UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Appellee, v. CALVIN WEAVER, Defendant-Appellant.
Docket No. 18-1697
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT
September 15, 2020
August Term, 2019 (Argued: September 26, 2019)
Before: LIVINGSTON, Chief Judge, CALABRESI and POOLER, Circuit Judges.
Appeal from an order of the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York (Suddaby, C.J.) denying Weaver’s motion to suppress a firearm discovered after police officers pat-frisked Weaver during a traffic stop. We hold that the officers lacked an objectively reasonable belief that Weaver was armed and dangerous. Suppression of the firearm was accordingly warranted as the fruit of an illegal search conducted in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
Reversed and remanded.
Chief Judge Livingston dissents in a separate opinion.
Judge Calabresi concurs in a separate opinion.
JAMES P. EGAN, Assistant Federal Defender, for Lisa A. Peebles, Federal Public Defender for the Northern District of New York, Syracuse, NY, for Defendant-Appellant.
CARINA H. SCHOENBERGER, Assistant United States Attorney, for Grant C. Jaquith, United States Attorney for the Northern District of New York, Syracuse, NY, for Appellee.
Calvin Weaver appeals from the December 20, 2017 order of the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York (Suddaby, C.J.) denying his motion to suppress a firearm that police officers discovered in the course of a pat-down frisk of Weaver’s person conducted during a traffic stop. It is well established that the Fourth Amendment permits the police “a narrowly drawn authority” to conduct “a reasonable search for weapons for the protection of the police officer, where he has reason to believe that he is dealing with an armed and dangerous individual, regardless of whether he has probable cause to arrest the individual for a crime.” Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 27 (1968). Here, however, the police lacked an “articulable and objectively reasonable belief,” Michigan v. Long, 463 U.S. 1032, 1051 (1983), that Weaver was “armed and presently dangerous to the officers or others,” Terry, 392 U.S. at 24. At
BACKGROUND
At approximately 5 p.m. on Monday, February 15, 2016, Officers Quonce, Tom, and Staub of the Syracuse Police Department (“SPD”) observed Weaver walking along a street curb while they were driving in an unmarked police vehicle with tinted windows on the westside of Syracuse, a high-crime area. As the officers drove past, Weaver “stared into [their] vehicle, continued to stare, as [they] approached, as [they] passed, and continued to stare as [they] proceeded past him.” App’x at 150-51. According to Officer Quonce, Weaver stared for “probably a few seconds but it seemed longer than typically one would look at a vehicle.” App’x at 95.
The officers then saw Weaver walk towards a gray sedan and “adjust[] his waistband.” App’x at 151. Officer Tom described this adjustment as “just a subtle tug of his waistband, like an upward tug motion,” explaining that “his pants were lower than waist level and it was kind of a tugging upward like adjusting. . . .” App’x at 152. Weaver sat down in the front passenger seat, and the car drove away.
The officers drove on but encountered the gray sedan again driving on Davis Street. After the car stopped at a stop sign at the intersection of Davis Street and Delaware Street, the driver turned on his right indicator light to signal a turn. This constituted a traffic infraction, as
When the gray sedan stopped, the officers observed that the rear passenger’s driver’s side door quickly opened up into traffic. The officers “believed that the rear passenger was about to flee from the vehicle.” App’x at 103. When Officer Quonce instructed that party to stay in the vehicle, however, the rear passenger closed his door and remained in the car. That passenger also complied with police orders directing him to hold his arms in front of him and to put his hands on his head.
Officer Tom observed Weaver sitting in the front passenger seat. As Officer Tom approached the gray sedan, he testified that “from my vantage point I can see into the cabin of the vehicle clearly, I see the front passenger with both hands kind of pushing down on his pelvic area and squirming kinda in the seat left and right, shifting his hips.” App’x at 158. Officer Tom stated that Weaver used two hands to make a “[d]ownward motion, trying to push something down.” App’x at 159.
Officer Tom asked Weaver to show him his hands, and Weaver complied. Weaver also told Officer Tom, “I don’t got nothin’.” App’x at 159. Officer Tom instructed Weaver to put his hands on his head, and he again complied. Officer Tom then asked Weaver if he possessed identification and “visually inspected his right pocket.” App’x at 160. Concluding that “it didn’t appear that there was any bulges in his pocket,” Officer Tom asked Weaver “to slowly use his right hand to remove his ID from his pocket.” App’x at 160. Weaver complied
Officer Tom ordered Weaver to step out of the car and place his hands on the trunk with his legs spread apart. Weaver also complied with this order. Officer Tom testified that Weaver “was very close to the rear quarter panel of the vehicle,” so he “asked him to take a step back.” App’x at 162. Weaver “took a small step back, and then [Officer Tom] began to pat his waistband area.” App’x at 162. When Officer Tom patted Weaver’s waist area, Weaver “immediately stepped forward and pressed his pelvic area against the quarter panel of the vehicle.” App’x at 162. This prevented Officer Tom “from doing an effective pat frisk of [Weaver’s] waist area,” so he asked Weaver “to take a step back and he did but again he said it was slippery.” App’x at 163. Officer Tom then pulled Weaver “the distance where [Officer Tom] wanted him to be at so [he could] effectively do a pat frisk,” and Weaver “took a step back, his hands remain[ing] on the rear of the vehicle.” App’x at 164. As Officer Tom began to pat frisk Weaver a third time, Weaver “again thrust his pelvic area against the rear quarter panel of the vehicle.” App’x at 164. Officer Tom then placed Weaver in handcuffs, pulled him away from the vehicle, and conducted a pat frisk of his waist and front pockets.
Officer Tom felt nothing suspicious at Weaver’s waist, but he felt a “slight small bulge” in Weaver’s front pocket. App’x at 165. Believing this bulge to be a narcotic, Officer Tom reached into Weaver’s pocket and pulled out a white powdery substance that field tested as cocaine. Officer Tom continued the pat frisk, from Weaver’s right leg from the top down, and then back up his right leg before transitioning to the groin area, left leg upper groin area, and left leg. At that point, Officer Tom “felt something hard,” which he believed was a barrel of a firearm. App’x at 166-67.
Officers Tom and Quonce placed the driver and remaining passenger in handcuffs while Detective Staub secured Weaver. Detective Staub then motioned Officer Quonce towards the front groin area of the pants Weaver had on. When Officer Quonce conducted a pat-down frisk of the outside of Weaver’s clothing of that area, he felt the barrel and handle of a gun through Weaver’s pants. Officer Quonce unzipped Weaver’s pants and saw that Weaver had “long john underwear on underneath [his pants] with . . . a button on the fly,” so Officer Quonce “unbuttoned the fly and . . . removed the handgun.” App’x at 110. The officers found live ammunition in the handgun’s magazine.
On August 31, 2017, Weaver was charged with one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm in violation of
The district court denied Weaver’s motion to suppress after a hearing. The district court held in relevant part that the officers had reasonable suspicion to conduct a pat-down frisk based on Weaver’s
Weaver subsequently entered a guilty plea to the three charges pursuant to a conditional plea agreement that allowed him to appeal the district court’s denial of suppression. App’x at 232. Weaver was sentenced principally to 87 months’ imprisonment and three years’ supervised release.
Weaver timely appealed.
DISCUSSION
“On review of a challenged suppression order, we examine the district court’s findings of fact for clear error, reviewing de novo questions of law and mixed questions of law and fact, including the existence of reasonable suspicion to stop or extend a stop.” United States v. Santillan, 902 F.3d 49, 56 (2d Cir. 2018). We look at the totality of the circumstances from the view of a reasonable and cautious officer on the scene. Id.
The Fourth Amendment protects “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”
In Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), the Supreme Court recognized one such exception when it held that police officers can stop someone whom they reasonably suspect is involved in the commission of a crime and conduct a protective search of this person for weapons, even absent a warrant or probable cause for an arrest. Critically, this does not provide the police with a free pass to search for anything illicit. The Court’s central preoccupation was the need to protect officers from dangerous weapons, and its holding was tailored accordingly: “When an officer is justified in believing that the individual whose suspicious behavior he is investigating at close range is armed and presently dangerous to the officer or to others, it would appear to be clearly unreasonable to deny the officer the power to take necessary measures to determine whether the person is in fact carrying a weapon and to neutralize the threat of physical harm.” Id. at 24 (emphasis added).
To establish that an officer is justified in neutralizing such a threat, the “police officer must be able to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion.” Id. at 21. We apply “an objective standard: would the facts available to the officer at the moment of the seizure or the search warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief that the action taken was appropriate?” Id. at 21-22 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). While we have explained that “the concept of reasonable
Terry has since been extended to a number of contexts, including that of protective searches in the specific factual circumstance at issue here: an investigative stop of an automobile. In Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U.S. 106, 112 (1977), the Supreme Court held that police officers can conduct an investigative stop of an automobile and frisk the driver of the car for weapons, reiterating the Terry requirement that the officers have an objectively reasonable and articulable belief that the driver is armed and dangerous. Similarly, in Michigan v. Long, 463 U.S. 1032, 1051 (1983), the Court allowed the police “to conduct an area search of the passenger compartment to uncover weapons, as long as they possess an articulable and objectively reasonable belief that the suspect is potentially dangerous.” In line with its previous admonitions, the Court explicitly warned that police officers cannot conduct searches “whenever they conduct an investigative stop” of an automobile, because “[a] Terry search, unlike a search without a warrant incident to a lawful arrest, is not justified by any need to prevent the disappearance or destruction of evidence of crime. . . . The sole justification of the search . . . is the protection of police officers and others nearby.” Id. at 1049 n.14 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
Subsequent Supreme Court cases extended the rule in Terry and Mimms to automobile passengers. See Maryland v. Wilson, 519 U.S. 408 (1997) (holding that police officers can order automobile passengers out of the vehicle during traffic stops); see also Arizona v. Johnson, 555 U.S. 323 (2009).
Terry makes clear that reasonable suspicion must be present at the “inception” of the officer’s search. 392 U.S. at 20. Thus, our analysis of whether reasonable suspicion was present considers only the facts known to the officer that prompted him to search or seize. See Dancy v. McGinley, 843 F.3d 93, 108-09 (2d Cir. 2016); United States v. Freeman, 735 F.3d 92, 96-97 (2d Cir. 2013).
The central dispute in this case is whether the SPD had an objectively reasonable belief that Weaver was “armed and presently dangerous to the officers or others.” Long, 463 U.S. at 1047 (internal quotation marks omitted). It did not. None of the facts before us—individually or collectively—is sufficient to establish that the SPD officers had an objectively reasonable suspicion that Weaver was armed and dangerous.2
I. The Inception of the Frisk
As an initial matter, we consider only the events that occurred before
Actually touching a suspect “with the intention of frisking him,” of course, constitutes a search. Dancy, 843 F.3d at 108 n.12. But in this case, by the time Officer Tom touched Weaver, he had already instructed Weaver to exit the car and assume a position that any reasonable person could only have interpreted to mean that the search had begun. Objectively, the search was therefore initiated after Officer Tom ordered Weaver out of the car, but no later than the moment when Officer Tom directed Weaver to assume this “in search” position. It is at that point that Officer Tom must have had an articulable and objectively reasonable belief that Weaver had something dangerous.
The dissent argues that the majority’s analysis is “both erroneous and problematic” as it focuses only on conduct occurring before Officer Tom decided to frisk Weaver. It provides two reasons for this assessment, neither of which is appropriately explanatory.
First, the dissent notes, correctly, that an order to exit a vehicle during a lawful stop amounts only to a de minimis intrusion on Weaver’s liberty. It then accuses the majority of elevating this intrusion into something more. The dissent reaches this conclusion by focusing largely on the order that Weaver get out of the car and minimizing the order that he place his hands on the car and spread his feet apart. But when Weaver exited the vehicle, Officer Tom directed him to assume a position that indicated to Weaver that Officer Tom was about to frisk him. And while asking a passenger to exit a vehicle might be a de minimis intrusion on the passenger’s liberty, ordering someone to spread-eagle on a car is manifestly not. It is a search!
The dissent entirely elides this critical distinction. As Terry itself recognized, a frisk “is a serious intrusion upon the sanctity of the person, which may inflict great indignity and arouse strong resentment.” 392 U.S. at 17; see also United States v. Tinnie, 629 F.3d 749, 756 (7th Cir. 2011) (Hamilton, J., dissenting) (“[W]e must recognize that a frisk is most certainly not a minor intrusion on privacy.”). “[I]t is simply fantastic to urge that [a frisk] performed in public by a policeman while the citizen stands helpless, perhaps facing a wall with his hands raised, is a ‘petty indignity.’” Terry, 392 U.S. at 17-18. But this “fantastic” notion is precisely what the dissent
Second, the dissent claims that considering this order of Officer Tom’s to be the initiation of the search runs afoul of the principle that an officer’s subjective intentions in frisking are irrelevant. It is true, as the dissent says, that precedent instructs us to turn a blind eye to an officer’s subjective intentions in stopping, searching, or seizing. See Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 813 (1996). But this means only that we must ignore intent in determining why the officer took the challenged action. It does not preclude us from looking at intent in determining when the action was initiated. See United States v. Williams, 731 F.3d 678, 686 (7th Cir. 2013) (analyzing “the circumstances that [the officer] may have relied upon in deciding to frisk [the defendant]” (emphasis added)).
The dissent’s conflation of these two inquiries would significantly narrow the scope of judicial review over police actions in a manner inconsistent with the Fourth Amendment’s reasonable-suspicion requirement. Because the purpose of our inquiry is to ensure that reasonable suspicion was present to justify a frisk, see Terry, 392 U.S. at 20; see also Mimms, 434 U.S. at 109 (explaining that reasonableness serves to protect the individual’s right to be “free from arbitrary interference by law officers”), it makes little sense to rely on conduct postdating the decision to frisk. Any subsequent events could not possibly factor into that decision.
According to the dissent, a frisk only begins when an officer lays hands on an individual. We cannot agree with such a formalistic view. “This narrow definition of a frisk would require us to close our eyes to reality and would encourage aggressive and intrusive police tactics, especially during pre-textual traffic stops. . . . Bent over the hood of a car or pressed against a wall in the middle of the night, most people would be extremely nervous and disoriented. It would be easy enough for an enterprising officer to find some justification for a frisk in any nervous responses,” or behavior, “at such a vulnerable moment.” Tinnie, 629 F.3d at 759 (Hamilton, J., dissenting). To assume, as the dissent does, that a search only begins once there is physical contact would contradict long-standing precedent that our analysis under Terry must be “flexible enough to be applied to the whole range of police conduct in an equally broad range of settings.” Michigan v. Chesternut, 486 U.S. 567, 574 (1988). For these reasons, we respectfully disagree with the dissent’s belief that the majority’s approach is “erroneous and problematic.”
II. Whether Reasonable Suspicion Was Present
Because reasonable suspicion must be present at the inception of the frisk, Terry, 392 U.S. at 20, we therefore only consider the following acts in determining whether there was reasonable suspicion that Weaver was armed and dangerous: (1) Weaver’s staring at the
The Government’s strongest fact is Weaver’s movements in the passenger seat, which Officer Tom described as “with both hands kind of pushing down on his pelvic area and squirming kinda in the seat left and right, shifting his hips.” App’x at 158. Officer Tom believed that Weaver was “trying to push something down.” App’x at 159. But nothing in Officer Tom’s description that Weaver was squirming and trying to push something down suggests that this “something” was a weapon. Weaver’s actions were equally consistent with the act of secreting drugs or other nonhazardous contraband.
The distinction between the two is key, as is illustrated in our recent case United States v. Hussain, 835 F.3d 307 (2d Cir. 2016). In Hussain, an officer pulled over a car that defendant Cunningham was driving after it ran a stop sign. Id. at 310. After the car had been pulled over, the officer “observed Cunningham’s arm move up and down in the middle console area.” Id. The officers also noticed that the passenger in the front seat of the car was sitting in an “unnatural” position that the officers believed was meant to obscure the front seat of the car from view. Id. at 311. As an officer approached the car, he saw Cunningham with a cellphone in his right hand. Id. at 310. Cunningham was ordered out of the car, and when he complied, he told the officer that he had a knife in his pocket (which was a legal pocket knife). Id. at 311. After discovering the pocket knife, the officer searched Cunningham’s car and discovered a loaded gun under the front passenger seat. Id. We held that the search was unconstitutional. Although we acknowledged that “each of the officers subjectively suspected that Cunningham and [the passenger] were hiding something and up to no good,” we concluded that the officers had not pointed to articulable facts indicating that Cunningham posed a danger to them. Id. at 314. We noted that the officers knew Cunningham was holding a cellphone, not a firearm, in the car. Id. at 315-16. We
also rejected reliance on the passenger‘s unnatural seated position, reasoning that it “may have been enough to believe that [the passenger] sought to hide something. But insofar as dangerousness is the sole focus of our attention under Long, [the passenger‘s] position by itself sheds insufficient light on whether he was hiding something dangerous.” Id. at 316.
Hussain is instructive in the present case. We have no doubt that Officer Tom reasonably suspected that Weaver was hiding something based on his downward motion and wiggling. But there are no specific or articulable facts that Weaver was hiding something dangerous.4 As Hussain and Supreme Court precedent establish, there is a distinction between hiding something and hiding something dangerous. It is not enough that officers rely on a suspicion that a suspect was hiding something, even if that something is contraband like drugs—
rather, officers must have a
The other facts present also fail to support an objectively reasonable suspicion that Weaver was armed and dangerous. The Government points to Weaver‘s adjustment of his waistband to bolster its claims. We are not convinced that this action signals that Weaver carried a weapon on his person. Officer Tom testified that Weaver made a “subtle tug of his waistband.” App‘x at 152. But given that Weaver‘s pants were lower than waist level, such a subtle tug is no more suggestive of a firearm than it is of Weaver simply wanting to raise his pants because they slipped lower than he preferred.6 In other words, we cannot say that an objectively reasonable officer who witnessed such an action would conclude that Weaver carried a firearm.
This differentiates Weaver‘s case from United States v. Padilla, 548 F.3d 179 (2d Cir. 2008), in which we held that the officer had reasonable suspicion that Padilla was armed and dangerous. In doing so, one of the facts (among several others suggesting suspicious circumstances) that we relied on was Officer O‘Brien‘s testimony that he saw Padilla adjust something in the center of his waistband in a manner “consistent with the adjustment of a gun lodged in one‘s waistband” but not “consistent with any innocent explanation” based on his experience in making nearly ten arrests of suspects carrying firearms in their waistbands and how his colleagues adjusted their waistbands when carrying firearms. Id. at 183. The magistrate judge, who twice requested that Officer O‘Brien make the same gesture at the suppression hearing, similarly characterized it as a “distinctive gripping motion, as if holding and adjusting (first up and then down) something comparable in size, shape, and heft to a handgun.” Id. at 184 (internal quotation marks omitted). This “‘distinctive’ consistency with the adjustment of a firearm” was the focus of much of our analysis. Id. at 189. Given the lack of any “distinctive consistency” in the case at hand—coupled with the lack of other suspicious facts present in Padilla, like Padilla‘s choice to eschew the lighted path and instead follow a suspected drug user down a dark path at night7—we do not believe Weaver‘s subtle tug at his waistband supports an objectively reasonable suspicion
The final bases offered by the Government are so meritless they warrant little discussion. One is Weaver‘s presence in a high-crime area. While relevant, this factor does not necessarily “contribute meaningfully to a finding of reasonable suspicion.” See Freeman, 735 F.3d at 101. We cannot say that it contributes meaningfully here. The stop and frisk of Weaver occurred during daylight,9 and Officer Tom acknowledged that he did not witness Weaver or the other occupants of the car engaging in criminal activity. The other basis the Government puts forth is Weaver‘s staring at the unmarked police vehicle as it drove by. Officer Tom testified that as their vehicle drove past Weaver, he stared at the car for “a few seconds.” App‘x at 174. Besides the fact that there is nothing objectively unusual about staring at an unmarked car with tinted windows driving by slowly, citizens are well within their rights to stare at others in public, including police officers. Very little, if anything, can be gleaned from such an act. Cf. Dancy, 843 F.3d at 110 (“[L]ooking over one‘s shoulder at an officer in slow pursuit is not suspicious behavior.“). To conclude otherwise would yield the troubling result of adverse consequences for the exercise of basic rights—something we see far too much of in the case law as it is. See generally I. Bennett Capers, Criminal Procedure and the Good Citizen, 118 Colum. L. Rev. 653 (2018).
The dissent takes issue with our conclusion that there is nothing unusual about Weaver‘s staring. It believes that it indicates that Weaver was “attempting to avoid police surveillance.” But such an inference is insupportable. Given that the vehicle was unmarked, and therefore Weaver would not have known that it contained police officers, the dissent makes too great a leap. And even if Weaver had been concerned about encounters with the police, the hard reality is that, in light of incidences of police brutality and discriminatory policing, minority citizens across the country fear encounters with the police, whether guilty or innocent. See Utah v. Strieff, 136 S. Ct. 2056, 2070 (Sotomayor, J., dissenting) (“For generations, black and brown parents have given their children ‘the talk‘—instructing them never to run down the street; always keep your hands where they can be seen; do not even think of talking back to a stranger—all out of fear of how an officer with a gun will react to them.“); Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119, 132 (2000) (Stevens, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (explaining that “[a]mong some citizens, particularly minorities and those residing in high crime areas,” there may be a belief “that contact with the police can itself be dangerous“).10
The dissent disagrees. Despite agreeing that a Terry frisk involves a “more specific analysis, requiring the officer to hold a reasonable suspicion that the subject is ‘armed and dangerous’ as opposed to being generally suspicious,” Williams, 731 F.3d at 686 (citation omitted), the dissent would have us hold that Weaver‘s ambiguous conduct gave rise to reasonable suspicion that he was armed and dangerous. According to the dissent, the presence of alternative explanations does not negate reasonable suspicion. But what we must look at is “the degree of suspicion that attaches to particular types of noncriminal acts.” United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 10 (1989). We agree that officers are not required to rule out every innocent explanation, but that does not mean, as the dissent would have us believe, that any conduct consistent with, or possibly suggestive of, weapon possession satisfies the reasonable-suspicion standard. That proposition is belied by our decision in Hussain, 835 F.3d at 316. And while we give “due weight” to officers’ reasonable inferences, Ornelas v. United States, 517 U.S. 690, 699 (1996), due weight is not determinative weight.
The importance of Fourth Amendment rights demands careful scrutiny of those facts offered by the police to support reasonable suspicion. This need is perhaps even greater when searches or seizures do result in criminal evidence. “When a search uncovered criminal evidence, enterprising cops soon learned what was expected of them: an additional fact besides the violation of some traffic law. Articulating something out of the ordinary—a nervous glance, shaking hands, a revealing smell—when asked for one in a court of law was especially easy when they caught someone red-handed.” Sarah A. Seo, Policing the Open Road 237 (2019). But as Seo explains, “Requiring an ‘unusual’ fact did little to eliminate pretextual stops.” Id. “In practice, more often than not, ‘all the facts and circumstances’ rationalized discretionary“—and often discriminatory, we might add—“policing of people who were, in fact, guilty.” See id.11
CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, we reverse and remand the district court‘s denial of Weaver‘s motion to suppress.
DEBRA ANN LIVINGSTON, Chief Judge, dissenting:
It was dusk as Officer (now Detective) Jason Tom approached the vehicle in which Calvin Weaver was a passenger. Officer Tom, then a two-year veteran of the Syracuse Police Department‘s Gang Violence Task Force, was patrolling a dangerous
As I‘m approaching the vehicle, I see the front passenger slouched down pushing down his pelvic area and kind of squirming in his seat. I‘m not up to the front of the window yet to see his head, I can just see, from my vantage point I can see his pelvic area, his lower part of his body, his hands. . . . As I‘m approaching the vehicle . . . I can see into the cabin of the vehicle clearly, I see the front passenger with both hands kind of pushing down on his pelvic area and squirming kinda in the seat left and right,
shifting his hips.
App‘x 158. Weaver was using both hands in a “[d]ownward motion, trying to push something down.” App‘x 159. Officer Tom, “concerned because it‘s abnormal that he‘s making these movements,” ordered Weaver to “show . . . [his] hands.”1 App‘x 159.
By the time Weaver stepped out of the car at Officer Tom‘s direction, Officer Tom had his own hand on his holstered firearm, “suspicious of [Weaver‘s] actions.” App‘x 162. This caution proved justified. The protective frisk that Officer Tom initiated once Weaver was out of the car revealed a
The majority admits that Officer Tom‘s observations, along with others recounted herein, left “no doubt that Officer Tom reasonably suspected that Weaver was hiding something” on his person. Majority Opinion (“Maj. Op.“) 22. But because the evidence adduced by Officer Tom does not rule out the possibility that this “something” was merely illicit, and not dangerous, the majority concludes that Officer Tom violated the Fourth Amendment by frisking Weaver and securing the loaded handgun (with an obliterated serial number) that Weaver, a convicted felon, could not lawfully possess. Maj. Op. 3.
As I explain below, this is a startling and untenable conclusion. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), does not limit protective frisks to circumstances in which the officer knows that a suspect is armed and dangerous, but permits frisks based on the reasonable belief that a suspect may pose such a threat, even when the suspect‘s conduct is “ambiguous and susceptible of an innocent explanation,” Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119, 125 (2000). The Warren Court recognized that “a rigid and unthinking application of the exclusionary rule” to condemn “legitimate and restrained investigative conduct” (such as a protective frisk in the circumstances here) would represent but a “futile protest” against abusive police, for whom the exclusion of evidence is an ineffective remedy. Terry, 392 U.S. at 15. At the same time, such an approach would “exact a high toll in human injury and frustration of efforts to prevent crime.” Id.
The majority‘s decision today forgets these lessons of the Warren Court and thus undermines the safety of suspects and officers, not to mention the broader community. Moreover, the majority‘s analysis is wholly inconsistent with the Supreme Court‘s repeated admonitions that the Fourth Amendment‘s touchstone is reasonableness, see, e.g., Heien v. North Carolina, 574 U.S. 54, 60 (2014) (noting Court‘s repeated affirmation that “the ultimate touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is ‘reasonableness‘” (quoting Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373, 381 (2014))), and that “the determination of reasonable suspicion,” premised “on commonsense judgments and inferences about human behavior,” Wardlow, 528 U.S. at 125, requires “considerably less than proof of wrongdoing by a preponderance of the evidence, and obviously less than is necessary for probable cause,” Kansas v. Glover, 140 S. Ct. 1183, 1187 (2020). Because the Fourth Amendment does not lead in the direction that the majority would go, I respectfully dissent.
I
The majority‘s discussion at least begins in the right place: Terry and its progeny recognize that it would be “clearly unreasonable” to deny police officers in appropriate circumstances the ability to conduct a protective search for weapons when investigating a suspect at close range. Maj. Op. 11; see also Terry, 392 U.S. at 24; Michigan v. Long, 463 U.S. 1032, 1049–50 (1983); Arizona v. Johnson, 555 U.S. 323, 327 (2009). The Supreme Court has repeatedly said that the “protection of police and others can justify protective searches when police have a reasonable belief that the suspect poses a danger.” Long, 463 U.S. at 1049; see also Johnson, 555 U.S. at 327 (“To justify a patdown of the driver or a passenger during a traffic stop, . . . the police must harbor reasonable suspicion that the person subjected to the frisk is armed and dangerous.“). This carefully articulated standard in no way authorizes a protective search on the occasion of just any traffic stop. But the Court has underscored more than once “that roadside encounters between police and suspects are especially hazardous,” Long, 463 U.S. at 1049, that an “inordinate risk confront[s] an officer as he approaches a person seated in an automobile,” Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U.S. 106, 110 (1977) (per curiam), and that it is “‘too plain for argument‘” that the public interest in officer safety in such encounters is “‘both legitimate and weighty,‘” Maryland v. Wilson, 519 U.S. 408, 412 (1997) (quoting Mimms, 434 U.S. at 110). Frisks in the context of traffic stops (like frisks generally) are thus constitutionally reasonable on considerably less than either a preponderance of the evidence or probable cause to believe that a suspect is armed and poses a threat: “[W]here a police officer observes unusual conduct which leads him reasonably to conclude in light of his experience that criminal activity may be afoot and that the persons with whom he is dealing may be armed and presently dangerous . . . he is entitled for the protection of himself and others in the area to conduct” a protective frisk. Terry, 392 U.S. at 30 (emphasis added).
The majority acknowledges that the stop of the automobile in which Weaver was a passenger was lawful and expresses “no doubt” that Weaver engaged in conduct, albeit ambiguous, that gave Officer Tom reasonable suspicion that “Weaver was hiding something,” Maj. Op. 22—conduct that included, in my view, not only Weaver‘s unusual seat movements suggesting that he was “trying to push something down,” App‘x 159, but also his behavior in staring at an unmarked police car as it passed by, adjusting his waistband, and volunteering, “I don‘t got nothin‘,” App‘x 159, as soon as Officer Tom reached the car. To the list of circumstances giving Officer Tom reason to be suspicious of the car‘s occupants, I would add the rear driver‘s side door opening up into traffic after the officers stopped the gray sedan, App‘x 103–104, and the fact that the stop occurred in a high crime neighborhood at dusk, App‘x 149–50.
The majority improperly evaluates these facts piecemeal, discarding each as insufficient to create reasonable suspicion.2 See United States v. Arvizu, 534 U.S. 266, 274 (2002) (“The court‘s evaluation and rejection of . . . factors in isolation from each other does not take into account the ‘totality of the circumstances.‘“). But the majority first goes astray by declining even to consider relevant facts that took place after Weaver exited the car: namely, that when asked to put his hands on the car with his feet spread apart, Weaver attempted to conceal the loaded handgun in the area of his groin by positioning his pelvis very close to the car and taking only a very “small step back” when asked to reposition so that Officer Tom could perform the frisk.3 App‘x 162–63.
The majority determines that it may not consider these additional facts because the frisk supposedly “was . . . initiated,” not when the frisk began, but “no later than the moment when Officer Tom directed Weaver” to place his hands on the trunk of the grey sedan with legs spread apart. Maj. Op. 16. To be clear, I conclude that Officer Tom had reasonable suspicion for a protective frisk whether or not Weaver‘s actions in attempting to position his pelvic area against the grey sedan are considered. But the majority‘s conclusion that a frisk commences when an officer (supposedly) decides to perform a frisk and orders a suspect to assume what the majority terms an “in search” position is both erroneous and problematic.
First, this approach is contrary to Terry itself, which defines a frisk as “a limited search of the outer clothing for weapons,” not as a directive to put one‘s hands on the hood of a car. 392 U.S. at 24; see also Frisk, Black‘s Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019) (defining a “frisk” as “[a] pat-down search to discover a concealed weapon“). It is precisely because this search “of the outer surfaces of a person‘s clothing all over his or her body in an attempt to find weapons” is “a severe, though brief, intrusion upon cherished personal security” that the Terry Court brought it within the Fourth Amendment‘s coverage and carefully specified the particular requirements that render this physical intrusion constitutionally reasonable. 392 U.S. at 16, 24–25. In so doing, however, the Court emphatically did not determine that safety-related directives issued during the course of a lawful stop—directives involving no such physical contact—constitute frisks for which reasonable suspicion is required. In Mimms, for instance, the Supreme Court determined that once a vehicle has been lawfully stopped, its driver may be ordered to get out of the car because, when assessed against the hazards faced by police in such encounters, this intrusion, far from being a frisk, is not even a Fourth Amendment event. 434 U.S. at 111. And Wilson made clear that this holding extends to a car‘s passengers—“that a police officer may as a matter of course” order both drivers and passengers to exit a lawfully stopped automobile. 519 U.S. at 410.
In the course of a lawful stop such as occurred in this case, police sometimes
With this backdrop in mind, the majority‘s approach is inconsistent not only with Terry‘s definition of a frisk, but also with its recognition that frisks are constitutionally permissible precisely because it is reasonable for officers acting on the basis of articulable suspicion that a suspect may be armed and dangerous to address their “immediate interest . . . in taking steps to assure [themselves] that the person with whom [they are] dealing is not armed with a weapon that could unexpectedly and fatally be used against [them].” 392 U.S. at 23. To take such steps with due care, however, officers must be positioned to assess reasonable
suspicion not “in terms of library analysis by scholars,” Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 232 (1983) (quoting United States v. Cortez, 449 U.S. 411, 418 (1981)), but in the context of “the protean variety of . . . street encounter[s]“—encounters which “range from wholly friendly exchanges . . . to hostile confrontations,” and which can “begin in a friendly enough manner, only to take a different turn upon the injection of some unexpected element,” Terry, 392 U.S. at 13-15.
With respect, I am “unwilling to send police and judges into a new thicket of
Here, the majority concludes that Officer Tom intended to frisk when he requested Weaver to assume what the majority deems an “in search” position. And it argues that precedent permits it to consider Officer Tom‘s subjective intent, despite
The majority cites no authority for its contrary conclusion. Indeed, several of the decisions the majority relies upon do not support its position. The majority repeatedly invokes the dissent in United States v. Tinnie, 629 F.3d 749, 754-61 (7th Cir. 2011), but the panel opinion in that case “deemed a frisk not to have begun until the officer actually placed his hands on the defendant,” United States v. Snow, 656 F.3d 498, 503 n.1 (7th Cir. 2011); see also Tinnie, 629 F.3d at 753 & n.3. And in Dancy v. McGinley, 843 F.3d 93, 108 (2d Cir. 2016), we concluded that a “stop occurred“—not a frisk—“at the very latest when [a police officer] instructed [a suspect] not to use his phone.” But even then our analysis in Dancy did not turn on the officer‘s intention in issuing a verbal command. It focused on whether, under “all the circumstances, any reasonable person in [the suspect‘s] situation ‘would have believed that he was not free to leave.‘”5 Id. at 108 (quoting United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U.S. 544, 554 (1980) (opinion of Stewart, J.)); see also Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491, 501-02 (1983) (plurality opinion) (citing Justice Stewart‘s Mendenhall opinion as controlling law).
In sum, a verbal directive is not a frisk and officer intent has no place in the
II
I also diverge from my colleagues in their conclusions regarding “whether [Officer Tom] ha[d] a ‘particularized and objective basis’ for suspecting” that Weaver was armed and dangerous based on “the ‘totality of the circumstances.‘” Arvizu, 534 U.S. at 273 (quoting Cortez, 449 U.S. at 417-18). As already noted, Terry itself found “ample factual justification” for a frisk, 392 U.S. at 15, even though all the conduct that Officer McFadden, the policeman in Terry, observed was “ambiguous and susceptible of an innocent explanation,” Wardlow, 528 U.S. at 125. The majority concludes here, however, that while it has “no doubt that Officer Tom reasonably suspected that Weaver was hiding something” from police, a frisk was still improper on the theory that something illicit is not necessarily something dangerous. Maj. Op. 3, 22. But “necessarily something dangerous” is emphatically not the Terry standard. And the majority arrives at its startling approach only by ignoring the Supreme Court‘s repeated directive that the bases for an officer‘s suspicion are not to be “evaluat[ed] and reject[ed] . . . in isolation from each other,” with each treated as “‘perhaps innocent in itself.‘” Arvizu, 534 U.S. at 274 (quoting Terry, 392 U.S. at 22). Indeed, Terry “precludes [the] sort of divide-and-conquer analysis” that the majority employs here. Id.
Officer Tom described Weaver‘s strange and bizarre movements as Officer Tom approached the car by specifically noting that Weaver “slouched down pushing down his pelvic area and kind of squirming in his seat . . . with both hands kind of pushing down on his pelvic area and squirming kinda in the seat left and right, shifting his hips.” App‘x 158. Based on that motion, Officer Tom concluded that Weaver was “trying to push something down.” App‘x 159. The majority dismisses this evidence by noting that “Weaver‘s actions were . . . consistent with the act of secreting drugs or other nonhazardous contraband.” Maj. Op. 21. But based on what he also knew, Officer Tom could reasonably infer that Weaver was attempting to conceal something that had enough heft that Weaver
To be clear, none of these facts nor the inferences reasonably drawn from them establishes that Weaver was carrying a gun. But “the level of suspicion” required for reasonable suspicion is “‘considerably less than . . . a preponderance’ . . . and ‘obviously less’ than is necessary for probable cause.” Navarette v. California, 572 U.S. 393, 397 (2014) (quoting United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 7 (1989)). And officers “‘need not rule out the possibility of innocent conduct.‘” Id. at 403 (quoting Arvizu, 534 U.S. at 277). With the information he had in hand, it was not unreasonable for Officer Tom to formulate certain common-sense conclusions—that is, to suspect that the item Weaver was hiding might be dangerous. Weaver‘s actions, the majority insists, “were equally consistent with the act of secreting drugs . . . .” Maj. Op. 21. But “equally consistent” and “no more suggestive” mean that Weaver was just as likely “secreting” a weapon or other dangerous instrument. See Maj. Op. 21, 24. And just as the reasonable suspicion standard does not require officers to rule out every innocent explanation for a suspect‘s conduct, they need not rule out every alternative illicit (yet nonhazardous) explanation for the conduct in which a suspect might
In an attempt to find support for its position, the majority misreads United States v. Padilla, 548 F.3d 179 (2d Cir. 2008). In Padilla, a detective on narcotics surveillance in a high-crime area observed two men follow a third onto an isolated dark path at around 8:15 at night rather than stay on the lighted sidewalks. Id. at 182. The detective suspected that a drug transaction or robbery might ensue. Id. at 183. Encountering the men walking together as they emerged from the wooded path some thirty seconds later, the detective observed Padilla adjust his waistband, id.—but engage in no additional conduct analogous to Weaver‘s highly unusual movements in the car, which the majority concedes left “no doubt that Officer Tom reasonably suspected that Weaver was hiding something” on his person, Maj. Op. 22. Nevertheless, even in Padilla, in which the adjustment of the waistband played a more central role in the reasonable suspicion analysis, the panel did not, contrary to the majority‘s claim here, base its conclusion that reasonable suspicion existed on the fact that the particular manner in which Padilla adjusted his waistband was “not consistent with any of the innocent explanations proposed by defense counsel.” 548 F.3d at 189. That fact may have strengthened the government‘s case, but we nevertheless reiterated in Padilla that “[e]ven conduct that is ‘as consistent with innocence as with guilt‘” may give rise to the reasonable suspicion required to perform a lawful frisk. Id. at 187 (quoting United States v. Villegas, 928 F.2d 512, 516 (2d Cir. 1991)).
In short, officers are—and must be—attuned to dangers that might arise during traffic stops so that they may act to safeguard themselves and others. See, e.g., Johnson, 555 U.S. at 330-31; Wilson, 519 U.S. at 412; Santillan, 902 F.3d at 59. Indeed, our precedent directs us to “view the totality of the circumstances through the eyes of a reasonable and cautious officer on the scene.” Santillan, 902 F.3d at 56 (emphasis added). And the Supreme Court has emphasized that we must “give due weight to inferences drawn from those facts by . . . local law enforcement officers.” Ornelas v. United States, 517 U.S. 690, 699 (1996). Demanding that officers possess specific information as to dangerousness that affirmatively negates the possibility of both innocent behavior and not-dangerous-but-still-criminal activity places too great a burden on law enforcement as they process the ever-shifting circumstances around them while on patrol. See Gates, 462 U.S. at 231 (“The process does not deal with hard certainties, but with probabilities.” (quoting Cortez, 449 U.S. at 418)). The possibility that Weaver might have been hiding drugs in his groin area does not negate Officer Tom‘s reasonable suspicion that he was in fact hiding a gun.9 Contrary to the majority‘s suggestion that an officer must possess dispositive evidence of dangerousness in order to justify a stop and frisk, see Maj. Op. 22, neither Terry nor our cases interpreting it imposes such a requirement.
* * *
My colleagues suggest that condoning a protective frisk in the circumstances here will promote discriminatory traffic stops in other cases. But the majority concedes that the traffic stop in this case did not violate the
Conceding that the traffic stop here did not violate the
As a parting note, the majority also urges the most “careful scrutiny of those facts offered by the police to support reasonable suspicion,” suggesting that such facts should be viewed skeptically at best, particularly when “searches or seizures do result in criminal evidence.” Maj. Op. 29. Here, too, the majority disregards settled precedent. The Supreme Court, in contrast, has cautioned that appellate judges in assessing reasonable suspicion on a cold
In sum, the majority today misapplies basic
18-1697 - United States v. Weaver
GUIDO CALABRESI, Circuit Judge, concurring:
I agree completely with the majority opinion and join it fully. I write separately to express my concern with the state of the law in this area and with how we got to where we are.
The ordinary person looking at the facts of this case would, I believe, no doubt conclude that the officers decided to search Weaver because of a hunch or a stereotype, and then went about finding a way to search him.1 After all, neither seeing a man pull up his sagging pants nor watching that same man stare at a car with tinted windows for a few seconds are plausible grounds for suspicion. Yet these actions led the police to take their next steps. Weaver got in a car, and the driver of that car then failed to signal within one hundred feet of turning. The police stopped the car. The search followed. One might ask, how often are most people stopped and arrested for failing to signal—let alone failing to signal within a hundred feet of turning? And even if one is stopped for such a trivial traffic 1
offense, how often would a passenger in the offending car be made to exit the vehicle, spread eagle himself against the car, and subsequently be frisked?
The ordinary person, looking at these facts, would, I believe, readily say: The officers wanted to search Weaver, they found a way, and hey, they were right. He was a felon with a gun and cocaine.
I think the majority is correct that what was done here violated the
To put it another way, although there is a gap between police action in this case and police action in cases where we found the search was justified, like United States v. Padilla, 548 F.3d 179 (2d Cir. 2008) (in whose holding I reluctantly joined), the gap is not enormous. My dissenting colleague argues that we should close that gap. And yet such a result would, in my judgment, and I believe that of the ordinary person, be absurd if the constitutional mandate against unreasonable searches and seizures is to have any meaning. As important, the result would go yet further in making those whom the police suspect and dislike subject to humiliating treatment and abuse which, not incidentally, is what Terry v. Ohio warned against. 392 U.S. 1, 15 (1968) (“Under our decision, courts still retain their traditional responsibility to guard against police conduct which is over-bearing or harassing, or which trenches upon personal security without the objective evidentiary justification which the Constitution requires.“).
How did we get to the point where behavior that to the ordinary person would seem to be a manifestly unreasonable search is, on the law, a close case? I believe it is the result of the confluence of two unfortunate doctrines—supported by opposite sides of the political spectrum—the exclusionary rule and qualified immunity.
The exclusionary rule, as a way of controlling police behavior, has been a disaster, I think. Don‘t get me wrong: some way of keeping the police from undertaking unreasonable searches and seizures is essential. And exclusion of wrongfully found evidence seems a plausible way. But in practice its effect has been a slow and steady erosion of rights to be free from unreasonable searches.
Courts are—and should be—guided by precedents. A case asserting an improper search and the exclusion of evidence there found is likely to be, on its facts, just a step beyond a prior case in which police behavior was justified. The precedents might not compel the court to take that next step, but another factor will all too frequently bring that about: the defendant seeking exclusion is almost always guilty of something and might be dangerous. As in the case before us, the officers’ hunch or stereotype was correct! Courts do not want to release criminals, those who have done and may again do harm. And so, often and understandably, courts have taken “the next step,” for to do otherwise would have led to the release of a felon. This “next step” case then becomes the precedent for the subsequent “close case.” Through a series of holdings, each one driven by the desire to avoid excluding determinative evidence, we have approved one after another form of increasingly unreasonable police action, until we find ourselves reviewing actions that would, on their face, seem obviously improper but which, instead, on our precedents, on governing law, are “close.”
This string of “next step” precedents comes at a cost that courts cannot easily address. What about all the cases in which the police behavior turned out to be unjustified? What about all the cases in which the hunch or the stereotype was wrong, and an honest person was humiliated, searched, and all too often maltreated? Why don‘t the courts see those cases, and in them set down rules reinforcing the constitutional mandate? Recent events more than suggest that a multitude of such cases exist. These cases lead to distrust and even hatred of the police, with dire consequences. Why don‘t these cases get to court?
The reason is obvious. Persons so searched may well not know that they can bring a lawsuit, or they may be too disaffected to sue. But even if they go to a lawyer, the lawyer will tell them—ah yes, you have been mistreated, but you won‘t recover; the case is fairly close and so the officer would surely have qualified immunity. Sue if you want, but I can‘t take your case on a contingent fee because the odds are too great that, though the behavior was wrong, under current precedents, we won‘t win. And, by the way, you will most likely not even get a decision on whether the behavior was wrong, because the court is unlikely to reach that question given the presence of qualified immunity. See Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223 (2009) (eliminating the requirement that courts first decide whether a public official‘s conduct violated the Constitution before reaching qualified immunity).
There may well be hundreds of situations in which searches like the one before us today turned up nothing. But surely no more than a handful will get to court. And even these will almost always get decided against the innocent “searchee” on qualified immunity. All this might not matter if courts knew, directly and emotionally, from personal experience, the stories of those unnecessarily, improperly, and humiliatingly searched. But we judges, and our families and friends, are not likely to be the ones whom the police decide to search on a hunch. We are not likely to be stopped for failing to signal. And we are most unlikely to be made to spread eagle, even if stopped.
My dissenting colleague is correct that this case is not that many steps beyond Padilla, which itself was only a step or two from the prior precedent. See United States v. Bayless, 201 F.3d 116 (2d Cir. 2000). But these are steps we must not take, and so I join the majority opinion.
I write this concurrence in sadness and in hope. It is not for me or for other judges to find a way out of our current dilemma, hence my sadness. Yet recent events have focused attention on the qualified immunity doctrine.2 And some have even suggested alternatives to the exclusionary rule.3 (Wearing my academic hat, I have done so myself—but, as is usually the case with purely academic suggestions, it can only be a beginning. See Guido Calabresi, The Exclusionary Rule, 26 HARV. J. L. & PUB. POL‘Y 111 (2003).) It is this current attention that gives me hope.
Finding an answer will not be easy. It will require careful and coordinated thought by the political branches, by the academy, and by judges as well. But we 2 3
must do better. The noxious effects of our current approach are all too obvious, and are manifested both broadly, in the current protests, and narrowly, in the instant case.
Given where the law is, and the need to avoid further erosion of
Notes
“The erosion of Fourth Amendment liberties comes not in dramatic leaps but in small steps . . . .” Tinnie, 629 F.3d at 754 (Hamilton, J., dissenting). Drawing the inferences the dissent asks us to draw and concluding that such weak facts support reasonable suspicion would be far reaching. Officers could subject individuals to the humiliations and dignitary harms incident to unwarranted frisks based on mundane acts, such as a look, a nervous response, or an adjustment of one‘s clothes. This unfettered discretion in turn “could lead to harassment of minority groups and severely exacerbate police-community tensions.” Dancy, 843 F.3d at 111 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
As we have seen time and again, such harassment is neither new nor innocuous, as carefully documented in Seo‘s book. Seo notes that “midcentury Americans recognized, to varying degrees, that the police picked on racial minorities.” Seo, Policing the Open Road 169. Seo explains that like white citizens, “Black citizens were also policed in their cars, but the experience for them was often much more terrifying than a series of nosy questions.” Id. at 214. Communities should not have to “decide between their constitutional rights against unwarranted searches and seizures” and “governmental protection that is readily afforded to other communities.” United States v. Curry, 965 F.3d 313, 333 (4th Cir. 2020), as amended (July 15, 2020), as amended (July 16, 2020) (Gregory, C.J., concurring).