United States of America v. Charles R. Hays

In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 22-3294
U NITED STATES OF A MERICA ,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
C HARLES R. HAYS ,
Defendant-Appellant.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Central District of Illinois.
No. 3:20-cr-30021 — Sue E. Myerscough, Judge.
____________________
A RGUED NOVEMBER 6, 2023 — D ECIDED J ANUARY 12, 2024
____________________
Before FLAUM, SCUDDER , and KIRSCH , Circuit Judges.
KIRSCH , Circuit Judge. After stopping the car Charles Hays
was driving, officers observed Hays’s passenger possessing
methamphetamine and a smoking pipe. Officers searched the
car’s interior, finding a screwdriver in the center console but
no drugs. An officer then searched under the car’s hood and
found methamphetamine in the air filter. The only issue on
appeal is whether the officers had probable cause to search
under the car’s hood, including inside the air filter. Because

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2 No. 22-3294
the automobile exception to the Fourth Amendment’s war-
rant requirement authorizes officers to search a car without a
warrant if there is probable cause to believe it contains con-
traband, including all parts of the car in which there is a fair
probability contraband could be concealed, we conclude they
did.
I
The following facts are not in dispute. In October 2019, Il-
linois State Police (ISP) Inspector Evert Nation received infor-
mation that a male subject known as “Chuck” was distrib-
uting methamphetamine in Christian County, Illinois. That
same month, ISP agents were surveilling a suspected drug
trafficking location in Christian County and observed a man
driving a silver Cadillac arrive at the location. The agents de-
termined that the car was registered to Brenda Berger, and the
driver, Charles Hays, was her son.
On October 15, 2019, Inspector Nation spotted the Cadillac
traveling toward Taylorville, Illinois, and noticed that the ve-
hicle did not have working taillights. Inspector Nation noti-
fied the Taylorville police chief, Dwayne Wheeler, of his ob-
servation. Chief Wheeler located the Cadillac and, after notic-
ing its illegal tints and observing it cross the center lane twice,
initiated a traffic stop with help from Officer Jeremy Alwerdt.
During the stop, the officers identified the driver as Hays,
and Officer Alwerdt recognized the passenger, Tamera Wis-
nasky, from previous encounters and knew she had an out-
standing arrest warrant. When questioned, Wisnasky falsely
identified herself as Kayla. Officer Alwerdt noticed that Wis-
nasky was attempting to conceal something in her right hand,
which he recognized as a glass pipe used to smoke

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No. 22-3294 3
methamphetamine. Officer Alwerdt then went to grab Wis-
nasky’s hands, at which time he observed her shove some-
thing in her mouth. At Officer Alwerdt’s demand, Wisnasky
spit out the object, and he identified it as a plastic container
carrying suspected methamphetamine. Wisnasky was conse-
quently arrested. Meanwhile, Chief Wheeler directed Hays to
get out of the car. During questioning, Hays looked nervous,
falsely identified Wisnasky as Kayla, and stated that he had
been arrested before and gone to prison for drug possession.
At that point, the officers decided to search the Cadillac.
The officers did not find contraband inside the passenger
compartment but spotted a screwdriver in the center console,
which they knew could be used to hide drugs in traps within
vehicles. An officer then searched under the hood, including
inside the air filter (a screwdriver is used to open the air filter
housing box). In the air filter housing, he found a bag contain-
ing methamphetamine.
Following indictment, Hays moved to suppress the evi-
dence obtained during the traffic stop, which the district court
denied. Hays pleaded guilty to possession with the intent to
distribute 50 grams or more of methamphetamine in violation
of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) and (b)(1)(A), reserving his right to ap-
peal the district court’s denial of his motion to suppress. On
appeal, Hays argues that the officers did not have probable
cause to search under the hood and in the air filter.
II
We review the district court’s probable cause determina-
tion de novo. United States v. Williams, 627 F.3d 247, 251 (7th
Cir. 2010).

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Under the automobile exception to the Fourth Amend-
ment’s warrant requirement, officers may conduct “a war-
rantless search of a vehicle … so long as there is probable
cause to believe it contains contraband or evidence of illegal
activity.” United States v. Washburn, 383 F.3d 638, 641 (7th Cir.
2004) (citing Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 153–56
(1925)). It is well settled that officers can search a car without
a warrant where there is probable cause to believe that illegal
substances are present. See, e.g., Wyoming v. Houghton, 526
U.S. 295, 300–02 (1999) (holding that officers could conduct a
warrantless search of a car where they “had probable cause to
believe there were illegal drugs in the car”); United States v.
Johnson, 383 F.3d 538, 545 (7th Cir. 2004) (finding probable
cause to search a car, including the trunk, without a warrant
where the officer discovered a controlled substance which
had fallen out of the defendant’s hat). During the traffic stop,
officers saw Wisnasky in possession of a pipe for smoking
methamphetamine and methamphetamine itself, and officers
knew that Hays was recently seen at a known drug trafficking
location. True, as Hays argues, the officers observed Hays’s
passenger, rather than Hays himself, with methamphetamine.
But we previously held that under the automobile exception,
an officer had the authority to conduct a warrantless search of
a car when he discovered the passenger in possession of con-
traband. United States v. McGuire, 957 F.2d 310, 314 (7th Cir.
1992) (“Once Trooper Newman discovered that [the passen-
ger] was transporting open, alcoholic liquor … he had proba-
ble cause to believe that the car contained additional contra-
band or evidence.”); see Houghton, 526 U.S. at 304–05 (reject-
ing a driver/passenger distinction and noting that a vehicle’s
driver and passenger “will often be engaged in a common en-
terprise … and have the same interest in concealing the fruits

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No. 22-3294 5
or the evidence of their wrongdoing”). Thus, the officers had
probable cause to search the car’s interior.
Further, officers may search all containers within a car
“where they have probable cause to believe contraband or ev-
idence is contained.” California v. Acevedo, 500 U.S. 565, 580
(1991). In other words, “[i]f probable cause justifies the search
of a lawfully stopped vehicle, it justifies the search of every
part of the vehicle and its contents that may conceal the object
of the search[,]” Houghton, 526 U.S. at 301 (quotation omitted)
(emphasis in the original), “including closed compartments,
containers, packages, and trunks,” Williams, 627 F.3d at 251.
To justify probable cause for a search, “[a]ll that is required is
a fair probability of discovering contraband.” Id. at 252. This
is true “without qualification as to ownership” of the contain-
ers searched. Houghton, 526 U.S. at 301. Once the officers be-
gan searching the car’s interior, they discovered a screwdriver
in the center console but nothing else to suggest that the
screwdriver was a tool of Hays’s trade. Based on their experi-
ence, the officers knew that the screwdriver could have been
used to hide methamphetamine in the vehicle. Thus, consid-
ering the circumstances leading up to and during the stop
“viewed from the position of a reasonable police officer,”
United States v. Hines, 449 F.3d 808, 815 n.7 (7th Cir. 2006), the
officers reasonably found a fair probability that the area un-
der the hood, including the air filter, could contain metham-
phetamine. See United States v. Eymann, 962 F.3d 273, 286 (7th
Cir. 2020) (“Probable cause to search a vehicle exists ‘if, given
the totality of the circumstances, there is a fair probability that
contraband or evidence of a crime will be found in a particular
place.’”) (quotation omitted); see also United States v. Patter-
son, 65 F.3d 68, 71 (7th Cir. 1995) (finding probable cause to
search behind a vehicle’s tailgate panel where officers

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observed missing screws from the tailgate interior and a drug-
sniffing dog alerted to the odor of drugs).
A FFIRMED

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