Jonathan KLAUCKE, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. Brian C. DALY, Defendant, Appellee.
No. 09-1222.
United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.
Feb. 9, 2010.
Submitted Dec. 11, 2009.
Notably, Abrante challenged the admission of Perez‘s statement in his direct appeal, and the MAC affirmed its admission. Commonwealth v. Abrante, No. 03-P-651, 62 Mass.App.Ct. 1109, 817 N.E.2d 339, 2004 WL 2480390, at *4 (Mass.App.Ct. Nov.4, 2004) (table). Abrante again challenged the admission of the statement in his collateral appeal, specifically arguing that it lacked reliability, and the appeals court again rejected his claim, finding that there was no need for an independent showing of reliability. Abrante, 2007 WL 4180256, at *4.
Abrante‘s counsel could not have rendered ineffective assistance in failing to address alleged errors of state evidentiary law that were either non-prejudicial or nonexistent. Knight, 447 F.3d at 16. Therefore, Abrante‘s counsel was not ineffective for failing to challenge the reliability of Perez‘s statement.
D. Challenge to AEDPA‘s Constitutionality
Finally, Abrante argues that AEDPA violates his right to petition the government for redress of grievances under the First Amendment by preventing federal review of constitutional issues of first impression decided by state courts.
Abrante premises this argument on his claim that the constitutional issues presented in his habeas petition are issues of first impression. This assertion is incorrect. The issues raised by Abrante fall well within the bounds of established Supreme Court precedent, and, as we have held, “[t]he Constitution is not offended when lower federal courts are prevented from substituting for that of a state court their judgment as to reasonable application of Supreme Court precedent.” Evans v. Thompson, 518 F.3d 1, 8 (1st Cir.2008).
Thus, the issues Abrante raises do not present us with the opportunity to consider his constitutional challenge to AEDPA.
IV.
For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the district court‘s denial of the habeas petition.
Affirmed.
Before LYNCH, Chief Judge, TORRUELLA and STAHL, Circuit Judges.
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
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. 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
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. 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 re-
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 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
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]
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 factorable 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. 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, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (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 “‘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 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 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
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 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 of qualified immunity. See, e.g., Holder v. Town of Sandown, 585 F.3d 500, 508 (1st Cir.2009).
Affirmed.
Wen Y. CHIANG, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. VERIZON NEW ENGLAND INC., Defendant, Appellee.
No. 09-1214.
United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.
Heard Dec. 9, 2009.
Decided Feb. 9, 2010.