UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. David MONAHAN, Defendant-Appellant.
No. 79-1582
United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.
June 3, 1980
623 F.2d 206
Before COFFIN, Chief Judge, ALDRICH and BOWNES, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM.
David Monahan appeals from a cocaine conviction under
We disagree. Evidence of threats to witnesses can be relevant to show consciousness of guilt. See
We have no occasion in this case to consider whether a threat that is inflammatory or macabre in content should be excluded under Rule 403. Cf. United States v. McManaman, 606 F.2d 919, 926 (10th Cir. 1979) (“hearing and reading the taped conversation lead us to the conviction that the inflammatory talk of the plan of murders clearly must have predominated in impact over the discussion of drug dealing“); United States v. Check, 582 F.2d 668, 685-86 (2d Cir. 1978) (recognizing the “severe prejudice” that can result from testimony of death threats); United States v. Weir, 575 F.2d 668, 669-71 (8th Cir. 1978) (threats of three assassinations, plus account of attempted killing resulting in bullet wound, held to be reversible error).
Affirmed.
UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Oscar ARBOLEDA, Defendant-Appellant.
No. 528, Docket 79-1278
United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.
Argued Dec. 11, 1979. Decided June 9, 1980.
Rehearing Denied Oct. 8, 1980.
Ira Leitel, New York City (Carol Mellor, New York City, of counsel), for defendant-appellant.
Before FRIENDLY, MULLIGAN and OAKES, Circuit Judges.
FRIENDLY, Circuit Judge:*
This appeal is from a judgment of the District Court for the Eastern District of
The circumstances surrounding the arrest of Arboleda and the seizure of the highly damaging evidence were elicited at a pretrial suppression hearing. Three witnesses testified: two of the police officers who were present on the scene, and the defendant. The trial judge said that he found “much, if not all, of the defendant‘s testimony to be incredible and credits fully the testimony of Detective Bisbee.”
The facts developed at the hearing were as follows: On the evening of April 9, 1979, New York City Detective Bisbee, assigned to the Drug Enforcement Task Force, went to the Van Kleck Avenue apartment, along with Officer Flores and Group Supervisor and Investigator Gross of the New York City Police Department, for the purpose of apprehending defendant‘s brother, Gilberto Arboleda, who was wanted in connection with narcotics-related homicides, and also to interview the defendant. Officers Gross and Flores stationed themselves outside the front door of Apartment 3 H, listened in order to ascertain whether anyone was inside, and heard some movement and the noise of a TV. Bisbee arranged that at a set time the officers should knock on the door and announce themselves as police. He ascended to an apartment on an upper floor and with the occupant‘s consent went through it to a window that gave access to the fire escape. He descended this to the floor on which defendant‘s apartment was located,1 climbed over the fence of the fire escape to a two-foot ledge and made his way along it, with the purpose of preventing “the possible escape of Gilberto Arboleda whom we believed may have been in the apartment.” Bisbee testified that he glanced into the windows of the apartment as he proceeded, but that he could not see into it because the blinds were drawn. The kitchen window blinds were “maybe half-way up“; Bisbee‘s glance only permitted him to make out that the room was a kitchen. The trial court found that at the prearranged time of the signal Bisbee heard a banging noise.2 The court described what then happened as follows:
The defendant came to the kitchen window of his apartment. The window opened and the defendant looked out, tossed an aluminum foil package out the window towards the underneath part of the fire escape, looked around and quickly slammed the window and began locking it. Detective Bisbee ran over, grabbed the package from the fire escape, looked inside and saw a plastic bag filled with white powder which in his opinion appeared to be cocaine. Thereupon he banged on the window, held up his badge and the package and said “Police, open the window.” (Tr. 9).
The defendant (who now claims to speak no English) replied by holding up a single finger and saying “Wait one minute” and “With that he ran away from the window.” (Tr. 11) and then made a left hand turn (Tr. 12).
Detective Bisbee then smashed the window, opened it, jumped through the opened window and ran in the direction the defendant had run, and saw that the bathroom door was closed. He heard a toilet being flushed and he kicked open the closed bathroom door. Inside Detective Bisbee found Oscar Arboleda and the
defendant then took another package of clear plastic containing white power, molded into a pair of dungarees, folded it and dropped it on the ground. (Tr. 13). Detective Bisbee advised him he was under arrest whereupon the defendant began struggling with him and continued to struggle with him all the way into the living room. Detective Bisbee finally managed to get one handcuff on the defendant, pulled him over to the door and opened it to admit the other officers who were waiting outside. The other officers went through the apartment checking each room, looking for Arboleda‘s brother or anyone else who might be there. During this investigation, Detective Bisbee recovered the second package of cocaine from the bathroom. Thereafter, in Detective Bisbee‘s presence, Officer Flores warned the defendant of his rights, in Spanish. During the course of the aforedescribed events, Detective Bisbee heard New York City Police Officers who had apparently been called to the scene by other people “Yelling outside“. Detective Bisbee went back into the kitchen and from the kitchen window informed the police officers outside that there were police officers already in the premises. It was at this time that he observed a Hamilton Scale on the sink, a package of zip lock bags and four stringers hanging at the end of the sink.
I.
In the district court Arboleda, then represented by different counsel, focused his attack on Bisbee‘s breaking the window, entering the apartment and arresting Arboleda without a warrant, allegedly in violation of United States v. Reed, 572 F.2d 412 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 913, 99 S.Ct. 283, 58 L.Ed.2d 259 (1978), now reinforced by Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 100 S.Ct. 1371, 63 L.Ed.2d 639 (1980). Arboleda testified at the suppression hearing that he did not lean out the window or toss a package along the ledge, as the district court permissibly found, but that Bisbee simply broke in through the window. On appeal counsel focused not on Bisbee‘s entry through the window or arrest of Arboleda without a warrant, but rather on his entry onto the ledge. Counsel conceded that if Bisbee‘s seizure of the plastic bag, reasonably believed to contain cocaine, was lawful, which he stoutly denied, the breaking of the window and the subsequent entry, search and arrest were unobjectionable. These actions clearly came within the “exigent circumstances” exception recognized in Reed, id. at 418, 424.3 He conceded also that if the officers were armed with an arrest warrant for Gilberto Arboleda, his appeal should be dismissed, presumably because on that assumption Bisbee would have been justified in placing himself on the ledge to prevent Gilberto‘s escape,4 see United States v. Anderson, 552 F.2d 1296, 1300 (8th Cir. 1977), and the seizure of the first package would be valid under the plain view doctrine, Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 451 et seq., 91 S.Ct. 2022, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971), since the circumstances were exigent and the discovery inadvertent. His argument is that there was no such warrant and that without one, while Bisbee may have had a right to station himself on the fire escape, a “public area” of the building within our decisions in United States v. Llanes, 398 F.2d 880 (1968), cert. denied, 393 U.S. 1032, 89 S.Ct. 647, 21 L.Ed.2d 576 (1969), and
The argument encounters the serious difficulty that the record is barren of any evidence that none of the officers had an arrest warrant. “It is well established that the burden of production and persuasion generally rest upon the movant in a suppression hearing.” United States v. De La Fuente, 548 F.2d 528, 533 (5 Cir.), cert. denied, 431 U.S. 932, 97 S.Ct. 2640, 53 L.Ed.2d 249, 434 U.S. 954, 98 S.Ct. 479, 54 L.Ed.2d 312 (1977). See United States v. Morin, 378 F.2d 472, 475 (2 Cir. 1967); cf. United States v. Masterson, 383 F.2d 610, 614 (2 Cir. 1967), cert. denied, 390 U.S. 954, 88 S.Ct. 1048, 19 L.Ed.2d 1147 (1968) (
The movant must at least question the existence of a warrant before the Government is compelled to produce it. In United States v. De La Fuente, supra, 548 F.2d at 533, the court stated that:
[I]n some well-defined situations the ultimate burden of persuasion may shift to the government upon an initial showing of certain facts by the defendant. For example, if a defendant produces evidence that he was arrested or subjected to a search without a warrant, the burden shifts to the government to justify the warrantless arrest or search. (emphasis supplied).
See also United States v. Warren, 578 F.2d 1058, 1067 & n. 6 (5 Cir. 1978) (en banc) (“it is incumbent upon the party moving to suppress evidence to demonstrate lack of authority for its acquisition“). Cf. United States v. Diezel, 608 F.2d 204, 207 (5 Cir. 1979) (voluntariness of confession). Arboleda did not make the showing necessary to call upon the Government to adduce evidence of a warrant for Gilberto‘s arrest which, as he concedes, would justify Bisbee‘s presence on the ledge and the subsequent arrest of Arboleda and search of the apartment.
The rule requiring a movant at least to make an initial demonstration of lack of authority is sound both in logic and in fairness. As noted, the general rule is that the burden is on the movant, and so the movant must take some action, such as questioning the existence of a warrant, before the bur-
The dissent suggests that we should relieve the appellant of the consequences of this failure because it is somehow “unfair” to expect him to question the existence of a warrant for the arrest of a third party. This ignores the facts of the case. The role of the contemplated arrest of Gilberto in this scenario did not suddenly emerge out of the blue. Arboleda knew that Bisbee was positioned on the ledge pursuant to the endeavor to arrest Gilberto, and it was open to him below to question the officers about this effort by, for example, asking if they had a warrant and inquiring into the basis for their belief that Gilberto was in the apartment. The paucity of record evidence on these points is not due to defendant‘s inability to anticipate them, but rather is caused by the fact that pitting his own version of the facts against that of the officers as to what occurred on the ledge, he did not question them in any way. If, as the dissent suggests, there is anything “Kafkaesque” about this case it is the complete “metamorphosis” in appellant‘s legal argument between trial and appeal—a change so great as to make it questionable whether Arboleda should even be heard on the contention with respect to the illegality of Bisbee‘s presence on the ledge that is now mainly pressed.6
Again, apart from the concession, the dissent‘s further argument, fn. 3, that the officers were required to announce their presence and purpose prior to entering the ledge as opposed to the apartment is unpersuasive, even assuming the ledge was a protected area. See
While this is a sufficient basis for affirmance, there is another. In Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 99 S.Ct. 421, 58 L.Ed.2d 387 (1978), the Court said that “capacity to claim the protection of the Fourth Amendment depends not upon a property right in the invaded place but upon whether the person who claims the protection of the Amendment has a legitimate expectation of privacy in the invaded place.” Id. at 143, 99 S.Ct. at 430. See also Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351, 361, 88 S.Ct. 507, 511, 516, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (Harlan, J., concurring) (1967). Clearly Arboleda had such an expectation with respect to objects within his apartment but Bisbee‘s impermissible peeping-Tom activity produced nothing that led to the subsequent arrest and seizures. In contrast Arboleda had no legitimate expectation of privacy with respect to an object which he threw outside the apartment with the objective of getting rid of it before it could be seized by the officers whose presence at the door he had apparently detected.
The district judge stated that Bisbee grabbed the package “from the fire escape.” The fire escape was a common area where Bisbee could lawfully have been whether or not there was an arrest warrant. If Arboleda tossed the contraband onto it, he can claim no violation of his rights. Although Arboleda may have intended to retrieve the package later, by placing it in an unprotected area he had abandoned it for Fourth Amendment purposes. See United States v. Lewis, 227 F.Supp. 433 (S.D.N.Y.1964). Arboleda‘s action was precipitated by the perfectly legal knock of the officers at the door, and not by anything which Bisbee did, authorized or not.
Bisbee‘s testimony, however, suggests that the package fell short of the area where the fire escape hangs over the ledge and came to rest on the ledge itself. This makes no difference, since Arboleda had no legitimate expectation of privacy in the ledge.
Rakas provides considerable guidance on assessing whether there exists a legitimate expectation of privacy in any particular case. The Court noted that one may have a legitimate expectation of privacy “by virtue of [the] right to exclude.” 439 U.S. at 143-44 n. 12, 99 S.Ct. at 430. There is no evidence that Arboleda exercised any exclusive control over the ledge, which ran along the front of the building and was accessible to other tenants from their windows and the fire escape.7 Another relevant factor in considering what constituted a legitimate expectation of privacy is “the way a person has used a location.” 439 U.S. at 153, 99 S.Ct. at 435 (Powell, J., concurring); 439 U.S. at 141, 149, 99 S.Ct. at 429, 433. Here there was no indication that Arboleda had ever used the ledge in a private manner or as a part of his home. A third factor is whether the defendant “took normal precautions to maintain his privacy.” 439 U.S. at 152, 99 S.Ct. at 435 (Powell, J., concurring). Again, there is no evidence that Arboleda took any such precaution with respect to the ledge; indeed, the record demonstrates that the exigent circumstances in which Arboleda found himself when the officers knocked left no time for precautions.
It is difficult to imagine a legitimate expectation of privacy in an open area running along the front of the second floor of a building over a street. Bisbee was apparently observed on the ledge by someone who called the police to report a burglary; later Bisbee spoke through the kitchen window over the ledge to police on the street below. Cf. United States v. Santana, 427 U.S. 38, 42, 96 S.Ct. 2406, 2409, 49 L.Ed.2d
Arboleda likewise is not helped by invocation of the hoary concept of “curtilage“. Terming a particular area curtilage expresses a conclusion; it does not advance Fourth Amendment analysis. The relevant question is the one surveyed above, whether the defendant has a legitimate expectation of privacy in the area. See Wattenberg v. United States, 388 F.2d 853, 858 (9 Cir. 1968). It seems decidedly questionable whether, under the Rakas analysis, a homeowner could insist upon a search warrant if he hurled a package of cocaine onto his front lawn where it could be plainly seen by anyone. In its recent decision in Payton v. New York, supra, the Supreme Court identified the line at which the requirement for an arrest warrant takes hold as “the entrance to the house” and the “threshold“. See also United States v. Santana, supra, 427 U.S. at 42 (vestibule behind open door is public place). In any event, it is doubtful that the curtilage concept has much applicability to multifamily dwellings such as the one involved here. As the Court stated in Commonwealth v. Thomas, 358 Mass. 771, 267 N.E.2d 489, 491 (1971):
In a modern urban multifamily apartment house, the area within the “curtilage” is necessarily much more limited than in the case of a rural dwelling subject to one owner‘s control. . . . In such an apartment house, a tenant‘s “dwelling” cannot reasonably be said to extend beyond his own apartment and perhaps any separate areas subject to his exclusive control.
See also United States v. Agapito, 620 F.2d 324, 331 and n. 9 (2 Cir. 1980).
Finally, any distinction between the ledge and the fire escape for Fourth Amendment purposes would be irrational. The fire escape projects over the ledge and runs along it, a small space above. As noted, it is a common area of the building, and thus no particular tenant can claim Fourth Amendment protection in it. Arboleda was not trying to hide the package on the portion of the ledge immediately adjacent to his apartment; Bisbee testified that Arboleda “directed” the package toward the fire escape but that it “hit the bar from the fire escape and rested there on the ledge.” It is difficult to see why, under these circumstances, the ledge, which is readily observable from the fire escape and even runs under it in areas, should have a constitutionally different status than the fire escape itself.
Since the seizure of the package of cocaine was lawful both for the reason stated in Part I and for that stated in Part II of this opinion, the judgment of conviction is affirmed.
OAKES, Circuit Judge (dissenting):
The majority opinion holds first that a suppression movant must raise the issue whether officers who arrested him in his home had a warrant for a third person who was not found in the home. Apparently unsatisfied with a record that could have been cured to the majority‘s satisfaction by the asking of one simple question of Detective Bisbee,1 the majority then goes on to hold, alternatively or cumulatively, that Arboleda “had no legitimate expectation of privacy with respect to an object which he threw outside the apartment with the intention of getting rid of it.” Because I disagree with each of these conclusions, I must dissent.
The majority‘s first argument, condemning appellant because he failed to ask whether the officers had an arrest warrant for Gilberto Arboleda, constitutes a novel and unjustifiable procedural ruling. It ap-
In sum, the procedural holding of this case appears to be that a defendant in a suppression hearing, even after establishing clearly that he was arrested in his home and that there was no arrest warrant for him or search warrant for the premises, has a further burden of asking whether the arresting officers had an arrest warrant for any third party. On appeal, even if the district court and both parties have treated the case as one involving no warrants, the majority is apparently willing to affirm an otherwise illegal conviction because this question was not asked. This seems to me almost Kafkaesque. This rule would be less unfair if it were in line with general principles of burden of proof in suppression motions, but it is not.
It may be true as a general rule that the moving party in a suppression hearing has the burden of production and persuasion, as the case so relied upon by the majority points out. United States v. De La Fuente, 548 F.2d 528, 533 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 431 U.S. 932, 434 U.S. 954 (1977). But when a defendant has produced sufficient evidence that he was arrested or subjected to a search without a warrant, the federal rule is that the burden shifts to the government to justify the warrantless arrest or search. Id.; Manuel v. United States, 355 F.2d 344 (5th Cir. 1966). Here appellant did produce such evidence and one would have thought that the burden then shifted to the government. Yet the court holds him to an additional burden—to ask whether the police were on his premises with a warrant for his brother‘s arrest. This is a burden that no case cited by the majority requires.
The burden-shifting in suppression hearings is clearly premised on a recognition of what it is fair to expect each party to prove. As Professor LaFave has stated:
if the search has been conducted incident to a warrant of arrest or search, and the defendant claims that the warrant was issued on less than probable cause, he has the burden of proving this allegation. This position may be based in part upon the “presumptions of regularity which attend the action” of the judicial officer issuing the warrant, but is better explained on the basis that it is in no way unfair to place the burden on the defendant when the government has already set forth in the complaint or affidavit the grounds upon which it rests the legality of its action. But, when the police have acted without a warrant, “it would be impossible for a defendant to prove a lack of probable cause in the abstract. The defendant cannot be expected to prove a lack of some item until he knows on what the government bases its claim of existence.” Thus, the federal courts have placed the burden on the government in such cases.
The unfairness is made worse here because of the implied Fourth Amendment substantive holding in the majority opinion. The majority apparently concludes that a warrant of arrest for T will permit the entry of D‘s apartment/home absent both probable cause and exigent circumstances. The opinion states:
Although there was no search warrant for Arboleda‘s apartment; the police officers were going to the apartment to arrest Gilberto, and if they had an arrest warrant for Gilberto this would have the same legal effect as a search warrant in justifying entry into Arboleda‘s home to effect the arrest. See e. g., United States v. Cravero, 545 F.2d 406, 421 (5 Cir. 1976) (on petition for rehearing), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 1100, 430 U.S. 983 (1977); United States v. McKinney, 379 F.2d 259, 263 (6 Cir. 1967) (McCree, J.).
Majority op. at 989. However, every recent case in this area, including those cited by the majority, has required at least a showing of “reasonable belief” that the third party was actually in the premises entered. Thus, in its reliance on a presumption of a third-party warrant that was not even suggested by the Government, the majority is either adopting a new rule of total police discretion in this area or depriving appellant of an opportunity to show that the officers had no reasonable grounds for suspecting that his brother was in the apartment that night.
The reasonable-belief requirement, as enunciated in numerous cases, is not a mere formality that is easily satisfied. See United States v. Harper, 550 F.2d 610, 611, 613 (10th Cir.), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 837 (1977) (reliable informant placing suspect at that address that same day); United States v. Cravero, 545 F.2d 406, 421 (5th Cir. 1976) (on rehear- ing), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 1100, 430 U.S. 983 (1977) (officers observed suspects enter residence); Rice v. Wolff, 513 F.2d 1280, 1292-93 (8th Cir. 1975), rev‘d on other grounds sub nom. Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 465 (1976) (guesswork or speculation is not enough); United States v. Brown, 467 F.2d 419, 423 (D.C. Cir. 1972) (officers knew residence was suspect‘s girlfriend‘s and saw person of his basic description enter); United States v. McKinney, 379 F.2d 259, 262-64 (6th Cir. 1967) (tips of several informants). See also United States v. Hammond, 585 F.2d 26, 28 & n.1 (2d Cir. 1978) (suggesting approval for counsel‘s concession that police may enter and search for third party as long as they have “probable cause” to believe person was there). Indeed, these cases seem to equate “reasonable belief” with “probable cause,” while allowing the officers to make the judgment without consulting a magistrate. E. g., Cravero, supra, 545 F.2d at 421; Brown, supra, 467 F.2d at 424. Here, the only evidence was that the officers “believed [Gilberto Arboleda] may have been in the apartment” because they had heard he sometimes stayed there. There is nothing to indicate that this belief was at all reasonable, let alone that there was probable cause to believe that Gilberto was at his brother‘s, the appellant‘s, apartment. If this is the proper standard, we should at least remand for some findings.
But I would adopt the higher standard enunciated by the Third Circuit, requiring both a showing of probable cause to believe that the suspect is on the premises, and also exigent circumstances. See Government of Virgin Islands v. Gereau, 502 F.2d 914, 928 (3d Cir. 1974), cert. denied, 420 U.S. 909, 424 U.S. 929 (1975); Fisher v. Volz, 496 F.2d 333, 338-39 (3d Cir. 1974). See also Rice v. Wolff, supra, 513 F.2d at 1292 n.7 (it is not yet settled whether exigent circumstances are also required when there is an entry based on probable cause and an arrest warrant for a third party). I agree with the Third Circuit for three rea-
The second reason for my agreement with the Third Circuit is related to the first: the underlying policy of the Fourth Amendment opposes indiscriminate searches and seizures conducted under general warrants. Id. 445 U.S. at 584-85, 100 S.Ct. 1371. While the probable cause requirement for entries based solely on arrest warrants affords some protection against police discretion, there remains a danger that relatively indiscriminate entries will be justified subsequently by elaborate explanations concerning probable cause. It would be safer to adopt a standard for arrests in the homes of third parties that is analogous to seizures of property: absent exigent circumstances, a warrant must specify the location to be entered in advance. Cf. id. 445 U.S. at 586, 100 S.Ct. 1371 (discussing, by contrast, entries in the suspect‘s own home) (a search warrant standard would afford more protection, but “[i]f there is sufficient evidence of a citizen‘s participation in a felony to persuade a judicial officer that his arrest is justified, it is constitutionally reasonable to require him to open his doors to the officers of the law“).
My third reason is that this circuit apparently went even further in United States v. Reed, 572 F.2d 412, 424 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 913 (1978), in requiring, for an arrest in a suspect‘s home absent exigent circumstances, “a warrant to arrest a suspect at home“—i. e., the equivalent of a search warrant. See also Dorman v. United States, 435 F.2d 385, 396 (D.C. Cir. 1970) (en banc) (cited in Reed, supra, 572 F.2d at 424 n.10) (suggesting such a procedure). While the section of Payton just quoted held that a warrant specifying the location to be entered is not required for an entry in a suspect‘s home when there is already a general arrest warrant, the Reed case can be viewed as strong support for a search warrant requirement in cases of entries to arrest third parties, absent exigent circumstances.
To sum up, I do not believe we can fairly presume on appeal that there was an arrest warrant for appellant‘s brother Gilberto. Even if we do so, appellant should at minimum have the right to show the absence of reasonable grounds to believe that Gilberto was then in the apartment.2 In addition, I would follow the Third Circuit and require a magistrate‘s prior finding of probable cause to believe Gilberto was at that location, since there were no exigent circumstance here.3
At one time the answer to this question would have depended on whether the ledge outside appellant‘s apartment was “curtilage,” and hence an area not subject to entry without a warrant, or at least so protected against intrusion as to make a seizure therefrom illegal. See e. g.,
The nutshell elaboration of the concept, as expressed in Katz, is that “[w]hat a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection,” 389 U.S. at 351, 88 S.Ct. at 511, whereas “what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected,” id. at 351-52, 88 S.Ct. at 511. In Katz, for example, the Court held that a person in a public telephone booth, visible to the outside world, nevertheless had a protected interest in the secrecy of his spoken words. Id. at 352, 88 S.Ct. at 511. The focus, therefore, is on the
In response to this point, the majority argues that the announcement requirement applies only to buildings, whereas the ledge area is more analogous to a yard around a home. Majority op. at n.6. They suggest that I would prevent officers from even approaching the front door of a home without a prior announcement. Id. This analogy is inapposite both because an upper-floor ledge, unlike a yard, is part of a building and because it is not all clear that an officer who approaches a front door for purposes of knocking violates any “reasonable expectation of privacy.” It is the latter factor that controls the applicability of the announcement requirement. See United States v. Fluker, 543 F.2d 709, 716 (9th Cir. 1976) (“Thus the critical question before this Court is whether, under the particular circumstances of this case, appellant Young can be said to have had a ‘reasonable expectation of privacy’ with respect to the corridor area separating the door of his apartment from the outer doorway of the apartment building.“). In Fluker, the court concluded that the requirement did apply to the particular corridor area under consideration.
Here, the agent who had the plain view of the cocaine was climbing on a two-foot ledge and peering into the windows of appellant‘s apartment. I would hold that an apartment dweller should be protected from such intrusions because of his “reasonable expectation of privacy.” If appellant was so protected, then it was unlawful for the officer to enter the ledge area prior to the making of a warrantless arrest, under Payton v. New York, supra, and United States v. Reed, supra.
The majority says that “[t]here is no evidence that Arboleda exercised any exclusive control over the ledge, which ran along the entire front of the building and was accessible to other tenants from their windows and the fire escape.” Majority op. at 991. But access from the fire escape, separated from the two-foot-wide ledge by a three-foot fence, over which Detective Bisbee had to climb, is immaterial, because the ledge itself was not a passageway. No one absent an emergency would use such a narrow ledge to walk on—it was certainly not designed for any such use—so it cannot be treated like a hall, stairwell, garage, or the like, as in United States v. Penco, 612 F.2d 19, 24-25 (2d Cir. 1979). And I find no evidence in the record that this ledge was accessible to any other tenants except by way of the fire escape.
Nor is it very important that the general ledge area was visible from the street. A living room in a home may be visible from a distance through a window, but that fact cannot justify a warrantless entry by the police to view the same room up close. The difference between a long-distance view and an actual entry is suggested by the fact that the package of cocaine might never have been seen, or recognized as incriminating evidence, from any vantage point other than the ledge itself.5 It is noteworthy in any event that the police were summoned to the building by someone who, seeing Bisbee creeping along the ledge and his peeping-Tom activities, had reported a burglary in process. Evidently that person thought that the apartment dwellers had an expectation of privacy in respect to the ledge.
In short, when Bisbee climbed over the fence from the fire escape on to the ledge, he intruded on an area in which Arboleda had a reasonable expectation of privacy. If Bisbee had at that time no warrant, there were no exigent circumstances, and there was no consent for him to be there, he had no “legitimate reason for being present,” and the plain view doctrine is inapplicable. Coolidge v. New Hampshire, supra, 403 U.S. at 466,6 91 S.Ct. at 2038.
I would accordingly reverse.
PER CURIAM:
Appellant has filed a petition for rehearing in which he alleges, inter alia, that an oral communication between counsel for the Government and the defendant which was not in the record gave the defense reasonable ground to believe that the Government would not contend that the officers had a warrant for Gilberto‘s arrest. We gave the Government an opportunity to answer. Although it does not admit that the conversation was of the tenor asserted by the defendant, it agrees that in fact there was no warrant for Gilberto‘s arrest but contends that defendant should not now be allowed to question the officer‘s presence on the ledge since he did not do so in the district court. While there may well be merit in this position, see United States v. Knuckles, 581 F.2d 305, 310 (2 Cir. 1978); United States v. Braunig, 553 F.2d 777, 780 (2 Cir. 1977), we prefer to rest our decision on the adequate and independent ground developed in Part II of the opinion. When Oscar Arboleda, in his own words, “tossed” the aluminum foil package “out the window“, he abandoned any reasonable expectation of privacy. See Rawlings v. Kentucky, 448 U.S. 98, 100 S.Ct. 2556, 2561, 65 L.Ed.2d 633 (1980). The dissent concedes that if the package had come to rest when it hit the fire escape, the defendant would have been “out of luck“. 997 n. 5. Fourth Amendment protections did not spring back into force when the package fell from the fire escape to the ledge.
The petition for rehearing is denied.
OAKES, Circuit Judge (dissenting):
I adhere to my previous opinion and therefore dissent from the denial of rehearing and affirmance of the judgment on the second alternative ground advanced in the original opinion. I take it that the majority‘s sole reliance on the second alternative ground is an abandonment of its original position that somehow the defendant had an obligation to raise the issue whether officers who arrested him in his home had a warrant for Gilberto, a third person, who was not found in the home. Surely, at least, the admission of the Government that there was in fact no warrant for Gilberto‘s arrest demonstrates the validity of the proposition that once a defendant has produced sufficient evidence that he was arrested or subjected to a search without a warrant, the rule should be, as I believe the basic federal rule is, that the burden shifts to the Government to justify the warrantless arrest or search. See at 993 (Oakes, J., dissenting).
As for the alternative ground—that Arboleda abandoned any reasonable expectation of privacy when he tossed the package onto the two-foot ledge outside of his apartment—I think the subject is adequately covered in the original dissenting opinion. The fact that the package, at least according to the detective, hit the fire escape before it came to rest on the ledge is wholly immaterial. The case is not one involving a package being thrown onto an area as to which there was no expectation of privacy. If my back yard is enclosed by a fence that shields it from an alleyway and I throw an object against the fence that remains in the yard, I do not think that any officer who happens to come down the alleyway at the time I throw the object and even sees me throw it has a right to climb the fence to determine what that object is. See Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 466, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 2038, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971).
I would still reverse.