Jump To

Top Caption [Combined Opinion

                  by Kolar](https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/10809817/united-states-v-floyd-suggs/#o1)

Support FLP

CourtListener is a project of Free
Law Project, a federally-recognized 501(c)(3) non-profit. Members help support our work and get special access to features.

Please become a member today.

Join Free.law Now

March 17, 2026 Get Citation Alerts Download PDF Add Note

United States v. Floyd Suggs

Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit

• Citations: None known
• Docket Number: 24-2892

• Judges: Kolar

• Opinion

• Authorities (11)

• Cited By (0)

• Summaries (0)

• Similar Cases (12.9K)

• PDF

Combined Opinion

                        by Kolar

In the

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit

---

No. 24-2892
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.

FLOYD L. SUGGS,
Defendant-Appellant.

---

Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
No. 1:22-cr-00084 — Franklin U. Valderrama, Judge.

---

ARGUED NOVEMBER 4, 2025 — DECIDED MARCH 17, 2026

---

Before EASTERBROOK, KIRSCH, and KOLAR, Circuit Judges.
KOLAR, Circuit Judge. Floyd Suggs appeals the district
court’s order denying his motion to suppress. He argues for
suppression based upon an overbroad warrant—the warrant
at issue identified the location of the search as a single-family
home, when it should have identified the structure as a multi-
unit dwelling and specified the unit to be searched. He also
argues for suppression claiming agents executed the warrant
unreasonably after they should have realized that they were
2 No. 24-2892

at a building with multiple units. We hold otherwise: the
agents’ investigation of the facts contained in the warrant, and
their execution of it, were reasonable. And even if we doubted
the warrant or agents’ execution of it, long-recognized excep-
tions to the warrant requirement apply here, as discussed be-
low. Accordingly, we affirm.

I. Background

The parties do not dispute the material facts relevant to
this appeal. Federal law enforcement began investigating
Suggs’s Chicago address in October 2021, when a United
States Postal Inspector, Thomas McKeown, identified a suspi-
cious parcel sent to the address from Tucson, Arizona. Four
months later, McKeown identified another suspicious parcel
also sent from a Tucson address to the Chicago address,
though not to Suggs specifically. A K9 unit inspected this sec-
ond parcel and alerted, suggesting narcotics were present.
Based on this alert, McKeown obtained a warrant to search
the parcel. Inside he found three Ziploc bags wrapped in lay-
ers of paper and tape and filled with blue pills. The pills,
around 3,000 total, tested positive for fentanyl. McKeown es-
timated they were worth up to $20,000.
McKeown then planned a controlled delivery of the pills
to Suggs’s address. He sought a tracker warrant permitting
him to place a GPS device in the parcel, and an anticipatory
search warrant permitting him to search the premises at the
delivery address. His request included a proposed “trigger-
ing event” whereby a warrant would kick in—probable cause
to search would arise—once agents delivered the parcel and
it was opened inside. But his warrant application contained
No. 24-2892 3

an error: he described the address as a “single-family resi-
dence,” when the address in fact contained two units.
As discussed below, we must focus on whether McKeown
knew or should have known that the address contained two
units at the time he signed the search warrant affidavit. McKe-
own investigated the address in four principal ways.
First, he ran the street address through a United States
Postal Service (USPS) database. The result indicated to him
that the address was a single-family residence.
Second, McKeown pulled a report showing the USPS-
trackable parcels sent to that address between October 2020
and October 2021; none were addressed to a specific unit, just
the street address.
Third, he consulted a general investigative database. This
database also suggested to McKeown that the address was a
single-family residence. It linked three residents to the ad-
dress—Suggs not among them—all of whom shared a family
name. None were listed on the database as living in a partic-
ular unit number. McKeown also pulled driver’s license rec-
ords for two of the three, which did not list any unit numbers
either. The database also showed the third resident was on
supervised release. McKeown called that resident’s probation
officer, and though the officer said she had been to the ad-
dress, McKeown did not confirm whether the address was a
single-family residence.
Fourth, McKeown reviewed photographs of the address,
taken by his investigation team, and concluded the photo-
graphs showed a single-family residence because the address
had one mail slot on the front door and no mailboxes outside.
4 No. 24-2892

A judge issued the anticipatory search warrant, along with
a tracker warrant permitting agents to place a GPS tracker in-
side the parcel. With warrants in hand, agents replaced the
pills in the parcel with a lookalike substance (“Smarties”
candy) and dusted the parcel with a powder that turns purple
when it touches human skin. Agents also put a GPS tracker
inside the parcel, along with a device designed to alert them
when the parcel was opened.
With a search team standing by, an officer dressed as a
USPS worker delivered the parcel: she opened the address’s
exterior front door, rang two doorbells inside the door—a fact
Suggs claims should have alerted agents to the likelihood
there were multiple units in the building—and left the parcel
between the exterior and interior doors. Two minutes later
someone in the house retrieved the parcel. Nothing else hap-
pened until, about three hours after delivery, Suggs arrived
and entered the front doors. Almost immediately after he en-
tered, the parcel began moving, and several minutes later it
was opened.
Once the parcel was opened, agents approached the ad-
dress, knocked on the front door, and announced “police,
search warrants” several times. With no answer, they entered
the house, stepping first into a front vestibule area. There they
encountered two people (neither Suggs) and observed two
doors: one to the right and open, and another to the left and
atop a flight of stairs. Agents secured the two people, entered
the first door on the right—which opened into the first-floor
unit—and conducted a protective sweep to determine
whether other people were present on the first floor. While in
the first-floor unit, agents heard footsteps from above. Still on
the first floor, they proceeded toward the rear of the building
No. 24-2892 5

and found a door leading to a common stairwell connecting
the first and second floors.
There, agents caught Suggs purple-handed, descending
the rear stairwell holding a small plastic bag with his hands
stained purple. They ordered Suggs to show his hands and
stop; instead, he fled up the stairs into the second-floor unit,
where he closed and locked the door. All told, agents encoun-
tered Suggs in the rear stairwell within two minutes of enter-
ing the building.
Agents forced their way into the second-floor unit, de-
tained Suggs, and saw his clothes were stained purple, too.
They swept the unit and found purple stains in a bathroom
on a toilet seat and handle, the sink, and the floor. They also
found white powder (which tested positive for a controlled
substance), a garbage bag with the sham drugs inside it, and,
in the rear stairwell, the GPS tracker.
By criminal complaint, McKeown alleged that Suggs at-
tempted to knowingly and intentionally possess with intent
to distribute a controlled substance in violation of 21 U.S.C.
§ 846. A grand jury indicted him on one count of this offense.
Invoking the Fourth Amendment, Suggs moved to sup-
press all evidence agents seized from his unit. First, he argued
the anticipatory search warrant was invalid because it was too
broad, as it described the address as single-family when it re-
ally had two units. Second, he claimed agents executed the
warrant unreasonably by continuing their operation after
they should have known the address had two units. Third,
Suggs argued that neither the exigent circumstances nor inev-
itable discovery doctrines permitted agents to search his unit
without a valid warrant.
6 No. 24-2892

The district court denied Suggs’s motion. While it ac-
cepted that the investigation leading up to the signing of the
warrant was “not robust,” the district court nonetheless con-
cluded that McKeown neither knew nor should have known
that the address contained two units. After holding the war-
rant was valid, the district court also determined agents exe-
cuted it reasonably because, even though agents should have
known the warrant was too broad when they entered the
front vestibule, they searched only Suggs’s unit, the proper
target of the warrant. And even had it invalided the warrant,
the district court reasoned that agents were permitted to
search Suggs’s unit under the exigent circumstances and in-
evitable discovery doctrines.
Suggs then pled guilty but reserved the right to appeal the
district court’s suppression ruling. The district court sen-
tenced Suggs to sixty-three months in prison and four years
of supervised release. Suggs timely appealed.

II. Discussion

“We review a district court’s denial of a suppression mo-
tion under a dual standard of review: legal conclusions are
reviewed de novo, while factual findings are reviewed for
clear error.” United States v. Kelly, 772 F.3d 1072, 1077 (7th Cir.
2014).
We proceed in three parts. First, we hold that the warrant,
though overbroad, was valid. Second, we hold the warrant
was executed reasonably. And third, we note that, even if the
warrant were invalid, we need not reverse because agents
lawfully entered Suggs’s unit under the doctrine of exigent
circumstances and lawfully seized evidence in plain view.
No. 24-2892 7

A. The Warrant’s Validity
The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires
that a warrant “particularly describ[e] the place to be
searched[.]” U.S. CONST. amend. IV. This provision prevents
“wide-ranging” searches by limiting government intrusion
“to the specific areas and things for which there is probable
cause.” Kelly, 772 F.3d at 1081 (quoting Maryland v. Garrison,
480 U.S. 79, 84 (1987)). “When a search involves a building
with multiple, separate units, the warrant must specify the
precise unit that is the subject of the search to satisfy the par-
ticularity requirement.” United States v. White, 416 F.3d 634,
637–38 (7th Cir. 2005).
The parties agree the warrant incorrectly referred to
Suggs’s address as a single-family residence, when in fact the
address contained two units: an upper unit (where Suggs
lived) and a lower unit (where others lived). But this does not
automatically invalidate the warrant. Id. (citing Garrison, 480
U.S. at 85). Rather, if when agents obtain a warrant they nei-
ther knew nor should have known that a building contained
multiple units, we will uphold the warrant. Id. We determine
what an officer knew or should have known objectively,
based on the totality of the circumstances, considering only
the information available to agents at the time the warrant
was issued. “Just as the discovery of contraband cannot vali-
date a warrant invalid when issued, so is it equally clear that
the discovery of facts demonstrating that a valid warrant was
unnecessarily broad does not retroactively invalidate the war-
rant.” Garrison, 480 U.S. at 85.
Suggs argues McKeown acted unreasonably while inves-
tigating the address and should have known it contained two
units. He bases this argument principally on McKeown’s
8 No. 24-2892

failure to confirm with the probation officer whether the ad-
dress was a single-family home. “McKeown ignored access to
first-hand knowledge about the place to be searched[,]” Suggs
says. He argues this failure “to obtain what appeared to be
readily available information about the layout” of the address
was unreasonable. Thus, he concludes, McKeown should
have known the address was a single-family home, rendering
the warrant invalid.
But we must analyze McKeown’s conversation with the
probation officer based on what McKeown knew then, not
what we know now. See Garrison, 480 U.S at 85. When McKe-
own spoke to the probation officer, he had no reason to sus-
pect the home was multi-unit. Rather, everything suggested
the opposite, specifically: (1) none of his searches in govern-
mental and public databases indicated the address had mul-
tiple units; (2) none of the driver records McKeown reviewed
listed unit numbers; (3) the three residents listed shared the
same last name, suggesting they lived together as a family; (4)
every trackable parcel delivered to the address from October
2020 to October 2021—fifteen in all—were addressed without
a unit number; and (5) the probation officer said nothing in-
dicating that the address was a multi-unit dwelling. Nothing
in McKeown’s investigation made it unreasonable for him to
conclude that he was looking at a single-family dwelling, and
there were no “red flags” that made it unreasonable for McKe-
own to fail to confirm this with the probation officer.
B. The Warrant’s Execution
Suggs alternatively argues that even if the warrant were
valid, agents violated the Fourth Amendment by executing
the warrant unreasonably. But this argument fails because
No. 24-2892 9

agents, after learning the address was multi-unit, searched
only the proper target of the warrant: Suggs’s unit.
The Fourth Amendment’s general protection “against un-
reasonable searches and seizures” requires that a valid search
warrant be executed in a reasonable manner. U.S. CONST.
amend. IV; Garrison, 480 U.S. at 84. In the context of a multi-
unit building, this means that agents, once they discover their
warrant is too broad, must “limit their search to” the intended
premises. Garrison, 480 U.S. at 86. If agents determine their
warrant is too broad while searching the wrong unit, they
must “discontinue” their search completely. Id. at 87. Agents
may not conduct a roving search of all units in a building “un-
til they f[i]nd the one they [are] looking for.” Jacobs v. City of
Chicago, 215 F.3d 758, 768 (7th Cir. 2000). Accordingly, we ask
when agents discovered the warrant was too broad, and
whether, after this discovery, they limited their search to the
intended premises.
On the first question, Suggs argues agents should have
known the warrant was too broad as soon as the officer who
delivered the parcel saw two doorbells inside the security
door. The record does not support that conclusion. Rather, as
discussed above, all evidence before seeing the two doorbells
suggested the address was single-family. With all other signs
pointing to a single-family residence, two doorbells do not
amount to much evidence of a multi-unit dwelling. Our con-
clusion might be different if, for example, the doorbells were
labelled by unit number. But here, Suggs points to no such
evidence.
Suggs cites Jacobs v. City of Chicago, where we concluded
agents should have known their warrant was overbroad be-
fore they entered a multi-unit building, for his assertion that
10 No. 24-2892

the two doorbells alone should have alerted agents the ad-
dress here was multi-unit. 215 F.3d at 769. But the fact that the
building in Jacobs contained multiple units was much plainer
than here. Each unit in the Jacobs building had its own en-
trance, number on the front door, and doorbell; and two of
the units had their own gas meters. Id. at 763–64. And the
building owner told agents there were multiple units in the
building before the search, yet agents searched each unit one-
by-one anyway. Id. None of the facts which made it plain in
Jacobs that the targeted building was multi-unit are present
here. Again: prior to the two doorbells, all evidence suggested
the address was single-family.
We agree with the district court that agents should have
known there were multiple units only when they entered the
front vestibule and saw two more front doors—one immedi-
ately to the right, and one to the left up a flight of stairs—sug-
gesting a distinct unit was behind each door. This prompts
our next question: whether agents limited their search to the
intended premises after they entered the front vestibule. We
conclude on this record that agents properly limited their
search once inside.
From the front vestibule, agents conducted a protective
sweep of the first-floor unit and almost immediately con-
fronted Suggs. Suggs does not challenge this sweep, which for
the purposes of the Fourth Amendment is “a cursory inspec-
tion of those spaces where a person may be found[,]” not “a
full search of the premises[.]” Maryland v. Buie, 494 U.S. 325,
335 (1990). After this sweep, agents entered the back stairwell,
where they encountered a purple-stained man who, despite
agents’ commands, fled upstairs into his unit. This alerted
agents that the upstairs unit was the true subject of the
No. 24-2892 11

warrant: the premises to which the parcel was to be delivered
and ultimately opened. Agents then reasonably determined
Suggs’s apartment was the proper subject of the warrant be-
fore conducting a search pursuant to the warrant.
Suggs suggests that agents were required to stop their op-
eration entirely (and seek a new warrant) upon learning the
warrant was overbroad. But this finds no support in our prec-
edent. In United States v. Kelly, officers obtained a warrant to
search a defendant’s “upper apartment” on the second floor
of a two-story building, but realized while executing the war-
rant that the apartment was instead a “rear” unit spanning
two floors. 772 F.3d at 1076. Even though officers continued
their search after realizing this error, we held officers did not
violate the Fourth Amendment because they limited their
search to the proper target of the warrant (the defendant’s
unit). Id. at 1083. As we observed: “The Garrison Court no-
where suggested that if, after discovering the[ir] mistake[,] …
a continued search of [the targeted] apartment would have
been improper.” Id. (citing Garrison, 480 U.S. at 86). So while
agents must stop immediately if they determine they are ac-
tively searching the wrong unit, Garrison and Kelly confirm
that they may still search the correct unit.
Perhaps if agents had searched the first-floor unit even af-
ter realizing the warrant was too broad, found contraband
there, and criminally charged the first-floor residents, those
residents might have a case to suppress evidence seized in
their apartment. But that is not this case. Nor did agents con-
duct a roving search of other units to try and find the proper
unit to search, which the Constitution forbids. See Jacobs, 215
F.3d at 769. Rather, agents entered the first-floor unit and
swept the unit for other occupants. Here, we are satisfied
12 No. 24-2892

agents did not improperly search the first-floor unit in viola-
tion of the Fourth Amendment.
Because agents determined which unit was the proper
subject of the warrant mere minutes after entering the front
vestibule and searched only that unit, they executed the war-
rant reasonably.
C. Exceptions to the Warrant Requirement
Even if we had concerns with the validity of the warrant
or questioned the manner of its execution, Suggs’s appeal
would still fail. Agents entered Suggs’s unit under circum-
stances that fall squarely within the doctrine of exigent cir-
cumstances and seized evidence in plain view. 1
A warrantless search of a home is presumptively unrea-
sonable. United States v. Schmidt, 700 F.3d 934, 937 (7th Cir.
2012). The government may rebut this presumption by show-
ing an exception to the warrant requirement, like exigent cir-
cumstances, applies. Id. “Exigent circumstances, including the
need to prevent the destruction of evidence, permit police of-
ficers to conduct an otherwise permissible search without first
obtaining a warrant.” Kentucky v. King, 563 U.S. 452, 455 (2011)
(cleaned up). The burden is on the government to show law
enforcement reasonably concluded exigent circumstances re-
quired they enter a home without a warrant. United States v.
Patino, 830 F.2d 1413, 1415 (7th Cir. 1987).
When agents first encountered Suggs, they were in the
back stairwell—a common space they could enter without a
warrant. See Harney v. City of Chicago, 702 F.3d 916, 925 (7th

1 The government also invokes the doctrine of inevitable discovery.

Because we affirm on different grounds, we do not address this argument.
No. 24-2892 13

Cir. 2012); United States v. Villegas, 495 F.3d 761, 768–69 (7th
Cir. 2007). They observed him descending the stairs with
hands stained purple and holding a plastic bag, convincing
evidence that he had opened the parcel containing the faux
pills. He fled back into his unit after agents confronted him,
strongly suggesting the parcel agents had delivered was in-
side the upstairs unit. Thus, agents reasonably feared that
Suggs might destroy evidence: other controlled substances or
the materials in the parcel agents delivered to Suggs’s build-
ing. This fear justified entering his unit without a warrant.
King, 563 U.S. at 462.
Of course, entering a unit based on exigent circumstances
does not give agents carte blanche to search it. “Once a room
is legally entered under exigent circumstances, a subsequent
search or seizure of items in the room must be justified by a
warrant or an exception to the warrant requirement.” United
States v. Rivera, 825 F.2d 152, 157 (7th Cir. 1987).
But the record is sufficient to suggest that agents saw the
evidence at issue in plain view while sweeping the unit to se-
cure it. The plain-view doctrine permits agents to seize evi-
dence without a warrant if “(1) the officer is lawfully present
at the place of the seizure, (2) the seized object is in the plain
view of the officer, and (3) the incriminating nature of the ob-
ject is immediately apparent.” United States v. McGill, 8 F.4th
617, 622 (7th Cir. 2021). These factors are met here. After law-
fully entering Suggs’s unit under the doctrine of exigent cir-
cumstances, agents secured him and swept his unit to ensure
no others were hiding there. In Suggs’s unit, agents observed
obviously incriminating evidence: Suggs’s purple-stained
hands and clothes; similar stains on a toilet seat and handle, a
sink, and a floor (perhaps suggesting Suggs may have
14 No. 24-2892

attempted to destroy evidence); and white powder on the
floor (which field tested positive for a controlled substance).
In sum, the doctrines of exigent circumstances and plain
view would lead us to affirm even if we took issue with the
warrant or its execution.

III. Conclusion

For the reasons discussed above, we AFFIRM.