Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-almd-1_05-cr-00291/USCOURTS-almd-1_05-cr-00291-1/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
USA
Plaintiff
Bruno Uriostegui
Defendant

Document Text:

IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE

MIDDLE DISTRICT OF ALABAMA, SOUTHERN DIVISION

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA )

)

v. ) CRIMINAL ACTION NO. 

) 1:05cr291-MHT

BRUNO URIOSTEGUI ) (WO)

OPINION

Defendant Bruno Uriostegui is charged with illegal

re-entry into the United States in violation of 8 U.S.C.

1326(a). Uriostegui has moved to suppress all evidence

and statements seized as a result of the traffic stop

during which he was taken into custody for a possible

immigration violation. United States Magistrate Judge

Vanzetta Penn McPherson held an evidentiary hearing on

the motion on February 6, 2006, and recommends that the

motion be denied. No objection has been filed to this

recommendation. After an independent and de novo review

of the record and for the reasons given below, the court

will adopt Judge McPherson’s recommendation.

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I. Background 

At approximately 3:00 a.m. on December 5, 2005, Sgt.

Andrew Ray Hughes of the Dothan Police Department was

parked in the median of Highway 431 near Dothan, Alabama

as part of a routine traffic patrol. Hughes testified,

during the evidentiary hearing, that he observed a

vehicle cross the center line of the highway as it

traveled in the northbound lane and that it was too dark

for him to see who was driving that vehicle. Hughes

began following the vehicle and testified that it crossed

the center line “approximately three more times” and that

the vehicle also crossed the fog-line on the right margin

of the highway. 

Officer Hughes initiated a traffic stop, procured the

license of the driver, Uriostegui, and submitted the

information on the license to the Dothan Police

Department (to determine its validity) and,

simultaneously, to the U.S. Department of Homeland

Security’s (“DHS”) Blue Lightning Operations Center.

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Hughes had previously received “Blue Lightning” training

in contraband interdiction conducted by DHS. 

Information from the Dothan Police Department’s

communications center revealed that Uriostegui’s license

had expired, for which Hughes issued a citation. Hughes

also issued a warning ticket for “erratic driving.”

Shortly thereafter, information received from Blue

Lightning Operations Center revealed that Uriostegui was

possibly wanted for an immigration violation. Hughes

contacted an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent

and, while not “arresting” Uriostegui, took him into

“custody” for further questioning. Hughes testified that

he did not suspect Uriostegui of being under the

influence or of any other violation of the law. While

Uriostegui was in “custody,” the government issued a

detainer for him to the Dothan Police Department. 

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II. Discussion

Uriostegui’s motion to suppress is based on the

theory that he had violated no traffic laws, that is,

that Hughes had no probable cause to effect the original

stop. Uriostegui’s implicit argument is that he was

impermissibly stopped because of his Hispanic ethnicity

for the purpose of determining his immigration status,

although Hughes was not deputized to enforce federal

immigration law. However, Hughes testified that he could

not see the driver of the vehicle before the stop and

that he did see the vehicle cross the center lane of the

highway. Section 32-5A-88(1) of the 1975 Alabama Code

provides that, “A vehicle shall be driven as nearly as

practicable entirely within a single lane and shall not

be moved from such lane until the driver has first

ascertained that such movement can be made with safety.”

The magistrate judge found that Officer Hughes, based

on his uncontested testimony, had reasonable cause to

believe that Uriostegui was committing the traffic

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violation of improper lane usage. Once this finding has

been made, the traffic stop must be considered valid even

if evidence suggests that the stated reason for the stop

was pretextual. “Subjective intentions play no role in

ordinary, probable-cause Fourth Amendment analysis.”

Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 813 (1996).

Uriostegui’s counsel, who does not object to the

magistrate judge’s recommendation, apparently recognizes

that Whren compels this result. 

However, although it cannot affect the outcome here,

the court must disagree with the magistrate judge’s

finding that “there is no evidence anywhere in the record

that Sgt. Hughes was motivated by any factor other than

the defendant’s commission of a traffic offense when he

stopped Uriostegui.” Recommendation of the Magistrate

Judge (Doc. No. 19), p. 7. The extremely minor nature of

the alleged traffic violation (by Hughes’s own testimony,

he began to give pursuit after seeing the vehicle cross

a traffic lane line once), the fact that Hughes submitted

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Uriostegui’s information to a DHS database even before

learning that his driver’s license was expired, and the

fact that Hughes did so despite having no suspicion of

misconduct involving contraband (the only area in which

he had received training from DHS), are all factors that

in other circumstances might at least raise the question

of whether Hughes was impermissibly motivated in his

actions by Uriostegui’s ethnicity. 

Whren is clear in its instruction that an ulterior

motive cannot strip an officer of a legal justification

for such a traffic stop, and the facts of this case

require its application. However, these facts also

adumbrate a different scenario in which an officer’s

suspicion (of, for example, undocumented immigration

status) is raised solely as a result of a driver’s

ethnicity or race, divorced from any other behavior.

Because the body of traffic regulations “is so large and

so difficult to obey perfectly that virtually everyone is

guilty of violation,” Whren, 517 U.S. at 817, it is

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unfortunately conceivable that a driver whose ethnicity

itself is the cause of suspicion could be followed, as

Uriostegui was, until he commits a violation. At such

time, a police officer might conduct a stop to check the

driver’s license and registration without running afoul

of Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648 (1979), which

disallowed random stops for such purposes. 

In this scenario, an expansive reading of Whren could

enlist the judiciary as an accomplice (albeit sometimes

an unknowing one) to race or ethnicity-based police

actions, by foreclosing even a detailed look, in a

criminal case, into whether invidious race or ethic

discrimination played a role in police conduct. This

result would pose a serious challenge to our nation’s

claimed commitment to a blind, non-racial criminal

justice system, and may require a revisiting of the idea

that “the Fourth Amendment’s concern with

‘reasonableness’ allows certain actions to be taken in

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certain circumstances, whatever the subjective intent.”

Whren, 517 U.S. at 814 (emphasis in original). 

The court, while applying Whren’s holding to the

instant case and while not necessarily convinced on the

current factual development that race or ethnicity played

a role in Officer Hughes’s actions, has added these

comments so that, if in the future, there should be

occasion for the Supreme Court to reconsider Whren under

circumstances similar to, if not even more compelling

than, the ones outlined above, the facts of this case and

this court’s concern about Whren's application to those

facts will be known. 

III. Conclusion

For the reasons given above, Judge McPherson’s

recommendation will be adopted. 

An appropriate order will be entered.

DONE, this the 20th day of March, 2006.

 /s/ Myron H. Thompson 

UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE 

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