No. 21-1862

UNITED STATES,

Appellee,

v.

HOWARD JOHN,

Defendant, Appellant.

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS

[Hon. Indira Talwani, U.S. District Judge]

Before

Kayatta, Lynch, and Thompson, Circuit Judges.

Samia Hossain for appellant. Randall E. Kromm, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Rachael S. Rollins, United States Attorney, was on brief, for appellee.

February 3, 2023 LYNCH, Circuit Judge. Howard John pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), reserving his right to contest on appeal the district court's denial of his motion to suppress evidence that he possessed an AR-15 assault rifle and many rounds of ammunition.

In a thoughtful opinion, the district court rejected his Fourth Amendment claim because John had not shown an objectively reasonable privacy interest in the items seized from a case John had left in the home of Nichelle Brison, his former domestic partner, and their six-year-old son. John no longer lived in the home and had been told by Brison that he was unwelcome, but returned there unannounced on November 10, 2018, without her permission to do so or her permission to have left the unlocked case with weapons there. The police learned these facts when they responded to her call for help after John had entered, assaulted her, and left both her and the boy wounded. The police retrieved the case, which had blood on it, from the kitchen table. We reject John's three arguments that the ruling was error and affirm. We agree with the district court that John had no objectively reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of the case.

I. District Court Findings of Fact

We take the facts from the district court's findings in its February 1, 2021, memorandum and order denying John's motion to suppress, supplemented "with the addition of undisputed facts

- 2 - drawn from the suppression hearing." United States v. Cruz-Mercedes, 945 F.3d 569, 571 (1st Cir. 2019) (quoting United States v. Hernandez-Mieses, 931 F.3d 134, 137 (1st Cir. 2019)). We note that John did not contest any of the district court's findings.

A.

Just after midnight on November 10, 2018, Somerville Police Officers Cleary, Ramirez, and Sousa responded to a domestic disturbance call made by Brison at 3 Wesley Park, Apartment #202, Somerville, Massachusetts. Officer Sousa noticed blood on the apartment's door and on the floor immediately outside the unit. He knocked on the door multiple times and announced himself as Somerville Police. The officers heard a male voice from inside the apartment, asking Officer Sousa to "hold on." Approximately a minute later, after further knocks and demands from the officers, John opened the door, his hand bleeding. Officers Sousa and Ramirez recognized John from a previous domestic disturbance call at the same address in June 2018 involving John and Brison, in which Officer Sousa had run John's criminal history and learned he had previous firearms offenses on his record. Officer Sousa asked John to step into the hallway; John complied.

While Officers Sousa and Cleary waited with John in the hallway and called for medical assistance, Officer Ramirez entered the apartment. Inside, Officer Ramirez found Brison and her six-

- 3 - year-old son. Brison was bleeding from her face, and she stated that John had struck her fac