USA v. Shedrick Holli

Filing

Opinion issued by court as to Appellant Shedrick D. Hollis. Decision: Affirmed. Opinion type: Published. Opinion method: Signed.

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[PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
________________________
No. 13-13780
________________________
D.C. Docket No. 3:12-cr-00017-WKW-WC-1
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
versus
SHEDRICK D. HOLLIS,
Defendant-Appellant.
________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Alabama
_______________________
(March 12, 2015)
Before WILLIAM PRYOR and JORDAN, Circuit Judges, and HAIKALA, ∗
District Judge.

∗

Honorable Madeline Hughes Haikala, United States District Judge for the Northern District of
Alabama, sitting by designation.

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WILLIAM PRYOR, Circuit Judge:
This appeal requires us to decide whether the subject of an arrest warrant
may challenge the use of evidence found in plain view during a protective sweep in
a third party’s residence. Law enforcement officers possessed an arrest warrant for
Shedrick Hollis and learned that he could be found in an apartment the officers
suspected to be a drug house. After surrounding the apartment, the officers saw
Hollis through a window, broke through the door, and arrested him, and other
officers conducted a protective sweep of the apartment. During that sweep, the
officers discovered marijuana and firearms in plain view. After he was indicted on
charges of possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute, 21
U.S.C. § 841(a)(1), felon in possession of a firearm, 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A), and
possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug-trafficking crime, id. §§ 922(g)(1),
924(e), Hollis moved to suppress the drugs and firearms found in the apartment.
The district court denied his motion. Hollis was convicted on all counts. Because
the evidence was discovered in plain view during a protective sweep incident to a
valid arrest, we affirm.
I. BACKGROUND
In February 2011, officers were searching for Hollis based on an outstanding
Georgia arrest warrant for a parole violation. Police officers from Phenix City,
Alabama, and agents of the United States Marshals Service received information
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that Hollis might be found in an apartment in Phenix City alleged to be a drug
house. On March 1, 2011, officers surrounded the apartment. Some of the officers
approached the front door of the apartment and knocked. Hollis peered out from
behind a window, and the officers recognized him. The officers yelled “police” and
ordered Hollis to open the door. After waiting for a brief period, the officers used a
battering ram to open the door and arrested Hollis.
Other officers entered the apartment to conduct a protective sweep of the
area. They found a cosmetic bag with marijuana on a dresser, weapons under a
bed, and marijuana on the kitchen counter. The officers then obtained a search
warrant for the premises. In a thorough search of the apartment, they discovered
about a pound of cocaine, large amounts of marijuana, crack cocaine, ecstasy,
scales, and about $5,000 in cash. One of the scales had a latent fingerprint on it,
later attributed to Hollis.
A federal grand jury indicted Hollis on two counts of possession of a
controlled substance with intent to distribute, 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1), one count of
possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime, 18 U.S.C.
§ 924(c)(1)(A), and one count of felony possession of a firearm, id. §§ 922(g)(1),
924(e). Before trial, Hollis moved to suppress the evidence obtained from the
apartment on the ground that the officers conducted an illegal, warrantless search
in violation of his rights under the Fourth Amendment. A magistrate judge held an
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evidentiary hearing and found that Hollis was not invited into the apartment by its
owner, but by an acquaintance of the owner. Because Hollis was “a guest of an
uninvited guest,” the magistrate judge recommended that Hollis’s motion to
suppress be denied. The district court adopted the report and recommendation of
the magistrate judge and denied Hollis’s motion to suppress.
Before trial, the government moved to exclude the testimony of Hollis’s
fingerprint expert, Lawden Yates, Jr. The government requested a hearing to
confirm Yates’s qualifications under Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals,
Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 113 S. Ct. 2786 (1993). The district court held a hearing and
ruled that Yates could not testify “as to fingerprint comparison.” But the district
court reserved judgment on whether Yates could testify about whether the latent
fingerprint was of sufficient quality to make a comparison. Yates later testified that
there “shouldn’t be any” difference between the expertise required to compare
fingerprints and the expertise used to judge the sufficiency of a latent fingerprint
for comparison. He also testified that when in doubt, a technician should send a
print to the laboratory to see if an identification can be made. Because the district
court had already ruled that Yates was not qualified to testify about fingerprint
comparisons and the same expertise was required to judge the sufficiency of a
latent print for comparison, the district court ruled that Yates could not testify
about the sufficiency of the print taken from the scale.
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The jury convicted Hollis on all counts. The district court sentenced Hollis
to a term of imprisonment of 420 months, followed by eight years of supervised
release.
II. STANDARDS OF REVIEW
Two standards of review govern this appeal. When we review a motion to
suppress, we review de novo the legal conclusions of the district court; we review
for clear error its findings of fact; and we review the entire record in the light most
favorable to the party prevailing below. United States v. Newsome, 475 F.3d 1221,
1223–24 (11th Cir. 2007). We review for abuse of discretion the decision of the
district court to exclude expert testimony. Gen. Elec. Co. v. Joiner, 522 U.S. 136,
141–42, 118 S. Ct. 512, 517 (1997).
III. DISCUSSION
We divide our discussion in two parts. First, we explain that the drugs and
firearms seized from the Phenix City apartment were admissible because they were
found in plain view during a protective sweep incident to a valid arrest. Second, we
explain that the district court did not abuse its discretion when it refused to allow
Yates to testify as an expert about the sufficiency of the latent fingerprint for
comparison.

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A. The Officers Were Entitled to Seize Evidence in Plain View During a Protective
Sweep Incident to a Valid Arrest.
Hollis argues that the district court erred when it admitted the evidence
seized from the apartment because he had a reasonable expectation of privacy as a
guest in the apartment. The government denies that Hollis had a reasonable
expectation of privacy as a guest in the apartment and, alternatively, argues that the
evidence was discovered in plain view during a protective sweep incident to a valid
arrest. Because we agree with the alternative argument of the government, we need
not address whether Hollis had a reasonable expectation of privacy as a guest in
the apartment.
“[A]n arrest warrant founded on probable cause implicitly carries with it the
limited authority to enter a dwelling in which the suspect lives . . . when there is
reason to believe the suspect is within.” Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 603,
100 S. Ct. 1371, 1388 (1980). “Law enforcement officers are permitted, in the
context of a valid arrest, to conduct a protective sweep of a residence for officers’
safety.” United States v. Yeary, 740 F.3d 569, 579 (11th Cir. 2014). Police can
execute an arrest warrant by entering a residence if they have a “reasonable belief
that the location to be searched is the suspect’s dwelling, and that the suspect is
within the residence at the time of entry.” United States v. Magluta, 44 F.3d 1530,
1535 (11th Cir. 1995).

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Although the police did not believe that the apartment was Hollis’s dwelling,
that fact is of no help to Hollis:
A person has no greater right of privacy in another’s home than in his
own. If an arrest warrant and reason to believe the person named in
the warrant is present are sufficient to protect that person’s [F]ourth
[A]mendment privacy rights in his own home, they necessarily suffice
to protect his privacy rights in the home of another.
United States v. Agnew, 407 F.3d 193, 197 (3d Cir. 2005) (internal quotation marks
and citation omitted). To be sure, when a police officer effectuates an arrest
warrant in a third-party’s abode, the officer may violate the Fourth Amendment
rights of the third-party, Steagald v. United States, 451 U.S. 204, 212–16, 101
S. Ct. 1642, 1648–50 (1981). But we agree with our sister circuits that the subject
of an arrest warrant cannot challenge the execution of that warrant and the later
discovery of evidence in a third-party’s home. See, e.g., United States v. Jackson,
576 F.3d 465, 468 (7th Cir. 2009); United States v. McCarson, 527 F.3d 170, 172–
73 (D.C. Cir. 2008); Agnew, 407 F.3d at 197; United States v. Kaylor, 877 F.2d
658, 663 (8th Cir. 1989); United States v. Underwood, 717 F.2d 482, 484 (9th Cir.
1983); United States v. Buckner, 717 F.2d 297, 299–300 (6th Cir. 1983); but see
United States v. Weems, 322 F.3d 18, 23 n.3 (1st Cir. 2003) (assuming but not
deciding that a suspect can challenge the search of a third-party’s home incident to
the suspect’s arrest).

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The protective sweep, performed incident to Hollis’s arrest, was a valid
attempt to ensure that the apartment did not contain “other persons who are
dangerous and who could unexpectedly launch an attack.” United States v.
Hromada, 49 F.3d 685, 690 (11th Cir. 1995) (internal quotation marks and citation
omitted). The government established that “there [were] articulable facts [that] . . .
would warrant a reasonably prudent officer in believing that the area to be swept
harbor[ed] an individual posing a danger to those on the arrest scene.” Maryland v.
Buie, 494 U.S. 325, 334, 110 S. Ct. 1093, 1098 (1990); see also Hromada, 49 F.3d
at 690 (holding that a protective sweep was valid where the “purpose of the
protective sweep . . . was to secure [the home] and investigate the officers’
reasonable suspicion” that others were in the home). The district court found that
the officers suspected that the apartment was a “drug house” that could hold “other
occupants.” One of the officers testified that he had been told that the apartment
was a “drug house,” with a “high level of activity,” where “people [were] in and
out of the house all hours of the day or night,” and that they “could expect to
encounter a number of people inside.” Based on that information, the officers
could draw the “rational inference,” Buie, 494 U.S. at 334, 110 S. Ct. at 1098, that
there might be armed individuals inside the apartment.
Because the officers could conduct a protective sweep, the evidence they
found in plain view was admissible. As the Supreme Court has explained, “if
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contraband is left in open view and is observed by a police officer from a lawful
vantage point, there has been no invasion of a legitimate expectation of privacy
and thus no ‘search’ within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment—or at least no
search independent of the initial intrusion that gave the officers their vantage
point.” Minnesota v. Dickerson, 508 U.S. 366, 375, 113 S. Ct. 2130, 2137 (1993).
As part of the sweep, the officers found marijuana in plain view on a dresser in the
bedroom and on a counter in the kitchen, and they found loaded firearms under a
bed. It “was only coincidental that [the officers] discovered contraband in plain
view while conducting the [protective] sweep.” Yeary, 740 F.3d at 580. The
officers then obtained a search warrant for the apartment and found additional
contraband. As a result, all of the evidence found during both searches was
admissible.
B. The District Court Did Not Abuse Its Discretion When It Refused to Admit
Yates’s Testimony.
Hollis also argues that the district court abused its discretion when it refused
to allow Yates, a forensics expert, to testify about the sufficiency of a latent
fingerprint for comparison, but we disagree. “[T]he task of evaluating the
reliability of expert testimony is uniquely entrusted to the district court under
Daubert, and . . . we give the district court considerable leeway in the execution of
its duty.” United States v. Brown, 415 F.3d 1257, 1266 (11th Cir. 2005) (internal
quotation marks and citation omitted). The “rules relating to Daubert issues are not
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precisely calibrated and must be applied in case-specific evidentiary circumstances
that often defy generalization.” Id. Hollis must establish that the district court
“abdicat[ed]” its duty, or that it “applie[d] the wrong law, follow[ed] the wrong
procedure, base[d] its decision on clearly erroneous facts, or commit[ted] a clear
error in judgment.” Id. “[U]nder the abuse of discretion standard of review there
will be occasions in which we affirm the district court even though we would have
gone the other way had it been our call.” United States v. Frazier, 387 F.3d 1244,
1259 (11th Cir. 2004) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Hollis
cannot satisfy this burden.
The district court applied the correct law, correctly ordered a Daubert
hearing, and did not base its decision on clearly erroneous facts. See Brown, 415
F.3d at 1266. The district court ruled that Yates could not testify as an expert
because he was not “qualified” as an expert in fingerprint comparison. See Fed. R.
Evid. 702. The district court then ruled that Yates could not testify about the
sufficiency of a latent fingerprint for comparison because Yates himself testified
that the expertise required to determine sufficiency is identical to the expertise
required to perform comparisons. Hollis does not challenge the ruling that Yates
was unqualified to testify about fingerprint comparison, and Hollis fails to explain
how Yates, if not qualified as an expert on comparison, could be qualified as an
expert on sufficiency, when it was Yates who testified that there should be no
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difference in the expertise required for each analysis. Accordingly, the district
court was within its “considerable leeway,” Brown, 415 F.3d at 1266 (internal
quotation marks and citation omitted), when it concluded that Yates lacked the
necessary expertise to testify about the sufficiency of a latent fingerprint for
comparison.
IV. CONCLUSION
We AFFIRM Hollis’s conviction.

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