Aрpellant Espinoza seeks relief from the refusal of the district court to suppress evidence obtained in a police search of his home. We affirm.
*318 On May 6, 1986, El Paso police obtained a warrant for Espinoza’s arrest and to search his house for narcotics, based on information from a reliable, confidential informant that Espinoza and his wife were dealing narcotics at that location., Because the house was heavily secured and the police feared that Espinoza would be able to destroy evidence if they attempted to arrest him inside, the police set up surveillancе in an attempt to intercept Espinoza outside. On May 7, 1986, the police stopped a car, believed to be Espinoza’s, as it left the premises. Finding Espinoza and his wife and her sister inside, they arrested Espinoza and returned to his house.
Upon entering the house, the police noticed a triple-beam sсale in the kitchen and several antique guns in a display case in the living room. Suddenly a car pulled into Espinoza’s driveway and two men got out and apprоached the back door of the house. One man, later identified as Crouse, was carrying a chrome-plated shotgun and called out Espinoza’s nickname. A police radio inadvertently sounded and the men fled, but they were quickly captured by the police. Officer Apodaca then interviewed Crouse and learned that the shotgun in Crouse’s possession was stolen and that he had intended to trade it to Espinoza for narcotics. Crouse also told Apodaca that the other man, Fineron, had recently traded a stolen shotgun to Espinoza for drugs and that the gun was in the house.
At about this time, Detective Pacheco informed Apodaca that he had discovered several guns in a corner of the bedroom. Based on Crouse's statements and their own suspicions, the police confiscated the guns, as well as drug paraphernalia and cash found in the house and eighteen balloons containing heroin and cocaine found on Mrs. Espinoza.
Espinoza was indicted on two counts of knowing and unlawful receipt and possession of the shotgun and two handguns found in the bedroom corner. 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(h)(1), 924(a); 18 U.S.C.App. II § 1202(a)(1). At a pretrial hearing, the district court denied Espinoza’s motion to suppress the guns as the product of an illegal search. Esрinoza subsequently pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years incarceration, conditioned on the right to take this appeal of the suppression ruling.
It is undisputed that the warrant at issue was limited to narcotics, and that the seizure of the guns cannot be justified under the warrant. The government, however, contends that the guns were discovered in plain view during a lawful search of the premises, and were lawfully seized under the plain view exception to the fourth аmendment’s warrant requirement. This was the basis of the trial court’s ruling. Espinoza disagrees.
As enunciated by the Supreme Court in
Texas v. Brown,
1. The officer must lawfully make an initiаl intrusion or otherwise properly be in a position from which he can view a particular area;
2. The officer must discover incriminating evidence “inadvertently,” i.e., he may not know in advance the location of certain evidence and intend to seize it under the pretext of the plain view doctrine; and
3. It must be “immediately apparent” to the officers that the items they observe may be evidence of crime, contraband, or otherwise subject tо seizure.
Examining each element in turn, we find that the government established a proper plain view seizure.
Proper Initial Intrusion
The guns were discovered during the course of a search for narcotics, and appellant does not challenge the district court’s finding that the search warrant and supporting affidavit were legally sufficient for that purpose. As the officers were legally in Espinoza’s house, this element is satisfied. See
United States v. Whaley,
*319 Inadvertently Discovered
Espinoza contends that Crouse’s statements to the рolice gave the police prior knowledge that stolen firearms would be found in his house, and thus the guns could not have been inadvertently discovered. Wе disagree. There is no evidence in the record to suggest that the police had any advance knowledge that' there would be stolen firearms in the hоuse and that they were relying on the plain view doctrine only as a pretext for the seizure.
Texas v. Brown,
Evidentiary Nature Immediately Apparent
Espinoza finally argues that if the officers learned from Crouse that there might be stolen firearms in the house only after they discovered them, then the evidentiary nature of the firearms was not “immediately apparent.” Alternatively, he contends, the information supplied by Crouse was nоt sufficiently detailed to justify the officers’ conclusion that the particular weapons seized were “immediately apparent” evidence of crime. Appellant’s characterization of events pertinent to the third prong of the plain view test founders on the facts of record and, as will be demonstrated, on a misunderstanding of this requirement.
Even before learning of Crouse’s statements, as the district court found, the officers were aware that drug addicts оften trade stolen guns for narcotics. Given the previous discoveries of narcotics, paraphernalia, and significant amounts of cash, as well аs the informant’s tip that Espinoza was involved in drug dealing, there was probable cause for Detective Pacheco to believe that the guns were stоlen or were the profits of Espinoza’s drug trafficking when he discovered them. As the Supreme Court has further explained, the implication of the “immediately аpparent” criterion derived from
Coolidge v. New Hampshire,
More fundamentally, Appellant’s insistence upon a necessary connection between Crouse’s statements and the officers’ plain view discovery of the firearms is flawed. The Supreme Court rejected, in
Texas v. Brown,
the contеntion that a police officer “must be possessed of near certainty as to the seizable nature of the items.”
Because all three elements of a “plain view” seizure were present in this case, the *320 district court properly denied Espinoza’s motion to suppress.
AFFIRMED.