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United States v. Leeper, ___ Fed. 4th____(2nd Cir. 2026)
Leeper abducted and murdered a fellow drug dealer in California who shorted him in a drug transaction. He and Rodriguez drove to New York where officers stopped his pickup truck. The officers detained Leeper and held the pickup truck after learning that neither Leeper nor his associate Rodriguez possessed a valid license, and that the vehicle did not have a valid registration. Officers conducted an inventory search of the truck, where they found a firearm, ammunition, and four pounds of methamphetamine. Rodriguez told officers Leeper smoked and sold meth, she had seen him with a handgun and stun gun and was present when he committed the murder. A warrant to collect DNA from a buccal swab was obtained.
Leeper was convicted on his plea of guilty to one count of intentional murder while engaged in a controlled substance offense. As part of his plea agreement, Leeper reserved the right to challenge the district court’s denial of his pretrial motions, including his motions to suppress evidence seized from his vehicle and evidence obtained by taking a buccal swab of his DNA.
Leeper challenged the warrant on three grounds, but only two directly pertain to the officers’ actions.
The first claim was that the search warrant affidavit did not establish probable cause to search his DNA because it did not identify any viable DNA samples with which his DNA could be compared. The Court explained that the question of whether a search warrant application can establish probable cause without identifying usable DNA samples taken from physical evidence linked to the alleged crime is one of first impression for federal appellate courts. This means that no previous federal appellate court has addressed this issue. In response from the defendant’s request for for a bright line rule that “absent any comparison DNA, there is no way to establish probable cause that a suspect’s DNA will be evidence of anything.”
The Court reasoned that “probable cause is a fluid concept turning on the assessment of probabilities in particular factual contexts, and as such is not readily, or even usefully, reduced to a neat set of legal rules.” It concluded that probable cause to obtain a DNA sample will not always require the government to identify specific DNA samples for comparison. The probable cause determination may include whether there is physical evidence that could link a particular suspect to a crime, how much physical evidence there is, the type of physical evidence, and the like. In this case DNA might be found on the eight shell casings, seven projectiles, multiple cut zip ties recovered at the scene of the homicide, as well as the rental car and victim’s body. The question is whether the “plethora of physical evidence recovered from the scene made it probable that obtaining a DNA sample from Leeper would lead to the discovery of evidence of a crime.”
In simple terms, where a whole bunch of items might reveal a DNA match, officers do not have to specifically identify any one or a few items that contain DNA that they believe will or are likely to match the suspect’s DNA.
Leeper also claimed the officers’ decision to hold his vehicle was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment, rendering the resulting inventory search unreasonable. The Court found the officers’ decision to hold his car did not violate the Fourth Amendment. The community caretaker doctrine allows seizures of vehicles due to arrests, suspended licenses, or other reasons where no driver is available to remove the vehicle from its location. In this case, the vehicle’s registration had expired and even if it had not, neither Leeper nor Rodriguez had a valid license.
Written by Elliot B. Spector, Esquire
Spector Criminal Justice Training Network, Inc.
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