United States of America v. Pierre Burnett, Iii

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Argued November 19, 2024
Decided January 7, 2025
Before
AMY J. ST. EVE, Circuit Judge
JOHN Z. LEE, Circuit Judge
JOSHUA P. KOLAR, Circuit Judge
No. 24-1443
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
PIERRE BURNETT, III,
Defendant-Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the Southern District of
Indiana, Indianapolis Division.
No. 1:22-cr-00059-MPB-MG-01
Matthew P. Brookman,
Judge.
O R D E R
After escaping an attempted traffic stop by police, Pierre Burnett parked near an
apartment building and stashed his backpack and a trash bag outdoors in the bushes.
Before Burnett could retrieve those bags, police arrived and, with a tip from a witness,
discovered them. Inside the bags, they found cocaine and a large sum of cash. Burnett
was charged with one count of possession with intent to distribute controlled
substances. The district court denied Burnett’s motion to suppress the drugs and cash,
reasoning that he had abandoned the bags and thus the Fourth Amendment’s
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with F ED. R. APP . P. 32.1

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protections did not apply. Burnett later pleaded guilty, expressly reserving the right to
appeal the suppression issue.
On appeal, Burnett maintains that he did not abandon the bags because he
sought to hide them and because, he says, a reasonable observer would conclude that
he meant to retrieve them later. We disagree. Burnett separated the bags from his
person and his home—the classic sites protected by the Fourth Amendment—and left
them in public, for the apparent purpose of temporarily hiding his link to them (even if
he had hoped that he could later retrieve them when the coast was clear). In doing so,
he relinquished the interests protected by the Fourth Amendment, so the officers did
not need a warrant before searching the bags. Therefore, we affirm the district court’s
decision denying Burnett’s motion to suppress.
I.
Because the parties waived an evidentiary hearing on the suppression motion,
the facts are undisputed. On July 22, 2021, agents of the Drug Enforcement
Administration and the Indianapolis Metro Drug Task Force surveilled an Indianapolis
apartment. That afternoon, they saw a Dodge Ram truck park nearby. Burnett exited the
truck and entered the apartment. A few hours later, agents saw Burnett leave the
apartment with a black trash bag. Burnett got in the truck and drove away.
Later, Indiana State Police attempted to stop Burnett’s truck for going 55 m.p.h.
in a 30-m.p.h. zone—but Burnett fled. Officers ended the pursuit after Burnett nearly
struck three vehicles at an intersection.
Though the State Police ended their chase, agents of the DEA and Metro Drug
Task Force headed to an apartment building “associated” with Burnett. (The nature of
this association is not clear from the record.) Once agents arrived at the building, a
“concerned citizen” told them that the driver of the Ram had thrown two bags into
some nearby bushes. Following up on this tip, the agents found an orange backpack
and a black trash bag in the bushes about 30 feet from the truck, as shown in these
photos:

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The agents searched the bags, finding 4 kilograms of cocaine in the orange
backpack and 2.2 kilograms of cocaine plus $71,500 in the trash bag. Agents then
arrested Burnett on an apartment balcony. The government later charged Burnett with
possession with intent to distribute controlled substances, in violation of 21 U.S.C.
§§ 841(a)(1) and 841(b)(1)(A)(ii).
Burnett moved to suppress the evidence from the backpack and trash bag,
arguing that the warrantless search of the bags violated his Fourth Amendment rights.
The district court denied the motion, ruling that Burnett had abandoned the backpack
and trash bag and had thereby renounced any expectation of privacy in those items for
purposes of the Fourth Amendment.
Burnett then entered a conditional guilty plea, see F ED. R. C RIM . P. 11(a)(2),
reserving his right to appeal the denial of his suppression motion. The district court
sentenced him to 10 years’ imprisonment and 5 years’ supervised release.
II.
The sole issue on appeal is the lawfulness of opening the backpack and trash bag
without a warrant. The facts are undisputed, and we review the legal conclusions in the
district court’s suppression ruling de novo. See United States v. Swinney, 28 F.4th 864, 866
(7th Cir. 2022).
The Fourth Amendment protects “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their
persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”
U.S. Const. amend. IV. Generally, police must obtain a warrant before searching or
seizing private property without consent. Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523, 528–
29 (1967). This requirement extends to places and items where the defendant has a
reasonable expectation of privacy. United States v. Basinski, 226 F.3d 829, 836 (7th Cir.
2000). But a defendant does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in an item he
has “abandoned.” Id.
The government bears the burden of showing abandonment.* “To demonstrate
abandonment, the government must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the
* Yet caselaw also says that the defendant bears the burden of proving a
legitimate expectation of privacy in the item searched. See Rawlings v. Kentucky, 448 U.S.
98, 104 (1980); United States v. Yang, 478 F.3d 832, 835 (7th Cir. 2007). In the

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defendant’s voluntary words or actions would lead a reasonable person” to understand
that the defendant had relinquished his Fourth Amendment interests in the searched
object. United States v. Alexander, 573 F.3d 465, 472 (7th Cir. 2009) (quoting United States
v. Pitts, 322 F.3d 449, 456 (7th Cir. 2003)). This is an objective test: We consider only “the
external manifestations of the defendant’s intent as judged by a reasonable person
possessing the same knowledge available to the government agents involved in the
search.” Pitts, 322 F.3d at 456.
We have identified three illustrative, “general types of abandonment cases”:
(1) when the fleeing defendant tosses evidence aside; (2) when the defendant places
items near a trash-pickup area; and (3) when the defendant tells police (often falsely)
that the objects are not his. Basinski, 226 F.3d at 837. Although these categories are non-
exhaustive, the district court placed Burnett’s case in the first category: in Basinski’s
terms, it involved “a fleeing defendant who relinquishes an object to make his flight
easier or because discarding the item might make it easier for him to later claim that he
never possessed it.” Id. In that circumstance, Basinski says, there is “easy access to the
public,” and reasonable persons would see the defendant’s Fourth Amendment
interests as “eroded.” Id.
Burnett argues that the district court erred in placing his case in the first
category. In his view, the time gap between the car chase and him hiding his bags
makes him unlike the fleeing defendant ditching objects throughout a chase. We agree
that Burnett was not necessarily fleeing at the precise moment he stashed his bags; the
car chase had ended. And to be sure, an objective observer might infer that Burnett
hoped to circle back to the bags later if the police gave up, or found nothing in a search
of his person or home and let him go.
But that does not end the Fourth Amendment analysis. Burnett left the
unsecured bags in a public area, exposing them to anyone who spotted them and was
curious enough to open them. California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35, 40–41 (1988) (bags left
in trash-pickup area are “readily accessible to animals, children, scavengers, and
snoops,” and “society would not accept as reasonable” a defendant’s “claim to an
expectation of privacy” in those bags). He had no affirmative right to exclude others
government’s view, it is not clear who should bear the burden in this case. But we need
not further address the burden of proof because, as discussed below, the government
has shown that Burnet lacked any Fourth Amendment privacy interests in his bags at
the time the bags were searched.

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from this outdoor area or store his things there. And his apparent attempt to keep the
bags away from his home and person (without giving them to anyone for safekeeping)
was akin to verbally denying to a police officer (even if temporarily and
unpersuasively) that he was the bags’ owner. Cf. Basinski, 226 F.3d at 837 (no
abandonment when defendant entrusted his locked briefcase to a friend for
safekeeping). Burnett may have intended to return to the bags later, but his subjective
desire to later reclaim the bags is irrelevant to the abandonment analysis. See Pitts,
322 F.3d at 456. All things considered, Burnett abandoned any reasonable expectation of
privacy in the bags—and any right to be secure against a search of them.
Burnett insists that he did not relinquish his privacy interest in the bags because
he remained nearby and attempted to conceal the bags near his truck. But this argument
only highlights the fact that he did not keep the bags on his person, leave them in the
truck, take them into his apartment, or hand them to someone for safekeeping—
recognized ways to protect privacy interests under the Fourth Amendment. See, e.g.,
Basinski, 226 F.3d at 837.
Burnett also relies on United States v. Whiteside, No. 3:22-cr-00040-FDW-DSC, 2022
WL 16707978 (W.D.N.C., Nov. 4, 2022), where a court concluded that the defendant did
not abandon his backpack for purposes of the Fourth Amendment. Aside from the fact
that Whiteside is a case from a district court in another circuit, it does not lend the
support Burnett seeks. The defendant in Whiteside, unlike Burnett, placed his backpack
where his friends were gathered and “took active steps to ensure it would remain
hidden.” Id. at *7. The backpack “was neither alone nor readily accessible” to the public
and so was not abandoned. Id. at *8. Here, however, Burnett’s bags were alone (even if
he was watching somewhere nearby) and readily accessible to the public.
Because Burnett placed his bags in the apartment building’s bushes and did not
take active steps to guard them or give them to another for safekeeping, he abandoned
his Fourth Amendment interests in them. Police therefore did not need a warrant to
search the bags.
For these reasons, we AFFIRM the district court’s judgment and uphold its
denial of Burnett’s motion to suppress.

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