NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION

File Name: 24a0134n.06

No. 23-3443

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

CARLOS PERDUE,

Defendant-Appellant.

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ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED 

STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR 

THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF 

OHIO

OPINION

Before: SILER, COLE, and MATHIS, Circuit Judges.

SILER, Circuit Judge. When Defendant Carlos Perdue pled guilty to possessing a firearm 

as a felon, he reserved his right to appeal the district court’s denial of his motion to suppress. In 

that motion to suppress, Perdue argued that the traffic stop—which precipitated his arrest—was 

conducted without probable cause. Yet on appeal, Perdue drops his illegal-stop argument and 

instead raises two new arguments. He now contends that events which occurred after the traffic 

stop violated his Fourth Amendment rights. Because Perdue only reserved the right to appeal the 

argument he made in his motion to suppress, he waived the right to raise these new arguments. 

We affirm the judgment.

I.

One evening in Raveena, Ohio, two sheriff’s deputies noticed a car operating in violation 

of Ohio law. Its registration stickers were improperly obscured by its license plate holder and it 

was illegally tailgating the car to its front. The deputies pulled the car over.
No. 23-3443, United States v. Perdue

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One of the deputies approached the car to speak with its driver, Tamara Perdue. Her 

husband, Defendant Perdue, sat in the front passenger seat. The deputy immediately smelled 

marijuana and asked if either occupant had been smoking marijuana. Defendant Perdue admitted 

that he smoked before getting in the car. Next, the deputy asked if either occupant had a firearm. 

Neither responded. The deputy pressed on, asking where the firearm was located. While Tamara 

Perdue denied having a firearm, Defendant Perdue reached into his pocket and handed the deputy 

a baggie of marijuana. The deputy instructed Defendant Perdue to exit the car. As Defendant 

Perdue opened his door and exited, the deputy noticed a firearm under the front passenger seat. 

The deputy detained Defendant Perdue and told his partner that there was a firearm in the car. 

Unprompted, Defendant Perdue claimed that the firearm was “for his protection.” 

Perdue was indicted for possessing a firearm as a felon. 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). He filed a 

motion to suppress the firearm. Perdue’s argument, though initially ill-defined, eventually focused 

on the legality of the stop itself. During the hearing on his motion to suppress, Perdue crossexamined the deputy about the registration sticker’s visibility and the following distance of 

Perdue’s car. On direct examination, Tamara Perdue produced a photograph showing the car’s 

registration sticker, visible and unobscured by its plate holder. She testified that she took this 

picture on the day of the traffic stop. But her story quickly fell apart: following a database search, 

the government proved that the registration sticker shown in the photo was obtained at least two 

months after Perdue was pulled over. The photo could not have been taken on the day of the stop. 

Still, Perdue stuck to his argument. He contended in closing that the police did not have 

probable cause to stop the car. The district court found the stop permissible because the license 

plate frame obscured the registration sticker. Alternatively, the district court found the stop 

permissible because the vehicle was illegally tailgating. The district court concluded that the 
No. 23-3443, United States v. Perdue

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deputy acted within the law when he instructed Perdue to exit the car, and that Perdue’s statement 

regarding the firearm was spontaneous and not the result of interrogation. It denied Perdue’s 

suppression motion. 

Perdue pled guilty under a conditional plea agreement. Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(a)(2). He 

reserved only his right to appeal the denial of his suppression motion. 

Yet on appeal, Perdue does not present the suppression argument that he raised in the 

district court. He does not argue that the stop was illegal. Rather, he raises two new Fourth 

Amendment arguments. First, he contends that the smell and appearance of marijuana is 

indistinguishable from legal hemp. Therefore, Perdue claims, the deputy did not have reasonable 

suspicion that he possessed a controlled substance and impermissibly removed him from the car. 

Second, he argues that the deputy improperly prolonged the traffic stop when he asked whether 

either occupant had a firearm. These arguments were neither raised in Perdue’s motion to suppress 

nor during the hearing on his motion.

II.

The government claims that Perdue waived these new arguments when he pled guilty. We 

review de novo whether Perdue waived his right to make these arguments on appeal. United States 

v. McGilvery, 403 F.3d 361, 362 (6th Cir. 2005). Conditional guilty pleas must “reserv[e] in 

writing the right to have an appellate court review an adverse determination of a specified pretrial 

motion.” Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(a)(2). The defendant has an “affirmative duty” to “preserve any 

issues . . . by specifying them in the plea itself.” United States v. Ormsby, 252 F.3d 844, 848 (6th 

Cir. 2001) (quotations omitted).

Perdue’s plea agreement reserves his right to “appeal . . . the [district court’s] denial of 

[his] Motion to Suppress in this matter.” When a defendant pleads guilty but reserves his right to 
No. 23-3443, United States v. Perdue

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appeal the district court’s denial of his motion to suppress, as Perdue did here, he may only appeal 

the argument(s) he made in that motion to suppress. He has waived any other suppression 

arguments. United States v. Pirosko, 787 F.3d 358, 370-71 (6th Cir. 2015). 

For example, like Perdue, the defendant in Pirosko pled guilty but reserved his right to 

appeal his motion to suppress. Id. at 370. And like Perdue, the defendant in Pirosko raised a new 

suppression argument on appeal. Id. We found that the defendant waived that new suppression 

argument in his conditional guilty plea. Id. at 371; see also United States v. Woosley, 361 F.3d 

924, 928 (6th Cir. 2004) (holding that a defendant, who reserved his right to appeal the denial of 

his suppression motion, did not reserve his right to appeal arguments not made in his suppression 

argument); United States v. Vanderweele, 545 F. App’x 465, 468-69 (6th Cir. 2013) 

(“Vanderweele[] preserved his right to appeal the district court's denial of his motion to suppress, 

but he is limited to the arguments that he made there.”).

In his suppression motion, Perdue argued that the traffic stop was illegal. In his conditional 

plea agreement, he reserved that argument for appeal. Yet on appeal, he has dropped this argument 

and instead argues that two events which occurred after the stop were unlawful. Perdue did not 

preserve these new arguments for appellate review. Therefore, Perdue’s arguments are waived 

and non-reviewable. 

AFFIRMED.