Pipe Sufficient to Justify Search of Car, Even Given Other Uses

US v. Runner:  A police officer in West Virginia got an anonymous tip of a person sitting in a blue Volkswagen in a Wal-Mart parking lot “shooting up.” An officer made contact with the woman, who “adamantly denied having injected narcotics,” answered the officer’s questions in a “straightforward and logical manner” and otherwise “exhibited no symptoms of impairment. There were no fresh track marks on her arms. A second officer, a “trained drug recognition expert” arrived and did find “scars from prior intravenous drug use but . . .  no evidence of fresh use.” The woman allowed a search of her purse, which uncovered no contraband, but she denied a request to search the car, explaining that it was not hers and the driver, Runner, was in the store. The drug recognition expert looked into the car and “identified a glass stem pip in the center console” which he believed “had a ‘frosted tip’ to it, indicating prior use.” The first officer went into the store and got Runner, who also denied permission to search the car. The officers searched it anyway, finding small amounts of drugs and, after Runner conceded there might be firearms in the car (it belonged to his cousin), a pistol in the trunk.

Runner filed a motion to suppress, arguing that the incriminating nature of the pipe was not immediate apparent from the inspection outside of the car. Both officers testified that the pipe was drug paraphernalia used to smoke “meth, crack cocaine, stuff like that.” Runner countered with testimony from a local CBD shop owner that sold (among other things) glass pipes, who testified that they “are used by some to smoke hemp and CBD oils.” The district court denied the motion, concluding that the “criminal nature of the pipe was immediately apparent,” notwithstanding the legal uses to which it might be put. Runner pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm and was sentenced to 51 months in prison.

On appeal, the Fourth Circuit affirmed the denial of Runner’s motion to suppress. The court rejected Runner’s argument that the seeing the pipe alone was the basis for the search, pointing to the other evidence collected, starting with the anonymous tip. The conclusion that the pipe was contraband “meets the admittedly low standard: that the facts available warrant that items may be contraband or stolen property.” The court also rejected the argument that the pipe was an everyday item that could be used to smoke drugs, but was in fact primarily used for that purpose.