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Parties Involved:
Jesus Antonio Rivera
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

./ PUBLISH · 

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 

TENTH CIRCUIT 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

FILED 

United States Court of Appeals 

Tenth Circuit 

FEB 0 919B9 

ROBERT L. HOECKER 

Plaintiff-AppeLlee, 

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No. 87-2479 Clerk 

v. 

JESUS ANTONIO RI\ERA, 

Defendant-Appellant. 

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of New MeRico 

D.C. No. 87-CR-201 

Kenneth J. Wadas, Nicholas A. De John & Associates, Ltd., Chicago, 

Illinois, for Defendant-Appellant. 

Paula Burnett (William Lutz, United States Attorney, and James D. 

Tierney, Assistant United States Attorney, on the brief), Albuquerque, 

New Mexico, for Plaintiff-Appellee. 

Before LOGAN and SEY:.fOUR, Circuit Judges, and A. ANDERSON*, Senior 

District Judge. 

A. ANDERSON, Senior District Judge. 

)':The Honorable Aldon J. Anderson, Senior District Judge of the 

District of Utah, sitting by designation. 

Appellate Case: 87-2479 Document: 01019739996 Date Filed: 02/09/1989 Page: 1 
Defendant Jesus Antonio Rivera and a codefendant, Monica 

Jones, were indicted by the United states Grand Jury for 

possession of more than 500 grams of cocaine with· intent to 

distribute. See 21 u.s.c. § 841(a) (1) (1982), 21 u.s.c. § 841(b) 

(1) (B) (1982 & Supp. IV 1986)' 18 u.s.c. § 2 (1982 & Supp. IV 

1986). Both defendants filed pretrial motions to suppress. As 

part of the pretrial proceedings, the district court conducted· 

an evidentiary hearing and ordered a partial granting and a 

partial denial of that motion. Mr. Rivera subsequently pled 

guilty and was sentenced, while the charge against Ms. Jones was 

dismissed. Mr. Rivera now appeals from the final judgment of his 

conviction, claiming that his conviction should be reversed. 

I. BACKGROUND 

According to the findings of the district court, a truck 

driver used his CB radio to notify Richard Keene, a New Mexico 

State Police Officer, that his Reeves truck was being "tailgated" by a light-blue two-door car. Officer Keene waited and 

subsequently noticed a Reeves truck with a light-blue car 

immediately behind. After following the car for some time, 

Officer Keene "pulled it over." The vehicle's occupants, Mr. 

Rivera and Ms. Jones, gave Officer Keene conflicting and 

inconsistent information regarding their travel plans and their 

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Appellate Case: 87-2479 Document: 01019739996 Date Filed: 02/09/1989 Page: 2 
relationship. Mr. Rivera was unable to produce ownership papers 

to the car.· 

Furthermore,.Officer Keene testified that, while issuing 

a traffic citation for following too closely, he detected "a 

strong odor of car freshener. 11 Record, vol. 2 at 20. He 

reportedly observed that Mr. Rivera avoided eye-to-eye contact, 

was breathing heavily, began sweating and turned red in the 

face. Officer Keene testified that, upon asking permission to 

search the vehicle, Mr. Rivera responded, "You can look anywhere 

in my car." Id. at 21. When the car trunk was searched, a 

sweet, chemical ether smell wa.s noted, which Officer Keene had 

learned to associate with the possible presence of cocaine. 

Inspection of the car interior revealed several car deodorizers. 

"The right rear bench seat was ajar" and could not be depressed. 

Id. at 28. Further search uncovered three packages underneath 

the seat, one of which was spilling a white, powderY, substance, 

later testing positive for cocaine. Upon finding the three 

packages, Officer Keene placed Mr. Rivera and Ms. Jones under 

arrest. Next, after receiving Mr. Riv~ra's written consent, the 

car was removed from bad weather into the hanger of a nearby gas 

station to continue the search. The vehicle was dismantled, 

revealing a storage compartment in the body of the car •. 

At the suppression hearing, the district court found that 

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Appellate Case: 87-2479 Document: 01019739996 Date Filed: 02/09/1989 Page: 3 
Officer Keene had probable cause to first stop the vehicle and 

to then conduct the ·highway search incident to defendants' 

arrest. Additionally, the district ·court found that Officer 

Keene asked Mr. Rivera for permission to search the vehicle and 

that consent was given. However, the district court found that 

neither this consent nor the subsequent signed consent gave 

officers permission to dismantle the car; a search warrant 

should have been obtained before conducting the gas station 

search and, therefore, any evidence from this portion of the 

search was suppressed. 

Mr. Rivera argues to this court that Officer Keene 

stopped the vehicle as a pretext and did not have probable cause 

for either the stop or the highway search. Additionally, 

defendant claims that the search was not valid since it failed 

to meet legal standards for a search incident to an arrest. In 

reviewing these claims, the rulings of the District Court must 

be upheld unless they are clearly erroneous. United States v. 

Cooper, 733 F.2d 1360, 1364 (10th Cir.) ("The standard of review 

for denial of a motion to suppress is [the] clearly erroneous [standard]"), cert. denied, 467 U.S. 1255 (1984); United 

States v. Pappas, 735 F.2d 1232, 1233 (10th Cir. 1984) ("At a 

hearing on a motion to suppress, ..• [t]he appellate court is 

bound by· the trial court's determinations unless they are 

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Appellate Case: 87-2479 Document: 01019739996 Date Filed: 02/09/1989 Page: 4 
clearly erroneous"). 

II. ANALYSIS 

All governing factors must be considered in determining 

whether detention of a suspect and consent to search a· vehicle 

is reasonable and can be upheld against Fourth Amendment 

safeguards. "[I]n determining whether the seizure and search 

were 'unreasonable' our inquiry is a dual one -- whether the 

officer's action was justified at its inception, and whether it 

was reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which 

justified the interference in the first place." United States 

v. Guzman, --F.2d--, Nos. 87-2325 & 87-2231, slip op. at 15 

{10th Cir. Jan. 5, 1989), citing Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 19-

20 (1968). 

When police lack the reasonable suspicion necessary to 

support a stop, but use a minor violation to support a stop in 

order to search a person or place for evidence of an unrelated 

serious crime, the stop is merely pretextual. In determining 

whether such a stop is constitutional, the court should ask "not 

whether the officer could validly have made the stop, but 

whether under the same circumstances a reasonable officer would 

have made the stop in the absence of the invalid purpose." 

Guzman, slip op. at 7 & 12, citing United States v. Smith, 799 

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Appellate Case: 87-2479 Document: 01019739996 Date Filed: 02/09/1989 Page: 5 
F.2d 704 (11th Cir. 1986). In other words, an objective 

analysis of the facts and circumstances of a pretextual stop is 

appropriate, rather than an inquiry into the officer's subjective intent. Guzman, slip op. at 6 & 14. 

Of course, even if the initial stop and investigation are 

valid, the officer's action may at some point become unreasonable and co111prise an unlawful detention. ~, United states v. 

Recalde, 761 F.2d 1448 (10th Cir. 1985). No bright line divides 

the point at which an investigatory stop becomes an unlawful 

detention. United States v. Sharpe, 470 U.S. 675, 685 (1985). 

Searches and seizures are upheld when "the police officer (can] 

point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together 

with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant 

that intrusion. " Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. at 21. A police 

officer's conduct during a stop is evaluated according to 

whether the.duration of the stop was reasonable, whether the 

detained person had the ability to leave or_ end the encounter, 

and whether the detained person was transported during the 

period of detention. Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491, 504-06 

(1983). 

A. Initial Investigatory Stop 

Before initiating the stop at issue here, Officer Keene 

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Appellate Case: 87-2479 Document: 01019739996 Date Filed: 02/09/1989 Page: 6 
,. 

was notified by a third party that Mr. Rivera was "tailgating" 

and Officer Keene then observed the illegal driving conduct. 

These facts provided an·objective basis for the district court's 

finding that the stop was based upon probable cause and not upon 

pretext. We do not agree with Mr. Rivera that a necessary 

inference of pretext can be drawn from the presence of working 

arrangements between the Federal Drug Enforcement Agency and the 

New Mexico State Police nor from evidence that Officer Keene 

made similar stops and seizures on other occasions. Officer 

Keene could legitimately ask questions relating to the identity 

.and travel plans of Mr. Rivera and Ms. Jones and the ownership 

of the car Mr. Rivera was driving, regardless of Officer Keene's 

underlying motivation. 

In Guzman, we explained that "[i]f police officers in New 

Mexico •.. routinely stop most cars they see in which the driver 

is not wearing his se,at belt, then this stop was n~t unconstitutionally pretextual at its inception, even if [the officer] 

subjectively hoped to discover contraband during the stop." 

Slip op. at 13-14. Since police officers routinely stop cars 

that are tailgating, the stop in this case was not unconstitutional, even if Officer Keene suspected that Mr. Rivera was 

transporting drugs. "[T]he legality of his actions [was] not 

affected by his subjective beliefs," Sirimarco v. United 

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Appellate Case: 87-2479 Document: 01019739996 Date Filed: 02/09/1989 Page: 7 
States, 315 F.2d 699, 702 (10th Cir.), cert. denied, 374 u.s. 

807 (1963), but was justified through the presence of probable 

cause. · Thus, Officer Keene lawfully stopped Mr. Rivera's 

vehicle and conducted an initial investigation while issuing a 

traffic citation. 

B. Highway Search 

Officer Keene's further detention of Mr. Rivera and Ms. 

Jones was supported by reasonable suspicions . following their 

conflicting and inconsistent responses to his questions and to 

Mr. Rivera's inability to produce the car's ownership papers. 

See United States v. Obregon, 748 F.2d 1371, 1376 (10th cir. 

1984) (officer acted lawfully in detaining car when possessory 

rights could not be determined) . The district court entered two 

separate findings regarding the highway search of the. vehicle 

during this detention: 1) Officer Keene had probable cause to 

search the vehicle incident.to an arrest and, 2).Mr. Rivera gave 

Officer Ke·ene permission to search the vehicle. Each of these 

findings warrant separate analysis. 

1. Search Incident to an Arrest 

A warrantless search of an arrested person and the 

immediate surrounding area may be conducted contemporaneously 

with the arrest. New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 457 (1981). 

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Appellate Case: 87-2479 Document: 01019739996 Date Filed: 02/09/1989 Page: 8 
On the other hand, a search cannot precede an arrest and then 

serve as part of its justification. Sibron v. New York, 392 

U.S. 40; 63, 67 (1968). However, in some instances, a search 

occurring before a formal arrest may be valid where the arrest 

"followed quickly on the heels of the challenged search •••• " 

Rawlings v. Kentucky, 448 U.S. 98, 111 (1980). For example, in 

one case, a detainee was compelled to empty his pockets and the 

contents of the objects produced were searched a few minutes 

prior to making a formal arrest. United States v. Gay, 77 4 F. 2d 

368, 371, 378 (10th cir. 1985). During an investigatory stop in 

another case, one officer inspected a stopped vehicle while two 

other officers performed a "pat-down" search of vehicle's two 

occupants. United States v. Romero, 692 F.2d 699, 701 (10th 

Cir. 1982). The first officer announced that he detected the 

smell of marijuana while opening the door of the stopped vehicle 

and, .at about the same time, ano~her officer pulled a plastic 

bag of marijuana from the pocket of one detainee. Id. 

In both Gay and Romero, this court held that the search 

and seizure was lawful. However, "[i]t is a question of fact 

precisely when, in each case, the arrest took place." S ibron v. 

New York, 392 U.S. at 67. That determination distinguishes the 

facts now before us and is dispositive to our analysis. 

The district court found that approximately seven minutes 

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Appellate Case: 87-2479 Document: 01019739996 Date Filed: 02/09/1989 Page: 9 
r, 

'. 

elapsed from the time the vehicle was stopped ·until the first 

package of cocaine was discovered. "[T]he entire search of the 

vehicle consumed approximately fifteen minutes," record, vol. 2 

at 88, and culminated in the arrest of Mr. Rivera and Ms. Jones. 

From these findings and the factual sequence of events, it is 

evident that short intervals separated the time Officer Keene 

f i.rst smelled the possible odor of cocaine while searching the 

car trunk, located the first, second and third packages of 

cocaine within the car's interior, and carried out the actual 

arrest. Thus, the search preceded the arrest and was not truly 

contemporaneous. 

In Gay, grounds for arrest were present at the time 

defendant was first involuntarily detained and before the 

incriminating evidence was discovered. United States v. Gay, 

774 F.2d at 378. This court noted that, although the defendant 

was not actually arrested until later, he was not free to leave 

during the search and was "in effect ••• already apprehended." 

Id. In Romero, this court observed that the search for marijuana occurred incident to an arrest only if the officer 

announced that he smelled marijuana prior to the search and 

seizure since that event, combined with other circumstances, was 

necessary to create probable cause for an arrest. United States 

v. Romero, 692 F. 2d at 703-04. The search was validated on 

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Appellate Case: 87-2479 Document: 01019739996 Date Filed: 02/09/1989 Page: 10 
" 

other grounds since it was unclear whether probable cause for. 

arrest existed at the time of the search and seizure. Id. at 

704. Cf. united states v. Sharpe, 470 U.S. at 682, 688 (twentyminute detention was reasonable where police had reasonable·and 

articulable suspicion of narcotic trafficking). 

In contrast to those other cases, neither the government 

nor Mr. Rivera claim that he was under any form of apprehension 

or arrest during the highway search and, in fact, probable cause 

for his arrest did not exist until the search was underway. 

Therefore, we hold that the district court improperly found that 

Officer Keene had probable cause to search the vehicle incident 

to an arrest. In order to be lawful, the search and seizure 

must be upheld on other grounds. 

2. Voluntary Consent to Search 

It is well recognized that a search and seizure can be 

made even without probable cause if voluntary consent is given. 

See United States.v. Diaz-Albertini, 772 F.2d 654, 658 (10th 

Cir. 1985), cert. denied,~- U.S.~~' 108 s.ct. 82 (1987). 

According to Officer Keene's testimony and the findings of the 

district court, he asked Mr. Rivera for permission to search the 

vehicle and Mr. Rivera gave that permission. The ensuing search 

soon led to the three packages of. cocaine, and the arrest 

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Appellate Case: 87-2479 Document: 01019739996 Date Filed: 02/09/1989 Page: 11 
swiftly followed. Mr. Rivera does riot deny that he gave his 

consent. However, he essentially claims that the district 

court's findings establish that this consent occurred after the 

search was· complete. 

We do not agree that the stated findings of the district 

court support that conclusion. After finding that the. initial 

stop and search was lawful, and that permission to search the 

vehicle was given, the district court discussed the written 

consent form and the subsequent gas station search of the 

vehicle. The district court stated: 

The Court therefore finds that there was 

· probable cause for Officer Keene to stop the 

vehicle and search the vehicle incident to the 

arrest. 

The Court is somewhat puzzled about the form 

for consent to search which was obtained after the 

initial stop and search. 

While it is signed by Mr. Rivera, the Court 

finds that following their being arrested, that it 

was incumbent upon the arresting officers to get 

a search warrant. 

I do not find that-- I find that this consent 

to search form does not give the officers permission to dismantle the car •.•• 

And I do not feel that any consent to search 

form entitles the policemen after the people have 

been taken into custody and have custody of the 

automobile to dismantle an automobile, which is 

·apparently what took place in this case, notwithstanding the consent to search form executed by 

Mr. Rivera. 

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Appellate Case: 87-2479 Document: 01019739996 Date Filed: 02/09/1989 Page: 12 
So the Court will suppress any evidence that 

was obtained from the automobile after the initial 

stop and search •••• 

Record, vol. 2 at 89-90. Upon review of the record, we conclude 

that the district court's concern was related to the written 

consent form and not to the earlier verbal consent for the 

vehicle's search. 

Furthermore, the district court's findings were based 

upon testimony just freshly received. Officer Keene related 

that Mr. Rivera gave verbal consent prior to the search. Mr. 

Rivera has not made any direct claim, then or now, that Officer 

Keene's testimony regarding the sequence of events was incorrect. Neither does he challenge Officer Keene's statements that 

he himself assisted in the search by walking to the driver's 

side of the car, leaning through the window and removing the car 

keys, and then moving to the rear of the vehicle and opening the 

trunk. These circumst.ances support the district court's ruling 

that Mr. Rivera gave voluntary consent to conduct the highway 

search, even though the written consent was not sufficient to 

justify the subsequent gas station search. See United States v. 

Obregon, 748 F.2d at 1376-77. Thus, while the highway search 

was not correctly characterized as a search incident to an 

arrest, it was lawfully performed with Mr. Rivera's consent and 

partial assistance. 

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~ . 

III. CONCLUSION 

We hold that the_ initial stop and investigation for a 

traffic violation was validly made and executed. The district 

court was not clearly erroneous in finding tqat probable cause 

for these police actions was present. Tpe highway search cannot 

be upheld as a search incident to an arrest since probable cause. 

was not present until the search and seizure produced drug 

evidence. However, the highway search was lawfully performed 

following Mr. Rivera's voluntary verbal consent. Thus, the 

district court was not clearly erroneous in denying suppression 

of evidence from the highway search even though written consent 

for the subsequent gas station search was found to be invalid. 

AFFIRMED. 

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