DPS Legal Review

11th Circuit Court of Appeals

DEFENDANT FORFEITED FOURTH AMENDMENT INTEREST IN CELL PHONE BY DISCLAIMING OWNERSHIP

In a controlled delivery case, Steven Morgan received a package containing cocaine that was allowed to be delivered to the address listed on the box. The package, which was flagged by a pair of trained police dogs, contained cocaine, and the police planted a beacon designed to alert upon opening of the package. Upon delivery, Morgan retrieved the package from the porch and took it inside. Shortly after, the beacon alerted, and the waiting law enforcement agents burst into the residence, weapons drawn.

On entry, Morgan was found standing near the back porch, close to two cellphones: an iPhone and an LG phone. After handcuffing Morgan—but not having read him Miranda warnings—a federal agent asked Morgan if those were his phones, to which he replied, “Yes.”

Subsequently, Morgan was removed from the residence, placed in the back of a patrol car, and Mirandized, after which he invoked his right to remain silent and asked for counsel. Not long after invoking his Miranda rights, however, Morgan was asked again—by a second federal agent– if the two phones seized earlier belonged to him. This time, Morgan hesitated, and answered, “Not sure.”

The second agent then told Morgan that she was just trying to inventory the property, not “to interrogate him or ask him any questions about the case[.]” Morgan then told the agent “that ‘only the iPhone’ was his.” Further, Morgan “explained that he had earlier claimed ownership of both phones
only due to his ‘shock because of the way that [the agents] came into the apartment with the guns drawn’— ‘but,’ he reiterated, ‘only the iPhone was his.’” The agents then released Morgan, after seizing the iPhone, the LG phone, and a gun found on Morgan’s person.

Several weeks later, “the agents conducted a warrantless search of the LG phone, which yielded evidence implicating Morgan in the drug-running scheme—including text messages between him and his brother and photos of shipping records and wire-transfer receipts.” Morgan was indicted on three charges in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida: (1) conspiring to import 500 grams or more of cocaine; (2) attempting to possess with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of cocaine; and (3) possessing a firearm in furtherance of a drug-trafficking crime. A jury convicted Morgan on all charges.

On appeal to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals (“11th Circuit” or “Court”), Morgan raised several issues relating to the LG phone. First, Morgan disputed that the facts indicated that he had abandoned his interest in the LG phone by disclaiming his ownership over it.

The District Court had decided that Morgan’s initial statement claiming that the LG phone was his established his ownership interest in the phone. However, the District Court reasoned that Morgan’s subsequent statement disclaiming the LG phone meant that he had abandoned his Fourth Amendment interest in the phone.

On appeal, the 11th Circuit cited its own 2020 decision in U.S. v. Ross: “[A]n individual’s Fourth Amendment rights are not infringed—or even implicated—by a search of a thing or place in which he has no reasonable expectation of privacy.” And by disavowing his earlier statement claiming ownership of both the iPhone and the LG phone by his subsequent statement, the Court of Appeals agreed with the District Court and found that Morgan abandoned the LG phone. And having abandoned it, Morgan’s Fourth Amendment right was not implicated by the warrantless search of the phone.

Morgan’s next issue involves Miranda and the Fifth Amendment. Basing its analysis on Miranda the District Court suppressed Morgan’s second statement, that he was “Not sure” that both phones were his. The District Court found that the agent’s continued inquiry, even after Morgan had availed himself of the protections under the Fifth Amendment, constituted a Miranda violation. However, although the District Court suppressed Morgan’s statement, it nonetheless relied on it to find that Morgan had abandoned the LG phone.

The statements disavowing the LG phone ownership were clearly results of an improper inquiry and a Miranda violation. However, the Court distinguished the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination from the voluntariness of those statements.

The Court of Appeals cited Garcia v. Singletary, a 1994 11th Circuit case, in reiterating Miranda’s protection against a custodial interrogation that was “reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response from the suspect.” However, as the 11th Circuit pointed out:

There is . . . one pertinent exception: Even if an interaction qualifies as a custodial interrogation, a suspect’s statements might still be admissible if the officer’s “questions fall within a ‘routine booking question’ exception which exempts from Miranda’s coverage questions to secure the biographical data necessary to complete booking or pretrial services.”
(Pennsylvania v. Muniz).

However, the timing of the questioning – almost immediately after Morgan’s invocation of his Miranda rights – and the place where the questions were posed – not in the jail booking room, but in the back of a patrol car – are fatal to the proposition that the question was a “routine booking question.” On this, both the District Court and the Court of Appeals were clear. But the Court of Appeals made the distinction referenced above: the voluntariness of the statement would allow the district court and the Court of Appeals to consider the statements, as the violation of Miranda does not “automatically infringe the Fifth Amendment.”

In U.S. v. Patane (2004), a three-Justice plurality of the U.S. Supreme Court

ruled that a police officer’s “failure to give a suspect the [Miranda] warnings … [does not] require[ ] suppression of the physical fruits of the suspect’s unwarned but voluntary statements.” The plurality explained . . . that conduct that runs afoul of Miranda’s dictates doesn’t automatically infringe the Fifth Amendment; rather, it said, “the Miranda rule is a prophylactic employed to protect against violations of the Self-Incrimination Clause.”
(Citations omitted.)

Further, the Patane court explained that Miranda’s “prophylactic rule[ ] … necessarily sweep[s] beyond the actual protections of the Self-Incrimination Clause,” and that “any further extension of [the prophylactic] rule[ ] must be justified by its necessity for the protection of the actual right against compelled self-incrimination.”

In short, even with a Miranda violation, with the statements themselves suppressed, the Courts can still consider the statement in “an objective, common-sense approach to assessing the abandonment, focusing on whether the prior possessor voluntarily discarded, left behind, or otherwise relinquished his interest in the property in question in light of his statements, acts, and other facts.”
In fact, the Court of Appeals found that only when a statement is deemed involuntary or otherwise forced or coerced will Fifth Amendment implications arise. And no such implications arise even when the police use deception if the deception does not “[take] the form of a coercive threat” or the deception “goes directly to the nature of the suspect’s rights and the consequences of waiving them.” On the latter point, the Courts, including the 11th Circuit’s 2010 decision in U.S. v. Farley, have ruled that police “misrepresentations of law … are much more likely to render a suspect’s [statement] involuntary” than “misrepresentation[s] of fact” – which generally “are not enough.”

So, after Morgan invoked his Miranda rights, the agent’s continued questioning, even though she framed it as her attempt to inventory property, was in fact an illegal custodial interrogation and the resulting statement was properly suppressed. But whether the provided reasoning for the continued questioning was either a misstatement of fact, or an attempt at deception, even as it constituted a Miranda violation, it was nevertheless not enough to make Morgan’s statement in the back of the patrol car involuntary because it lacks the sufficient indicia of force or coercion. And if the statement was not involuntary, it could still be used in “an objective, common-sense approach” — an analysis that is analogous to the “totality of circumstances” in assessing the abandonment issue. And as a person lacks any reasonable expectation of privacy in things that he has abandoned, evidence yielded from a warrantless search of the abandoned property could be used to convict Morgan. U.S. v. Morgan, 143 F.4th 1264 (11th Cir., July 11, 2025).
Georgia Court of Appeals

UNDER THE TOTALITY OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES, WAS THE TRAFFIC STOP UNLAWFULLY PROLONGED?

On December 14, 2022, Corporal Dangle with the Gwinnett County Police Department observed a Dodge Charger parked at a gas station in a high crime area. For approximately 40 minutes, Corporal Dangle observed various activities he considered suspicious and indicative of criminal activity. He then allowed the vehicle to leave the area, and, shortly thereafter, another officer initiated a traffic stop when he observed the Charger fail to use its turn signal.

While approaching the stopped Charger, Corporal Dangle saw Ferguson “bend down towards the floorboard.” Next, “after Ferguson rolled down his passenger window, Dangle spotted a cellophane wrapper coated in a crystalline material laying on the floor of the vehicle.” Corporal Dangle thought that this item was narcotics and, as a result, he arrested Ferguson. Ferguson told Corporal Dangle that the wrapper “was a pastry wrapper[.]” After scrutinizing the wrapper more closely, Dangle “realized it was not narcotics and released Ferguson from custody, telling him that he was not under arrest.”

Corporal Dangle then continued with the traffic stop, first checking the Charger’s window tint. As he did so, Dangle “could see in plain view in the driver door a small blue ziploc style jewelry bag or dime bag” in the door handle. At 2:37 AM, Corporal Dangle requested the services of a drug detection dog. Based on evidence seized by police during the vehicle search, “Ferguson was arrested and charged with trafficking methamphetamine, trafficking in illegal drugs, possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, and possession of a Schedule IV controlled substance with intent to distribute[.]”

Ferguson filed a motion to suppress the evidence discovered during the vehicle search, arguing that the police “did not have a sufficient basis for their warrantless search.”
At the suppression hearing, Corporal Dangle testified that seeing the “dime bag” in the door handle “heightened [his] suspicion that there could potentially be more narcotics … in the vehicle.” Dangle testified further that the traffic stop “evolved into a drug investigation after he observed the empty dime bag inside the vehicle.”

The trial court granted Ferguson’s motion to suppress. The court concluded “that the 37 minutes that elapsed from the time officers initiated a traffic stop to the time the K-9 unit arrived exceeded that which would be required for the officers to issue warnings or write a citation for the window tint violation.” Additionally, the court determined that Corporal Dangle’s “discovery of a single empty plastic bag did not provide reasonable articulable suspicion to prolong the detention.”

On appeal to the Georgia Court of Appeals, the State contended “that the trial court failed to consider all of the available evidence in its ruling[.]” Therefore, the State asked the Court of Appeals to remand Ferguson’s case to the trial court. The Court of Appeals vacated the trial court’s order on Ferguson’s motion to suppress and remanded the case to the trial court “to make additional findings so that this Court can meaningfully review its judgment.”

The Court of Appeals pointed out that, although the trial court’s order on Ferguson’s motion to suppress “sets out a number of findings of fact”, the order’s analysis regarding whether Corporal Dangle had “reasonable articulable suspicion to justify [Ferguson’s] continued detention” simply stated: “The Court finds that the discovery of a single empty plastic bag did not provide reasonable articulable suspicion to prolong the detention.” Therefore, the trial court “reject[ed] the suggestion that the subsequent discovery of contraband should be considered as a factor supporting the propriety of a search.”

Regarding the trial court order, the Court of Appeals wrote:

There are many additional facts in the record, and it is not clear whether the court overlooked these facts, discounted them for some reason, or whether the court in fact considered all of these facts and found them not to reach the reasonable articulable suspicion standard. Given that the test for reasonable articulable suspicion is a “totality of the circumstances” test, we cannot determine whether the ruling of the trial court was in error without a more robust explanation regarding the basis of the trial court’s order.

In its analysis, the Court of Appeals cited a 2017 Court of Appeals decision in Taylor v. State, which held that “a lawful traffic stop can morph into a criminal investigation and justify prolongation ‘so long as the officer can articulate reasonable suspicion that criminal activity is occurring.’” The Taylor court explained that, “[t]o satisfy the articulable reasonable suspicion standard, ‘the officer’s investigation must be justified by specific articulable facts sufficient to give rise to a reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct.’” In Taylor, the court reasoned that an officer must have “a ‘particularized and objective basis’ for suspecting that the particular person stopped is involved in criminal activity.”

The Taylor court noted: “Although this suspicion need not meet the higher standard of probable cause, it must be more than a mere caprice or a hunch.”
State v. Ferguson, 918 S.E.2d 383 (Ga. Ct. App., July 1, 2025).