PUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 12-4374

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff – Appellee,

v.

LECONIE WILLIAMS, IV,

Defendant – Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of 

Maryland, at Greenbelt. Peter J. Messitte, Senior District 

Judge. (8:09-cr-00443-PJM-1)

Argued: October 31, 2013 Decided: January 23, 2014

Before NIEMEYER and WYNN, Circuit Judges, and Louise W. 

FLANAGAN, United States District Judge for the Eastern District 

of North Carolina, sitting by designation.

Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Wynn wrote the opinion, in 

which Judge Niemeyer and Judge Flanagan joined.

ARGUED: Mary Elizabeth Davis, DAVIS & DAVIS, Washington, D.C., 

for Appellant. Jonathan Allen Ophardt, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT 

OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Rod J. 

Rosenstein, United States Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES 

ATTORNEY, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellee.
2

WYNN, Circuit Judge:

Late one night in June 2009, a police officer saw a car 

stopped in the middle of the road in a residential district. 

The officer activated his vehicle lights and the car pulled over 

to the side of the road. Thereafter, another officer joined in 

approaching the car and saw the driver, Defendant Leconie 

Williams, IV, remove something from his waistband and drop it 

inside of the vehicle. That object turned out to be a gun which 

led to Defendant’s conviction at a jury trial of a firearm 

offense.

On appeal, Defendant contends that the evidence discovered 

during the stop should have been suppressed at trial because the 

traffic offense for which he was cited did not apply to the road 

on which he had stopped his car. Because another closely 

related traffic law barred the conduct for which Defendant was 

cited, we reject Defendant’s argument. We also reject 

Defendant’s argument challenging the exclusion of 404(b) 

evidence. Accordingly, we affirm.

I.

On June 12, 2009, at around 1:00 a.m., Major Joseph McCann, 

a Prince George’s County police officer, was driving through a 

residential area when he saw a vehicle stopped in the “middle of 

the road.” J.A. 34, 41, 47. As McCann approached the vehicle, 
3

he saw a person who had been bent over into the driver’s side 

window of the car stand up and walk away from the vehicle. 

McCann observed the vehicle sitting still in the road for thirty

seconds to a minute. Defendant, the driver, waved for McCann to 

drive past him. McCann remained behind Defendant, who began to 

pull away. McCann then activated his lights, and Defendant

pulled over to the side of the road. 

Sergeant Edward Finn arrived and pulled up behind McCann. 

As the officers approached Defendant’s vehicle, Finn observed

Defendant remove an object from his pants and drop it with a 

thud onto the floorboard. The officers removed the car’s three 

occupants, conducted a search, and found a gun on the floorboard 

by the driver’s seat.

During the process of handcuffing the three occupants of 

the vehicle, Defendant stated “that’s mine, that’s my gun.” 

J.A. 106. Finn cited Defendant for violating Section 21-1001(b)

of the Maryland Code’s Transportation Article, which prohibits 

leaving a vehicle standing such that it obstructs traffic.1

 

 1 That section provides: 

Except as otherwise provided in this section, on any 

highway outside of a business district or a 

residential district, a person may not leave any 

vehicle standing, without providing an unobstructed 

width of the roadway opposite the standing vehicle for 

the free passage of other vehicles. 

Md. Code Ann., Transp. § 21-1001(b).
4

Ultimately, the government indicted Defendant on two 

firearm charges: felon in possession of a firearm (Count One), 

in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), and possession of a 

firearm with an altered serial number (Count Two), in violation 

of 18 U.S.C. § 922(k). Before trial, Defendant moved to 

suppress the gun, arguing that McCann lacked probable cause to 

initiate the traffic stop. The district court denied the motion 

because it found that McCann had a reasonable suspicion that 

Defendant violated a different provision of the Maryland Code—

Section 21-1001(a) of the Transportation Article.2

 The district 

court also granted the government’s motion to exclude evidence 

of alleged police misconduct by McCann and Finn.3 

The case proceeded to a trial, at which the jury could not 

reach a verdict on Count One and acquitted Defendant on Count 

Two. A mistrial was granted on Count One. At the second trial, 

on Defendant’s motion, the district court re-affirmed its 

earlier decisions on the gun-suppression and police-misconduct 

 2 That provision states: 

Except as otherwise provided in this section, on any 

highway outside of a business district or a 

residential district, a person may not stop, park, or 

leave standing on the roadway any vehicle, whether 

attended or unattended, if it is practicable to stop, 

park, or leave the vehicle standing off the roadway.

Md. Code Ann., Transp. § 21-1001(a).

3 Williams also moved to suppress his statements 

acknowledging ownership of the gun. The district court denied 

the motion, and Defendant has not challenged that ruling.
5

evidence issues. The jury found Defendant guilty on Count One, 

and the district court sentenced Defendant to 120 months’

imprisonment.

Defendant raises two issues on appeal. First, he argues

that the district court erred by denying his motion to suppress 

the gun recovered from the traffic stop. Second, he contends 

that the district court erred by excluding evidence of earlier 

alleged incidents of police misconduct. We address each in 

turn. 

II.

Defendant’s main argument on appeal is that the evidence 

seized from the car as a result of the stop should have been 

suppressed because McCann lacked probable cause or reasonable 

suspicion to stop his car. We review factual findings regarding 

the motion to suppress for clear error and legal conclusions de 

novo. United States v. McBride, 676 F.3d 385, 391 (4th Cir. 

2012). 

The Fourth Amendment guarantees “[t]he right of the people 

to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, 

against unreasonable searches and seizures[.]” U.S. Const. 

amend. IV. “Because an automobile stop is a seizure of a 

person, the stop must comply with the Fourth Amendment’s 

requirement ‘that it not be ‘unreasonable’ under the 
6

circumstances.’” United States v. Wilson, 205 F.3d 720, 722–23

(4th Cir. 2000) (en banc) (quoting Whren v. United States, 517 

U.S. 806, 810 (1996)). “As a result, such a stop ‘must be 

justified by probable cause or a reasonable suspicion, based on 

specific and articulable facts, of unlawful conduct.’” Id. at 

723 (quoting United States v. Hassan El, 5 F.3d 726, 729 (4th 

Cir. 1993)). 

Probable cause exists where “the officer ‘had reasonably 

trustworthy information . . . sufficient to warrant a prudent 

[person] in believing that the petitioner had committed or was 

committing an offense.’” United States v. Sowards, 690 F.3d

583, 588 (4th Cir. 2012) (alteration in original) (quoting Beck 

v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 91 (1964)). Crucially, this principle 

holds true even for the most basic traffic offense: “‘When an 

officer observes a traffic offense—however minor—he has probable 

cause to stop the driver of the vehicle.’” Hassan El, 5 F.3d at

730 (quoting United States v. Cummins, 920 F.2d 498, 500 (8th 

Cir. 1990)). Moreover, an officer who observes a traffic 

offense may have probable cause even where he has additional 

motives for the stop. “[I]f an officer has probable cause or a 

reasonable suspicion to stop a vehicle, there is no intrusion 

upon the Fourth Amendment. That is so regardless of the fact 

that the officer would not have made the stop but for some hunch 

or inarticulable suspicion of other criminal activity . . . .” 
7

Id.; see also United States v. Branch, 537 F.3d 328, 335 (4th 

Cir. 2008) (“Observing a traffic violation provides sufficient 

justification for a police officer to detain the offending 

vehicle for as long as it takes to perform the traditional 

incidents of a routine traffic stop.”). 

Finally, a police officer’s inability to identify the 

correct code section at the time of a stop does not undermine 

valid probable cause or reasonable suspicion that a driver 

violated a traffic law. In that regard, we agree with the Sixth 

Circuit that 

in order for traffic stop to be permissible under the 

Fourth Amendment, a police officer must know or 

reasonably believe that the driver of the car is doing 

something that represents a violation of the law. 

This is not to say that officers must be able to, at 

the time of a stop, cite chapter and verse—or title 

and section—of a particular statute or municipal code 

in order to render the stop permissible.

 

United States v. Hughes, 606 F.3d 311, 316 (6th Cir. 2010). 

This does not, however, give the government license to 

“look for after-the-fact justifications for stops . . . .” Id. 

Nor do we suggest that a police officer’s mistake of law can 

support probable cause to conduct a stop when the underlying 

conduct was not, in fact, illegal. See United States v. 

McDonald, 453 F.3d 958, 961 (7th Cir. 2006) (collecting cases 

and stating that “[w]e agree with the majority of circuits to 

have considered the issue that a police officer’s mistake of law 
8

cannot support probable cause to conduct a stop. Probable cause 

only exists when an officer has a reasonable belief that a law 

has been broken. . . . An officer cannot have a reasonable 

belief that a violation of the law occurred when the acts to 

which an officer points as supporting probable cause are not 

prohibited by law.” (internal citation omitted)). 

The facts in this matter show that McCann pulled Defendant

over because Defendant had stopped his car in the middle of the 

road. Specifically, McCann saw Defendant’s vehicle positioned 

in the middle of the road, observed that the car was stopped in 

the road for at least thirty seconds, and saw Defendant’s 

attempt to wave him past when he pulled up behind Defendant.

Defendant argues that McCann incorrectly identified that conduct 

as illegal under Md. Code Ann., Transp. § 21-1001(b). It is 

true that Md. Code Ann., Transp. § 21-1001(b) does not apply to 

roadways in residential areas and the stop at issue here 

undisputedly occurred in a residential area. Therefore § 21-

1001(b) could not be the basis for conducting a stop of 

Defendant’s vehicle. Nonetheless, we uphold the trial court’s 

determination in this matter because the conduct that McCann set 

forth as a basis for the stop was plainly illegal under Maryland 

law, albeit in a different section than the one in the traffic 

citation. Specifically, the transportation section of the 

Maryland code requires that “a vehicle that is stopped or parked 
9

on a two-way roadway shall be stopped or parked parallel to the 

right hand curb or edge of the roadway, with its right hand 

wheels within 12 inches of that curb or edge of the roadway.” 

Md. Code Ann., Transp. § 21-1004(a). Under that section, “stop” 

means “to halt even momentarily a vehicle, whether or not it is 

occupied, except when necessary to avoid conflict with other 

traffic or in compliance with the directions of a police officer 

or a traffic control device.” Md. Code Ann., Transp. § 11-162. 

Thus, the conduct relied upon by McCann supported the reasonable 

suspicion to believe that Defendant had violated Section 21-

1004(a) by stopping his car in the middle of the road for at 

least thirty seconds.4

 

It was precisely this conduct—conduct plainly illegal under 

Maryland law—for which Defendant was cited. The traffic law 

identified by Finn in the citation, Md. Code Ann., Transp. § 21-

1001(b), was inapplicable because that section does not apply to 

roadways in residential areas. But because a closely related 

provision of the Maryland Code, Md. Code Ann., Transp. § 21-

1004, barred the exact conduct that McCann observed: stopping a 

vehicle in the middle of the road rather than next to the curb, 

 4 The government also made this Section 21-1004(a) argument 

below, though the district court’s ruling focused on Section 21-

1001(a). 
10

we conclude that the district court did not err in denying 

Defendant’s motion to suppress on that basis.

Defendant counters that even if the citation to the 

incorrect code section did not render the stop unlawful, the 

government failed to show that Defendant violated the applicable 

traffic law. Specifically, Defendant contends that there was 

insufficient evidence to show that he had stopped his car more 

than twelve inches from the curb. But this argument does not 

square with the record. McCann testified that Defendant’s

vehicle was stopped “in the middle of the road.” J.A. 34, 41, 

47. And when McCann pulled up behind Defendant, Defendant 

signaled to McCann to pass around him, further indicating that 

Defendant was stopped in the travel lane rather than on the side 

of the road by the curb. 

The district court credited McCann’s testimony and found 

that McCann had reasonable suspicion based on Defendant’s car 

being in the middle of the road. Further, the district court 

found that “[t]here was plenty of room, according to the 

testimony even of the defendant’s investigator, that there would 

have been room to stop on the side of the road for the defendant 

at that night.” J.A. 182. 

In sum, Defendant was cited for a traffic violation that 

McCann witnessed and immediately identified as illegal. That 

the traffic citation listed an incorrect, albeit closely 
11

related, provision of Maryland’s traffic laws does not alter the 

fact that, at the time McCann stopped Defendant, the Fourth 

Amendment’s requirement that the stop “must be justified by 

probable cause or a reasonable suspicion, based on specific and 

articulable facts, of unlawful conduct” had been met. Hassan 

El, 5 F.3d at 729. Further, Defendant has failed to show that 

the district court clearly erred in finding that Defendant had 

stopped his vehicle in the middle of the road—conduct that 

constituted a violation of the applicable traffic law. 

Therefore, we affirm the district court’s denial of Defendant’s

motion to suppress.

III.

Defendant next argues that the district court improperly 

excluded evidence of prior police misconduct. Specifically, 

Defendant sought to have admitted evidence of alleged police 

misconduct by McCann and Finn. The district court excluded the 

evidence under Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b), a decision we 

review for abuse of discretion. United States v. Hodge, 354 

F.3d 305, 312 (4th Cir. 2004). We “will not find a district 

court ‘to have abused its discretion unless its decision to 

admit evidence under Rule 404(b) was arbitrary and irrational.’” 

United States v. Byers, 649 F.3d 197, 206 (4th Cir. 2011) 
12

(quoting United States v. Weaver, 282 F.3d 302, 313 (4th Cir. 

2002)). 

Rule 404(b) allows for the admission of evidence of other 

crimes or wrongs for purposes such as “proving motive, 

opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, 

absence of mistake, or lack of accident.” Fed. R. Evid. 404(b).5 

We apply a four-factor test for determining the admissibility of 

evidence under this rule:

(1) The evidence must be relevant to an issue, such as 

an element of an offense, and must not be offered to 

establish the general character of the defendant. In 

this regard, the more similar the prior act is (in 

terms of physical similarity or mental state) to the 

act being proved, the more relevant it becomes. (2) 

The act must be necessary in the sense that it is 

probative of an essential claim or an element of the 

offense. (3) The evidence must be reliable. And (4) 

the evidence’s probative value must not be 

substantially outweighed by confusion or unfair 

prejudice in the sense that it tends to subordinate 

reason to emotion in the factfinding process.

United States v. Queen, 132 F.3d 991, 997 (4th Cir. 1997). The 

fourth factor reflects that the proffered 404(b) evidence must 

satisfy Rule 403. Unfair prejudice exists “‘when there is a 

genuine risk that the emotions of a jury will be excited to 

 5 Rule 404(b) was amended in December 2011, but this does 

not change the analysis in this case. The district court’s 

August 2011 decision granting the government’s motion in limine 

to preclude evidence of police misconduct was properly made

under the old version of the rule. However, the district court 

reaffirmed its own earlier decision in January 2012, before the 

second jury trial. Thus, the appropriate rule for the appeal is 

the current version of Rule 404(b). 
13

irrational behavior, and this risk is disproportionate to the 

probative value of the offered evidence.’” Byers, 649 F.3d at 

210 (quoting United States v. Siegel, 536 F.3d 306, 319 (4th 

Cir. 2008)). “[W]e defer to the district court’s Rule 403

balancing using these or other factors ‘unless it is an 

arbitrary or irrational exercise of discretion.’” United States 

v. Kelly, 510 F.3d 433, 437 (4th Cir. 2007) (quoting United 

States v. Heater, 63 F.3d 311, 321 (4th Cir. 1995)).

In this case, Williams sought to admit documents from three 

civil suits that alleged police misconduct against McCann and 

Finn. The first suit involved allegations from 1999 that McCann 

slapped a suspect in the back of the head, pushed his head into 

a window multiple times, and threatened the suspect by telling 

him that if he tried to run “we all have guns.” J.A. 213-14, 

221-22. The suspect was also allegedly “choked” during his 

interactions with McCann and another officer. J.A. 221. The 

second suit involved McCann’s alleged role in coercing a 

confession from another suspect, Corey Beale, in 1998. The 

third suit involved excessive force allegations against Finn 

dating back to 2000. The government moved to exclude all 

evidence regarding the three civil lawsuits. Relying on Rule 

403, the district court granted the government’s motion, holding

that the dated civil allegations of police misconduct were only 

marginally relevant, would be confusing to the jury, and would 
14

be time-consuming at trial. The district court later reaffirmed this decision before the second trial for Count One.

Upon careful review, we cannot conclude that the district 

court’s decision to exclude the evidence was either “arbitrary” 

or “irrational.” Kelly, 510 F.3d at 437. First, the proffered 

evidence, which included civil complaints and motions from 

incidents dating back well over a decade ago, had minimal 

probative value to Defendant’s criminal case. Further, 

settlement materials Defendant sought to introduce may have 

presented admissibility problems. See, e.g., Fed. R. Evid. 408. 

And the district court did not act irrationally in concluding 

that these barely, if at all, probative materials likely would

have been confusing to the jury and time-consuming.

IV.

For the foregoing reasons, we hold that the district court 

properly denied Defendant’s motion to suppress and also did not 

err in excluding the evidence of previous police misconduct 

allegations against McCann and Finn. 

AFFIRMED