In United States v. Everett, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that a protective sweep conducted by police did not violate the Fourth Amendment.
The Facts & Procedural History
Law enforcement received information that the defendant, Rashod Everett, was involved in drug trafficking activities and operated a stash house. After obtaining a search warrant for the stash house, police found an assortment of drugs, guns, and money inside the residence. Police also found a receipt with Everett’s name and address on it which they believed to be his home.
Police obtained an arrest warrant for Everett and began to conduct surveillance of his home. Eventually, police knocked on the front door, and Everett answered. Police entered the home and arrested Everett pursuant to the arrest warrant. Everett’s wife was inside the home and told police that a friend was in the bathroom, two children were upstairs, and there was a dog in the house.
Police then conducted a protective sweep of the home. During the sweep, officers saw a bottle of THC gummies near a bannister at the top of the stairs and two loaded riles in a closet. Police limited themselves to looking for other individuals in rooms or closets, they did not seize anything, nor open any drawers or containers. The sweep lasted three-and-a-half minutes.
Police requested a search warrant for Everett’s home. The search warrant included everything police had learned, observed, and seized, up to that point. The search warrant also explained that police had conducted a “security sweep” of the home “[f]or the safety of everyone on scene.” The search of the home yielded:
“[A]n AR-15 assault rifle, a SKS 7.62 rifle, a MG-G4 .223 rifle, and a PS90 rifle; at least $65,000 in cash; digital scales; drug packaging materials; and other containers that matched those found at [the stash house]. In a backyard shed, the [] officers found and seized a substance called tramadol (an opioid medication), THC wax, Tupperware containers with marijuana residue, vacuum sealers, and a Ziploc package from Colorado with a label stating that it contained THC. The Tupperware containers matched those seized at [the stash house]. The officers also found and seized a handgun from the truck parked in the backyard.”
The defense moved to suppress all evidence seized pursuant to the search warrant, arguing it was not unconstitutionally tainted by the protective sweep. The trial court denied the motion.
Everett was convicted at trial and was sentenced to 480 months in prison plus five years of supervised release. The defense appealed the trial court’s ruling on the suppression motion.
The Law
Warrantless searches of a residence “are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment — subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions.” A protective sweep of a residence is one of those exceptions. Police may conduct a protective sweep when they have an interest “in taking steps to assure themselves that the house in which a suspect is being, or has just been, arrested is not harboring other persons who are dangerous and who could unexpectedly launch an attack.”
The protective sweep exception requires “articulable facts which, taken together with the rational inferences from those facts, would warrant a reasonably prudent officer in believing that the area to be swept harbors an individual posing a danger to those on the arrest scene.” Importantly, “a lack of information cannot provide an articulable basis upon which to justify a protective sweep.” Moreover, courts have recognized the “general knowledge that guns are common in drug transactions,” and that “entrance into a situs of drug trafficking activity carries all too real dangers to law enforcement officers.”
The Court’s Reasoning — Protective Sweeps
The Court affirms the trial court’s denial of the motion to suppress, reasoning that there was ample justification for a protective sweep. Law enforcement entered the home with an arrest warrant and arrested the defendant. Before arresting the defendant, officers already knew the following:
- “Officers knew that Everett was involved in a large-scale drug-trafficking operation with multiple confederates who likely were armed;
- Officers had found a firearm at [the stash house], and thus had good reason to believe that the [home] might contain firearms;
- Officers saw that surveillance cameras covered the exterior of the [home], which reasonably suggested that those inside could be watching the officers; and
- When the officers entered the [home], they were surprised by the presence of an unexpected person, which supported the proposition that other unknown persons could be there.”
The Court stresses that all the information law enforcement had prior to approaching Everett’s home and arresting him served to justify a protective sweep. Everett was at the top of a substantial drug trafficking operation, with known connections to large quantities of drugs and several guns already seized, and surveillance cameras around the home presumably capturing the location and movement of law enforcement.
The foregoing circumstances “justified a reasonably prudent officer in conducting a protective sweep of the [home] to ensure the safety of himself and others.”
The Bottom Line
This is an easy one — and the Court got it right here. Every fact and circumstance known to police at the time of the protective sweep occasioned a protective sweep. In fact, I can’t find anything in the record that militated against such a sweep. Moreover, the sweep itself was modest, short, and minimally intrusive.
Police were arresting the top man of major drug trafficking operation, had already seized drugs and guns from other locations connected to Everett, were armed with an arrest warrant, arrested Everett at his home, surrounded by surveillance cameras, and encountered unexpected persons inside the home — do I need to go on?
I will go ahead and say it — this was a textbook protective sweep — and the Court knew it. Case closed.
John Q. Prosecutor