The U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on May 21 that a detective from the Archuleta County Sheriff’s Office (ACSO) violated the fourth amendment of the U.S. Constitution by barring a local resident and his family from entering their home during an eight-hour period prior to obtaining a search warrant for the property.
The ruling orders the suppression of two firearms found at the property from evidence in a case where Corban Elmore is accused of being a felon in possession of a firearm due to the firearms being located as part of the ACSO’s occupation of the home.
Elmore had previously asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado to suppress the firearms from evidence in the case against him, which the lower court denied.
Following this, Elmore appealed to the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld his appeal to suppress the firearms from evidence in the May 21 decision and remanded the case to the lower court for further proceedings.
The May 21 decision begins by laying out the events, stating that Elmore’s teenage son suffered a drug overdose and fell unconscious on a Tuesday morning and was transported to the hospital by emergency medical technicians (EMTs).
Colorado Politics reports the events occurred in April 2021.
Prior to his son being transported, Elmore supplied an EMT with a box from his son’s room containing various drugs and drug paraphernalia, the decision states.
At about 11:30 a.m., approximately 30 minutes after the EMTs arrived, the decision explains that ACSO Detective Patrick Smith ordered two deputies to secure the Elmore home and not let anyone inside prior to departing for the hospital to obtain further information about Elmore’s son.
In the hours that followed, Elmore, his wife Jessica Hayes and their young child were denied entry to their home by ACSO deputies, who stated the home was a “crime scene” and that they were “conducting an investigation,” according to the court document.
Elmore and Hayes both consented to have the officers search their son’s room and stated that there were unsupervised pets in the home that needed care, among other issues, the decision explains.
However, the officers declined to allow them to enter the home or to search the room, it states.
While this was occurring, the decision indicates, Smith conducted interviews relating to the overdose and the drugs found in the box.
As part of the process for obtaining a search warrant, the deputies at the home took photos of its exterior, the decision states, and, in the process of doing this, saw what appeared to be a gun safe and gun carrier inside the home.
They then relayed this information to Smith, the decision indicates, who ran a criminal history check on Elmore and determined he had four felony convictions.
It explains that Smith applied for a search warrant at 7:30 p.m. and in this application cited that the officers saw a gun safe in the home and that Elmore had previous felony convictions.
The warrant was issued 20 minutes after Smith requested it, the decision states, and the search of the Elmore home conducted later that day using this warrant discovered two firearms in the home, which were used as evidence a month later when Elmore was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm.
No charges were filed relating to the overdose or to drugs at the home, it indicates.
The decision states that the district court, in denying Elmore’s motion to suppress the firearms from evidence in the case, concluded that the seizure of Elmore’s home was reasonable since the officers had probable cause to believe the home contained evidence of drug possession and that there was good cause to fear the occupants of the property might destroy this evidence prior to a warrant being issued.
It adds that the district court also found that the officers acted reasonably during the seizure, including by prohibiting the Elmore family from entering their home and delaying obtaining a warrant to allow Smith to do further investigation.
Following the district court denying the motion to suppress, the decision explains, Elmore entered a conditional guilty plea, which allows the defendant to appeal to a higher court to determine if the judge made an incorrect ruling on a key issue in a case, and was sentenced to 24 months in prison and three years of supervised release.
As explained in the decision, the appeals court differed from the lower court in finding a fourth amendment violation on two central grounds, both based on a four-pronged test for the reasonableness of officers seizing a home without a warrant articulated in the U.S. Supreme Court decision Illinois v. McArthur.
The decision states that the four standards supporting the reasonableness of a seizure articulated in the McArthur decision are that officers have probable cause to believe a home contains evidence of a crime, that they have reason to believe that evidence may be destroyed prior to obtaining a warrant, that they make “reasonable efforts to reconcile” law enforcement needs with the demands of personal privacy and that the seizure lasts no longer than “reasonably necessary” for the police to obtain a warrant to search the home.
The decision notes that Elmore argues that the initial seizure was unreasonable because officers lacked probable cause to believe the home contained evidence of a crime and reason to believe that evidence would be destroyed, but chooses to assume that the initial seizure was warranted under these standards and instead focuses on if the seizure became unreasonable later under the third and fourth MacArthur standards.
The decision concludes that the seizure was not reasonable under the third standard since the deputies did not make reasonable efforts to reconcile law enforcement and personal privacy needs in barring Elmore and his family from their home.
It comments that the primary law enforcement concern with the seizure was the potential for the destruction of evidence and that officers could have prevented such destruction by allowing the family supervised access into the home, which they did not do.
“Because the officers made no effort, much less a reasonable effort, to strike a sound balance between those competing interests, this factor weighs heavily against the government,” the decision states, referring to the interests of law enforcement and personal privacy.
The decision also concludes that law enforcement failed to meet the fourth McArthur standard of only continuing the seizure as long as reasonably necessary to secure a warrant.
In this conclusion, the decision disagrees with the district court’s analysis, commenting that McArthur only allows law enforcement to seize a home long enough to obtain a warrant, not for as long as it takes to conduct an investigation that ultimately results in a warrant, as the district court contended.
It states that Smith had enough evidence to secure a warrant immediately due to having probable cause to believe that the home contained evidence of drug-related crimes, but instead spent significant amounts of time performing further investigation prior to attempting to obtain a warrant.
The decision also notes that the seizure occurred during a time when courts were open to process the request for a search warrant and that Smith used information obtained during the seizure of the property in the search warrant request he eventually filed.
The decision then considers if the illegal seizure of the property justifies the suppression of the firearms from evidence.
It states that, under the “fruits of the poisonous tree” doctrine, evidence obtained directly from an illegal search or seizure and evidence obtained later but derived from an illegal seizure must be suppressed.
The decision explains that, for the evidence to be suppressed, Elmore must demonstrate a “factual nexus between the illegality and the challenged evidence” and show that the evidence being considered for suppression would not have been found except for the government’s unconstitutional conduct.
It concludes that Elmore successfully demonstrated this nexus, commenting that law enforcement had no reason to believe that there were firearms in Elmore’s home prior to the seizure and that the seizure allowed the officers to find evidence of firearms needed to eventually search for and seize the firearms.
The decision also rejects the government argument that a warrant to search for drug-related items would have also uncovered the firearms, which would have removed the need to suppress them under the inevitable discovery doctrine that exclusions of items due to illegal search and seizure does not apply to items that would have been inevitably discovered through legal means.
In rejecting this argument, the decision comments that the government has the burden of proof concerning this doctrine and that it both failed to adequately discuss this doctrine in its filings and “disclaimed any reliance” on the doctrine during oral arguments.
The decision concludes by summing up that the seizure of Elmore’s home was unreasonable under the third and fourth McArthur standards and that, because of this, the firearms must be suppressed from evidence in Elmore’s case.
Sheriff Mike Le Roux and the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which represented the ACSO in the case, both declined to comment on the ruling.
josh@pagosasun.com
