Klaucke v. Daly

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 09-1222
JONATHAN KLAUCKE,
Plaintiff, Appellant,
v.
BRIAN C. DALY,
Defendant, Appellee.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. Michael A. Ponsor, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Lynch, Chief Judge,
Torruella and Stahl, Circuit Judges.
Bruce D. Colegrove, on brief for appellant.
Richard W. Jensen and Morrison, Mahoney, LLP, on brief for
appellee.
February 9, 2010
TORRUELLA, Circuit Judge. In this appeal, plaintiff-
appellant Jonathan Klaucke challenges the district court's grant of
summary judgment in favor of defendant-appellee Brian C. Daly, a
police officer in Amherst, Massachusetts, on claims alleging
violations of Klaucke's Fourth Amendment rights brought pursuant to
42 U.S.C. § 1983 and the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act. We
conclude on the undisputed facts that Officer Daly had ample
reasonable suspicion to believe that Klaucke was a minor in
possession of alcohol in violation of state law when he detained
Klaucke, demanded identification, and briefly retained his driver's
license in order to confirm its validity and check for outstanding
warrants. We affirm.
I. Background
A. The Facts
The facts are straightforward. On May 5, 2007, Klaucke was a 21-
year-old senior at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst who,
by all accounts, looked younger than his years. At approximately
9:00 p.m. on that Saturday night, Klaucke was walking with a group
of four friends along Meadow Street in Amherst. It was the Mexican
holiday of Cinco de Mayo, and Klaucke and his friends were on their
way to a party in the area. Three of Klaucke's companions were
visibly carrying alcohol as they walked, including two twelve packs
of Corona beer and a large 22-ounce bottle of Smuttynose beer.
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Klaucke wore a backpack and carried a brown paper "Whole Foods"
grocery bag. The contents of the bag were not visible, though as
it turned out Klaucke was carrying six loose cans of beer.
Everyone walking with Klaucke was also over 21 years old, the
minimum age required in Massachusetts to legally possess alcohol.
See Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 138, sec. 34C (providing that "police
officer may arrest without warrant" any person "under twenty-one
years of age and not accompanied by a parent or legal guardian . .
. [who] knowingly possesses, transports or carries on his person .
. . any alcohol or alcoholic beverages").
Around the same time, Officer Daly was patrolling the
Meadow Street area on motorcycle. He was accompanied by a
colleague, Officer Todd Lang. The area was known for a high
incidence of underage drinking and student crime -- including large
scale disturbances, property damage, and both physical and sexual
assaults -- much of it alcohol-fuelled. The first two weeks of May
typically brought an increase in these incidents and, in an attempt
to head it off, the Amherst Police Department had been conducting
seminars and distributing leaflets in the area to notify residents
and students that officers would be patrolling the area and
requesting proof of age from individuals who were carrying alcohol
and appeared to be under the legal age. Seeing Klaucke's friends
with beers in hand, Officer Daly did just that. He approached the
group and asked each member if he or she was over 21 years old.
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When they all answered that they were, Officer Daly asked them to
produce identification to confirm their age. The other members of
Klaucke's group complied immediately.
Klaucke alone refused to hand over his ID. He told the
officer that he was 21 years old and had done nothing wrong. He
asserted his Fourth Amendment rights, and said that he had
previously spoken to a lawyer and believed that, under the
circumstances, he was not required to produce identification.
Officer Daly replied that he suspected Klaucke had alcohol in his
bag and was under the legal age, and again demanded identification.
Klaucke continued to refuse, and questioned the basis for the
officer's belief that he was carrying alcohol. This cavil back and
forth continued, for no more than a few minutes, until Officer Daly
stated that if Klaucke continued to refuse to produce
identification, Daly would assume Klaucke was underage and in
possession of alcohol, arrest him, and figure out his age during
the booking process. Klaucke promptly produced his driver's
license, which verified that he was 21.
Officer Daly did not return the identification to Klaucke
immediately, as he had to Klaucke's more cooperative companions.
Rather, he kept the license while he relayed Klaucke's information
to his dispatcher to confirm the validity of the license and
perform a check for outstanding arrest warrants. Officer Daly
explains that, at the time, he suspected Klaucke may have had a
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warrant out for his arrest given his adamant -- and, in Daly's
view, inexplicable -- refusal to produce identification that would
have verified that he was 21.
After confirming that the license was real and that
Klaucke had no outstanding warrants, Officer Daly returned the
identification and Klaucke and his friends went on their way.
Between two to eight minutes elapsed between the time Officer Daly
took Klaucke's license and the time he returned it. The entire
incident lasted no more than eighteen minutes.
B. Procedural History
On August 23, 2007, Klaucke filed suit against Officer
Daly in federal court, bringing claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and
the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act, Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 12, § 11I.1
The gravamen of his complaint under both state and federal law was
that Officer Daly had violated his Fourth Amendment right to be
free from unreasonable search and detention when the officer
demanded identification, threatened him with arrest, briefly
retained his license, and conducted the warrant search. Klaucke
alleged that Daly was without a reasonable basis to do any of these
things.
1
Klaucke pled his state cause of action under Mass. Gen. Laws ch.
ch. 12, § 11H-1. Because Section 11H governs civil rights actions
brought by the Attorney General, and because Section 11H-1 does not
exist, we assume, like the district court, that Klaucke meant to
bring a claim pursuant to Section I, which creates a private cause
of action for individuals alleging a deprivation of state or
federal constitutional freedoms.
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Officer Daly moved for summary judgment and, after a
hearing, the district court ruled from the bench that the officer's
actions were supported by a reasonable suspicion that Klaucke was
a minor in possession of alcohol and that, as a result, no Fourth
Amendment violation had occurred. The district court also held, in
the alternative, that even assuming for argument's sake there had
been some violation of Klaucke's constitutional rights, Officer
Daly was entitled to qualified immunity for his conduct as those
rights were not clearly established at the time of the incident.
The court granted Officer Daly's motion for summary judgment.
Shortly thereafter, on January 13, 2009, the district
court issued a brief written opinion to the same effect. See
Klaucke v. Daly, 592 F. Supp. 2d 222 (D. Mass. 2009). In it, the
court articulated the facts supporting its conclusion that Officer
Daly had reasonable suspicion to believe that Klaucke was a minor
in possession of alcohol at the time Daly demanded his
identification. These facts were "the nature of the area in which
[Klaucke's group was] walking, . . . the time of day and particular
holiday" and, "[o]f more importance[,] . . . the fact that the
individuals, especially Plaintiff, were of young appearance and
three of the five were openly carrying alcoholic beverages." Id.
at 224. Final judgment was entered on the same day. Klaucke now
appeals.
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II. Discussion
A. Standard of Review
We review a district court's grant of summary judgment de
novo. Insituform Techs., Inc. v. Am. Home Assurance Co., 566 F.3d
274, 276 (1st Cir. 2009). "We will affirm entry of summary
judgment if the record -- viewed in the light most favorable to the
nonmoving party, including all reasonable inferences drawn in favor
of the nonmoving party -- discloses no genuine issue of material
fact, and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of
law." Kunelius v. Town of Stow, 588 F.3d 1, 8-9 (1st Cir. 2009).
"We may affirm summary judgment on any ground manifest in the
record." Emhart Indus. Inc. v. Century Indem. Co., 559 F.3d 57, 65
(1st Cir. 2009).
B. The Investigative Stop
Klaucke does not dispute that Officer Daly was permitted
under the Fourth Amendment to approach him and his companions,
inquire as to their age, and request that they voluntarily produce
identification. United States v. Young, 105 F.3d 1, 6 (1st Cir.
1997) ("Police may approach citizens in public spaces and ask them
questions without triggering the protections of the Fourth
Amendment. Such police engagements need not find a basis in any
articulable suspicion." (citations omitted)); see, e.g., Hiibel v.
Sixth Judicial Dist. Court of Nev., 542 U.S. 177, 185 (2004)
("Asking questions is an essential part of police investigations.
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In the ordinary course a police officer is free to ask a person for
identification without implicating the Fourth Amendment.").
Instead, he asserts that Officer Daly first crossed the
constitutional line when he "seized" Klaucke and "demanded" that he
produce identification. Interactions such as this, which involve
more intrusive, investigative stops of an individual, fall within
the ambit of the familiar Terry line of cases. See Terry v. Ohio,
392 U.S. 1 (1968).
"When conducting a Terry stop, a police officer may
briefly detain an individual for questioning if the officer has
'reasonable suspicion supported by articulable facts that criminal
activity 'may be afoot.''" Schubert v. City of Springfield, 589
F.3d 496, 501 (1st Cir. 2009) (quoting United States v. Sokolow,
490 U.S. 1, 7 (1989)). "In determining whether a Terry stop is
justified, our inquiry involves two steps, first, 'whether the
officer's action was justified at its inception,' and second,
'whether it was reasonably related in scope to the circumstances
which justified the interference in the first place.'" Id.(quoting Terry, 392 U.S. at 20).
At the first step, "reasonable suspicion" requires the
officer to have "'a particularized and objective basis' for
suspecting the person stopped of criminal activity." United States
v. Wright, 582 F.3d 199, 205 (1st Cir. 2009) (quoting Ornelas v.
United States, 517 U.S. 690, 696 (1996)). This basis must be
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"'grounded in specific and articulable facts,'" and turns "not on
what the officer himself believed but, rather, on what a reasonable
officer in his position would have thought." United States v.
Espinoza, 490 F.3d 41, 47 (1st Cir. 2007) (quoting United States v.
Hensley, 469 U.S. 221, 229 (1985)).2
At the next step, we look to whether the officer's
investigative measures were reasonably calculated to uncover
evidence of wrongdoing related to circumstances giving rise to the
officer's initial suspicions. See Terry, 392 U.S. at 20. There is
no fixed guide to what police investigative measures are within the
scope of a Terry stop; in all events, the touchstone is the
reasonableness of the measures undertaken to quell or confirm the
officer's suspicions. See, e.g., Hiibel, 542 U.S. at 188-89.
In this case, we agree with the district court that the
circumstances confronted by Officer Daly were more than sufficient
to support a reasonable suspicion that Klaucke was a minor in
possession of alcohol in violation of state law. Klaucke's age and
2
Klaucke argues that summary judgment is inappropriate due to the
existence of factual disputes concerning why Officer Daly suspected
Klaucke had alcoholic beverages in his bag. For example, Officer
Daly explained in his deposition that he suspected Klaucke had
alcohol only after seeing Klaucke attempt to conceal the bag, at
which point Daly claims he saw a wine bottle protruding from the
top of the bag. Klaucke disputes these facts, but they are not
material. Rather, under Terry, we view the circumstances attending
the investigative stop through an objective lens, and therefore
have no need to resolve ancillary disputes rooted in allegations
regarding the officer's actual, subjective beliefs, even if those
beliefs were mistaken. United States v. Ruidíaz, 529 F.3d 25, 29
(1st Cir. 2008) (reasonable suspicion "is not dependent on an
individual officer's subjective motives").
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appearance more than justified the reasonable suspicion that he was
under 21 years old. The district court found that Klaucke "had an
unusually youthful appearance even for his age," a determination
well within its ken and supported by photographs of Klaucke
appearing in the record.
Further, the circumstances confronted by Officer Daly at
the time of the stop amply justified the reasonable suspicion that
Klaucke was in possession of alcohol. Officer Daly was on patrol
in an area well-known for undergraduate drinking. It was a
Saturday night and, moreover, a holiday and time of year
particularly associated with student partying. Cf. United States
v. Ortiz, 422 U.S. 891, 897 (1975) (police officers may permissibly
"draw reasonable inferences from [the] facts in light of their
knowledge of the area and their prior experience"). While these
considerations may have been insufficient, without more, to arouse
suspicion in the eyes of a reasonable officer, taken together with
the undisputed fact that Klaucke was walking in a group in which
his companions were openly carrying alcohol, we find that a
reasonable officer standing in Officer Daly's shoes could have
suspected that the brown grocery bag Klaucke carried concealed
alcoholic beverages.
Thus, we turn to whether the investigative measures
undertaken by Officer Daly were reasonably related in scope to the
circumstances that first aroused his suspicion. Officer Daly's
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demand for identification, plainly, was reasonably related to his
suspicion that Klaucke was underage. Under the circumstances of
this case, the officer was not required to take Klaucke at his word
that he was 21. Further, given Klaucke's initial refusal to
produce identification, it was not unreasonable for Officer Daly to
quickly verify the license to confirm he had not been handed a
fake. It is well-known that college students often have doctored
IDs which list them as older than they are, just so they can
drink.3
As for the warrant search, most circuits have held that
an officer does not impermissibly expand the scope of a Terry stop
by performing a background and warrant check, even where that
search is unrelated to the circumstances that initially drew the
officer's attention. See, e.g., United States v. Kirksey, 485 F.3d
955, 957 (7th Cir. 2007) (explaining that when an individual
"remains under suspicion for committing a crime, the officer can
3
Klaucke suggests that he was "coerced" into producing his
identification by an unlawful threat of arrest. Assuming for
argument's sake that more than reasonable suspicion was required to
threaten arrest, we conclude that the totality of information known
to Officer Daly at the time, including Klaucke's behavior in
refusing to produce his proof of age, was sufficient to allow
Officer Daly's reasonable suspicion to ripen into probable cause to
believe that Klaucke had violated Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 138, sec.
34C. See Acosta v. Ames Dep't Stores, Inc., 386 F.3d 5, 11 (1st
Cir. 2004)("The test for probable cause [to support an arrest] does
not require the officers' conclusion to be ironclad, or even highly
probable. Their conclusion that probable cause exists need only be
reasonable."). On these facts, the choice Officer Daly presented
to Klaucke was a lawful and common sense response to an impasse of
Klaucke's own creation.
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take a reasonable amount of time to check for outstanding warrants
or criminal history, even if the initial justification for the stop
had nothing to do with criminal history." (citing United States v.
Villagrana-Flores, 467 F.3d 1269, 1275-77 (10th Cir. 2006)); accord
United States v. Cavitt, 550 F.3d 430, 437 (5th Cir. 2008) (traffic
stop); United States v. Long, 532 F.3d 791, 795 (8th Cir. 2008);
United States v. Rusher, 966 F.2d 868, 876-77 (4th Cir. 1992).
We need not address whether warrant checks are always
permissible in the normal course of a Terry stop. Under the
circumstances here, Klaucke's refusal to produce a license that
would have alleviated the officer's stated concerns reasonably
roused a suspicion that his non-cooperation was driven by other
considerations, like an outstanding warrant for his arrest or other
criminal history, such as a prior arrest for underage drinking.
Cf. United States v. Sowers, 136 F.3d 24, 27 (1st Cir. 1998)
(police officer's "shift in focus" based on "unfolding events" in
course of Terry stop was "neither unusual nor impermissible"). It
took less than eight minutes to perform both the license validity
and warrant check. We hold that these brief actions were within
the scope of conduct permissible under Terry.
Accordingly, on the undisputed facts, Klaucke has failed
to show that Officer Daly violated any of his constitutional
rights, and we therefore need not address independently the issue
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of qualified immunity. See, e.g., Holder v. Town of Sandown, 585
F.3d 500, 508 (1st Cir. 2009).
Affirmed.
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