UNPUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 11-4253

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff - Appellee,

v.

MARC JUDSON CURRY,

Defendant - Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of 

Maryland, at Baltimore. Benson Everett Legg, District Judge. 

(1:09-cr-00483-BEL-1)

Submitted: March 19, 2012 Decided: April 19, 2012

Before WYNN and DIAZ, Circuit Judges, and HAMILTON, Senior 

Circuit Judge.

Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.

James Wyda, Federal Public Defender, Martin G. Bahl, Staff 

Attorney, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellant. Rod J. 

Rosenstein, United States Attorney, Ayn B. Ducao, Assistant 

United States Attorney, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellee.

Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
2

PER CURIAM:

Consonant with the terms of his conditional plea 

agreement, Marc Judson Curry appeals the district court’s denial 

of his motion to suppress evidence obtained during a search of 

his car pursuant to a traffic stop. We affirm.

The district court’s legal conclusions underlying a 

suppression determination are reviewed de novo while its factual 

findings are reviewed for clear error. United States v. GuijonOrtiz, 660 F.3d 757, 762 (4th Cir. 2011). Because the district 

court denied the motion to suppress, the evidence is construed 

on appeal in the light most favorable to the government. United 

States v. Perkins, 363 F.3d 317, 320 (4th Cir. 2004).

Curry disputes the district court’s ruling on his 

motion by developing two separate strands of argument. He first 

claims that the law enforcement officers who detained him 

impermissibly prolonged the traffic stop by requesting a Vehicle 

Identification Number (“VIN”) verification despite the fact that 

reasonable suspicion that he was unauthorized to drive his 

vehicle had previously been entirely dissipated by Curry’s 

production of his license, his registration, and a bill of sale. 

But whatever the merits of this argument may be, the record 

demonstrates that the detaining officers were nonetheless 

justified in prolonging Curry’s detention longer than was

strictly necessary to issue him a ticket because they possessed 
3

reasonable suspicion that Curry was engaged in other criminal 

activity. See Illinois v. Caballes, 543 U.S. 405, 407 (2005); 

United States v. Ortiz, ___ F.3d ___, 2012 WL 604151, at *4 (4th 

Cir. Feb. 27, 2012) (slip op.). 

In our view, the collective import of Curry’s visible 

tremulousness and attempts at concealing items in the glove 

compartment and his pants pocket suggested behavior “in which 

few innocent people would engage.” United States v. Foreman, 

369 F.3d 776, 781 (4th Cir. 2004). See also United States v. 

Digiovanni, 650 F.3d 498, 512 (4th Cir. 2011). Coupled with the 

detaining officer’s knowledge that Curry previously had been 

involved in a drug-related criminal offense, see United 

States v. Powell, 666 F.3d 180, 188 (4th Cir. 2011), we conclude 

that the assortment of peculiar circumstances observed by the 

officer constituted “sufficient objective evidence” 

demonstrating reasonable suspicion that Curry was involved in 

some sort of criminality. United States v. Branch, 537 F.3d 

328, 336 (4th Cir. 2008). Detaining Curry long enough to 

investigate his suspicious behavior was therefore justifiable in 

this case.

Curry next claims that the drug dog brought onto the 

scene by the detaining officers did not alert on his car prior 

to jumping inside of it, thereby violating his Fourth Amendment 

rights by intruding into his car without probable cause, and 
4

that the district court erred in determining otherwise. Whether 

the dog alerted before entering Curry’s vehicle is a question of 

fact, United States v. Mason, 628 F.3d 123, 130 (4th Cir. 2010), 

so appellate review is for clear error. Guijon-Ortiz, 660 F.3d 

at 762.

Curry’s arguments boil down to an attack on the

credibility of the dog handler’s testimony at the suppression 

hearing, which he claims consisted simply of post hoc attempts 

to locate the dog’s alert at an earlier point in time than it 

actually occurred. But on this score, Curry is up against the 

principle that credibility is quintessentially a question for 

the district court, whose role it is to “observe witnesses and 

weigh their credibility during a pre-trial motion to suppress.” 

United States v. Abu Ali, 528 F.3d 210, 232 (4th Cir. 2008). 

Nor, in our opinion, does the relevant video footage demonstrate 

that the dog handler’s testimony was unworthy of belief.

Accordingly, the district court did not commit clear 

error in accepting the dog handler’s testimony that the dog 

alerted prior to entering Curry’s vehicle. See Mason, 628 F.3d 

at 130. Because the dog’s alert provided probable cause to 

enter the vehicle almost immediately after the dog began its 

scan, Curry suffered no Fourth Amendment violation from the 

dog’s subsequent intrusion into the car’s passenger compartment. 

See United States v. Parada, 577 F.3d 1275, 1281-82 (10th Cir. 
5

2009) (distinguishing between a “general alert” and a “pinpoint 

location,” and holding that an alert provided probable cause to 

search a car, even in the absence of a pinpoint indication of 

the location of the drugs). As a consequence, Curry’s motion to 

suppress was properly denied by the district court.

Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the district 

court. We dispense with oral argument because the facts and 

legal contentions are adequately presented in the material 

before the court and argument will not aid the decisional 

process.

AFFIRMED