UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Ernest REAGAN, Defendant-Appellant.
No. 09-5832.
United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.
Oct. 29, 2010.
Before: KETHLEDGE and WHITE, Circuit Judges; BECKWITH, Senior District Judge.*
* The Honorable Sandra S. Beckwith, Senior United States District Judge for the Southern District of Ohio, sitting by designation.
BECKWITH, Senior District Judge.
Ernest Reagan, a federal prisoner proceeding through counsel, appeals a district court order denying his motion to suppress evidence based on an alleged violation of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. After the motion was denied, Reagan pleaded guilty to several drug and firearm offenses, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Reagan argues that there was no probable cause to arrest him and, thus, all evidence obtained should have been suppressed.
Reagan‘s arrest occurred at approximately 4 a.m. at a gas station. That morning in 2007, Deputy Sheriff Chad Faulkner, who had just completed his shift, was sitting in his unmarked vehicle at the gas station reading a newspaper when he noticed a black car parked approximately thirty feet behind him. Faulkner heard two people arguing in the car. The passenger, a female, exited the car and entered the gas station. The driver, a male, remained in the car and turned up the volume on his stereo. At that point, Faulkner, who was not in uniform, put on his badge, secured his weapon, and approached the black car from the front and asked the driver (later identified as Reagan), “What‘s the disturbance?” Reagan replied that there was no disturbance. Faulkner, however, noticed two containers or clear glasses of alcohol in the car‘s middle console and smelled alcohol coming
Faulkner placed both Reagan and the female passenger under arrest. He then called to have Reagan‘s car towed and conducted an inventory search of the car and its contents. Faulkner opened a shoe box sitting on the passenger-compartment floor and found electronic scales, two ounces of crack cocaine, and eight ounces of powder cocaine. Faulkner also discovered a bottle of liquor on the car floor.
At the hearing on Reagan‘s motion to suppress, Faulkner testified that the first time he cuffed Reagan, it was to detain him for officer safety, and that he arrested Reagan on a felony weapons charge and for public intoxication after he patted him down for a second time in front of the patrol officer‘s cruiser. At some point during these events, Faulkner learned that Reagan had previously been convicted of a felony. The magistrate judge was unable to determine, however, whether Faulkner placed Reagan under arrest before or after learning that Reagan had a previous felony conviction. The magistrate judge issued a report and recommendation to deny the motion, concluding that Faulkner had probable cause to arrest Reagan for carrying a firearm either with the intent to go armed, a misdemeanor offense, or as a felon, but not for intoxication, disorderly conduct, violation of a state open-container law, or for excessive noise from his vehicle. The magistrate judge further concluded that the subsequent search of Reagan‘s car was not unconstitutional. Overruling Reagan‘s objections, the district court issued an order accepting the magistrate judge‘s recommendation and denying Reagan‘s motion.
When reviewing a district court‘s denial of a motion to suppress evidence, we will “uphold the district court‘s factual determinations unless clearly erroneous, but we [will] review the district court‘s legal conclusions, such as the existence or absence of probable cause, de novo.” United States v. Couch, 367 F.3d 557, 560 (6th Cir.2004) (citation omitted). The evidence, however, must be considered “in the light most favorable to the government.” Id. (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
Reagan‘s principal argument on appeal is that Faulkner lacked probable cause to arrest him and, thus, the subsequent inventory search of his vehicle was unconstitutional.
Whether [an] arrest was constitutionally valid depends in turn upon whether, at the moment the arrest was made, the officers had probable cause to make it—whether at that moment the facts and circumstances within their knowledge and of which they had reasonably trustworthy information were sufficient to warrant a prudent man in believing that the petitioner had committed or was committing an offense. Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 91, 85 S.Ct. 223, 13 L.Ed.2d 142 (1964); United States v. Campbell, 486 F.3d 949, 955 (6th Cir.2007). “Probable cause is a standard more strin-
We find that Faulkner had probable cause to arrest Reagan under
Reagan argues on appeal, without any supporting authority, that at the time of the arrest, Faulkner lacked probable cause to arrest for a weapons charge because Reagan was arrested before Faulkner first conducted a records check to determine whether Reagan had a weapons permit. This argument lacks merit. In Tennessee, carrying a weapons permit is an affirmative defense, see
Having found that Faulkner had probable cause to arrest Reagan, we now address whether the subsequent search of his vehicle was constitutional. Reagan has not challenged whether there was a proper search incident to arrest, see New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 460, 101 S.Ct. 2860, 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981), but, as argued by the government, has conceded that the search was an inventory search. We therefore deem this issue effectively waived on appeal. See United States v. Sandridge, 385 F.3d 1032, 1035 (6th Cir.2004).
Although Reagan makes some references to the investigative detention, known as a “Terry stop,” see Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), we find that he has not developed any substantive argument as to why Faulkner lacked any reasonable suspicion and, thus, has also abandoned this issue on appeal. See Brown v. Konteh, 567 F.3d 191, 212 (6th Cir.2009), cert. denied, —
For the above reasons, we affirm the district court‘s denial of Reagan‘s motion to suppress.