United States v. Frank Degraffenreid ( 2014 )

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 13-4996
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
FRANK JUNIOR DEGRAFFENREID,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle
District of North Carolina, at Greensboro. Thomas D. Schroeder,
District Judge. (1:13-cr-00147-TDS-1)
Submitted: August 26, 2014 Decided: August 28, 2014
Before WILKINSON and THACKER, Circuit Judges, and HAMILTON,
Senior Circuit Judge.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Louis C. Allen, Federal Public Defender, John A. Duberstein,
Assistant Federal Public Defender, Greensboro, North Carolina,
for Appellant. Ripley Rand, United States Attorney, Graham T.
Green, Assistant United States Attorney, Winston-Salem, North
Carolina, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
Frank Junior Degraffenreid pled guilty to being a
felon in possession of a firearm, in violation of 18 U.S.C.
§ 922(g)(1) (2012), and reserved the right to appeal the
district court’s denial of his motion to suppress.
Degraffenreid claimed that officers impermissibly extended the
traffic stop occasioning their discovery of the firearm. The
district court disagreed, finding that any unjustified delay in
the completion of the stop was de minimis and, therefore, not
violative of Degraffenreid’s Fourth Amendment rights. * We
affirm.
We review the district court’s legal conclusions de
novo and its underlying factual findings for clear error.
United States v. Foster, 634 F.3d 243, 246 (4th Cir. 2011). “We
. . . construe the evidence in the light most favorable to the
Government, the prevailing party below.” Id.
Degraffenreid does not contest the validity of the
stop. See United States v. Digiovanni, 650 F.3d 498, 506 (4th
Cir. 2011). Once justified at its inception, “a traffic stop
*
We agree with the Government that Degraffenreid expressly
waived his contention that officers lacked the reasonable
suspicion necessary to frisk him for weapons during the traffic
stop by specifically confirming to the district court that he
was only challenging the stop’s duration. See United States v.
Claridy, 601 F.3d 276, 284 n.2 (4th Cir. 2010).
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must be limited in both scope and duration.” United States v.
Green, 740 F.3d 275, 280 (4th Cir. 2014) (internal quotation
marks omitted), petition for cert. filed, __ U.S.L.W. __ (U.S.
Apr. 10, 2014) (No. 14-5165). An officer must diligently
perform the necessities of investigating and completing a
traffic stop and may not materially deviate from that purpose
unless he has reasonable suspicion to do so. Id.
Here, Degraffenreid does not contend that the
officers’ activities leading up to his frisk exceeded the scope
of the traffic stop. Moreover, Degraffenreid points to no
evidence contradicting the district court’s determination that
the officers did not intentionally stall the stop to allow time
for a drug-detection dog to arrive on the scene. Although the
officers may have hoped for this result, their subjective
desires have no bearing on the reasonableness of the seizure.
See Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 813 (1996). Nor does
Degraffenreid’s speculation about which portions of the
otherwise proper stop officers might have omitted in order to
speed its completion. See United States v. Guijon-Ortiz, 660
F.3d 757, 770 (4th Cir. 2011) (explaining that “[t]he
reasonableness of a seizure depends on what the police do, not
on what they might have done” (internal quotation marks
omitted)).
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Accordingly, we conclude that the district court did
not clearly err in determining that, at most, Degraffenreid was
detained for one to two minutes longer than necessary.
Considering that the officer issuing the warning ticket had not
yet explained the ticket to the driver when Degraffenreid was
searched, we agree that such a delay was de minimis and
constitutional. See Green, 740 F.3d at 280-81; Guijon-Ortiz,
660 F.3d at 768-70. We therefore affirm the district court’s
judgment.
We dispense with oral argument because the facts and
legal contentions are adequately presented in the materials
before this court and argument would not aid in the decisional
process.
AFFIRMED
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