United States v. David Garcia ( 2021 )

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 20-4104
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff – Appellee,
v.
DAVID JOE GARCIA,
Defendant – Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, at
Asheville. Martin K. Reidinger, Chief District Judge. (1:18-cr-00142-MR-WCM-1)
Argued: March 10, 2021 Decided: April 9, 2021
Before NIEMEYER, MOTZ and RUSHING, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
ARGUED: Melissa Susanne Baldwin, FEDERAL DEFENDERS OF WESTERN
NORTH CAROLINA, INC., Charlotte, North Carolina, for Appellant. Anthony Joseph
Enright, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Charlotte, North Carolina,
for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Anthony Martinez, Federal Public Defender, FEDERAL
DEFENDERS OF WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA, INC., Charlotte, North Carolina, for
Appellant. R. Andrew Murray, United States Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED
STATES ATTORNEY, Charlotte, North Carolina, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
Following a stop and search of his vehicle, David Garcia was arrested for possessing
firearms as a convicted felon. Garcia entered a conditional guilty plea but reserved the
right to appeal the district court’s ruling on the legality of the stop and search. We affirm.
I.
The Government elicited the following facts at the suppression hearing before a
magistrate judge. Between 1:00 and 2:00 a.m. on July 23, 2018, Sgt. Jordan Warren sat in
a marked patrol car in a parking lot on Asheville Highway in Henderson County, North
Carolina. At an intersection down the street from his post, Sgt. Warren saw a white Nissan
driven by Garcia pause at a stop sign for “three to four seconds,” which seemed unusual to
Sgt. Warren because the road had no other traffic. The officer started following the vehicle
and concluded that Garcia was taking a circuitous route back to Asheville Highway to
avoid the police. While tailing the vehicle, Sgt. Warren ran its license tag, which showed
the vehicle was registered to Garcia’s mother and had “several indicators [of] narcotics,
felon and drugs” associated with it.
Sgt. Warren observed Garcia’s vehicle cross a double-yellow traffic line into the
lane of oncoming traffic. North Carolina law requires drivers to remain on the right half
of the highway. N.C. Gen. Stat. § 20-146. The officer initiated a traffic stop and explained
to Garcia why he had been pulled over. Garcia told Sgt. Warren that he went into the
opposite lane of travel to avoid what he saw as a dip in the road that might have blown his
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suspensions or rims. Garcia also explained that he was on the way to help a friend who
feared harassment from an ex-boyfriend.
Sgt. Warren then asked Garcia for his driver’s license; Garcia could not produce
one. Sgt. Warren contacted dispatch and learned that Garcia had a revoked driver’s license
and an outstanding arrest warrant for failure to appear for a prior charge of driving with a
revoked license. The officer then placed Garcia under arrest.
As Sgt. Warren arrested Garcia, he noticed that Garcia wore a vest under his
sweatshirt. While Garcia described this as a paintball vest, the officer testified that it
resembled a tactical vest and could serve as body armor to “prevent . . . a stab or to soften
a blow from a blunt type object.” Sgt. Warren also found a large knife on Garcia’s body
and two sets of brass knuckles in his back pants pocket. North Carolina law criminalizes
carrying concealed weapons including metallic knuckles. N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-269(a).
After handcuffing Garcia, Sgt. Warren placed him in the back of his patrol car.
Sgt. Warren and another officer who had arrived on the scene then searched the
white Nissan. The officers found a black pistol in a holster near the dashboard and a
shotgun in the trunk. They also found a magazine loaded with ammunition, a mask, a
Smith and Wesson baton, a hatchet and gloves.
A grand jury indicted Garcia, who had previously been convicted of a felony, on
one count of possession of firearms by a convicted felon in violation of 18 U.S.C.
§ 922(g)(1). He moved to suppress the firearms, initially arguing only that the stop violated
the Fourth Amendment. Following a hearing on the motion to suppress and supplemental
briefing on the lawfulness of the search of Garcia’s vehicle, a magistrate judge issued a
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recommendation that the district court deny Garcia’s motion to suppress. The district court
overruled Garcia’s objections and adopted the magistrate’s recommendation. Garcia
entered a conditional guilty plea, reserving the right to appeal. The district court sentenced
Garcia to 21 months’ imprisonment.
We review “the factual findings underlying a district court’s ruling on a motion to
suppress for clear error and its legal conclusions de novo.” United States v. McGee, 736
F.3d 263, 269 (4th Cir. 2013). We consider the evidence in “the light most favorable to
the government,” the party that prevailed in the district court. United States v. Abdallah,
911 F.3d 201, 209 (4th Cir. 2018) (internal quotation marks omitted).
Garcia challenges both the initial stop and the subsequent search of his vehicle. We
consider each in turn.
II.
Garcia first argues that the stop of his vehicle constituted an unlawful seizure in
violation of the Fourth Amendment. The “[t]emporary detention of individuals during the
stop of an automobile by the police . . . constitutes a ‘seizure’” subject to the Fourth
Amendment’s reasonableness requirement. Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 809–10
(1996). “As a general matter, the decision to stop an automobile is reasonable where the
police have probable cause to believe that a traffic violation has occurred.” Id. at 810.
Thus, if Sgt. Warren had a “reasonable ground for belief” that Garcia committed a traffic
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violation, even a minor one, he lawfully initiated the traffic stop. Maryland v. Pringle, 540
U.S. 366, 371 (2003).
North Carolina law directs that “[u]pon all highways of sufficient width a vehicle
shall be driven upon the right half of the highway.” N.C. Gen. Stat. § 20-146(a). But the
statute provides for an exception “[w]hen an obstruction exists making it necessary to drive
to the left of the center of the highway.” Id. § 20-146(a)(2). Sgt. Warren pulled Garcia
over after he observed Garcia cross over the double yellow line. According to Garcia, he
swerved to avoid an asphalt pavement patch, which constituted an “obstruction” permitting
him to lawfully drive into the other lane.
The magistrate judge found that the temporary patch in the road was not an
“obstruction” justifying Garcia’s swerve, and so Sgt. Warren had reasonable suspicion to
stop Garcia. The Government offered ample evidence to support that finding. At the
suppression hearing, Greg Connor, a Henderson County Maintenance Supervisor,
characterized the asphalt as a “smoothing patch” with “just a little bit of rise” and testified
that it would do “nothing to endanger moving traffic.” He explained that the patch
appeared smaller than a speedbump and that he did not consider it an “obstruction on the
roadway.” Connor further testified that he had initially patched the road because he found
a “depression” in the road and wanted to ensure it remained safe. Connor testified that he
had not received any complaints about the patch since it had been placed earlier that month.
Moreover, Sgt. Warren testified that as he followed Garcia, he drove over the patch with
no issue, suggesting that no obstruction justified Garcia’s swerve.
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Given all of this evidence, Sgt. Warren certainly had reasonable suspicion that
Garcia had violated N.C. Gen. Stat. § 20-146(a). See, e.g., State v. Baublitz, Jr., 616 S.E.2d
615, 620 (N.C. 2005) (denying motion to suppress when officer made an “objective
observation of defendant’s vehicle twice crossing the center line,” which “provided [him]
with probable cause for the stop”); State v. Osterhoudt, 731 S.E.2d 454, 460 (N.C. 2012)
(holding the defendant violated the N.C. statute by “cross[ing] the double yellow line”
when “there was no practical reason why defendant would need to veer over the double
yellow line”). 1 Accordingly, the stop did not violate the Fourth Amendment.
III.
Garcia alternatively maintains that even if the stop was lawful, the officers’
subsequent search of his vehicle violated the Fourth Amendment because they lacked
probable cause to do so. 2 The automobile exception to the warrant requirement permits
police officers to search an automobile if it is “readily mobile and probable cause exists to
believe it contains contraband.” Pennsylvania v. Labron, 518 U.S. 938, 940 (1996) (per
1
The cases Garcia relies on to support his contrary view do not apply. In defining
obstruction, Garcia points to cases interpreting an entirely separate statute concerning the
maintenance of public thoroughfares. See Cooper v. Town of S. Pines, 293 S.E.2d 235(N.C. 1982); Beckles-Palomares v. Logan, 688 S.E.2d 758 (N.C. 2010). Moreover, a patch
of asphalt constitutes neither “shrubbery” obstructing motorists’ view, Cooper, 293 S.E.2d
at 237, nor “vegetation” blocking an intersection, Beckles-Palomares, 688 S.E.2d at 764.
2
Garcia also argues that the search of his vehicle did not fall under the
search-incident-to-arrest doctrine, which permits searches “when it is reasonable to believe
that evidence of the offense of arrest might be found in the vehicle.” Arizona v. Gant, 556
U.S. 332, 335 (2009). Because this case meets the higher probable cause standard, we need
not address the search-incident-to-arrest argument.
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curiam) (citing California v. Carney, 471 U.S. 386, 393 (1985)). Probable cause requires
“fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime will be found in a particular place.”
Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 238 (1983). Once “police have probable cause, they may
search ‘every part of the vehicle and its contents that may conceal the object of the search.’”
United States v. Kelly, 592 F.3d 586, 590 (4th Cir. 2010) (quoting United States v. Ross,
456 U.S. 798, 825 (1982)).
The Government satisfied the probable cause standard. Probable cause exists when
a police officer finds contraband on a vehicle’s recent occupant, and here, Sgt. Warren
found on Garcia a large knife and two sets of brass knuckles. See United States v. Baker,
719 F.3d 313, 319 (4th Cir. 2013). Garcia also wore a tactical vest that could be used as
body armor. Garcia told Sgt. Warren he was on his way to help a friend who faced
harassment from an ex-boyfriend, suggesting he faced a potential confrontation. And
Garcia’s circuitous route indicated that he sought to avoid Sgt. Warren’s patrol car. Based
on the totality of the circumstances, an objectively reasonable officer could have concluded
that the automobile contained additional contraband, providing the officers with probable
cause to search it.
Garcia, however, argues that this evidence did not provide the officers with probable
cause to search for additional evidence of the crimes the officers knew of before the search
— driving without a license and possessing concealed brass knuckles. That argument also
fails. The automobile exception “permits police officers to search a vehicle for evidence
of any crime, not just the crime of arrest.” Baker, 719 F.3d at 319 (emphasis added). The
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officers had probable cause to do so here. Accordingly, the search did not violate the
Fourth Amendment.
IV.
For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district court is
AFFIRMED.
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