United States v. Lashawn Y. McDonald
100 F.3d 1320, 1996 WL 673246, 1996 U.S. App. LEXIS 30224 (1996)
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Rule of Law:
A passenger on a common carrier does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy that the exterior of their luggage, placed in a public overhead rack, will not be physically touched or manipulated by others. Therefore, a police officer's physical manipulation of the exterior of such luggage does not constitute a search under the Fourth Amendment.
Facts:
- Lashawn McDonald was a passenger on a Greyhound bus traveling from St. Louis, Missouri.
- During a short layover in Indianapolis, all passengers, including McDonald, disembarked, leaving their carry-on luggage in the overhead racks.
- While the bus was empty of passengers, three plain-clothed Indianapolis Police Detectives boarded with the bus driver's permission to conduct a drug interdiction inspection.
- The officers walked down the aisle pushing, feeling, and manipulating the exterior of the soft-sided bags in the overhead racks.
- Detective Cotton felt objects in two bags that she suspected were packed "bricks" of a controlled substance.
- After the passengers reboarded, Detective Cotton approached McDonald, who was seated near the bags, and asked if they belonged to her.
- McDonald denied ownership of the bags, both when asked individually and when the officer addressed all passengers collectively multiple times.
- Believing the bags were abandoned, Detective Cotton removed them from the rack, opened them, and discovered eleven kilograms of cocaine.
Procedural Posture:
- Lashawn McDonald was indicted by a grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana for possession with intent to distribute cocaine.
- McDonald filed a motion to suppress the cocaine evidence, arguing it was obtained through an unlawful search in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
- The district court held an evidentiary hearing and denied the motion to suppress, finding the officers' touching of the bags was not a search and that McDonald had voluntarily abandoned them.
- Pursuant to a plea agreement, McDonald entered a conditional guilty plea, which reserved her right to appeal the district court’s denial of her suppression motion.
- McDonald (appellant) filed a timely appeal of the district court's ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
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Issue:
Does a police officer's physical manipulation and feeling of the exterior of a passenger's luggage, placed in an overhead rack on a public bus, constitute an unreasonable search under the Fourth Amendment?
Opinions:
Majority - Coffey, Circuit Judge.
No. A police officer's physical manipulation of the exterior of a passenger's luggage in an overhead bus rack does not constitute a search under the Fourth Amendment. A person possesses a privacy interest in the contents of personal luggage, but that protection does not extend to the exterior of a bag placed in a public area where it is accessible to and likely to be handled by other passengers and bus employees. McDonald knowingly exposed the exterior of her bags to being touched by placing them in the overhead rack, thus she had no reasonable expectation of privacy that would be violated by the officers' actions. The officers' touch was a limited intrusion, analogous to a canine sniff, which reveals only limited information. Because the initial touching was not an illegal search, McDonald's subsequent repeated denial of ownership constituted a voluntary abandonment of the property, which stripped the bags of any Fourth Amendment protection and permitted the officers to open them.
Dissenting - Ripple, Circuit Judge,
Yes. The officer's manipulation of the bag's exterior was an unreasonable search under the Fourth Amendment. While a traveler must expect incidental contact with their luggage on a public bus, they retain a legitimate expectation of privacy that their bag will not be subjected to an exploratory, tactile inspection by a police officer aimed at discovering its contents. The officer's actions went far beyond the minimal sort of moving or touching one expects; it was described as 'rubbing, squeezing, manipulating' the bag to identify what was inside. This degree of intrusion violates the Fourth Amendment. Because the abandonment was a direct result of this preceding illegal search and the intimidating police presence, it was not voluntary, and the evidence should have been suppressed.
Analysis:
This decision established in the Seventh Circuit that a tactile inspection of luggage in a public carrier's overhead rack is not a search, expanding the scope of permissible police conduct during drug interdiction sweeps. It distinguished between the high expectation of privacy in the contents of a bag and the low expectation of privacy in its exterior when placed in a public space. This ruling created a circuit split on the issue and was effectively overruled by the Supreme Court in Bond v. United States (2000), which held that a similar physical manipulation of a bus passenger's bag is a search. This case is therefore a significant landmark for understanding the pre-Bond interpretation of the reasonable expectation of privacy doctrine in this context.
