Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-05-04060/USCOURTS-ca8-05-04060-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Christopher Carpenter
Appellee
United States of America
Appellant

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

___________

No. 05-4060

___________

United States of America, *

*

Appellant, *

* Appeal from the United States

v. * District Court for the 

* Eastern District of Missouri. 

Christopher Carpenter, * 

*

Appellee. * 

___________

Submitted: May 16, 2006

Filed: September 18, 2006

___________

Before LOKEN, Chief Judge, MELLOY, and COLLOTON, Circuit Judges.

___________

COLLOTON, Circuit Judge.

The government appeals an order of the district court granting Christopher

Carpenter’s motion to suppress evidence. See 18 U.S.C. § 3731. We reverse and

remand for further proceedings.

I.

According to the facts as found by a magistrate judge in a report and

recommendation and adopted by the district court, on December 18, 2001, Deputy

David Rightnowar of the Phelps County, Missouri, Sheriff’s Department was

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operating a ruse drug checkpoint on Interstate Highway 44 near the Sugar Tree Road

exit in Phelps County. He placed a sign reading “Drug Enforcement Checkpoint

Ahead 1/4 Mile,” on each side of the eastbound lanes of Interstate 44, approximately

200-300 yards before the Sugar Tree Road exit ramp. A short distance further east,

but still before the exit, he placed two more signs labeled “Drug Dogs In Use.”

Deputy Rightnowar parked his marked police car so he could observe eastbound

vehicles exiting onto Sugar Tree Road. Although there was no actual checkpoint,

Deputy Rightnowar was “watching for any nonlocal traffic that would exit the

interstate” and trying “to get reason to stop them.” He explained that “if they were

nonlocals, why, we would try to find out what they were doing up there.” Deputy

Rightnowar considered “nonlocal” traffic to be cars he didn’t recognize, or those with

out-of-state license plates. 

Carpenter was driving eastbound on Interstate 44 at around 4:00 p.m. in a white

Chevrolet Blazer, traveling from Texas to New York, and carrying a quantity of

cocaine. After seeing the signs, Carpenter exited at Sugar Tree Road and drove south

on County Road 7300. Because his car was low on gas, he decided to look for a

service station. Deputy Rightnowar observed the Blazer exit Interstate 44 and turn

onto the county road. Because the vehicle “just didn’t look right for the area,” he

decided to follow it.

As Carpenter drove down the road, he realized there were no services at the

exit, and when he looked in his rear view mirror, he saw that a police car was

following him. Concerned that he had “driven into a trap,” he decided to make a Uturn and pulled onto the side of the road. Deputy Rightnowar rounded a curve and

saw Carpenter’s Blazer parked on the side of the road. Deputy Rightnowar pulled off

the road behind the Blazer, activating the emergency flashing lights on top of his

police car as he did so.

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Rightnowar approached the Blazer and asked Carpenter if he was lost, to which

Carpenter responded in the negative. Carpenter then offered that he had exited the

highway looking for a gas station, but said that when he realized there were none in

the area, he had intended to turn around and get back onto the highway. Rightnowar

thought this was suspicious, as there are no gas stations at the Sugar Tree Road exit,

but such services are available at nearby exits. From the highway, there are blue signs

indicating the presence of a motel and a campground at Sugar Tree Road, but

otherwise the area is mostly rural.

Rightnowar inquired as to Carpenter’s destination, and Carpenter replied that

he was traveling from Austin, Texas, to New York. The deputy then asked to see

Carpenter’s license and registration, and Carpenter provided his Texas driver’s

license, along with paperwork indicating that the car was a rental vehicle. At some

point in the conversation, Rightnowar leaned into the Blazer and saw that the gasoline

gauge indicated the vehicle had a quarter of a tank of gas. He also noticed that

Carpenter appeared nervous, as he could see an artery in his neck pulsing.

Deputy Rightnowar took Carpenter’s license and the rental papers back to his

patrol car, where he remained for four or five minutes. In examining the papers, he

noticed that the rental agreement indicated that the vehicle had been rented in El Paso,

rather than Austin. Rightnowar again walked over to Carpenter’s vehicle and asked

him what was in the cargo area of the Blazer. Carpenter replied that there were boxes

of tile in the vehicle. When Rightnowar asked to look in the boxes, however,

Carpenter asked if there was a problem with his license and told Rightnowar that “the

boxes were all packaged up and he didn’t see why the deputy needed to look inside

them.” At this point, Rightnowar told Carpenter that he had exited the highway at a

drug interdiction area, that he believed Carpenter had exited to avoid the drug

checkpoint, that he thought Carpenter had drugs in the car, and that, if Carpenter

would not consent to a search, he would call a nearby officer with a drug dog.

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Carpenter refused to consent to a search, and the deputy asked him to step out of the

vehicle and patted down Carpenter’s shirt and pants pockets in a search for weapons.

Sheriff Don Blankenship, who had been parked nearby on the north side of the

highway with a trained drug detection dog in his vehicle, arrived and walked the dog

around the outside of the Blazer. The dog alerted, and Deputy Rightnowar searched

the Blazer. When he opened the boxes in the rear cargo area, he discovered bundles

wrapped in plastic. Using his pocket knife, the deputy slit open one of the bundles

and found it to contain a white powder that he believed was cocaine. Rightnowar then

arrested Carpenter.

Carpenter was charged with one count of possessing with intent to distribute

more than five kilograms of cocaine, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) and

841(b)(1)(A). He moved to suppress the evidence, arguing that he was seized without

reasonable suspicion, and that the discovery of the cocaine was the fruit of an

unlawful seizure. A magistrate judge recommended to the district court that it grant

Carpenter’s motion, finding that Carpenter was seized “when Deputy Rightnowar took

the defendant’s driver’s license and rental documents and went back to his patrol car”

or “by the time Deputy Rightnowar told the defendant that he suspected that he

possessed drugs and asked him to get out of his car.” The magistrate judge concluded

that the facts and circumstances existing at the time of the seizure did not give rise to

a reasonable suspicion justifying the search of the vehicle, in part because “the fact

that the defendant exited the highway at the exit where the checkpoint signs were

located can play no part in any reasonable equation.”

The district court determined that “the facts as found by the magistrate judge

are fully supported by the evidence adduced at the suppression hearing.” The court

then ruled that the judge was correct in concluding “that a Fourth Amendment seizure

of the defendant occurred either when Deputy Rightnowar took the defendant’s

driver’s license and car rental documents to his patrol car or when the officer told the

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defendant that he suspected him of carrying drugs and asked him to get out of his

vehicle,” because “it was at either point that a reasonable person would not have felt

free to leave.”

The district court reasoned that Carpenter’s act of exiting the highway at the

location of the drug checkpoint signs, standing alone, did not establish reasonable

suspicion. The court formulated the dispositive question as “whether reasonable

suspicion can be found to exist when that behavior is considered with other facts and

circumstances known to Deputy Rightnowar at the time.” Relying heavily on United

States v. Yousif, 308 F.3d 820 (8th Cir. 2002), which held that a driver was seized

without reasonable suspicion after exiting a highway in advance of a ruse drug

checkpoint, the court ruled that Carpenter was seized in violation of the Fourth

Amendment. We review the district court’s legal conclusions de novo and its findings

of fact for clear error. United States v. Williams, 359 F.3d 1019, 1020 (8th Cir. 2004).

II.

An encounter between citizens and police does not trigger Fourth Amendment

scrutiny unless “it loses its consensual nature.” Florida v. Bostick, 501 U.S. 429, 434

(1991). “Only when the officer, by means of physical force or show of authority, has

in some way restrained the liberty of a citizen may we conclude that a ‘seizure’ has

occurred.” Id. A seizure does not occur “simply because a police officer approaches

an individual and asks a few questions,” so long as “a reasonable person would feel

free to disregard the police and go about his business.” Id. at 434 (internal quotation

omitted). Even when officers have no basis for suspecting a particular individual, they

may generally ask the individual questions and request to examine his or her

identification. Id. at 435. 

The district court concluded that Carpenter was seized either when Deputy

Rightnowar took the defendant’s driver’s license and car rental documents to his

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patrol car or when the officer told the defendant that he suspected him of carrying

drugs and asked him to get out of his vehicle. Carpenter’s principal contention is that

he was seized at the earlier point, when Rightnowar took the driver’s license and

documents to his patrol car for four to five minutes. We conclude, however, that

Righnowar’s request for the identification and registration, and his brief retention of

those documents, did not constitute a seizure.

A request to see identification is not a seizure, “as long as the police do not

convey a message that compliance with their request[] is required.” Bostick, 501 U.S.

at 435. The district court found that Rightnowar “asked” to see Carpenter’s license

and registration, not that he ordered their production, so absent some other “message”

of compulsion not present on this record, the deputy’s request did not constitute a

seizure. Id.; United States v. Slater, 411 F.3d 1003, 1006 (8th Cir. 2005); United

States v. McManus, 70 F.3d 990, 992 (8th Cir. 1995). We have held that when a

passenger voluntarily hands identification to an officer, the officer may reasonably

consider that voluntary act as consent to a brief retention of the document for purposes

of a “routine, thirty-second computerized records check, using equipment readily at

hand.” Slater, 411 F.3d at 1006. Rightnowar retained Carpenter’s documents for four

to five minutes while he examined them, and the record is unclear whether

Rightnowar ran a computerized check, but we see no constitutionally significant

distinction between this fact pattern and the situation in Slater. Rightnowar

reasonably could interpret Carpenter’s act of providing the documents as consent to

retain them for brief examination or check, and the deputy’s carrying of the license

and rental papers to his vehicle did not effect a seizure.

The district court found that Rightnowar then “asked” Carpenter to exit his

vehicle, which may not itself result in a seizure, cf. United States v. Vera, 457 F.3d

831, 835-36 (8th Cir. 2006), but Rightnowar also patted Carpenter down for weapons

and told Carpenter that if he did not consent to a search, then the deputy would call

a nearby officer with a drug dog. The government does not dispute that this

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interaction constituted a seizure, but we conclude that Rightnowar at that point had

reasonable suspicion of illegal activity sufficient to justify an investigative detention.

We consider the totality of circumstances in evaluating whether there was

reasonable suspicion that criminal activity was afoot. United States v. Arvizu, 534

U.S. 266, 274 (2002); United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 8 (1989). Reasonable

suspicion is a lower threshold than probable cause, Alabama v. White, 496 U.S. 325,

330 (1990), and it requires considerably less than proof of wrongdoing by a

preponderance of the evidence. Sokolow, 490 U.S. at 7. The behavior on which

reasonable suspicion is grounded, therefore, need not establish that the suspect is

probably guilty of a crime or eliminate innocent interpretations of the circumstances.

Factors consistent with innocent travel, when taken together, can give rise to

reasonable suspicion, even though some travelers exhibiting those factors will be

innocent. To justify a seizure, however, the officer must have a “minimal level of

objective justification” and something more than an “inchoate and unparticularized

suspicion or hunch.” Id. (internal quotations omitted). And the ultimate test is not

what the seizing officer actually believed, but “what a hypothetical officer in exactly

the same circumstances reasonably could have believed.” McClendon v. Story County

Sheriff’s Office, 403 F.3d 510, 515 n.4 (8th Cir. 2005) (quoting United States v.

Roggeman, 279 F.3d 573, 581 n.5 (8th Cir. 2002)).

The district court determined that the facts of our decision in Yousif, 308 F.3d

at 828-29, “compel the same analysis and conclusion” of an unlawful seizure in this

case, but we believe that Yousif is readily distinguishable. That case involved ruse

checkpoint signs that induced drivers to leave the highway at the Sugar Tree Road exit

and then to encounter an actual checkpoint at the end of the exit ramp. Yousif exited

the highway and then slowed down on the ramp when he observed the checkpoint

ahead. We concluded that the use of a checkpoint that stopped every vehicle taking

the exit was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment, and that Yousif’s conduct

did not establish individualized reasonable suspicion. We said that the presence of

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out-of-state license plates and travel on “a known drug trafficking highway” could not

alone justify a stop. And our decision concluded that certain additional facts – that

Yousif took an exit just past the ruse checkpoint signs, and slowed upon observing the

actual checkpoint located on the exit ramp – were insufficient to justify a detention,

in part because they “never would have arisen but for the existence of the illegal

checkpoint.” Id. at 829. 

This case, of course, does not involve an illegal checkpoint at which all vehicles

exiting the highway were stopped. Since Yousif, moreover, we have clarified that

exiting a highway immediately after observing signs for a checkpoint “is indeed

suspicious, even though the suspicion engendered is insufficient for Fourth

Amendment purposes.” United States v. Williams, 359 F.3d 1019, 1021 (8th Cir.

2004). In other words, Carpenter’s act of exiting just after the checkpoint signs may

be considered as one factor in the totality of circumstances, although it is not a

sufficient basis standing alone to justify a seizure.

In this case, Carpenter drove a car with Texas license plates, exited just beyond

the ruse checkpoint signs, and then parked off the road for no apparent reason. These

factors at least begin to raise a reasonable inference that the driver may have departed

the highway without a destination in mind because he was carrying drugs and wanted

to avoid the purported checkpoint. See United States v. Brugal, 209 F.3d 353, 359-61

(4th Cir. 2000). The level of suspicion in this case was reasonably heightened when

Carpenter claimed to be looking for a gas station, even though he had a quarter of a

tank of gas and had taken an exit with no available services, despite signs on the

highway indicating services at previous exits. See id. An officer reasonably could

infer that Carpenter provided a false explanation to disguise his effort to avoid the

checkpoint. When questioned about his travel plans, Carpenter appeared nervous to

the deputy, and then explained that he was traveling from Austin, Texas, to New

York, despite providing a rental agreement indicating his car had been rented in El

Paso. This sort of discrepancy between documents and a driver’s explanation is a

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legitimate basis for suspicion, see United States v. Barahona, 990 F.2d 412, 416 (8th

Cir. 1993); United States v. Barbarena-Jimenez, 77 F.3d 486, 1996 WL 83002, at

* 2-3 (8th Cir. 1996) (per curiam) (unpublished), particularly where a reasonable

officer could infer that Carpenter’s explanation was an effort to distance himself from

a known source city for drugs. See United States v. White, 42 F.3d 457, 460 (8th Cir.

1994) (noting that reasonable suspicion was supported in part by fact that defendant

was traveling from El Paso, a known source city for drugs). 

Some innocent travelers with a quarter tank of gas may leave a highway after

drug checkpoint signs looking for fuel at an exit with no signs for services. And

perhaps some of those innocent travelers will also be nervous when approached by

police and even drive a vehicle rented in a drug-source city that is almost 600 miles

from their stated point of departure. These circumstances, however, are sufficiently

unusual and suspicious that they eliminate a substantial portion of innocent travelers,

and provide reasonable suspicion to justify the brief detention of Carpenter for the

purpose of conducting a dog sniff of the vehicle.

The district court’s order granting Carpenter’s motion to suppress evidence is

reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings.

 ______________________________

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