United States v. Terrance Coles

GARTH, Circuit Judge.

Terrance Coles (“Coles”) appeals his conviction and sentence for drug-related crimes, challenging, inter alia, the District Court’s denial of his motion to suppress physical evidence. In that motion, Coles argued that the physical evidence must be suppressed under the Fourth Amendment because police officers had removed it from his hotel room without a search warrant. The District Court concluded that exigent circumstances — to wit, the imminent destruction of the evidence — -justified the warrantless search. We cannot agree.

Concluding that the police impermissibly…