CASE SUMMARIES
Circuit Courts of Appeals
Seventh Circuit
United States v. Walker, 24-1522 (7th Cir. 2025)
Officers executed an arrest warrant for Richard Walker at a home where he lived with his girlfriend, Ramona Paulette. Also living in the home was the couple’s son, Walker Jr., and Paulette’s mother, Laverne Shipp. Upon arrival at the residence, officers knocked on the door. Walker Jr. opened the door and stepped outside. A short time later, Walker emerged from the residence and officers arrested him outside the front door.
Next, the officers conducted a protective sweep of the residence. In Walker Jr.’s bedroom, the officers found a firearm underneath the mattress. The mattress sat directly on a box spring, and the box spring laid on top of the floor. While the officers were still on the scene, Shipp and Paulette arrived home. The officers told Shipp of the firearm discovered in Walker Jr.’s bedroom and requested Shipp’s consent to search the rest of the home. Shipp signed a voluntary consent form. During the second search, officers found fentanyl and drug paraphernalia.
The government charged Walker with firearm and drug offenses. Walker filed a motion to suppress all evidence found in the residence. The district court denied the motion, finding the sweep and the search were justified. Walker then entered a conditional plea of guilty, reserving his right to appeal the denial of the suppression motion.
As an initial matter, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that Walker’s status as an overnight house guest, who spent most nights at the Shipp residence, gave him a legitimate expectation of privacy in the home; therefore, he had standing to challenge the search of Walker Jr.’s bedroom.
Next, the court addressed Walker’s argument that the protective sweep violated the Fourth Amendment because it was unreasonable in scope. Specifically, Walker claimed that, under the circumstances, no reasonable officer would have believed an assailant was hiding underneath the mattress in Walker Jr.’s bedroom and, thus, searching underneath the mattress was unreasonable.
The court recognized that the purpose of a protective sweep is to ensure the safety of the arresting officers. As such, protective sweeps are limited in their scope and can only extend “to a cursory inspection of those spaces where a person may be found,” and must “last no longer than is necessary to dispel the reasonable suspicion of danger.”
In this case, the court held that nothing in the record indicated that the officers had a reason to believe the area between the mattress and box spring had been hollowed out so that lifting the mattress would be “necessary to dispel the reasonable suspicion of danger.” The court recognized that although it may have been theoretically possible for a person to have hollowed the inside of the mattress or box spring to create a hiding space from which to attack, theoretical possibilities cannot be enough. Finding otherwise would permit officers to lift a mattress in every protective sweep, regardless of the reasonableness of their suspicions or configuration of the premises.
The court cited three examples from other circuits where the courts found searches under mattresses to be reasonable during protective sweeps. In the first case, a search underneath a bed was held to be reasonable in light of an officer’s testimony that the bed frame was high enough for a person to hide underneath. Unlike this case, there was no request that the court assume, based only on speculation, that a dangerous person had hollowed out the bed.
In a second case, the court found it was reasonable to search inside a wooden box on which a waterbed rested, given an officer’s testimony that “he believed the wooden box . . . was hollow and large enough for a person to hide inside.” Here, the government did not identify any facts that would have caused a reasonable officer to believe that Walker Jr.’s mattress or box spring were hollowed out. Instead, the government simply provided a blanket statement without any context that individuals sometimes hide underneath mattresses.
In a third case, the court found it was reasonable when there was a belief that a person for whom officers were searching was “hidden . . . in a hollowed box spring,” as officers “noticed a light on before hearing a door shut” and observed suspicious behavior of a person sitting on the bed.
Similar circumstances were not present here, as there were no facts indicating suspicious behavior within Walker Jr.’s bedroom to suggest someone was hiding between the mattress and box spring.
After finding that the protective sweep violated the Fourth Amendment, the court remanded the case to the district court to determine two outstanding issues: 1) whether the circumstances as they existed before the illegal protective sweep would have led to the inevitable discovery of the evidence; and 2) whether Shipp’s consent to search was tainted by the illegal protective sweep.
For the court’s opinion: https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/ca7/24-1522/24-1522-2025-07-17.pdf
