Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca10-94-04043/USCOURTS-ca10-94-04043-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Juan Alberto Angulo-Fernandez
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

PUBLISH . FILED 

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPE_J!~ated States Co~rt ~~ Appeab Tenth Carcuat 

TENTH CIRCUIT MAY 0 3 1995 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, PATRICK FISHER 

Clerk 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

vs. No. 94-4043 

JUAN ALBERTO ANGULO-FERNANDEZ, 

Defendant-Appellant. 

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF UTAH 

(D.C. No. 93-CR-163) 

Bruce C. Lubeck, Assistant United States Attorney, Salt Lake City, 

Utah (Scott M. Matheson, Jr., United States Attorney, Salt Lake 

City, Utah, with him on the brief), for Plaintiff-Appellee. 

Robert L. Booker, Booker & Associates, Salt Lake City, Utah (David 

v. Finlayson, Booker & Associates, Salt Lake City, Utah, with him 

on the briefs), for Defendant-Appellant. 

Before KELLY and McWILLIAMS, Circuit Judges, and VRATIL, District 

Judge t. 

KELLY, Circuit Judge. 

Defendant-Appellant Juan Alberto Angulo-Fernandez was 

convicted of possession of cocaine with intent to distribute, 

21 U.S.C. § 841(a) (1). He appeals his conviction, having entered 

a conditional plea of guilty and seeks review of the denial of his 

motion to suppress. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(a) (2). Our 

jurisdiction arises under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We vacate the 

t The Honorable Kathryn H. Vratil, United States District Judge 

for the District of Kansas, sitting by designation. 

Appellate Case: 94-4043 Document: 01019287626 Date Filed: 05/03/1995 Page: 1 
district court's order denying the motion and remand for further 

proceedings. 

Background 

On June 15, 1993, a Utah Highway Patrol trooper was 

travelling along Interstate 15 when he spotted Mr. AnguloFernandez standing next to an automobile parked in the emergency 

lane with the hood raised. The officer pulled over to render 

assistance. 

The officer and Mr. Angulo-Fernandez dispute how effectively 

they were able to communicate during their subsequent encounter. 

According to the officer, who does not speak Spanish, the 

Defendant spoke broken English, communicating first in Spanish and 

then puzzling it out into English with the officer's help. Mr. 

Angulo-Fernandez characterizes the language barrier between the 

two as much greater; he claims that he did not understand the 

officer's English, and that the two communicated largely by sign 

language. 

The officer asked the Defendant if his car had broken down. 

Mr. Angulo-Fernandez motioned to the radiator, which appeared to 

have overheated. The officer next inquired whether a wrecker was 

needed. The Defendant's response was equivocal: he asked which 

town was closer, Cedar City or St. George. He indicated that the 

vehicle had just been repaired in St. George by producing a repair 

receipt bearing the date June 15, 1993 and the name "Alberto 

Angola." Together, the officer and the Defendant added antifreeze 

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to the radiator, started the car, and moved it out of the 

emergency lane and onto a median. 

The officer asked Mr. Angulo-Fernandez where he was going 

and where he had been. The Defendant replied that he was on his 

way back to Chicago after spending a couple of days in Las Vegas. 

Next, the officer inquired whether the car belonged to the 

Defendant, who in turn responded that he had borrowed the car from 

a friend. When asked the name of the owner of the car, Mr. 

Angulo-Fernandez hesitated, whether out of nervousness or 

inability to understand the officer's question, and finally 

responded that the vehicle belonged to Manuel Lucero. Unable to 

understand the owner's last name, the officer offered the 

Defendant pencil and paper and had him write it down. 

The officer then requested the Defendant's license and the 

vehicle registration. Mr. Angulo-Fernandez claims to have 

understood this request, both because it has been his experience 

that police always ask for such documentation, and because the 

words for "license" and "registration" are similar in Spanish. 

The officer's suspicions were aroused by the seemingly unusual 

loan of a car for a cross-country trip, the difference between the 

spelling of the name on the repair order and Mr. AnguloFernandez's license, and the Defendant's apparent hesitancy in 

revealing the vehicle owner's name. The officer therefore called 

dispatch and requested a driver's license check, a license plate 

and registration check, and a warrant check. 

The license and warrant checks came back indicating no 

problem, but dispatch encountered difficulty in the registration 

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check. Eventually dispatch discovered that it had been checking 

registration for the wrong year, and when it ran the check under 

the correct year, the registration was found to be valid. In 

spite of all three checks ultimately revealing no problems, the 

officer asked dispatch to contact the registered owner to make 

sure that the Defendant was in lawful possession of the car. 

Dispatch called the number of Manuel Lucero, but the person on the 

other end of the line denied ownership of the car. 

The officer informed Mr. Angulo-Fernandez that there was a 

problem with the registration and then inquired whether he was in 

possession of either drugs or weapons. According to the officer, 

the Defendant understood the question and responded in the 

negative. The officer asked to search the car. He testified that 

Mr. Angulo-Fernandez walked over to the trunk, opened it, reached 

in and slid a duffel bag toward the officer. The Defendant, on 

the other hand, claims that he had no idea what the officer was 

saying and that he did not open the trunk for the officer, but 

rather had opened the trunk earlier to get out a container of 

antifreeze and had never closed it. The officer searched the car 

and discovered thirty bundles of cocaine in a concealed 

compartment hidden between the trunk and the passenger 

compartment. 

Discussion 

In reviewing the denial of a motion to suppress, we accept 

the district court's findings of fact unless they are clearly 

erroneous. United States v. Nielsen, 9 F.3d 1487, 1489 (lOth Cir. 

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1993). In the context of a hearing on a motion to suppress, we 

are mindful that "the credibility of the witnesses and the weight 

given to the evidence, as well as inferences and conclusions drawn 

therefrom, are matters for the trial judge." United States v. 

Fernandez, 18 F.3d 874, 876 (lOth Cir. 1994). Of course, the 

ultimate question of the reasonableness of a search or seizure is 

a question of law that we review de novo. United States v. Horn, 

970 F.2d 728, 730 (lOth Cir. 1992). 

A. Standing 

It is axiomatic that the threshold issue of Fourth Amendment 

standing, whether the search in question violated the rights of 

the defendant seeking to exclude evidence, must first be addressed 

in deciding a motion to suppress. See Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 

128, 140 (1978). The government contends that the Defendant 

lacks standing to challenge the excludability of the drug evidence 

because his possessory interest in the car did not give rise to 

the sort of expectation of privacy recognized by society as 

objectively reasonable. We disagree. 

The officer's testimony established that Mr. Angulo-Fernandez 

had claimed to have borrowed the car from the rightful owner and 

had produced a registration bearing the owner's name. Although 

such evidence may not be determinative of the Defendant's right to 

possess the car, absent evidence to the contrary, it is sufficient 

to meet his burden of demonstrating Fourth Amendment standing. 

See United States v. Soto, 988 F.2d 1548, 1553-54 (lOth Cir. 

19 9 3) . 

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The officer's testimony that the alleged registered owner, 

when contacted, denied ownership of the car does not, standing 

alone, suffice as evidence that Mr. Angulo-Fernandez wrongfully 

possessed the car. Without more, it is pure conjecture to claim 

that the Defendant stole the car. There are simply too many other 

possible reasons, such as mistaken identity, confusion, or selfinterest, for the person on the other end of the phone line to 

deny ownership. Hence, we do not find this evidence sufficient to 

undermine the Defendant's standing to challenge the search of the 

car. 

B. The Encounter 

In order to analyze both the degree of police intrusiveness 

permitted and the quantum of articulable suspicion supporting the 

intrusion required under the Fourth Amendment, it is necessary to 

first characterize the nature of the encounter between a defendant 

and the police. The district court found the initial contact 

between Mr. Angulo-Fernandez and the officer to be consensual in 

nature. We agree. 

The officer stopped to help the Defendant with his stalled 

car; he did not pull Mr. Angulo-Fernandez over for any perceived 

traffic violation. As in Florida v. Bostick, the Defendant's 

movement "was restricted by a factor independent of police 

conduct[;]" his car was stalled in a remote area. See 501 U.S. 

429, 436 (1991). "In such a situation, the appropriate inquiry 

[for determining if the encounter between the officer and the 

defendant was consensual] is whether a reasonable person would 

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feel free to decline the [officer's help] or otherwise terminate 

the encounter." See id. We find that Mr. Angulo-Fernandez could 

have declined the officer's assistance and was free "'to disregard 

the police and go about his business.'" Id. at 434 (quoting 

California v. Hodari D., 499 U.S. 621, 628 (1991)). The present 

case is thus analytically distinguishable from United States v. 

McSwain, 29 F.3d 558, 561 (lOth Cir. 1994), which held that once 

the purpose of an initially nonconsensual traffic stop was 

satisfied, subsequent questions exceeded the scope of the stop's 

underlying justification. But when, as here, the encounter is 

initially consensual, a police officer is free, at least at first, 

to pose basic questions and to request consent to search. See 

Bostick, 501 U.S. at 434-35. 

Unfortunately, the record before us is insufficient to permit 

a determination of whether at some point the consensual meeting 

between the officer and Mr. Angulo-Fernandez evolved into a 

nonconsensual encounter. The officer testified that he asked for 

and was given the Defendant's license and vehicle registration; 

however, the record is devoid of any indication as to when he gave 

these documents back. We have previously held that a police 

officer's continued retention of these documents takes the 

encounter out of the consensual realm, and into that of a stop 

requiring reasonable suspicion. United States v. Gonzalez-Lerma, 

14 F.3d 1479, 1483 (lOth Cir.), cert. denied, 114 S. Ct. 1862 

(1994) . Furthermore, we also have found that if an officer 

retains a driver's license, he must have reasonable and 

articulable suspicion for questioning the driver about drugs or 

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weapons. United States v. Turner, 928 F.2d 956, 959 (lOth Cir.), 

cert. denied, 502 U.S. 881 (1991). In other words, the officer's 

questions must concern the conduct that he has found objectively 

suspicious. See 3 Wayne R. LaFave, Search and Seizure§ 9.2(f), 

at 375-76 (2d ed. 1987). Without knowing how long the officer 

retained the license and vehicle registration, we are unable to 

decide when and if the encounter between the officer and the 

Defendant became one triggering Fourth Amendment scrutiny. 

C. The Search 

The district court found that reasonable suspicion justified 

the officer's preliminary search of the vehicle, which in turn 

provided probable cause for a more intrusive search into a hidden 

compartment containing the cocaine bundles. We think probable 

cause was required when the officer commenced searching the trunk. 

It is well established that in order to search a vehicle 

without consent, a police officer must have either a search 

warrant or probable cause. See Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42, 

51-52 (1970). Mere reasonable suspicion will not suffice. Thus, 

assuming that Mr. Angulo-Fernandez did not consent to the search 

and that the trunk was not already open, the officer needed 

probable cause, not just reasonable suspicion, to search without a 

warrant. This probable cause did not exist. The few facts that 

had aroused the officer's suspicions simply did not give rise to 

"the fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime 

[would be discovered]" inside the car's trunk. See Illinois v. 

Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 238 (1983). 

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Of course, the existence of probable cause is irrelevant if 

Mr. Angulo-Fernandez in fact voluntarily consented to the search. 

Because the district court found probable cause for the search, it 

did not make any findings regarding the issue of consent, which is 

an issue of fact. See Schneckloth v. Bustamante, 412 U.S. 218, 

227 (1973); United States v. Lowe, 999 F.2d 448, 450 (lOth Cir. 

1993) We therefore remand the present case to the district court 

so that such findings may be made. 

On remand, the district court will need to consider whether 

the Defendant voluntarily consented to the search, and whether the 

search undertaken exceeded the scope of any consent given. See 

United States v. Dewitt, 946 F.2d 1497, 1500 (lOth Cir. 1991), 

cert. denied, 502 U.S. 1118 (1992). This Circuit has established 

a two-step test for determining voluntariness. First, the 

government must proffer 11 clear and positive testimony that consent 

was unequivocal and specific and freely and intelligently given ... 

Id. {internal quotations omitted). Furthermore, the government 

must prove that this consent was given without implied or express 

duress or coercion. Id. 

As part of these considerations, the district court will need 

to further examine the nature of the encounter between the 

Defendant and the officer prior to the search. The district court 

has stated that reasonable suspicion existed to justify the 

officer's asking Mr. Angulo-Fernandez whether he was in possession 

of drugs or weapons. We previously have held that a 11 defendant's 

lack of a valid registration, license, bill of sale, or some other 

indicia of proof to lawfully operate and possess the vehicle in 

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question, [may give] rise to objectively reasonable suspicion that 

the vehicle may be stolen." Fernandez, 18 F.3d at 879. The 

district court should explain the basis for its apparent 

conclusion that the telephonic disclaimer of ownership by the 

purported owner in another state gave rise to reasonable suspicion 

of unlawful activity concerning drugs or weapons. If the lower 

court determines that the Defendant was in any way illegally 

detained, then it must also confront the question of whether there 

was sufficient attenuation between this detention and consent to 

search. See Turner, 928 F.2d at 958. Insufficient attenuation 

will result in suppression of the evidence discovered during the 

search of the car. See id. The district court's order denying 

the motion to suppress is vacated and the case is 

REMANDED. 

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