United States v. Batista

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 21-1365
UNITED STATES,
Appellee,
v.
SEBASTIAN BATISTA, a/k/a Jonathan,
Defendant, Appellant.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. Douglas P. Woodlock, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Barron, Chief Judge,
Lynch and Thompson, Circuit Judges.
Robert L. Sheketoff, with whom Sheketoff & O'Brien was
on brief, for appellant.
Randall E. Kromm, Assistant United States Attorney, with
whom Rachael S. Rollins, United States Attorney, was on brief, for
appellee.
April 25, 2022
LYNCH, Circuit Judge. Sebastian Batista appeals from
his conviction of possession with intent to distribute 40 grams or
more of fentanyl. He contends that the district court erroneously
denied his motion to suppress evidence seized during a stop and
warrantless search of his vehicle. We find that the stop and
search were lawful because law enforcement had probable cause to
believe Batista was committing a crime when they stopped his
vehicle and affirm.
I.
On February 28, 2019, law enforcement, including Special
Agents James Cryan and Tyler McNally from the Drug Enforcement
Administration ("DEA") and Detective Jason Ferranti of the Waltham
Police Department, arrested a target in their fentanyl trafficking
investigation. Prior to his arrest, the target had sold over 150
grams of fentanyl to undercover law enforcement. The target agreed
to become a cooperating witness ("CW") and to identify his drug
supplier. The CW referred to his supplier as "Jonathan" and had
a telephone number to contact him.
That evening, the CW placed two recorded calls to his
supplier at Special Agent Cryan's direction, and Special Agent
Cryan monitored the CW's side of the conversation in real time.
In the first call, at 6:28 pm, the CW asked "Jonathan" to supply
him 200 grams of fentanyl and "Jonathan" responded by asking where
the fentanyl he had given the CW the day before was, to which the
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CW replied that it was sold. The CW called "Jonathan" again at
6:41 pm, and "Jonathan" asked, "That guy [presumably, the buyer of
the previous day’s fentanyl], he's a good guy?" and the CW replied,
"Yeah, he's a good guy and he wants more, so I told him, yeah."
"Jonathan" agreed to sell the CW the requested fentanyl. He and
the CW agreed to meet "there," which the CW took to mean their
usual meeting place on Pine Vale Road in Waltham. The CW told
Special Agent Cryan that his supplier would expect to see the white
van owned by the CW's drug trafficking partner at the meeting
location.
The meeting place was a low-traffic residential
neighborhood street near the CW's residence. The CW rode in a law
enforcement vehicle with Special Agent Cryan and Detective
Ferranti to a predetermined location away from the meeting place.
At 8:19 pm, Special Agent Cryan directed the CW to place a recorded
call to his supplier to request an estimated time for the drug
deal. When "Jonathan" picked up, he said he was on his way and
would be there in 25 minutes. Special Agent Cryan, Detective
Ferranti, and the CW drove their car to a side street with a view
of the meeting place and parked.
Other law enforcement officers drove the white van which
was known to "Jonathan" as belonging to the CW's drug trafficking
partner to the meeting place. At around 9:00 pm, the officers
were driving the white van on Hardy Pond Road in the direction of
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Trapelo Road, and a black Jeep Cherokee passed them going in the
opposite direction. "Jonathan" then called the CW and they both
confirmed they were at the meeting place.1 "Jonathan," apparently
believing the CW was in the white van, called again and told the
CW that the white van was being followed and hung up abruptly.
Other officers observed the Jeep make a U-turn and speed off in
the direction of Trapelo Road shortly thereafter.
Law enforcement stopped the Jeep at the intersection of
Pine Vale Road and Trapelo Road. With their guns drawn, two
officers approached the Jeep and ordered the driver, later
identified as Batista, out of the car. A short while later,
Special Agent Cryan, driving the car the CW was in, pulled up
within a few feet of Batista, and the CW said, "that's him," to
which the agent replied, "Who?", and the CW responded, "that's
Jonathan." Special Agent Cryan reported the identification by
radio to all of the officers onsite.
Law enforcement searched the Jeep, recovering 200 grams
of fentanyl in a compartment under the driver's seat.
In their affidavits, Detective Ferranti and Special
Agent McNally attested that the vehicle was searched after the CW
identified Batista. The prosecution provided discovery to
Batista's defense counsel concerning statements made by the CW,
1 This call was not recorded because of its short duration.
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including that "when he made his identification of the defendant
as his drug supplier on the night of the defendant's arrest, the
law enforcement officers were already searching the defendant's
vehicle." From this, Batista contends that the officers may have
searched the Jeep before the CW identified him, and that the
government did not sufficiently establish that the identification
took place before the search. For reasons explained below, our
holding does not rest on the timing of the identification.
II.
Batista was indicted on one count of possession with
intent to distribute 40 grams or more of fentanyl on June 12, 2019.
On November 5, 2019, Batista filed a motion to suppress the
evidence obtained as a result of the February 28 stop and search.
Later that month, he obtained new counsel. On January 14, 2020,
he filed a second motion to suppress the fruits of the February 28
stop and search. He argued that the stop where he was pulled over
and ordered out of the car was a de facto arrest, for which law
enforcement would have needed probable cause. He also moved for
an evidentiary hearing. In an attached affidavit, Batista attested
that he was ordered from his vehicle at gunpoint after being pulled
over, that an officer told him that his license plate was not
valid, and that he heard one officer tell another that he thought
they had pulled over the wrong person. The district court heard
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argument on these motions on March 27 and April 2, 2020 but did
not hold an evidentiary hearing.
The district court denied Batista's motions to suppress
in a memorandum and order on July 9, 2020. It first concluded
that there were no inconsistencies between the government's
version of events and Batista's, though Batista alleged additional
facts. Of the additional facts Batista alleged, the district court
concluded only the contention that he had overheard an officer say
they might have stopped the wrong person was "potentially
material."
The district court found that the stop of the Jeep was
not a de facto arrest but a Terry stop, which requires law
enforcement to have only a reasonable suspicion, and law
enforcement had at that point "at least" a reasonable suspicion
that Batista was dealing drugs. The district court then found the
search of the car was appropriate under several exceptions to the
warrant requirement: the automobile exception, because there was
probable cause to believe there was contraband in the car; as a
search incident to arrest, because law enforcement had probable
cause to believe that the car contained drugs; and under the
doctrine of inevitable discovery, because, even if law enforcement
lacked probable cause to believe the car contained contraband, the
drugs would have eventually been discovered when the car was towed
incident to Batista's arrest.
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At a bench trial on November 4, 2020, Batista was found
guilty, and he was subsequently sentenced to 63 months'
imprisonment. This appeal followed.
III.
For a district court's denial of a suppression motion,
we review legal conclusions de novo and factual findings for clear
error. See United States v. Brown, 621 F.3d 48, 55 (1st Cir.
2010). "[T]he decision of whether to conduct an evidentiary
hearing is left to the sound discretion of the district court. On
appeal, our review is for an abuse of that discretion." Id. at 57(citation omitted). The denial of a motion to suppress may be
affirmed for any reason apparent from the record. See United
States v. Maldonado-Peña, 4 F.4th 1, 22 (1st Cir. 2021).
Batista makes two arguments. First, he argues that the
district court abused its discretion in failing to hold an
evidentiary hearing on his motion to suppress. This is because,
he contends, among other reasons, he did not have personal
knowledge of material facts that law enforcement relied on in order
to justify the stop. He argues that as a result of this lack of
personal knowledge he cannot make the requisite threshold showing
for an evidentiary hearing that material facts are in dispute,
which, if resolved in his favor would entitle him to relief. See
United States v. Cintron, 724 F.3d 32, 36 (1st Cir. 2013). Most
importantly, he argues, he does not have personal knowledge of
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when the CW identified him, and whether it occurred before or after
the police searched the vehicle. Second, Batista argues that even
if an evidentiary hearing is not warranted, the district court
erred in denying the motion to suppress because the record shows
that Batista was de facto placed under arrest without probable
cause.
This case, however, does not turn on these arguments.
As Batista conceded at oral argument, if there was probable cause
for law enforcement to believe he was committing a crime when he
was pulled over, there was no error in denying the motion to
suppress.
"'[P]robable cause is a fluid concept -- turning on the
assessment of probabilities in particular factual contexts', and
as such 'must be evaluated in light of the totality of
circumstances.'" United States v. Martinez-Molina, 64 F.3d 719,
726 (1st Cir. 1995) (first quoting Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S.
213, 232 (1983), and then quoting United States v. Torres-
Maldonado, 14 F.3d 95, 105 (1st Cir. 1994)). To establish probable
cause, the government "need only show that at the time of the
arrest, the facts and circumstances known to the arresting officers
were sufficient to warrant a prudent person in believing that the
defendant had committed or was committing an offense." Id.The government asserts that the officers had probable
cause when they stopped Batista's vehicle. Batista emphasizes
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that the district court only found that there was a reasonable
suspicion for the stop and argues that the circumstances
surrounding the stop did not add up to probable cause, particularly
because the officers did not have information beforehand about
what vehicle Batista would be driving.
The officers here had reason to credit the CW's
statements about his dealings with Batista. As we recognized in
United States v. Vongkaysone, when an informant "ha[s] been caught
dealing in drugs, it [is] to his advantage to produce accurate
information to the police so as to qualify for the leniency he
[seeks]." 434 F.3d 68, 74 (1st Cir. 2006). In this case, the CW
had been arrested in a fentanyl trafficking investigation and
agreed to cooperate. An informant's credibility is further
bolstered when the informant incriminates himself, see id. (citing
United States v. Principe, 499 F.2d 1135, 1137 (1st Cir. 1974)),
as the CW here did in revealing his history of purchasing drugs
for resale from Batista.
The CW's recorded calls with Batista evidenced a history
of prior drug dealing. In the first call, Batista asked the CW
where the fentanyl he had given him the previous day had gone.
Batista and the CW were able to arrange a meeting for a drug sale
by referring to the meeting place simply as "there," suggesting
prior communication and meetings. In the calls from the meeting
place, Batista apparently recognized the white van, which the CW
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said his supplier knew belonged to the CW's drug trafficking
partner. These factors gave law enforcement ample reason to
believe that the CW was on the phone with his supplier and that
the drug deal would transpire as the CW told them it would. See
id. (noting that recorded phone calls "between [the informant] and
an individual who appeared to recognize him and eventually agreed
to sell him drugs [at a specified time and place] . . . . strongly
supported the belief that [the informant] was indeed in touch with
[his supplier] and that the arranged drug deal was as
represented."). It was apparent from the content of the recorded
calls that Batista believed that he was supplying drugs to the CW
so that the CW could resell them, and that he had supplied drugs
to the CW in the past for this purpose.
Batista's presence at the meeting place identified by
the CW around the time that the drug deal was set to take place
also gave the officers reason to think that he was there to sell
drugs to the CW. In United States v. Garcia, this court found
that probable cause was established in part because an informant
"told officers that his source was roughly ten minutes away, and
then roughly ten minutes later the [defendant's vehicle] pulled in
front of the house." 982 F.3d 844, 846 (1st Cir. 2020). The
meeting place in Waltham was a low-traffic residential
neighborhood, and the meeting took place at around 9:00 pm, so it
was unlikely that the Jeep was in the area for an unrelated reason.
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Moreover, Batista called the CW to say that he was in the area
when he passed the white van that the CW said his supplier would
recognize as belonging to the CW's drug trafficking partner.
It is true that nothing in the record suggests that law
enforcement knew what kind of car Batista would drive to the
meeting place. Cf. Garcia, 982 F.3d at 845 (noting that the
informant "told law enforcement that the supplier had on occasion
used a Dodge truck or silver truck to deliver drugs."). But law
enforcement had many reasons to believe that the drug supplier the
CW spoke to in the recorded phone calls was the man in the Jeep.
In addition to the Jeep's presence at the low-traffic meeting place
at the appointed time, the supplier called the CW to say that he
was in the area right after the Jeep passed the white van, then
called the CW again to tell him that the white van was being
followed, at which point the Jeep made a U-turn and sped away from
the scene.
In sum, law enforcement had probable cause to believe
that Batista was in possession of drugs with an intent to sell
them to the CW when they pulled him over on February 28. The
totality of the circumstances -- including the CW's apparent
history of dealings with his supplier, the recorded phone calls
arranging the drug deal, Batista's presence at the meeting place,
and the way that the Jeep's movements lined up with the supplier's
phone calls to the CW during the would-be drug deal -- would give
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a reasonable officer probable cause to believe that the driver of
the Jeep was the drug supplier, and that he possessed fentanyl
that he intended to sell to the CW for resale.
We need not consider whether Batista was placed under de
facto arrest when he was ordered out of the vehicle, as the
officers had probable cause to believe he was committing a crime
at that point, so, if it was an arrest, it was a lawful one. See
United States v. Raspberry, 882 F.3d 241, 246-47 (1st Cir. 2018)
("Probable cause is a prerequisite not only for a formal arrest
but also for a de facto arrest."). Similarly, because there was
probable cause in the record to believe there were drugs in
Batista's car at the time of the stop whether or not the CW
identified him before the search took place, no evidentiary hearing
was necessary.
IV.
The judgment of conviction is affirmed.
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