United States Court of Appeals

For the Eighth Circuit

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No. 21-2581

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United States of America

lllllllllllllllllllllPlaintiff - Appellee

v.

Anthony Redman

lllllllllllllllllllllDefendant - Appellant

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Appeal from United States District Court 

for the Northern District of Iowa - Cedar Rapids

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Submitted: April 12, 2022

Filed: July 12, 2022 

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Before SMITH, Chief Judge, WOLLMAN and GRASZ, Circuit Judges. 

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WOLLMAN, Circuit Judge.

After the district court1

 denied Anthony Redman’s motion to suppress

evidence, Redman pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm by a prohibited person

1The Honorable C.J. Williams, United States District Judge for the Northern

District of Iowa, adopting the report and recommendation of the Honorable Mark A.

Roberts, United States Magistrate Judge for the Northern District of Iowa.
in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(1) and 924(a)(2). Redman appeals, arguing that

the arresting officer lacked reasonable suspicion to seize him and that evidence

recovered after the seizure should have been suppressed. We affirm.

I. Background

On November 26, 2019, the front desk worker of a Motel 6 in Cedar Rapids,

Iowa, called 911 at 12:44 a.m. to report shots fired behind the motel. Officers

described the area around the motel as a high-traffic, “high risk area” “that typically

ha[d] a lot of criminal activity.” Parole Officer Mark Smith was in the area and

responded to the call on the radio. When Smith arrived at approximately 12:47 a.m.,

a Motel 6 employee directed him to the area of the alleged shots. At approximately

the same time, Sergeant Matt Martin of the Cedar Rapids Police Department also

arrived at the Motel 6 and spoke to an Uber driver. The Uber driver said that

fireworks had been thrown from a car window as the car left the area and suggested

that the fireworks were the basis of the call, not gunshots.

At about 12:49 a.m., Smith parked in and began walking through the motel

parking lot, which was “fairly dark.” The only people he saw were two individuals

in an engine-running parked car. Smith approached the driver and asked him to roll

down the window, at which point Smith could smell marijuana coming from inside

the car and saw that both occupants were holding bottles of beer. After the occupants

initially denied hearing shots fired, the passenger suggested that the sound was

fireworks.

Smith asked both occupants for identification, but only the driver complied. 

The passenger, later identified as Redman, refused to provide identification and stated

that he was not being detained and was leaving. Although Smith told him to remain

in the car and called for assistance, Redman exited the car. Sergeant Martin arrived

and began speaking with Redman, who told Martin that he was not detained and

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could leave. As Redman began to walk away, Smith advised Martin that he had told

Redman to “stay here.”

As Redman unlocked a motel room door, Martin called out to and quickly

approached him, grabbing the back of Redman’s jacket when he turned the door

handle. Redman nevertheless began to enter the room, at which point Martin and

another officer brought him to the ground and handcuffed him in the doorway. 

Martin thereafter discovered in and removed from Redman’s coat pocket a loaded

Glock Model 42 .380 semi-automatic firearm.

Redman was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm. He moved

to suppress the firearm and statements he had made during the search, arguing that

he had been illegally seized by Martin. The magistrate judge conducted an

evidentiary hearing and concluded that Smith’s interaction with Redman began as a

consensual encounter. Smith thereafter developed reasonable suspicion to support

a Terry stop, however, based on the odor of marijuana, the open containers of beer

in an engine-running vehicle, and the fact that this was the only occupied vehicle in

a high-crime area following a shots-fired report. Martin was then justified in seizing

Redman as part of that Terry stop to protect officer safety and maintain the status quo,

and also because Martin had probable cause to believe that Redman had committed

the offense of interference with official acts by refusing to stay in the vehicle. The

district court overruled Redman’s objections, adopted the magistrate judge’s report

and recommendation, and denied the motion to suppress.

II. Discussion

“When reviewing the denial of a motion to suppress, we review the district

court’s factual findings for clear error and its legal conclusions de novo.” United

States v. Dickerman, 954 F.3d 1060, 1065 (8th Cir. 2020).

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Police “officers may conduct brief investigatory stops of individuals if they

have a reasonable articulable suspicion of criminal activity.” United States v.

Griffith, 533 F.3d 979, 983–84 (8th Cir. 2008) (citing Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 30

(1968)). “A Terry stop is justified when a police officer is able to point to specific

and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts,

reasonably warrant that intrusion.” United States v. Slater, 979 F.3d 626, 629 (8th

Cir. 2020) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). We “examine the totality

of the circumstances in every case to see if the officer conducting the search had a

particularized and objective basis for suspecting legal wrongdoing. This analysis

looks at such facts as the time of day or night, location of the suspect parties, and the

parties’ behavior when they become aware of the officer’s presence.” United States

v. Bailey, 417 F.3d 873, 877 (8th Cir. 2005) (internal quotation marks and citations

omitted).

 

A Terry stop is limited to “the least intrusive means of detention and

investigation, in terms of scope and duration, that are reasonably necessary to achieve

the purpose of the Terry stop.” United States v. Sanford, 813 F.3d 708, 713 (8th Cir.

2016) (per curiam) (quoting United States v. Newell, 596 F.3d 876, 879 (8th Cir.

2010)). During a Terry stop, an officer may “take such steps as [are] reasonably

necessary to protect their personal safety and to maintain the status quo during the

course of the stop,” including frisking a person for weapons if the officer has

“articulable suspicion that the person is armed and dangerous.” Pollreis v. Marzolf,

9 F.4th 737, 746–47 (8th Cir. 2021) (alteration in original) (first quote quoting United

States v. Hensley, 469 U.S. 221, 235 (1985)).

The parties agree that Redman was not seized until Martin physically grabbed

his jacket. We conclude that Martin had reasonable articulable suspicion to detain

Redman at that time. Martin was investigating an early-morning report of shots fired

near 1:00 a.m. in a high-crime area. That he had been told that the call may have

pertained to fireworks did not alone end his investigation, however. Martin knew that

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Redman was one of only two people present in the dark parking lot that was the

alleged location of the shots fired; that Smith was a parole officer and had called for

help; and that Redman had refused to identify himself and walked away against

Smith’s instructions to stay in the car.2 Finally, Martin saw Redman attempting to

enter a locked motel room, raising safety concerns. Given these circumstances,

Martin had reasonable suspicion that Redman may have been involved in a shotsfired incident, which justified his decision to seize Redman and to perform a limited

search to determine if Redman was armed. See Bailey, 417 F.3d at 877 (concluding

that officer had “a reasonable and particularized suspicion” when encounter occurred

at 1:00 a.m. in a poorly lit parking lot “in an [sic] neighborhood marked by frequent

crimes involving firearms,” defendant “turned in a manner that suggested he was

attempting to conceal contraband,” and officer reasonably believed that defendant

was merely pretending to talk on the phone).

The judgment is affirmed.

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2Redman argues that as a parole officer Smith lacked authority under state law

to detain him, so his instructions to Redman could not have supported Martin’s

seizure of Redman. Even assuming that Smith lacked such authority, Martin testified

at the suppression hearing that he believed Smith had the ability to detain someone

based on his peace officer certification and his authorization to use the Cedar Rapids

Police Department’s dispatch radio. “[A] reasonable but mistaken belief may justify

an investigative stop.” Bailey, 417 F.3d at 877.

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