Case ID: f-appx_476/html/0012-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "PER CURIAM: \n    ", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee v. Willie Lee FIELDS, Defendant-Appellant.
    No. 10-60890
    Summary Calendar.
    United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.
    April 13, 2012.
    
      Curtis Ivy, Jr., Assistant U.S. Attorney, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Oxford, MS, for Plaintiff-Appellee.
    Gregory Scott Park, Assistant Federal Public Defender, Federal Public Defender’s Office, Oxford, MS, for Defendant-Appellant.
    Before JONES, Chief Judge, and BENAVIDES and GRAVES, Circuit Judges.
   PER CURIAM:

Willie Lee Fields appeals his jury conviction and sentence for possession of cocaine base with intent to distribute. He argues that the district court erred in denying his motion to suppress, contending that the officer’s actions were not reasonably related to the circumstances that justified the traffic stop because there was no reasonable suspicion that Fields, the passenger in the vehicle, was engaged in criminal activity.

On appeal from the denial of a motion to suppress evidence, we review the district court’s factual findings for clear error and its conclusions of law de novo. United States v. Pack, 612 F.3d 341, 347 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 131 S.Ct. 620, 178 L.Ed.2d 450 (2010). Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the Government, the officer’s discovery of marijuana residue, partnered with the driver’s admission to the presence of additional contraband, rendered the weapons patdown and handcuffing of Fields reasonable. See United States v. Scroggins, 599 F.3d 433, 443 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, — U.S.-, 131 S.Ct. 158, 178 L.Ed.2d 95 (2010); United States v. Majors, 328 F.3d 791, 795 (5th Cir.2003).

Fields’s continued detention was not violative of the Fourth Amendment because while investigating the basis of the initial traffic stop, the officer’s discovery of marijuana residue created reasonable suspicion of additional criminal activity that rendered Fields’s further detention permissible for a reasonable time while the officer attempted to dispel this reasonable suspicion. See Pack, 612 F.3d at 350, 352. The officer’s inquiry of Fields into matters unrelated to the justification for the traffic stop, i.e., whether he was in possession of contraband, did not convert the encounter into something other than a lawful seizure because that inquiry did not measurably extend the duration of the stop. See Arizona v. Johnson, 555 U.S. 328, 333, 129 S.Ct. 781, 172 L.Ed.2d 694 (2009). In light of the preceding, the district court’s ruling on the motion to suppress was not in error.

Fields’s argument that the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA) should be retroactively applied is foreclosed by United States v. Tickles, 661 F.3d 212, 215 (5th Cir.), petition for cert. filed (Dec. 15, 2011) (No. 11-8023) and (Dec. 27, 2011) (No. 11-8268), which held “that the penalties prescribed by the FSA do not apply to federal criminal sentencing for illegal conduct that preceded the FSA’s enactment.” We remain bound by Tickles absent an intervening Supreme Court case overruling this precedent. See United States v. Lopez-Velasquez, 526 F.3d 804, 808 n. 1 (5th Cir.2008).

AFFIRMED. 
      
       Pursuant to 5th Cir. R. 47.5, the court has determined that this opinion should not be published and is not precedent except under the limited circumstances set forth in 5th Cir R. 47.5.4.