NOT RECOMMENDED FOR FULL
- TEXT PUBLICATION File Name: 19a0209n.06
Case Nos. 18

- 3083 / 3241
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff

- Appellee ,

v.
BORN MURRAY (18

- 3083); ELSTARHEEM MURRAY (18

- 3241) , Defendants

- Appellants

. ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF OHIO

BEFORE: DAUGHTREY, COOK, and GRIFFIN, Circuit Judges. COOK, Circuit Judge. After unsuccessfully fleeing from a traffic stop, Elstarh eem Murray found himself in police custody, along with his brother Born Murray. A search of their car revealed two large batches of commercial checks stolen from the mail. The brothers claim that the district court should have suppressed those checks as evidence because officers seized them after an unreasonably extended traffic stop. Because the district court properly denied their suppression motions, we AFFIRM.
I. Ohio State Highway Patrol Troope r Joseph Weeks stopped brothers Born and Elstarheem Murray twice o n a November morning in 2016. A s part of a drug

- trafficking task force, Weeks patrolled a high

- crime area in his marked cruiser but initiated traffic stops only at the request ofCase Nos. 18

- 3083 / 3241 , United States v. Murray, et al.

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- undercover agents surveilling a nearby h otel frequented by drug traffickers. So when an agent saw the brothers leave the h otel in a Chrysler sedan, he followed until Elstarheem executed an illegal lane change and the n radioed Weeks to initiate a stop. In his first encounter with the brothers, Weeks told Elstarheem, the driver, why he’d been stopped , then requested licenses from them both

. Elstarheem nervously admitted to driving without a valid license but explained that they were seeking medical attention for Born’s asthma.
Weeks asked Elst arheem out of the vehicle while he ran a records check

. It confirmed that Elstarheem was not licensed to drive and revealed th e brothers’ prior convictions; Elstarheem’s involving narcotics and Born’s for check fraud. After Born, who was licensed, agreed to drive, Weeks sent them off with a warning for the illegal lane change and directions to the nearest hospital. Once released , the brothers never followed Weeks’s directions to the hospital, returning instead to the h otel where surveillance continued. This time, undercover agents watched the brothers load luggage into a different vehicle before driving away

. When Born , now in a Hyundai sedan , failed to stop at a red light before turning, the agents called on Weeks to initiate a nother traffic stop. So about ninety minutes after their first encounter, Weeks again stopped the Murrays. As with the first stop, he asked the driver

— this time, Born

— to get out for a brief interview during which Weeks check ed the vehicle ’s r ecords back at his cruiser. Weeks directed Elstarheem to stay put with his hands on the dashboard. But as Weeks walked Born to his cruiser, Elstarheem bolted. With Born seated in the back of the cruiser but the door still ajar, Weeks gave chase and order ed Elstarheem to stop . Elstarheem heeded that command only after Weeks warn ed that he was armed with a taser.Case Nos. 18

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- Then , w ith both brothers secured in his cruiser, Weeks led his narcotics

- detection canine around the Hyundai for a free

- air sniff. The do g alerted to the trunk and arriving officers searched the car for drugs. They found none ; however, officers did seize two envelopes holding roughly 150 commercial checks stolen from the mail

. Those checks, together worth approximately $1.5 million, prov ided the basis for charging Born and Elstarheem with possession of stolen mail and conspiracy to commit bank fraud and to
possess stolen mail. See 18 U.S.C. §§ 2, 3 71 , 134 4 , 1708 . After the district court denied their motions to suppress the stolen checks, the brothers conditionally pleaded guilty. The district court
sentence d each brother to 54

- months’ imprisonment. As permitted by their plea agreements, Born and Elstarheem appeal the rejection of their suppression motions.
II. To make their Fourth Amendment claim , t he Murray s focus on the very short temporal window beginning when Weeks initiated the second traffic stop and ending with Elstarheem’s flight from the Hyundai. They argue that during this period

— less than one minute by all
account s

—

Weeks unlawfully detained them because he abandoned his traffic violation investigation “ almost immediately ” and asked Born out of the car to investigate drug trafficking without any reasonable suspicion supporting detention. If their detention exceeded its investigative scope, then the stolen checks must be suppressed as fruits of an illegal search. United
States v. Hill , 195 F.3d 258, 264 (6th Cir. 1999). We review for clear error the district court’s
conclusion that Week s lawfully detained the brothers before Elstarheem’s flight , taking “theCase Nos. 18

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- evidence in the light most likely to support the district court’s decision.” United States v. Navarro

Camacho , 186 F.3d 701 , 705 (6th Cir. 1999 ). The Murrays do not argue that the t raffic stop was unlawful at its outset

— nor could they

. Though Weeks admits the traffic violation was pretext to fish for drug

- trafficking evidence, the constitutional reasonableness of the brothers ’ detention turn s on Weeks ’s objective justifications,

not his subjective motivation. Whren v. United States , 517 U.S. 806, 813

– 14 (1996). Born’s
failure to obey a red light suffices to render the stop lawful under the Fourth Amendment at its initiation. See United S tates v. Copeland , 321 F.3d 582, 593 (6th Ci r. 2003). But what starts as reasonable may become unreasonable in “its manner of execution.” Illinois v. Caballes , 543 U.S. 405, 407 (2005)

. As the brothers correctly note, the Fourth Amendment will not tolerate unrelated inquiries that measurably exte nd the duration of an otherwise lawful traffic stop. Rodriguez v. United States , 135 S.Ct. 1609, 1614 (2015)

. Thus, “[a] seizure justified only by a police

- observed traffic violation .

. . becomes unlawful if it is prolonged beyond the time reasonably re quired to complete the mission of issuing a ticket for the violation.” Id. at 1612 (internal quotation omitted)

. But, judging the record by th at standard, this case is not close. Critically, the district court found “it would not have been possible for Weeks to process and issue a traffic citation” in the “very brief passage of time” between his driver’s side approach and Elstarheem’s flight from the car. R. 35, PageID 25 8

– 59

. In that one

- minute interval, Weeks asked Born to exit the car, performed a consensual pat

- down search, and was in the process of escorting Born to his cruiser when Elstarheem fled. Weeks had barely started at the tasks tied to issuing a traffic ticket, let alone the “ordinary inquiries incident to [a] traffic stop.” Rodriguez , 135 S.Ct. at 1615 (“Typically such inquiries involve checking the driver’s license, determiningCase Nos. 18

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- whether there are outstanding warrants against the driver, and inspecting the automobil e’s registration and proof of insurance.”). True , Weeks’s prior encounter with the brothers obviated some of these ordinary inquiries

. B ut other s remained, such as verifying proper registration and insurance for the Hyundai

. The Murrays ’s claim that Wee ks abandoned his traffic

- stop investigation to embark on

a nother also lacks support in the record. They stress that Weeks had not yet questioned them about the traffic violation. An officer’s failure to ask for a motorist’s driver’s license may suggest
abandonment in some cases , but not here, given that Weeks verified Born’s license during the first stop. Nor does Weeks’s decision to order Born out of the car point to abandonment

. See United States v. Lash , 665 F. App’x 428, 431 (6th Cir. 2016) (“Even without a reason to be suspicious, an officer may order the driver to get out of the vehicle during a traffic stop to ensure his own safety during the encounter.” (internal quotation m arks omitted) )

. The district court credited Weeks’s testimony that

— in light of the brothers’ earlier story about the need to get to a hospital for an emergency that no longer appeared to exist

—he removed Born from the car to separate the brothers while he figured out what was going on. T he Murrays offer no argument that would allow us to set aside that finding as clearly erroneous.
III. As the district court concluded, Weeks lawfully detained the brothers before Elstarheem’s flight

— and reasonabl y pursue d and seize d the brothers there after. We AFFIRM.