United States v. Barnes ( 1998 )

F I L E D
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
AUG 28 1998
TENTH CIRCUIT
PATRICK FISHER
Clerk
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee, No. 97-6290
v. (D.C. No. 96-CR-189)
JEFFREY LYNN BARNES, (W.D. Okla.)
Defendant - Appellant.
ORDER AND JUDGMENT *
Before ANDERSON, McKAY, and BRISCOE, Circuit Judges.
Defendant, Mr. Jeffrey Lynn Barnes, appeals from a final order of the
United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma sentencing him
to confinement for participating in a conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine in
violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846 and for possessing with intent to distribute
methamphetamine in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1). We assume jurisdiction
to review this appeal pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291.
Defendant asserts that the district court erred in denying his Motion to
*
This order and judgment is not binding precedent, except under the
doctrines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. The court
generally disfavors the citation of orders and judgments; nevertheless, an order
and judgment may be cited under the terms and conditions of 10th Cir. R. 36.3.
Suppress and admitting the disputed articles into evidence. After conducting an
evidentiary hearing on Defendant’s Motion to Suppress, the district judge issued
an order denying the motion, but made no factual findings. When reviewing the
denial of a motion to suppress, we view the evidence in the light most favorable
to the government. See United States v. Villa-Chaparro, 115 F.3d 797, 800-01
(10th Cir.), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___ , 118 S. Ct. 326 (1997); United States v.
Anderson, 114 F.3d 1059, 1063 (10th Cir. 1997). If the district court makes no
findings in resolving a motion to suppress, the appellate court “must uphold the
ruling if there is any reasonable view of the evidence to support it.” United States
v. Donnes, 947 F.2d. 1430, 1432 (10th Cir. 1991) (internal quotations omitted).
The reasonableness of a search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment is a
question of law that we review de novo. See United States v. McCarty, 82 F.3d
943, 947 (10th Cir.), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___ , 117 S. Ct. 257 (1996).
Defendant was a passenger in a car stopped for a speeding violation.
Trooper T.G. Byrns requested the driver’s license and rental car papers and asked
the driver to come to the patrol vehicle while the officer wrote the driver a
warning. While writing the warning in the patrol vehicle, the officer noticed that
the driver’s hands were shaking and that he was humming and singing while the
officer asked him questions. Because “the singing was very much more unusual
than what [he was] normally used to seeing,” R., Vol. II at 10-11, the officer
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asked for, and received permission from, the driver to run a drug-detecting dog
around the car. Trooper Byrns stated that if he had completed writing the warning
notice before the other trooper arrived with the dog, he would have let the driver
go on his way. See id. at 17-18. However, Trooper Mike Keeton arrived within
minutes with his dog.
Trooper Byrns stopped writing the warning and gave Trooper Keeton a
brief summary of the situation. He then returned to his vehicle to continue
writing the warning. When Trooper Keeton noticed Defendant in the vehicle, he
asked Defendant to step out of the vehicle. As Defendant looked through his
wallet to find his identification per the trooper’s request, Trooper Keeton noticed
that the wallet contained a large amount of money. After Defendant failed to
produce any official identification, Trooper Keeton asked him to stand against a
fence paralleling the highway.
Meanwhile, Trooper Byrns had again stopped writing the driver’s warning
and was present when Defendant was asked to stand by the fence. Trooper
Keeton ran the dog around the car twice, and each time it alerted on the passenger
side by barking and scratching. After the dog alerted twice on the same location,
Trooper Keeton opened the door and put the dog inside the car. The dog alerted
by pawing on the front passenger seat and on the back seat. Trooper Byrns then
went to the front passenger seat and found a small tube containing
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methamphetamine. When that vial was discovered, Defendant and the driver were
arrested. They were handcuffed and left on the ground while the troopers
continued their search. After pulling out the back seat of the vehicle, the troopers
found electronic scales and a larger quantity of methamphetamine. The troopers
called a wrecker to tow the vehicle.
Defendant claims that since the duration of his investigative detention
lasted longer than the average time to conduct a traffic stop and issue a warning
notice, the drugs were discovered as a result of an unlawful seizure and should
have been suppressed. He also claims that the scope of his investigative detention
constituted an unlawful seizure of his person.
There is no controversy over whether the stop was initially valid for Fourth
Amendment purposes. See United States v. Botero-Ospina, 71 F.3d 783, 787
(10th Cir. 1995), cert. denied, 518 U.S. 1007 (1996). Trooper Byrns could detain
the vehicle and its occupants for as long as it took him to inspect the driver’s
license and vehicle registration, run the necessary computer checks, and issue the
warning for speeding. See United States v. Martinez, 983 F.2d 968, 974 (10th
Cir. 1992), cert. denied, 508 U.S. 922 (1993). According to the troopers, it takes,
on average, five to seven minutes to complete a traffic stop in which a warning
notice is issued, but sometimes it takes longer. See R., Vol. II at 19, 20, 24.
Reviewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the government, the
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length of the detention was “carefully tailored to its underlying justification” and
“last[ed] no longer than [was] necessary to effectuate the purpose of the stop.”
Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491, 500 (1983). The drug dog alerted on the vehicle
before Trooper Byrns completed writing the warning notice and within a
reasonable amount of time necessary to effectuate the purpose of the stop. Under
the appropriate standard of review and based on the troopers’ testimony, we adopt
the reasonable view of the evidence that the drugs were found within seven to ten
minutes after the car was first stopped. See R., Vol. II at 12, 24, 47, 69-70.
Defendant directs our attention to the twenty-eight-minute time interval
between the stop of the car and the call to the wrecker to tow the car. We do not
inquire into the reasonableness of that time period. The length of detention that
we are concerned with is the time from the stop of the car until the first discovery
of methamphetamine. After that discovery, Defendant and the driver were taken
into custody and advised of their rights. The twenty-eight minute interval
between the initial contact and the calling of the wrecker does not conflict with
the troopers’ time estimate of the detention until the first methamphetamine
discovery.
Defendant complains of other factors relevant to the scope of his detention,
arguing that they resulted in an unlawful seizure of his person. He says that
Trooper Keeton did five things that resulted in an unlawful detention and search:
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(1) physically detained Defendant; (2) ordered Defendant out of the vehicle; (3)
ordered Defendant to produce identification; (4) viewed the contents of
Defendant’s wallet; and (5) ordered Defendant to stand by the fence along the
highway. We hold that Trooper Keeton’s conduct did not result in an unlawful
seizure of Defendant. In Maryland v. Wilson, the Supreme Court ruled that an
officer making a traffic stop may order a passenger out of the car pending
completion of the stop, reasoning that safety concerns for the officer outweighed
the personal liberty interests of the passenger. See Maryland v. Wilson, 519 U.S.
408, 117 S. Ct. 882, 884-86 (1997). Defendant, a passenger, was detained
properly as a result of a traffic stop, and the Supreme Court has specifically
sanctioned an officer’s removal of a passenger from the car, see id. at 884, and an
officer’s request that he produce identification. See Royer, 460 U.S. at 501. It
was also appropriate for Trooper Keeton to direct Defendant to stand a safe
distance away based on reasonable concerns for the officers’ safety, Defendant’s
safety, and minimizing distraction of the dog during the sniff.
Focusing on “‘the touchstone of our analysis under the Fourth
Amendment,’” the reasonableness of the intrusion into a citizen's personal
security, Wilson, 117 S. Ct. at 884 (quoting Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U.S.
106, 108 (1977)), the duration and scope of Defendant’s detention were
constitutionally permissible. As we explained in United States v. Melendez-
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Garcia:
There is no bright-line rule to determine whether the scope of police
conduct was reasonably related to the goals of the stop; “rather our
evaluation is guided by ‘common sense and ordinary human
experience.’” We must avoid “unrealistic second-guessing” of police
officers’ decisions in this regard and thus do not require them to use
the least intrusive means in the course of a detention, only reasonable
ones.
Melendez-Garcia, 28 F.3d 1046, 1052 (10th Cir. 1994) (internal citations
omitted). We are not persuaded by Defendant’s contentions regarding his
detention; each step taken by the troopers was reasonable and was guided by
common sense and ordinary human experience.
We therefore hold that Defendant's Motion to Suppress Evidence was
properly overruled because the traffic stop for a speeding violation was justified
at its inception and the detention which followed was lawful. Judgment
AFFIRMED.
Entered for the Court
Monroe G. McKay
Circuit Judge
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No. 97-6290, United States v. Jeffrey Lynn Barnes
ANDERSON, Circuit Judge, concurring:
I concur in Judge McKay’s analysis and conclusion that the stop and
detention which followed were lawful, and with this concurrence I regard Judge
McKay’s opinion as the majority view in this case.
That concurrence obviously rests upon the assumption that the Fourth
Amendment was implicated by the continued detention and search, a question
which need not be reached if, as Judge Briscoe points out in her separate
concurrence, the defendant consented to the search. I write separately simply for
the purpose of stating that I do not disagree with Judge Briscoe’s analysis of the
consent doctrine, and that I join her concurrence as an alternative holding in this
case. I do so fully realizing that this is an unusual position to take, but it is not
particularly exotic to approve of alternative grounds upon which the district court
can be affirmed in a case.
No. 97-6290, United States v. Jeffrey Lynn Barnes
BRISCOE, Circuit Judge, concurring:
I concur in the affirmance of the district court’s denial of the motion to
suppress, but rely on Sullivan’s consent to conclude the officers lawfully detained
Barnes.
We consider the entire record when we review the district court’s denial of
a motion to suppress. United States v. Muniz, 1 F.3d 1018, 1021 (10th Cir.
1993). This includes evidence admitted during the suppression hearing as well as
at trial. Id. In his trial testimony, Sullivan testified he consented to a drug
detection dog inspecting his car and he described the chronology of events
preceding his consent as well as the events following his consent. By my reading
of the record, Sullivan consented to the dog inspection within the first two or
three minutes of the stop, clearly within the duration of a proper traffic stop.
Because the traffic stop was not unlawful at that point, Sullivan was lawfully
detained when he gave his consent. Further, there is no evidence in the record
before us from which we could conclude Sullivan’s consent was involuntary.
Notwithstanding United States v. Lee, 73 F.3d 1034 (10th Cir. 1996), the
consent is not invalid simply because the driver was detained at the time the
consent was given. See also United States v. Burch, 1998 WL ______ *8 (No.
97-3208 filed August 25, 1998). A detained person can give valid consent.
United States v. Watson, 423 U.S. 411, 424 (1976); United States v. Doyle, 129
F.3d 1372, 1377 (10th Cir. 1997); United States v. Flores, 48 F.3d 467, 469 (10th
Cir. 1995); United States v. Sanchez-Valderuten, 11 F.3d 985, 990 (10th Cir.
1993). In Lee, the driver, during a traffic stop, gave consent to a search of his car
while the officer was still holding his license. The court stated because the
officer held the driver’s license, the passenger’s identification, and the rental
documents for the car when he asked for consent to search, the “request to search
the car was not a consensual encounter because the Defendants ‘would not
reasonably have felt free to leave or otherwise terminate the encounter’ with
Deputy Barney because their documents had not been returned.” 73 F.3d at 1040.
This analysis confuses the question of whether a police-citizen encounter is
consensual or a detention with the question of the voluntariness of a consent to
search. To the extent Lee holds the mere fact of detention invalidates consent by
the detained person, it appears contrary to Supreme Court precedent. In Watson,
the Supreme Court stated “the fact of custody alone has never been enough in
itself to demonstrate a coerced confession or consent to search.” 423 U.S. at 424.
It is also contrary to circuit precedent both before and after Lee.
When a driver voluntarily consents to additional questioning by an officer
or the use of a drug detection dog, there is no seizure and “hence the Fourth
Amendment’s strictures are not implicated.” United States v. Sandoval, 29 F.3d
537, 540 (10th Cir. 1994). Therefore the eighteen-minute detention about which
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Barnes complains did not violate the Fourth Amendment.
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