Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-09-02148/USCOURTS-ca7-09-02148-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Sowande Dixie
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Argued February 17, 2010

Decided July 1, 2010

Before

KENNETH F. RIPPLE, Circuit Judge

DANIEL A. MANION, Circuit Judge

DIANE S. SYKES, Circuit Judge

No. 09‐2148

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff‐Appellee,

v.

SOWANDE DIXIE,

Defendant‐Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District

Court for the Northern District

of Indiana, Fort Wayne Division.

No. 1:07‐CR‐33

Theresa L. Springmann,

Judge.

O R D E R

Sowande Dixie pleaded guilty to possessing with intent to distribute more than five

grams of crack cocaine in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) and possessing a firearm during

and in relation to that drug‐trafficking crime in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c).  The drugs

and the gun were recovered from Dixie during a traffic stop, and the evidence against him

also included self‐incriminating statements he made to the police following his arrest.  Dixie

moved to suppress the drugs, gun, and statements on the ground that this evidence was the

fruit of an unreasonably long traffic stop.  When his suppression motion failed, he pleaded

guilty to the drug and gun charges, expressly reserving the right to appeal the district

court’s denial of his motion to suppress.  We now affirm.  

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance

with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1

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No. 09‐2148 Page 2

1

 This was a violation of section 9-19-6-4 of the Indiana Code.

On March 6, 2007, Officer George Nicklow was patrolling the streets of Fort Wayne,

Indiana, when he spotted a truck with a broken taillight.  The officer initiated a traffic stop

and activated the patrol car’s videorecording system; the ensuing encounter was thus

captured on video.  The truck pulled over in response to the signal, and Officer Nicklow

approached the driver—Sowande Dixie—and informed him that his passenger‐side taillight

was not working properly.1  Dixie said he had something to fix the light and started to reach

beneath the seats and around the passenger compartment of the truck.  Officer Nicklow told

him to keep his hands still and on the steering wheel—a warning that he had to repeat

when Dixie continued to rummage around in his truck.  Officer Nicklow then asked Dixie

for his driver’s license, registration, and proof of insurance.  Dixie provided his driver’s

license and registration, but could not produce proof of insurance (although he insisted that

he was indeed insured).

Officer Nicklow returned to his patrol car to run a check on the documents Dixie had

provided.  It took less than five minutes to complete this background check.  During this

time, Officer Rich Paige arrived on scene, and Officer Nicklow told him he intended to ask

Dixie to step out of the truck.  Officer Nicklow testified at the suppression hearing that he

had no intention of writing a citation at this time, but only wanted Dixie to see the broken

taillight for himself in order to establish that there had been a legitimate basis for the traffic

stop.

With the background check complete, Officer Nicklow returned to Dixie and asked

him to “jump out” of the truck “real quick.”  Dixie dropped his cell phone as he got out of

the truck.  As he retrieved the phone with his right hand, he simultaneously reached with

his left hand back into the truck in the area under the driver’s seat.  Officer Nicklow tried to

see what Dixie was doing and told him, “Just don’t grab . . . here, here I’ll get it.  Don’t go

digging for nothing.”

Officer Nicklow then showed Dixie the broken taillight.  Seconds later, he said:

“Before I give you [your license and registration] back, you got any weapons or anything on

you that I need to know about?”  Dixie immediately acknowledged that he was carrying a

knife and reached for his pants pocket.  Officer Nicklow told Dixie to keep his hands still

and began a frisk.  As he searched, he asked Dixie if he had anything else.  Dixie pointed to

his jacket pocket.  After some evasive and unintelligible responses, Dixie admitted to having

a gun.  At this point Dixie was placed under arrest.

The officers recovered a loaded gun from Dixie’s hip area and crack cocaine from his

pocket.  Officer Nicklow asked Dixie why he was carrying a gun and inquired if it was

related to the “white stuff.”  Dixie said it was.  Officer Nicklow eventually learned from

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2

 During the suppression hearing, the government stipulated that it would not seek to admit the

non‐Mirandized statement Dixie made to Officer Nicklow at the scene immediately following his arrest.

dispatch that Dixie did not have a permit for the gun and that he had prior felony

convictions.

Following his arrest, Dixie was interviewed at the Fort Wayne Police Department by

Detectives Miguel Rivera and Teresa Smith.  Dixie was read his Miranda rights prior to this

interview, and he acknowledged and waived his rights in order to cooperate with the

police.  He admitted his involvement in drug dealing and said he carried his firearm for

protection during drug deals.  After the interview was completed, Dixie was released from

custody to assist the police as a confidential informant against other drug dealers.  Two

days later, on March 8, Dixie voluntarily met again with the detectives and repeated his

incriminating statements.

Dixie concedes that the initial traffic stop was valid on account of his broken taillight.

He contends, however, that Officer Nicklow’s questioning unreasonably prolonged an

otherwise lawful detention and was not justified by the purpose of the investigatory stop.

Officer Nicklow had already decided not to cite him for the broken taillight, so Dixie argues

that the question about weapons constituted an unreasonable extension of the seizure and

that all the evidence recovered thereafter—the drugs, gun, and Dixie’s self‐incriminating

statements of March 6 and March 8—should have been suppressed.2

On an appeal of a denial of a suppression motion, we review the district courtʹs legal

conclusions de novo and its factual findings for clear error.  United States v. Are, 590 F.3d

499, 504 (7th Cir. 2009).  The district court concluded that Dixie’s suppression argument was

foreclosed by our opinion in United States v. Childs, 277 F.3d 947 (7th Cir. 2002) (en banc);

this conclusion was manifestly correct.  In Childs we explicitly held that the Fourth

Amendment does not require the release of a person from a traffic stop “at the earliest

moment that step can be accomplished.”  Id. at 953‐54.  Instead, “[w]hat the Constitution

requires is that the entire process remain reasonable.  Questions that hold potential for

detecting crime, yet create little or no inconvenience, do not turn reasonable detention into

unreasonable detention.”  Id. at 954.  The Supreme Court has recently confirmed this

understanding.  See Arizona v. Johnson, 129 S. Ct. 781, 788 (2009) (“An officer’s inquiries into

matters unrelated to the justification for the traffic stop, this Court has made plain, do not

convert the encounter into something other than a lawful seizure, so long as those inquiries

do not measurably extend the duration of the stop.”).

Here, the district court noted that it took “only seconds longer” for Officer Nicklow

to ask Dixie about any weapons on his person and then to recover Dixie’s knife and

unlicensed gun when he answered in the affirmative.  Indeed, Dixie has conceded, both in

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his brief and at oral argument, that the increased length of the detention was “nominal.”

Accordingly, the officer’s actions cannot be said to have caused Dixie any appreciable

inconvenience or to have unreasonably prolonged the duration of the stop.  Dixie

emphasizes that Officer Nicklow withheld his license and registration while he inquired

about weapons, thus appearing to condition the return of the documents on Dixie’s

response to the question.  This establishes only that the seizure continued, not that it was

unreasonable.  A seizure does not have to be consensual to be reasonable.  See, e.g., Johnson,

129 S. Ct. at 787‐88.  The district court properly denied Dixie’s suppression motion.

There is one outstanding issue.  Dixie also argues that his two statements to

Detectives Rivera and Smith should have been suppressed under Missouri v. Seibert, 542 U.S.

600 (2004), because although they were preceded by proper Miranda warnings, his earlier

statement to Officer Nicklow was not.  He maintains that his unwarned statement at the

scene of the traffic stop tainted his later, fully warned statements, requiring suppression of

the latter.  

Seibert was decided by a deeply divided Supreme Court; we have previously

explained that Justice Kennedy’s separate concurrence represents the narrowest ground of

the decision.  United States v. Stewart, 388 F.3d 1079, 1090 (7th Cir. 2004).  And Justice

Kennedy’s opinion was limited to the deliberate use of a two‐step interrogation process in

which Miranda warnings are withheld until after the suspect confesses; when the police

intentionally “question first and warn later,” the admissibility of the second, Mirandized

confession depends on an evaluation of the change in time, place, and circumstances

between the unwarned and warned confessions.  Id.

As the government notes, however, Dixie invoked Seibert for the first time on appeal.

His only argument in the district court was that his inculpatory statements were the fruit of

an unreasonable seizure and accompanying search.  In his plea agreement, Dixie expressly

waived his right to appeal, save for “the issues decided” by the district court in its ruling on

the suppression motion.  The district judge did not decide the Seibert issue because it was

never raised.  Dixie has therefore waived this issue, and we are precluded from considering

it on appeal.  See United States v. Hamilton, 499 F.3d 734, 735 (7th Cir. 2007).

AFFIRMED.

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