Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-98-03122/USCOURTS-caDC-98-03122-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Robert Lee Johnson
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued May 3, 2000 Decided May 30, 2000

No. 98-3122

United States of America,

Appellee

v.

Robert Lee Johnson,

Appellant

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 96cr00145-01)

Sandra G. Roland, Assistant Federal Public Defender,

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

A. J. Kramer, Federal Public Defender. Neil H. Jaffee,

Assistant Federal Public Defender, entered an appearance.

Catherine Motz, Assistant United States Attorney, argued

the cause for appellee. On the brief were Wilma A. Lewis,

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U.S. Attorney, John R. Fisher, Elizabeth Trosman, and

Florence Pan, Assistant U.S. Attorneys.

Before: Silberman, Sentelle, and Rogers, Circuit Judges.

Silberman, Circuit Judge: Robert Lee Johnson appeals his

conviction for possession, with intent to distribute, of crack

cocaine. He argues that the evidence against him was the

product of a stop and frisk that was not supported by

reasonable suspicion. We affirm.

I.

According to the evidence in the record, on the night of

Johnson's arrest, two officers of the Metropolitan Police

Department were driving in an unmarked car in an area of

Southeast Washington they characterized as "a high narcotics

area." They pulled into a parking lot and saw a parked car

with two people in it. Johnson was sitting on the passenger's

side, and another person was on the driver's side. The

officers saw a young woman leaning into the passenger's

window and handing Johnson an object, which they could not

identify. At this point they approached the car and the

woman began to walk away.

One of the officers, Michael Fulton, saw Johnson make

what Fulton described as a "shoving down" motion, leading

him to believe that Johnson might be armed. He drew his

gun, advised his partner to do the same, and shouted, "Let

me see your hands." Johnson did not immediately comply

but rather made "a couple of more shoving motions down"

before raising his hands. Fulton reached into the car and

touched a bulge in Johnson's left pants pocket. He felt large,

hard objects which he believed to be rocks of crack cocaine.

He then removed a plastic bag from the pocket. It contained

18 rocks of crack cocaine that, together with another rock

found in Johnson's clothing, totaled 72 grams. Johnson was

arrested, but the driver of the car and the woman standing

outside it were not.

Prior to trial, Johnson moved to suppress all of the evidence recovered from him. He argued that the police did not

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have a reasonable suspicion that he was engaged in criminal

activity, and that the stop and frisk were therefore illegal.

The government argued that the stop was permissible under

Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), because the police reasonably suspected that a drug transaction was taking place, and

that the frisk was proper because Johnson's conduct led the

officers to believe that he was armed. At a hearing on the

suppression motion, the government presented the testimony

of Officer Fulton. Johnson called no witnesses. The district

court denied the motion without explanation. After a jury

trial, Johnson was convicted and was sentenced to 168 months

in prison.

On appeal, Johnson renews his argument that the stop was

unjustified and that the frisk exceeded the scope allowed by

Terry. He also contends that the district court erred in

failing to make factual findings on the record at the suppression hearing. In his brief, he suggested that the prosecutor

violated the Fifth Amendment by arguing to the jury that

Johnson's presence throughout the trial gave him an opportunity to tailor his testimony in response to that of other

witnesses. We need not discuss this claim because as counsel

conceded at argument the theory underlying it was rejected

in the Supreme Court's recent decision in Portuondo v.

Agard, 120 S. Ct. 1119 (2000).

II.

We begin with Johnson's claim that, regardless of the

validity of the stop and frisk, the district court's ruling cannot

be affirmed because the trial judge failed to make factual

findings on the record. Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure

12(e) provides: "Where factual issues are involved in determining a motion, the court shall state its essential findings on

the record." The government agrees that the district court

failed to comply with the rule, but it contends that Johnson

waived his challenge to this omission because he did not

object to the lack of factual findings, nor did he ask the court

to explain its ruling.

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In United States v. Harley, 990 F.2d 1340, 1341 (D.C. Cir.

1993), we held that Rule 12(e) can be waived and that when

the district court has not made findings, "any factual disputes

must be resolved in favor of admissibility and we must uphold

the denial of [the] motion if any reasonable view of the

evidence supports it." See also United States v. Caballero,

936 F.2d 1292 (D.C. Cir. 1991). To be sure, when the district

court has not made findings, and when it is not clear what

legal theory the court relied on, a remand may be required

even if the Rule 12(e) defect was waived. See United States

v. Williams, 951 F.2d 1287 (D.C. Cir. 1991). In Williams, the

district court not only did not make specific findings, it did

not indicate which arguments, of the three that were advanced by the government, it accepted to justify a search.

Noting that the "purpose of an appeal is to review the

judgment of the district court, a function we cannot properly

perform when we are left to guess at what it is we are

reviewing," we relied on our inherent supervisory power over

the district courts to order a remand. Id. at 1290; see also

United States v. Dale, 991 F.2d 819, 840 (D.C. Cir. 1993)

(reviewing the district court's findings after having remanded

"because we did not know which of three separate legal

theories advanced by the government the district court had

adopted and what facts, if any, it relied on to support its

chosen theory").

Notwithstanding Williams, when the validity of a search

can be upheld "based upon an argument made by the government below and supported by evidence either uncontested or

found credible by the District Court," the denial of a suppression motion may be affirmed. United States v. Taylor, 997

F.2d 1551, 1555 (D.C. Cir. 1993). The situation in Williams

was "exceptional," Harley, 990 F.2d at 1341 n.1, and a remand is not necessary unless there is genuine uncertainty

about what the district court did. There is no uncertainty

here. The government offered only one legal theory--i.e.,

that Officer Fulton was frisking Johnson for weapons after a

Terry stop--and it presented uncontroverted testimony from

Officer Fulton. The issue then is whether the government's

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theory is supported by the facts that were presented at the

hearing.

The government identifies several factors that it says provide the "minimal level of objective justification" necessary

for a Terry stop. United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 7

(1989). First, Johnson's car was in a high-crime area. Officer Fulton described it as a "high narcotics area," adding "I

have been involved in numerous narcotics arrests there."

While obviously insufficient by itself to amount to reasonable

suspicion, this is "among the relevant contextual considerations in a Terry analysis." Illinois v. Wardlow, 120 S. Ct.

673, 676 (2000). Second, Fulton saw a woman lean into the

car and hand Johnson an object, and third, when Fulton

approached in his unmarked car, the woman walked away and

Johnson made a "shoving down" motion.

If the seizure had taken place at that point, we doubt very

much whether it would have been valid. As Johnson points

out, simply receiving an object from another person--Fulton

did not see Johnson give the woman anything in exchange--is

a common occurrence for which there could be many innocent

explanations. And while Johnson's furtive gestures prior to

Fulton's command may be more suspicious, they are significant only if they were undertaken in response to police

presence. It is not clear that Johnson was aware that Fulton

was a police officer; Fulton was after all in an unmarked car.

While Fulton did testify that his car was "one of those ones

that everybody knows it's a police cruiser" because it had "a

little dome light in it," that may not help much. The government did not seek to qualify Fulton as an expert on public

identification of police vehicles, and Fulton did not establish a

factual foundation for opinion testimony as a lay witness. Cf.

Fed. R. Evid. 701, 702.

We need not focus on those questions, however, because we

do not think the seizure took place immediately after Johnson's first "shoving down" motion, when Fulton drew his gun

and ordered Johnson to raise his hands. Under California v.

Hodari D., 499 U.S. 621 (1991), a seizure requires the application of physical force or submission to an assertion of authoriUSCA Case #98-3122 Document #520057 Filed: 05/30/2000 Page 5 of 7
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ty. Before Johnson raised his hands, Fulton had made a

show of authority but Johnson had not submitted to it. On

the contrary, he continued to make "shoving down" motions,

gestures that were the very opposite of complying with

Fulton's order, and which a reasonable officer could have

thought were actually suggestive of hiding (or retrieving) a

gun. In sum, by the time the stop actually took place, it was

supported by Johnson's continued furtive gestures in response to being confronted by a police officer, and that was

suspicious enough to support a reasonable belief that Johnson

may have been engaged in criminal activity.

Johnson argues that the stop actually took place much

earlier: as soon as the officers pulled into the parking lot,

because they blocked Johnson's car with their own. Brower

v. County of Inyo, 489 U.S. 593 (1989), suggests that blocking

a vehicle can be the kind of application of physical force that

constitutes a seizure. So if Johnson's car had been blocked,

he would have been stopped, and the stop would be invalid

because at that point Fulton had almost no reason to suspect

Johnson of wrongdoing. But Johnson can find little factual

support for this argument in the record. The testimony on

which he relies is ambiguous at best; such as Fulton's

statement that "I was in a parking lot almost in front of their

vehicle but off, a little off-centered to the vehicle." And the

rest of the testimony actually contradicts the theory. For

example, Fulton went on to say that he was about 25 feet

away from Johnson's car, hardly close enough to block it.

More importantly, Johnson did not present this argument to

the district court (and did not raise it here until his reply

brief). His suppression motion is flatly inconsistent with his

theory, arguing that "Mr. Johnson was seized for purposes of

implicating his Fourth Amendment rights when the police

officers forcibly detained and searched him." The district

court was not obligated to conclude that Johnson was seized

when Fulton pulled into the parking lot.

Since the stop was valid, the frisk was permissible, for

Fulton obviously had reason to suspect Johnson of being

armed. The government points out that the discovery of

crack during the frisk comes within the plain-feel doctrine of

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Minnesota v. Dickerson, 508 U.S. 366 (1993). Johnson responds with the claim that "Terry does not permit officers to

frisk any and every bump or bulge. A bump or bulge that

could not reasonably be a weapon cannot justify a pat-down

frisk." That is inconsistent with Dickerson and with common

sense. A frisk may after all be conducted even when a

suspect's clothing exhibits no visible bulges. The limitation

imposed by Dickerson is that once the officer finds an object

on the person of a suspect, he may not palpate it more than is

necessary to determine whether it is a weapon. See, e.g.,

United States v. Ponce, 8 F.3d 989, 999 (5th Cir. 1993)

(removal of folded dollar bills from pocket was inappropriate

because the officer could not have thought they were a

weapon). Here, Fulton frisked Johnson and felt "a big

bulge" in which he "fe[lt] what I immediately recognize[d] to

be large, hard objects." He explained, "based on my experience ... I believe[d] what I [was] feeling to be crack cocaine." Fulton did not exceed the permissible contours of a

Terry frisk.

* * * *

The judgment of the district court is

Affirmed.

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