arrest ․ [but] ․ not ․ for weapons or contraband.” Id. (quotation omitted).

Several circuits “have often upheld protective sweeps after an arrest outside of a residence.” Id. at 14 (collecting cases). The Eighth Circuit has “found a protective sweep valid even though the defendant ‘had already been handcuffed and taken to [another area],’ ” Alatorre, 863 F.3d at 814 (bracketed material original) (quoting United States v. Boyd, 180 F.3d 967, 975 (8th Cir. 1999)), and “in a building that did not immediately adjoin the place of arrest.” Id. (citing United States v. Davis, 471 F.3d 938, 944-45 (8th Cir. 2006) (upholding protective sweep of defendant's barn after arrest outside of the barn)). But “ ‘[t]he inquiry as to the reasonableness and validity of a protective sweep is necessarily fact-specific.’ ” Id. (quoting United States v. Thompson, 842 F.3d 1002, 1009 (7th Cir. 2016)).

“Protection of officers conducting an arrest near a defendant's home is a priority recognized by our courts.” Id. (citation omitted). Thus, “[p]rotective sweeps in these circumstances are justified because officers are vulnerable during an arrest at a home, even when the arrestee and other occupants have been secured ․” Id. The Supreme Court has recognized that:

[T]here is an ․ interest of the officers in taking steps to assure themselves that the house in which a suspect ․ has just been ․ arrested is not harboring other persons who are dangerous and who could unexpectedly launch an attack. The risk of danger in the context of an arrest in the home is as great as, if not greater than, it is in an on-the-street or roadside investigatory encounter ․ A protective sweep ․ occurs as an adjunct to the serious step of taking a person into custody for the purpose of prosecuting him for a crime. Moreover, unlike an encounter on the street or along a highway, an in-home arrest puts the officer at the disadvantage of being on his adversary's “turf.” An ambush in a confined setting of an unknown configuration is more to be feared than it is in open, more familiar surroundings. Alatorre, 863 F.3d 810, 814 (quoting Buie, 494 U.S. at 333).

Accordingly, the Eighth Circuit has observed that “[a] protective sweep is justified by the threat of accomplices launching a surprise attack during an arrest and is particularly important during an in-home arrest, due to the heightened potential for an ambush in unfamiliar surroundings.” Id. (quotation omitted).

A protective sweep of Ruiz's home was justified here because there were several “articulable facts and rational inferences supporting the officers’ reasonable beliefs that someone else could be inside posing a danger to them during or following the arrest.” Id. (citation omitted). Yingling credibly testified officers observed two people flee to the back of the home when officers knocked on the front door. Only one person—Ruiz—emerged from the back door before officers entered the home. This left at least one other person still inside. The bodycam officer, who was at the back of the home, also noticed movement in the house through the window and believed that people may be going to the basement. See Ex. D at 1:47; 1:54. Ruiz told him that one person was upstairs in the home. Id. at 2:36. Because the bodycam officer believed people were going in the other direction—to the basement—it was reasonable for officers to believe that more than one person was still left in the home.

The Eighth Circuit has held when “audible movements and behaviors (e.g., coming to the door and retreating; quietly conversing) of people behind the door and blinds after the officers knocked, along with the delays in answering the door, created a reasonable uncertainty as to how many people were inside the residence and their intentions toward the officers,” a protective sweep was permissible. Alatorre, 863 F.3d at 815 (citing United States v. Boyd, 180 F.3d 967, 975-76 (8th Cir. 1999) (upholding a protective sweep because “[w]hen the law enforcement officers entered the house ․ they had no way of knowing how many people were there”) (internal quotation marks omitted); United States v. Davis, 471 F.3d 938, 944 (8th Cir. 2006) (“A protective sweep may be executed after an arrest if there is a reasonable possibility that other persons may be present on the premises who pose a danger to the officers.”)). That is the case here.

Officers are justified in continuing their protective sweep even after “hindsight reveals that the officers had already encountered the only [ ] individuals present in [the] residence.” Alatorre, 863 F.3d at 815 (citing United States v. Williams, 577 F.3d 878, 881 (8th Cir. 2009) (similarly noting that “[w]hile hindsight reveals that the officers had already encountered all of the occupants of the home before conducting the protective sweep, that information was not apparent to the officers when they initiated the sweep”)). That is especially true here when Ruiz told the bodycam officer there was only one person inside, but the bodycam officer encountered two people inside shortly after entering the home (one in the basement and one on the first floor).

The Eighth Circuit will uphold a protective sweep if it is “ ‘quick and limited’ and ‘initially confined to places large enough to conceal a person.’ ” Id. Officers began entering the home through the back door at 2:33 on the bodycam footage. Ex. D at 2:33. That footage clearly shows officers searching for and securing people in the home and looking for others in places where a person may hide. The bodycam officer began discussing searching the home less than six minutes later, when the protective sweep was over. See id. at 8:20. The officer's six-minute search of a two-story home with a basement was “ ‘quick and limited’ and ‘initially confined to places large enough to conceal a person.’ ” Alatorre, 863 F.3d at 815. (“Here, the Task Force's protective sweep lasted two minutes with officers only examining places where a person could be hiding, while incidentally noting guns and drugs in plain view.”). Even though Ruiz had already been detained before officers conducted a protective sweep, it still “passes constitutional muster, and the fruits of that valid sweep are untainted.” Id. at 816 (upholding protective sweep in factually similar case).

The officers discovered, at minimum, the cocaine on the bed and pounds of marijuana in a clear tote in a closet during the protective sweep. This provided probable cause to obtain the search warrant. See, e.g., United States v. Tran, No. CR12-4009-MWB-2, 2012 WL 1677421, at *3, n. 1 (N.D. Iowa May 15, 2012) (citation omitted) (“[C]ontraband observed in plain view during the protective sweep could have been used to provide probable cause to obtain a search warrant for the defendant's residence.”); United States v. Reinhart, No. CR08–0015, 2008 WL 4180295, at *6 (N.D. Iowa Apr. 8, 2008) (“The Court determines that Officer Wheatly's observation, during the protective sweep, of the handgun and bag of marijuana in plain view provided probable cause for obtaining a search warrant for Defendant's apartment.”). Therefore, the evidence discovered both during the protective sweep and after the search warrant had been obtained and executed was constitutionally obtained.

B. Ruiz's parole status

Officers were also permitted to search Ruiz's home based on his parole status. The officers’ original intent was not to search the home on November 30, 2021—it was to apprehend Ruiz at his parole host site on an IDOC parole warrant. Parolees like Ruiz “ ‘have severely diminished expectations of privacy.’ ” Lane v. Nading, 927 F.3d 1018, 1024 (8th Cir. 2019) (quoting Samson v. California, 547 U.S. 843, 852 (2006) (holding that the government may conduct warrantless, suspicion less searches of parolees)). By law, Illinois parolees like Ruiz consent to be searched.

Illinois prisoners “eligible for parole are presented with an agreement that sets forth the conditions of their release from the physical custody of the Department of Corrections.” People v. Wilson, 228 Ill. 2d 35, 48 (2008) (citing 730 ILCS 5/3–3–7 (West 2006)). Prisoners must “sign this agreement and retain a copy in order to secure their release from the physical custody of the Department of Corrections.” Id. (citing 730 ILCS 5/3–3–7(c) (West 2006); People v. Powell, 217 Ill.2d 123, 128 (2005) (prisoner who refused to sign his MSR agreement was kept in physical custody)). As a condition of parole, prisoners must “consent to a search of his or her person, property, or residence under his or her control.” 730 ILCS 5/3–3–7(a)(10). The Illinois Supreme Court has interpreted this provision as consent to conduct a suspicionless search of the parolee's home. See Wilson, 228 Ill. 2d at 52 (citing Samson, 547 U.S. at 857)

When a parolee is released on the condition that he must “submit to suspicionless searches by a parole officer or other peace officer ‘at any time’ and is ‘unambiguously’ made aware of the condition, he lacks ‘an expectation of privacy that society would recognize as legitimate.’ ” Lane v. Nading, 927 F.3d 1018, 1024 (8th Cir. 2019) (quoting Samson, 547 U.S. at 1024). “A warrantless search within the scope of a known parole condition is generally reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.” United States v. Blom, No. 22-2957, 2024 WL 620280, at *2 (8th Cir. Feb. 14, 2024) (citing Samson, 547 U.S. at 852; United States v. McCoy, 847 F.3d 601, 605 (8th Cir. 2017) (warrantless search of a Minnesota parolee's computer was not unreasonable in light of the parolee's acknowledged search condition)). Yingling testified that parole officers had authority to search the home and could have searched the home based on that authority alone. This belief accords with the law. Because Ruiz was a parolee who was required by law to submit to suspicionless searches of his home, officers were permitted to search his home without a warrant or an exception to the warrant requirement applying.

C. Good faith exception

Even if the search warrant application were insufficient to establish probable cause, the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies in this case. “Under the Leon good-faith exception, disputed evidence will be admitted if it was objectively reasonable for the officer executing a search warrant to have relied in good faith on the judge's determination that there was probable cause to issue the warrant.” United States v. Johnson, 75 F.4th 833, 842–43 (8th Cir. 2023) (quotation omitted). “In determining whether the officer relied in good faith on the validity of a warrant, [the Court] consider[s] the totality of the circumstances, including any information known to the officer but not included in the search warrant application. Id.” at 843 (citation omitted). The “good-faith inquiry is confined to the objectively ascertainable question whether a reasonably well trained officer would have known that the search was illegal despite the [issuing judge's] authorization.” United States v. Puckett, 466 F.3d 626, 630 (8th Cir. 2006) (bracketed material original) (quoting Leon, 468 U.S. at 922, n. 23). “The rationale for such an exception is that no justification exists to exclude evidence ‘when an officer acting with objective good faith has obtained a search warrant from a judge or magistrate and acted within its scope.’ ” Id. (quoting Leon, 468 U.S. at 920).

The Leon Court “cited four circumstances in which the good-faith exception does not apply: (1) when there is a Franks violation; (2) when an issuing judge has ‘wholly abandoned his judicial role’; (3) when it is entirely unreasonable to believe that an affidavit provides probable cause to issue a warrant; and (4) when the warrant is “so facially deficient” that no police officer could reasonably presume the warrant to be valid.” Id. None of those circumstances are present here. First, there was no Franks violation. Second, there is no “evidence that the issuing judge abandoned his role to independently determine probable cause.” Id. Third, it was entirely reasonable for officers to believe there was probable cause to search a home containing a large quantity of drugs in plain view. And lastly, “no evidence suggests that the search warrant was facially deficient.” Id. Indeed, Ruiz does not point to any of these circumstances.

Instead, he argues “[t]he Leon exception does not apply here because it is not reasonable for officers to rely on an arrest warrant as if it were a search warrant.” ECF No. 50-1 at 4 (citing United States v. Williams, 976 F.3d 807 (8th Cir. 2020)). But that is not what happened. Officers did not rely on the arrest warrant as if it were a search warrant—officers entered the home, not to search it for contraband, but to search it for people who may pose a safety threat to them. While doing so, they discovered contraband in plain view all over the house. Officers then applied for a search warrant, describing in the warrant application the contraband they found during the protective sweep. Officers obtained a search warrant based on that application, and then searched for contraband in addition to what had already been in plain view. Officers were not relying on the arrest warrant to search for that contraband.

The Court concludes that officers executing the search warrant “relied in good faith on the warrant, and therefore the evidence seized from [Ruiz's] home w[ill] be admissible at trial.” See Puckett, 466 F.3d at 630.

III. CONCLUSION

Officers lawfully discovered drugs in plain view during their protective sweep of the home. Even if the protective sweep was unlawful, officers still had authority to search Ruiz's home based on his parole status. Lastly, the good faith exception to the exclusionary rules applies.

IT IS SO ORDERED that Ruiz's motion to suppress, ECF No. 50, is DENIED.

FOOTNOTES

1.   The parties did not identify this officer in their pleadings or at the evidentiary hearing. The Court will refer to him here as “the bodycam officer.”

STEPHANIE M. ROSE, Chief Judge