drove through a suspicious place a place well known as a way to get around a border patrol checkpoint for smuggling contraband it was a suspicious day fields are empty for anyone except some i suspicious car buick regal that didn't belong in an agricultural area and was not familiar to the asians who were posted constantly in that position they drove in a suspicious fashion far below the speed limit with someone following them  sudden turns the checks that agent gatewood ran on the plate as he followed them showed that it had suspiciously crossed the border from mexico within two hours of that time and when the car came to a stop in an open area the two individuals in the car suspiciously got out and walked away from the field near which they were parked can i ask who are you representing so i thought i question this is this is my point there was challenges below to the reasonable suspicion i am accepting and in fact embracing the reasonable suspicion because in the appeal this is my point the district court found and i do not dispute that there was piles of reasonable suspicion at ten thirty am when that car came to a stop and asian gatewood pulled up behind it now i've scoured this record over and over to try to figure out why asian gatewood who knew well enough that fifteen minutes away there was a drug sniffing dog they could be brought to the scene waited so long with all that suspicion to call that drug sniffing dog which he himself said he knew was a quick way to resolve suspicions and get people on their way it's obvious letterman found it with this record also shows that the drug was used at a very busy checkpoint and they do not call that dog out unless a really sure it's necessary that is if these people went ahead and confessed why would you call the dogs dogs which they did step by step interrogation which they're trained to do that was their argument what's wrong with that are the argument is it's rational but it's not supported by the record in the burden is on them so the argument was made in mr boyd's brief well it wasn't it wasn't exactly made it was sort of hinted at that well maybe they thought they didn't have they shouldn't call the dog away from a busy checkpoint and it was that this sentence was written in such a way as to s in cases like florida vs royer and place and this court's decision in the us vs one hundred ninety one thousand currency the point is made that when it's clear that there is a drug sniffing dog that can quickly resolve suspicions and royer the supreme court said that was a detention that lasted all of fifteen minutes and royer and the supreme court among other things said there were drugs missing dogs at this airport they could have result their suspicions about that luggage perhaps without any detention but in that case they knew the person was coming to that  no and the district court found all of those specific things before ten thirty were known at the time the car came to a stop there was reasonable suspicion at that point if he had called the dog a ten thirty dog would have been there at ten forty five everything would have been over by levon i don't share that because we don't know what the dog was doing at that time we only know when the dog got there there's nothing in the record that said the dog was sitting there waiting for transport over  said it took me fifteen twenty minutes to get there as we all know that we know that if the dog already in was not out of sniffing some other cars we know that but we don't know that it would have happened things that we don't know do not go against us they go against the government because the is on the government are you about to ask a question and i just i guess i'm skeptical of the legal premise for your argument it sounds like you're saying that the officers are not permitted to use any other techniques to dispel there's seizure and it is so clear and so clearly a better way than what they pursue it it's an reasonable not to use that method then the seizure is unconstitutional and again roy is fifteen minutes and there this is not a least burden some seizure analysis the supreme court did not accept that but they said if it's a reasonable well i put it why isn't it reasonable to first engage the potential suspects in question to see if maybe their answers dispel your suspicion before taking the dog away from other important activities that the board ship or the truck well whatever again i i do not accept the idea there's no evidence that the dog being brought away from the checkpoint would somehow injure the earth which would limit the checkpoint there's no evidence that there were not other dogs there or that they need to the dog a stinker fine whatever the dog maybe the dog was taking a nap and it needed to rest that morning i don't think it matters what the dog was doing i'm just saying they're out in the middle of nowhere right right you can see that that's part of why it's suspicious  why not first before bringing in other resources just see if we can resolve this right here they can ask you a few questions i don't see why that first off immediately when they turn around and approach and he figures out they don't speak english and he knows as he said many times i spoke very limited spanish he's not going to reasonably allay his suspicions or confirm or deny anything speaking a language he doesn't he barely understands and barely can speak another thing is even if you spanish was good the questioning is not likely to resolve suspicions the way bring a drug sniffing dog and all it's going to do is maybe add on a little more suspicion a little more suspicion while drawing things out unnecessarily why do you think why he is saying he did the result can swing know what would happen here but suppose this person was legally there and they can show their documents in their check the documents and everything is fine he was in and i believe we don't know what were happen if these people were honestly what they claimed they were the court good morning your honors my name is william boyd i'm in a usa from phoenix here for the united states there is more than one way to reasonably investigate a crime my colleague cites the hundred ninety one thousand dollar currency case in that case this court explicitly said the currency case just because it's a yeah i read it but the what the fourth amendment requires is you pick any one of the reasonable options available to you the district court properly found that's exactly what the agents did here they had as has been conce suspicions and what they did was pick one reasonable way to investigate start by talking to people it can't be unreasonable to start by talking to the suspects that they have but opposing counsel makes the point that because of the limited scene who interacted from ten thirty to ten forty that is time he himself concedes they were not detained the defendant court has its own argument is the detention didn't begin until ten forty when these i d s were trying to over so that's not even part of the detention what happened at ten forty is that the next closest border patrol agent who had much better spanish agent white and the district court found and the factual conclusion i think is unimpeachable that agent white had sufficient spanish language ability to to have this sort of conversation he and he investigated by talking to them and what does it reveal that they were telling them stories that didn't make sense whose car is this they gave different accounts ultimately they settled on is a friend i don't know and then they couldn't name the friend there's nobody else  fields you know i don't have any tools i don't have any tools where your tools i don't know you don't have any food usually people have food if they're out here to work in the deserted fields do you have food no why i don't know these are answers that continue to grant mounting and mounting suspicion and those happened with border patrol agent white who the district court found had sufficient spanish proficiency to have that conversation the next agent a call was asian rivera and that's the agents to whom defending cortez gave consent to search the car he is a fluent native spanish speaker he grew up in puerto rico there is never been any question about his spanish language abilities and so the factual statement that they make is i think unsupportable because the agents who were having these conversations during what is argued to be the detention certainly had the spanish skills to do so do want to respond to the question about what the record shows about the what the dog was doing it is true nobody asked the question specifically are there other dogs are going to say nobody asked the da if he's a lovely dog  i didn't he said he didn't get in touch of the checkpoint or the dog was some twenty minutes away until about eleven o'clock but he said he had been trying and they were out in the lanes if i may just read a couple sentences this is from our fifty six we called a couple of times on the radio we call the checkpoint on the radio but if they're out working in the lanes they don't hear the radio all the time so it took us a few attempts to get a hold of them so the challenge the defendant is making here is essentially to this sliver of the detention not the twenty minutes it took the dog to get out there it certainly can't be this very beginning part that the defendant is even detained it's this ten or twenty minutes where the agents are with sufficient spanish language proficiency to do this attempting to understand the defendant stories and that is a very reasonable way to investigate especially when you have two defendants there you can see not only are their stories consistent with the facts that are they consistent with each other a drug dog although a powerful investigative tool can't do that one thing that you can do that dog can't do is investigate someone's demeanor to these people seem to miss in fact most of the book agent white and agent gatewood testified there were ample indicia of nervousness so those are things that drug dogs can't do that investigating  questioning can do and for those reasons this was a very reasonable detention how come the agents who were on this particular project roll why don't they just have a dog in the car it seems like that's mostly out there what they're trying to do right is enter into drugs so drug trafficking so i don't understand why they're leaving the dog at the checkpoint in the first place doesn't make much sense well the dog the dogs well the checkpoint is sort of the reason that we have this dumb valley situation in the first place there's only two ways out of you my if you want to snuggle do not you know i get why the dog is at the checkpoint i'm saying when i get another dog let's get dog number two and have it right in the car or because that's what they're out there trying to catch mostly i'm it maybe some some smuggling of undocumented immigrants i grant that but isn't most of the drug drug interdiction it's it's actually the testimony in this case is they were suspicious both of alien and drug smuggling it sort of happens the same way unfamiliar cars traveling through this particular high smuggling high volume area i think in a perfect world that would be true i did the realities of law enforcement resources you can't have a dog in every car there are actually three separate cars they are you having to rivera at the entrance to observe unfamiliar cars and the agent gatewood an agent white towards the exit and so i think that would be great just like i think it would be great if our law enforcement officers had lots of advantages they don't have but it certainly is not unreasonable for the defense to instead of immediately calling for a dog and taking it away from whatever it's doing because they are clearly finite resources to spend some time talking i was so curious about when when the actual so you took place at the point where agent gate would was first asking him questions they had turned over the green cards i want to go back before that what question did he clearing gatewood pulled up some distance away and he got out of his car the defendants were walking towards the healer river well we call it a river in arizona it's a drive and like a stream bed and he called out and said how are you doing can i help you find anything at that point the defendant to turn around and start walking back to him in spanish and start talking to him in spanish what he does at that point is try to find out my questions very specific when they did turn hand over to their green cards question cause them to hand them he asked them to do he said i asked them for their i'm trying to i won't have verbatim but he said i asked them if they had any identification so i could do background and immigration checks so he didn't ask them ask not a demand and he you know i've been a basis to demand anything so for all of those reasons i want to address the reasonable suspicion since it seems to have been effectively conceded today we do think that this was  reasonable and well within the amount of time that was provided for by law to investigate the enormous suspicions and mounting suspicions that were developed by the defendant's own insufficient responses and questionable responses to the law enforcement and  honor the fact that ten thirty to ten forty is not part of the seizure does not change the fact that it's part of the delay the unnecessary delay the da you can call the ten thirty when there are ten forty five whole thing done by eleven o'clock so counsel how many minutes saying the detention lasted the unnecessary yes part i would say half an hour because if he called at ten thirty doug would have been there in fifteen minutes  it took fifteen minutes to find the drugs in the dog got there so it would have been over eleven sort of eleven forty five relatively short detention can be unreasonable if it could have been much shorter had the police acted diligently the royer case the whole the tension was fifteen minutes and we have to look at the facts of those cases and they don't necessarily mirror th case and that's why i ask you the question as to whether or not you're making the argument that as a matter of law thirty minute delay isn't reasonable well in this in the in the place case i think it was a supreme court was presented with the american law institute's proposed rule the twenty minutes should be sort of a set and reasonable point and the supreme court said we reject any idea that there should be any set of rules like that every case is on its own facts and right i do not propose that there is any rule of law or principle of law that will generally apply this case on this particular facts shows that there are thirty minutes a half an hour but necessary detention which has still not been explained now the government has asserted that agent white spoke much better himself together with asian gate when they both said we don't know we don't know if you've developed any suspicion here because we both know our spanish is is weak we need to bring in rivera who's a real spanish speaker and he confirmed that there well he also uncovered inconsistency is but interestingly they didn't come out the same way as as agent whites that agent white said he asked them who owns the car and he said he said it was his car but when agent rivera asked him so essentially this is a case where it was simply and reasonable not to quickly bring in the dog sniff as in place as an roi or as an currency case when it was clearly a way as gate with himself acknowledged of quickly