Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-06-03075/USCOURTS-caDC-06-03075-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Jamal Abdus-Price
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued January 17, 2008 Decided March 11, 2008 

No. 06-3075 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

APPELLEE

v. 

JAMAL ABDUS-PRICE, 

APPELLANT

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 05cr00123-01) 

Rita B. Bosworth, Assistant Federal Public Defender, 

argued the cause for appellant. With her on the briefs was A. 

J. Kramer, Federal Public Defender. 

Stratton C. Strand, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the 

cause for appellee. With him on the brief were Jeffrey A. 

Taylor, U.S. Attorney, and Roy W. McLeese, III and Mary B. 

McCord, Assistant U.S. Attorneys. 

Before: GINSBURG, ROGERS, and GRIFFITH, Circuit 

Judges. 

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge GRIFFITH. 

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GRIFFITH, Circuit Judge: Can the target of a Terry stop 

defeat the legality of his seizure by pointing to a slight color 

discrepancy between the car in which he was traveling and a 

crime victim’s description of that vehicle? We hold that he 

cannot, so long as the remaining points of similarity support a 

reasonable suspicion that the target was involved in criminal 

activity. The investigative seizure and subsequent protective 

frisk at issue in this case did not violate the Fourth 

Amendment. 

I. 

On the evening of March 9, 2005, Sergeant Dennis 

Hance and other Metropolitan Police Department (“MPD”) 

officers heard the following radio broadcast: 

Lookout for an armed robbery that occurred on Today’s 

date 19:35 hours, 1300 block of Florida Avenue NE. 

Lookout for a Number One black male, 19 years of age 

5’ 11’ 200 lbs, dark-complected. He’se wearing a black 

North Face jacket, black pants, black shoes. This 

individual had a light mustache. Number two black male 

was a pasanger; he’se about a16, 17 years of age, 150 lbs, 

medium complexion. He has a black and red North Face, 

a new one with North Face on the sleeve and on the back 

of the jacket. This individual is armed with a silvercolored hand gun. Stolen from one of the complainants 

was a black (inaudible) blue North Face jacket, black 

Nike’s, and a CD player. Suspects were last seen inside a 

Crown Vic Ford model, tan on the side, black on top with 

smoked-out windows, year between 94 and 97. Last seen 

Westbound on Florida and Northbound on Trinidad. 

Radio Run Tr. (Mar. 9, 2005) (errors in original). 

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At 8:14 p.m., less than forty minutes after the robbery, 

Sergeant Hance spotted a Ford Crown Victoria with darktinted windows, dark blue in color with a white driver’s-side 

rear door, roughly two blocks from the scene of the crime. 

Reasoning that the car basically matched the lookout 

description and was in the general area where the robbery 

occurred, Sergeant Hance pulled over the car. MPD Officer 

Milner quickly arrived at the scene in response to Sergeant 

Hance’s call for backup, and MPD Officers Monk and 

Gaumond appeared shortly thereafter. 

Traveling in the stopped car were Jamal Abdus-Price, the 

passenger, and Jamaal Harris, the driver. Officers later 

described Abdus-Price as a dark-skinned black male between 

18 and 30 years old, weighing about 200 pounds, and wearing 

a black North Face jacket. Harris was described as a stocky, 

light-skinned black male wearing a North Face jacket. 

Sergeant Hance and Officer Milner asked Abdus-Price and 

Harris to exit the vehicle, explaining that they had been 

stopped because their car fit a description from a radio 

lookout for an armed robbery. When the officers informed the 

occupants that they would be patted down for officer safety, 

Harris complied but Abdus-Price’s “eyes got big.” Motions 

Hearing Tr. at 7:21–25 (Oct. 24, 2005). Abdus-Price tried to 

run away, prompting Officer Milner to grab him in a bear 

hug. In so restraining the suspect, Officer Milner felt the 

handle of a gun in the pocket of Abdus-Price’s jacket and 

warned his colleagues. A scuffle ensued. The officers 

eventually subdued Abdus-Price and, in an effort to avoid 

accidentally discharging the loaded and cocked weapon, cut 

open his jacket to retrieve a .22-caliber Beretta handgun.1

 

1

 Harris told a different story, but the district court credited the 

officers’ testimony over Harris’s. Abdus-Price does not challenge 

the district court’s factual determination. 

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Officer Monk arrested Abdus-Price for carrying a pistol 

without a license. Before departing with their prisoner, the 

officers conducted a show-up procedure to determine whether 

the victims of the armed robbery that had occasioned the stop 

could identify Harris or Abdus-Price as the robbers. The 

victims could not, and Harris was allowed to leave. 

Abdus-Price was indicted for unlawful possession of a 

firearm and ammunition by a felon, a violation of 18 U.S.C. 

§ 922(g)(1). He moved to suppress the weapon seized during 

the stop that led to his arrest, arguing that the officers violated 

the Fourth Amendment. After two days of evidentiary 

hearings, the district court denied the suppression motion in 

an oral ruling, finding that the car “basically met the 

description of the vehicle used by the robbery suspects” and 

concluding that Sergeant Hance thus had reasonable 

articulable suspicion under Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), 

to justify his decision to pull over the vehicle. Plea Hearing 

Tr. at 15:5–10 (Jan. 26, 2006). 

Abdus-Price subsequently entered a conditional plea of 

guilty, reserving his right to appeal the denial of his 

suppression motion. The district court sentenced him to fortysix months’ incarceration followed by three years’ supervised 

release, and imposed fines and special assessments totaling 

$1,100. Abdus-Price appeals the denial of his suppression 

motion. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. 

II. 

The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable 

seizures of the person. U.S. CONST. amend. IV (“The right of 

the people to be secure in their persons . . . against 

unreasonable . . . seizures, shall not be violated . . . .”). 

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Stopping the car in which Abdus-Price was traveling was a 

seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. 

Brendlin v. California, 127 S. Ct. 2400, 2406–07 (2007). 

Abdus-Price argues that there was not reasonable suspicion 

under Terry to justify the stop. We consider the issue de novo. 

United States v. Brown, 334 F.3d 1161, 1164 (D.C. Cir. 2003) 

(citing Ornelas v. United States, 517 U.S. 690, 699 (1996)). 

Under the Fourth Amendment, a police officer may effect 

a brief seizure for investigative purposes — a Terry stop — if 

he has “a reasonable suspicion, grounded in specific and 

articulable facts, that a person . . . was involved in or is 

wanted in connection with a completed felony.” United States 

v. Hensley, 469 U.S. 221, 229 (1985); see also United States 

v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 7 (1989) (“In Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 

1, 30 (1968), we held that the police can stop and briefly 

detain a person for investigative purposes if the officer has a 

reasonable suspicion supported by articulable facts that 

criminal activity ‘may be afoot,’ even if the officer lacks 

probable cause.”). Reasonable suspicion exists if “the totality 

of the circumstances” presents “a particularized and objective 

basis for suspecting the particular person stopped of criminal 

activity.” United States v. Cortez, 449 U.S. 411, 417–18 

(1981). This is not a particularly high bar: “a Terry stop 

requires only a ‘minimal level of objective justification.’ ” 

United States v. Edmonds, 240 F.3d 55, 59 (D.C. Cir. 2001) 

(quoting INS v. Delgado, 466 U.S. 210, 217 (1984)). 

The facts that led Sergeant Hance to stop Abdus-Price 

were sufficient to “warrant a man of reasonable caution in the 

belief that the action taken was appropriate.” Terry, 392 U.S. 

at 22 (citation and quotation marks omitted); see also United 

States v. Smart, 98 F.3d 1379, 1384 (D.C. Cir. 1996) (asking 

“whether a reasonable officer in those circumstances would 

have been suspicious”) (citation omitted). An MPD radio 

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lookout implicated the occupants of a particular automobile in 

an armed robbery. There were several points of similarity 

between the car described in that lookout and the car in which 

Abdus-Price was traveling. The lookout referred to a Ford 

Crown Victoria with “smoked-out windows,” two occupants, 

and a top that was darker in color than the side. Sergeant 

Hance pulled over a Ford Crown Victoria with tinted 

windows, two occupants, and a door that was lighter in color 

than the top of the car, and did so less than forty minutes after 

the robbery within a few blocks of the crime scene. To 

borrow a phrase from our opinion in United States v. 

Simpson, “a confluence of such factors will be sufficient to 

justify a Terry stop.” 992 F.2d 1224, 1226 (D.C. Cir. 1993) 

(upholding stop of suspect who “was wearing clothing similar 

to that described by the victim, was of the same general age 

group . . . , was of the same race and physical build of the 

alleged rapist, and was in the vicinity of the crime”). 

Abdus-Price urges us to focus on the difference between 

the car described in the lookout and the car in which AbdusPrice was traveling. The lookout specifically referred to a 

Ford Crown Victoria that was “tan on the side, black on top,” 

while Sergeant Hance pulled over a Ford Crown Victoria that 

was dark blue with a white driver’s-side rear door. AbdusPrice contends that a reasonable officer would have 

abandoned pursuit of the two-toned Crown Victoria in which 

he was riding upon noticing this discrepancy. But this is not 

what the law requires. In United States v. Davis, 235 F.3d 584 

(D.C. Cir. 2000), police received a radio lookout describing a 

shooting suspect “dressed all in black.” Id. at 586. 

Responding to this cue, officers stopped a man in dark blue 

coveralls. A subsequent frisk uncovered a sawed-off shotgun, 

leading to a conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). Despite 

the color discrepancy between black and dark blue clothing, 

we held there was reasonable suspicion to support the stop 

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and frisk that uncovered the shotgun. Davis, 235 F.3d at 588. 

The lesson of Davis is that a precise color match to a lookout 

is not an indispensable element of reasonable suspicion. 

In the matter before us, it is easy to imagine confusing a 

dark-blue-and-white car for a black-and-tan car after night has 

fallen. Cf. Motions Hearing Tr. at 22:21–25 (Nov. 3, 2005) 

(noting statement by the district court to this effect). This 

much will be obvious to anyone who has dressed before 

daybreak and arrived at the office wearing mismatched socks. 

And the usual morning routine does not involve getting 

dressed at gunpoint. As Officer Milner testified, “if you are 

interviewing complainants, and there’s a gun involved, 

they’re not going to give you an accurate description.” 

Motions Hearing Tr. at 20:7–9 (Oct. 24, 2005). A reasonable 

officer would be entitled to infer, on the basis of his or her 

experience, that the victim of an armed robbery might not 

exercise perfect recall of the color of the robbers’ getaway 

car. See United States v. Arvizu, 534 U.S. 266, 273–74 (2002) 

(noting that officers are entitled to draw on specialized 

experience and training in arriving at reasonable suspicion). 

Given the other matches between the lookout description 

and the stopped car (i.e., make and model, tinted windows, 

number of occupants, dark-colored top with light-colored 

side), the one near-miss involving a detail of color was not 

enough to dispel Sergeant Hance’s reasonable suspicion that 

he had spotted the robbers described in the lookout. 

Reasonable suspicion can survive in the face of discrepancies 

between the vehicle described and the vehicle stopped. See, 

e.g., United States v. Hurst, 228 F.3d 751, 756–57 (6th Cir. 

2000) (finding reasonable suspicion supported stop of dark 

blue Mercury Cougar, where report described dark-colored 

Ford Thunderbird); Umanzor v. United States, 803 A.2d 983, 

993 (D.C. 2002) (finding reasonable suspicion supported stop 

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of blue Honda, where lookout described gray Honda); cf. 

Bailey v. United States, 389 F.2d 305, 309 (D.C. Cir. 1967) 

(holding probable cause supported stop of 1954 Chevrolet, 

where lookout described 1953 Chevrolet). As noted in a 

leading treatise, “investigating officers must be allowed to 

take account of the possibility that some of the descriptive 

factors supplied by victims or witnesses may be in error.” 4 

WAYNE R. LAFAVE, SEARCH AND SEIZURE: A TREATISE ON 

THE FOURTH AMENDMENT § 9.5(g) at 557 (4th ed. 2004). 

In demanding a perfect match to a lookout description, 

Abdus-Price is asking us to fast-forward the criminal process 

to the jury trial phase. This we cannot do. Terry’s reasonable 

suspicion standard demands less of the government than the 

preponderance standard, see Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 

119, 123 (2000), which in turn demands less than the 

reasonable-doubt standard, see Addington v. Texas, 441 U.S. 

418, 423–24 (1979). Abdus-Price probably could not have 

been convicted of an armed robbery based solely on the 

appearance of the car in which he was traveling — “[f]rom a 

hundred rabbits you can’t make a horse, a hundred suspicions 

don’t make a proof.” FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY, CRIME AND 

PUNISHMENT 399 (Constance Garnett trans., Heritage Club 

1938) (1866). But Sergeant Hance was not convicting AbdusPrice, nor even arresting him, when he pulled him over. “[A] 

Terry stop requires only a minimal level of objective 

justification, and an officer may initiate one based not on 

certainty, but on the need to check out a reasonable 

suspicion.” United States v. Edmonds, 240 F.3d 55, 59 (D.C. 

Cir. 2001) (citations and quotation marks omitted). Based on 

its similarity to the car described in the armed-robbery 

lookout, Sergeant Hance had reasonable suspicion that the 

occupants of the two-toned Crown Victoria were “involved in 

or [were] wanted in connection with a completed felony.” 

Hensley, 469 U.S. at 229. Therefore, Sergeant Hance’s 

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decision to stop that car did not violate Abdus-Price’s Fourth 

Amendment right against unreasonable seizures. Id. 

III. 

Abdus-Price further contends that even if the stop was 

legal at its inception, the officers violated his Fourth 

Amendment rights by conducting a protective frisk of his 

person. We decide de novo whether there was reasonable 

suspicion supporting this Terry frisk. United States v. Brown, 

334 F.3d 1161, 1164 (D.C. Cir. 2003) (citing Ornelas v. 

United States, 517 U.S. 690, 699 (1996)). 

Before an officer may conduct a protective frisk of a 

suspect, “he must first have a right not to avoid him but to be 

in his presence.” Terry, 392 U.S. at 32 (Harlan, J., 

concurring). But once he has lawfully engaged a person for 

investigative purposes, “the policeman making a reasonable 

investigatory stop should not be denied the opportunity to 

protect himself from attack by a hostile suspect.” Adams v. 

Williams, 407 U.S. 143, 146 (1972). The cases describe an 

officer’s permissible protective steps. He may compel stopped 

motorists to step out of the car to prevent their surreptitious 

retrieval of weapons. See Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U.S. 

106, 111 n.6 (1977) (regarding drivers); Maryland v. Wilson, 

519 U.S. 408, 410, 415 (1997) (regarding passengers). He 

may then conduct a protective frisk for weapons if he has 

reasonable suspicion that the stopped individuals are armed 

and dangerous. See Terry, 392 U.S. at 30; United States v. 

Holmes, 385 F.3d 786, 789 (D.C. Cir. 2004). His reasonable 

suspicion may be based on reliable reports from others. See 

Adams, 407 U.S. at 147–48; United States v. Diggs, 522 F.2d 

1310, 1313–14 (D.C. Cir. 1975). 

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Sergeant Hance and his MPD colleagues prudently 

employed such protective measures. The officers, believing 

that they had stopped the car used in a recent armed robbery 

and aware that one of the robbers had been armed with a 

silver handgun, approached the situation with caution. The 

officers asked Abdus-Price and Harris to exit the vehicle for 

safety reasons, as was their prerogative. See United States v. 

Bullock, 510 F.3d 342, 344–45 (D.C. Cir. 2007) (describing 

the “bright-line rule” allowing officers to order drivers and 

passengers to exit a stopped vehicle). Armed with reasonable 

suspicion of danger by the very nature of the suspected crime 

of armed robbery, the officers initiated protective frisks of 

both men. See id. at 345–48 (holding that a person suspected 

of a violent crime is necessarily suspect as being armed and 

dangerous). Upon learning that a frisk was forthcoming, 

Abdus-Price added to the officers’ reasonable suspicion by 

attempting to escape. There can be no doubt that, at the 

moment they frisked Abdus-Price and discovered his illegal 

weapon, the MPD officers had reasonable suspicion to 

support a Terry frisk of his person. Terry, 392 U.S. at 30. 

Without seriously contesting any of the foregoing, 

Abdus-Price nevertheless urges that the protective frisk was 

unlawful. He argues that the officers should have released 

him and Harris without frisking them, due to the dissipation 

of whatever reasonable suspicion may have initially justified 

the stop. In this idealized retelling of the night’s events, 

Sergeant Hance would have stopped the Crown Victoria, 

realized that these were not the armed robbers described in 

the lookout, and immediately ended the interaction. In support 

of this theory, Abdus-Price points to facts in the record 

suggesting that he and Harris were not the robbers. First, the 

lookout described stolen items like a CD player and black 

Nike shoes, but the officers did not look to see if these were 

visible within the car. Second, the lookout described the 

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passenger as a 150-pound teenager with a black-and-red 

North Face jacket and medium complexion, while AbdusPrice was described by Officer Milner as a dark-skinned, 200-

pound man between 18 and 30 years of age and without any 

red on his North Face jacket. Third, despite a nearly fortyminute lapse between the robbery and the stop, Harris and 

Abdus-Price were found in a car within a two-minute radius 

of the scene of the crime. 

This dissipation argument fails because reasonable 

suspicion supporting the stop did not dissipate until after the 

frisk had occurred. We begin by rejecting the frivolous 

argument concerning the stolen items; without x-ray vision, 

the officers could not rule out the possibility that the loot was 

hidden in the car. Next, we reject the argument concerning 

physical descriptions because both men broadly resembled 

the robbers in the lookout description; Abdus-Price, in 

particular, almost completely matched the description of the 

driver. Finally, it is not clear that a reasonable officer 

necessarily would assume that the robbers, upon completing 

their crime, would make a run for the border. Perhaps these 

plunderers were working a particular neighborhood? Perhaps 

they thought their victim had refused to speak to the police 

and that, after almost forty minutes, the danger of 

apprehension had passed? 

The facts of this case are thus distinguishable from those 

of United States v. Edgerton, 438 F.3d 1043 (10th Cir. 2006), 

upon which Abdus-Price principally relies. In Edgerton, an 

officer stopped a driver because her temporary license tag 

was illegible to the officer, a potential violation of state traffic 

laws. Once the officer left his car, however, he was able to 

read the tag and confirm that no violation had occurred. The 

officer nevertheless took the driver’s license and registration, 

obtained her consent to search the car, and eventually found 

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cocaine. The Tenth Circuit suppressed the drugs, holding that 

the officer should have sent the motorist on her way upon 

realizing that the temporary license tag was valid. Id. at 1051 

(citing United States v. McSwain, 29 F.3d 558 (10th Cir. 

1994)). Unlike Edgerton, in which the justification for the 

stop clearly dissipated upon reading a license tag, our case is 

murky. Even if some details from the MPD officers’ stop did 

not square with the lookout, there was nothing about the 

interaction with Abdus-Price and Harris that dispelled the 

officers’ reasonable suspicion they were the robbers. This is 

in part attributable to the nature of the crimes at issue in 

Edgerton and in this case. The entirety of the crime of 

unlicensed driving exists within the borders of a car’s license 

tag, while the indicia of armed robbery are not confined to the 

vehicle. Reasonable suspicion did not dissipate until the 

show-up failed to implicate Harris and Abdus-Price in the 

robbery, by which time the lawful frisk had already 

uncovered a weapon. 

Abdus-Price also suggests that, even if the officers’ 

suspicion did not dissipate when he exited the car, the officers 

should have conducted a thorough investigation — complete 

with questioning, peering through car windows, and 

analyzing complexion — before taking steps to ensure officer 

safety. Abdus-Price gets it backwards. An officer with a 

reasonable fear that his suspect is armed can take reasonable 

steps to protect himself, and should do so before he sets about 

investigating the crime that occasioned a stop. On crossexamination, Sergeant Hance understandably balked at 

defense counsel’s suggestion that further investigation was in 

order: “Well, I don’t usually walk up to the car and stick my 

head in the car and try to find out whether they match a 

perfect description when I am dealing with a robbery suspect. 

. . . And for my safety, I don’t — whether or not he was a 

white male or a green male, it doesn’t make any difference — 

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or a black male. That car fit the description, basically, and I 

was protecting myself.” Motions Hearing Tr. at 26:5–7, 

26:19–22 (Nov. 3, 2005). That a protective frisk takes 

precedence over such investigation of criminal activity is 

encapsulated in Justice Harlan’s memorable phrase: “There is 

no reason why an officer, rightfully but forcibly confronting a 

person suspected of a serious crime, should have to ask one 

question and take the risk that the answer might be a bullet.” 

Terry, 392 U.S. at 33 (Harlan, J., concurring). 

Finally, Abdus-Price claims that the Terry stop at issue in 

this case “was the functional equivalent of a full-blown 

arrest.” Appellant’s Br. at 21 n.2. We need not consider this 

suggestion, as it was not presented to the district court. See 

District of Columbia v. Air Fla., Inc., 750 F.2d 1077, 1084 

(D.C. Cir. 1984) (“It is well settled that issues and legal 

theories not asserted at the District Court level ordinarily will 

not be heard on appeal.”). 

IV. 

Officers had reasonable suspicion to support the Terry

stop of Abdus-Price and further reasonable suspicion to 

support the Terry frisk of his person. Accordingly, there was 

no Fourth Amendment violation and no reason to grant a 

motion to suppress. The judgment of the district court is 

Affirmed. 

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