## Facts

- A fugitive task force went to a residence in Illinois to execute a state arrest warrant for Richard Walker, who had removed an ankle monitor while on monitored release.
- Officers arrested Walker outside the front door without incident.
- Officers conducted a protective sweep of the home and lifted a mattress in a child’s bedroom, discovering a loaded firearm underneath.
- After the homeowner (Laverne Shipp) and Walker’s girlfriend (Ramona Paulette) arrived, officers disclosed the firearm and obtained Shipp’s consent to conduct a second search.
- In the second search, officers found fentanyl near men’s clothing in Paulette’s bedroom.
- A federal grand jury indicted Walker for being a felon in possession of a firearm (18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1)) and possession with intent to distribute fentanyl (21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1), (b)(1)(C)).
- The district court denied Walker’s motion to suppress the firearm and drugs; Walker entered a conditional guilty plea preserving his right to appeal.

## Issues

1. Whether Walker had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the residence sufficient to challenge the searches.
2. Whether the protective sweep was lawful in scope, including whether lifting a mattress exceeded the sweep’s limits.
3. If the sweep was unlawful, whether the firearm and drugs were nonetheless admissible under the attenuation doctrine, consent, or inevitable discovery.

## Decision

- The court held Walker had standing to contest the searches based on his status as an overnight guest.
- The court held the protective sweep was unlawful in scope because lifting a mattress was not a search of a place where a person could be hiding.
- The court rejected the district court’s reliance on attenuation to admit the firearm and drugs where the later consent and discoveries were closely tied to the unlawful sweep.
- The court reversed the denial of the suppression motion and remanded for further proceedings to determine whether inevitable discovery applied and to reassess whether Shipp’s consent independently justified the second search.

## Legal Principles

- An overnight guest generally has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the host’s home and may challenge unlawful searches there.
- A protective sweep incident to arrest is limited to a brief inspection of spaces where a person could be found; actions aimed at finding evidence rather than people exceed its permissible scope.
- Attenuation requires a meaningful break between unlawful police conduct and the acquisition of evidence; close temporal proximity and use of unlawfully obtained information to obtain consent weigh against attenuation.
- When attenuation is unavailable, the government may still seek admission under other exclusionary-rule exceptions (e.g., inevitable discovery) or show that consent was sufficiently independent of the prior illegality; those doctrines require case-specific findings.

## Conclusion

The court concluded that the mattress search exceeded the lawful scope of a protective sweep and that attenuation did not justify admitting evidence obtained through a consent search that followed closely and was influenced by the unlawful sweep; it remanded for determinations on inevitable discovery and whether consent independently supported the later search.


United States v. Walker, 657 F.3d 160 (7th Cir. 2011)