US v. Daniels: Officers were searching for Daniels, who had multiple outstanding arrest warrants. They saw him driving a grey Dodge with Florida tags, which a check revealed was a rental car. The next morning, they tracked Daniels to a hotel where the Dodge was parked out front. After arresting Daniels in his room, they walked past the Dodge and asked Daniels about it, who responded that he “didn’t know anything about” a Dodge. An officer called the rental company, who confirmed that the Dodge was rented by someone else and Daniels was not an authorized driver. As a result, they had the car towed to one of their facilities, where employees consented to a search of the car. The search uncovered a firearm that DNA linked to Daniels. He was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm and unsuccessfully moved to suppress the gun. He entered a conditional guilty plea to preserve the issue for appeal.
On appeal, the Fourth Circuit affirmed the denial of Daniels’ motion to suppress. The court held that Daniels lacked “standing,” the reasonable expectation of privacy necessary to assert Fourth Amendment rights, in the Dodge. The court noted that the defendant in such situations bore the burden of proof in establishing standing and in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Byrd “Daniels had the burden of producing evidence that he had possession and that his possession was lawful.” It was not enough that counsel argued that the renter allowed Daniels to drive the car, “Daniels did not produce any evidence at the suppression hearing to support that claim – not even a statement of his own to suggest that he had permission.” Counsel’s “unsupported claim is not evidence” and therefore not sufficient to prove standing.
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