## Facts

- A confidential informant told Kentucky drug investigators that Hankins was growing marijuana on his property.
- Detective Kevin Bibb of the South Central Kentucky Drug Task Force went to Hankins’s property and found marijuana growing in a wooded area.
- Bibb obtained a warrant to search Hankins’s home and surrounding property.
- During the search, officers found a bag of marijuana and papers in a kitchen cabinet, and multiple marijuana plots growing directly behind Hankins’s home and garage.
- Officers seized items associated with marijuana growing and weighing, including plastic cups, Miracle-Gro, twine, and weighing scales.
- Officers also seized a shotgun, a revolver, ammunition, and Hankins’s truck.
- In total, officers seized 212 marijuana plants, estimated to be worth about $400,000, and Hankins was arrested.
- Two days after the arrest, Hankins went to the Task Force office seeking to retrieve money from his truck. Bibb accompanied Hankins to the truck, where Hankins removed $2,000 in cash hidden behind the backseat.
- Jim Devasher, the Task Force director, refused to allow Hankins to keep the $2,000.
- After the dispute, Hankins contacted his longtime friend James Chick and said he wanted Devasher dead and would pay someone to kill him.
- Unknown to Hankins, Chick had been caught selling cocaine and agreed to work as an informant for ATF Special Agent David Hayes rather than serve jail time.
- Chick reported Hankins’s statements to Hayes. Hayes instructed Chick to get Hankins to repeat the threat while Chick wore a transmitter.
- Chick went to Hankins’s home wearing the transmitter, and Hankins again threatened to kill Devasher during their conversation inside the home.
- Hankins moved to suppress the audio recordings of the in-home threats. The district court denied the motion, and Hankins appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether the Fourth Amendment required suppression of recordings of threats made inside Hankins’s home when the conversation was recorded through an informant wearing a transmitter and consenting to monitoring.
2. Whether Hankins had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his in-home conversation that barred the government from using the informant’s consensual recording.

## Decision

- The Sixth Circuit affirmed the district court’s denial of Hankins’s motion to suppress.
- The court held that recording and monitoring a conversation with the consent of one participant does not violate the Fourth Amendment, even when the conversation occurs in the defendant’s home.
- The court concluded that Hankins assumed the risk that Chick could disclose the conversation to law enforcement or allow it to be recorded.

## Legal Principles

- A person who voluntarily speaks to another assumes the risk that the listener may later reveal the conversation to the government.
- The Fourth Amendment is not violated when law enforcement records or monitors a conversation with the consent of one participant (one-party consent monitoring).
- The fact that a conversation occurs inside a home does not, by itself, bar admission of a consensually recorded conversation between the defendant and a cooperating informant.
- Under federal wiretap law, recordings made with the consent of one party acting under color of law are generally permitted and are not subject to suppression on the theory that a warrant was required solely because the recording occurred in a home.

## Conclusion

In *United States v. Hankins*, the Sixth Circuit upheld the admission of recordings of Hankins’s threats made inside his home because the cooperating informant consented to wearing a transmitter and recording the conversation, and Hankins assumed the risk that his friend could cooperate with law enforcement; therefore, suppression was properly denied and the judgment was affirmed.


United States v. Hankins, 195 Fed.Appx. 295 (2006)