NOT RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION

File Name: 16a0544n.06

No. 15-6244

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

QUADRICUS DEAN, 

Defendant-Appellant.

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ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED 

STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE 

WESTERN DISTRICT OF TENNESSEE 

BEFORE: DAUGHTREY, GIBBONS, and COOK, Circuit Judges.

MARTHA CRAIG DAUGHTREY, Circuit Judge. The defendant, Quadricus Dean, was 

stopped by police after he pulled his car out of a parking lot and across five lanes, nearly striking

a police car, and then swerved into the next lane, almost hitting a second car. During the traffic 

stop, Dean appeared confused and an officer detected the odor of marijuana, so the officers 

removed Dean from the vehicle and searched it. The search uncovered marijuana, cocaine, and a 

handgun, and Dean was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm. After his motion 

to suppress the evidence from the traffic stop was denied, Dean pleaded guilty and was 

sentenced. He now appeals the denial of his motion to suppress and the portion of the 

supervised-release condition in his written judgment that was not pronounced orally at the

sentencing hearing. Finding no clear error, we affirm the denial of the motion to suppress. 

However, because the government concedes that the district court abused its discretion in 
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imposing the additional supervised-release condition, we remand this matter for entry of an 

amended judgment that conforms to the supervised-release condition announced at sentencing.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

Dean was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm. He moved to suppress 

the evidence supporting the charge, which was obtained from a search of his car during a traffic 

stop. A magistrate judge conducted a suppression hearing, in which three witnesses testified. 

The government called Officers Beasley and Neely, the policemen who stopped Dean, searched 

his car, and arrested him. The defense called Victoria Peeples, Dean’s fiancée, who witnessed 

the events leading up to the stop.

Beasley testified that he was driving his marked patrol car eastbound on Winchester Road 

around 8:00 PM on his way to respond to an alarm. He witnessed a vehicle rapidly pull out of 

the parking lot of the Super Center Laundromat and cross five lanes, entering the lane in which 

Beasley was traveling. The vehicle entered the lane less than one car length in front of Beasley,

who had to slam on his brakes to avoid a collision. The vehicle then maneuvered into the 

adjacent lane without signaling, almost striking a second vehicle. Beasley turned on his lights 

and initiated a traffic stop. After driving less than 0.2 miles on Winchester, the offending driver

turned left on Kirby Road and stopped immediately. 

Beasley approached the vehicle, which was being driven by Dean, and asked Dean for his 

driver’s license and insurance information. Dean appeared dazed and just stared at Beasley for a 

few seconds, appearing not to understand the request. This lasted longer than the “normal time” 

of 15 to 20 seconds in which individuals usually can produce a driver’s license. Dean then began 

reaching under his seat and between the seat and the center console. Around this time, Neely, 
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who was standing on the passenger side of the car, gave Beasley a sign indicating that he could 

smell marijuana. Beasley could not smell marijuana because he “had some type of sinus 

infection.” Beasley asked Dean to exit the vehicle, placed him in handcuffs, and moved him to 

the back seat of the police car.

Neely testified that he was driving ahead of Beasley on Winchester, and he turned around 

after he saw Beasley initiate the traffic stop. When he arrived at the stop, Neely observed Dean 

looking confused and as if “he . . . didn’t know what was going on, [or] what was [sic] the 

questions being asked.” Neely testified that Dean did not say anything and was “[k]ind of 

baffled about why he was being stopped.” Neely observed Dean searching around and digging 

under his seat. Neely noticed the “smell of raw marijuana coming from the vehicle” and 

conveyed this to Beasley. At the suppression hearing, Neely did not recall whether the 

passenger’s side window of the car was rolled down when he smelled marijuana. He testified 

that the amount of time between when Beasley approached Dean’s car and when Dean was 

removed from the vehicle “wasn’t that long at all” and could be measured “in seconds.”

Once Dean had been removed from the vehicle, Neely searched the car for contraband. 

Inside the center console, he found a handgun, ammunition, 1.16 grams of marijuana in a plastic 

bag, 2.55 grams of powder cocaine, 16.43 grams of crack cocaine, scales, and a spoon. Neely 

also found Dean’s driver’s license underneath and slightly behind the driver’s seat. After Neely 

located the contraband, Dean was arrested.

Peeples, the defense witness, offered a different version of the events leading up to the 

traffic stop. She testified that she was taking a break from her job at the Super Center 

Laundromat on Winchester when Dean pulled into the parking lot and talked with her for about
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ten minutes. Peeples said that she watched Dean wait with his left blinker on for 10 to 20 

seconds before pulling out onto Winchester. According to Peeples, after Dean pulled onto 

Winchester, she continued to watch for about 10 seconds but did not see any police cars or see

Dean swerve or come into close contact with another vehicle. Peeples said that she then returned 

to work and did not see the traffic stop or the events that followed.

After hearing the witnesses’ testimony and the parties’ arguments, the magistrate judge 

issued a report and recommendation, in which he found the officers’ testimony to be credible and 

adopted their version of events. The magistrate judge credited the officers’ testimony over 

Peeples’s because of Peeples’s close relationship with Dean, the witnesses’ demeanor, and “the 

fact that the officers were in the process of responding to an alarm call and terminated their 

response in order to stop Dean’s vehicle.” The judge concluded that Beasley had probable cause 

to stop Dean because Beasley witnessed Dean committing traffic violations. The magistrate 

judge also found that the officers had probable cause to search Dean’s vehicle based on the odor 

of marijuana Neely detected. The magistrate judge recommended that Dean’s motion to 

suppress be denied, and the district court adopted the recommendation over Dean’s objection, 

giving great deference to the magistrate judge’s credibility determinations.

Dean pleaded guilty, reserving the right to appeal the denial of his motion to suppress. 

The district court sentenced Dean to 87 months of imprisonment, and this appeal followed. 

DISCUSSION

Denial of Motion to Suppress

In an appeal from the district court’s denial of a motion to suppress, we review the 

district court’s findings of fact for clear error, its legal conclusions de novo, and the evidence in 
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the light most favorable to the government. United States v. Jackson, 682 F.3d 448, 452 (6th 

Cir. 2012). A district court’s factual finding is clearly erroneous when, “although there is 

evidence to support the finding, the reviewing court on the entire evidence is left with the 

definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed.” United States v. Worley, 193 

F.3d 380, 384 (6th Cir. 1999) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).

The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. U.S. Const. 

amend. IV. A traffic stop is a seizure, and any evidence obtained from a traffic stop that is

unreasonable, or illegal, must be suppressed. Jackson, 682 F.3d at 453. “It is well established 

that a police officer lawfully may stop a car when he has probable cause to believe that a civil 

traffic violation has occurred, or reasonable suspicion of an ongoing crime.” Id. If probable 

cause supports a traffic stop, then the officer’s subjective intent in initiating the stop is irrelevant. 

United States v. Blair, 524 F.3d 740, 748 (6th Cir. 2008). 

A warrantless search also violates the Fourth Amendment, except in limited 

circumstances. The “automobile exception” to the warrant requirement “allows officers to 

search a vehicle without a warrant if they have probable cause to believe that the vehicle contains 

evidence of a crime.” United States v. Galaviz, 645 F.3d 347, 355 (6th Cir. 2011) (internal 

quotation marks and citation omitted). “Probable cause is a reasonable ground for belief 

supported by less than prima facie proof but more than mere suspicion.” Blair, 524 F.3d at 748. 

Dean challenges the district court’s finding that the officers’ testimony was credible and 

its resulting conclusion that the traffic stop was supported by probable cause. While

acknowledging the great deference owed to the magistrate judge’s credibility determinations, he 

asserts that no reasonable fact finder could have found the officers to be credible because their 
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testimony was inconsistent and implausible. Dean points out that Beasley and Peeples, the only 

two witnesses to the moments leading up to the traffic stop, offered contradictory accounts. 

Dean asserts that Beasley’s account of Dean’s maneuvers when exiting the Super Center 

Laundromat must be false because it is implausible that Dean would pull across five lanes of 

traffic directly in front of an oncoming police car and that Neely would fail to notice such 

reckless driving in his rearview mirror. He also points to the fact that he was not charged with 

any driving infractions as support for his argument that the reckless driving about which Beasley 

testified did not occur. In Dean’s view, these factors add up to the inescapable conclusion that 

Beasley’s testimony was not credible.

Put simply, Dean’s arguments fail to persuade us that the lower court’s credibility finding 

was clearly erroneous. Although it certainly is unwise to pull across five lanes of traffic and 

almost collide with a police car, it is not implausible that a driver would do so, particularly if that 

driver were under the influence of drugs. This conclusion is bolstered by the fact that Dean 

behaved strangely during the traffic stop and that drugs were found in his car. Moreover, it is 

perfectly plausible that Neely would not witness Dean’s reckless driving in his rearview mirror if

Neely’s attention was focused on the road ahead when it occurred. The lack of driving-related 

charges in Dean’s arrest ticket also fails to prove that he did not drive recklessly. In light of the 

more serious charges Dean faced after the police found drugs and a gun in his car, Beasley

reasonably may have decided to forego the misdemeanor driving charges, even though Dean’s 

behavior would have supported such charges.

The magistrate judge heard all of the testimony, observed the witnesses’ demeanor, and

adopted his own permissible interpretation of the testimony, rather than the interpretation Dean 

urges. “[W]here there are two permissible views of the evidence[,] the district court’s 
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conclusions cannot be clearly erroneous.” Worley, 193 F.3d at 384 (internal quotation marks and 

citation omitted). Therefore, even assuming we find Dean’s interpretation of the testimony to be 

a permissible one, we cannot rule in his favor. We conclude that the district court’s factual 

findings were not clearly erroneous and, thus, that the court did not abuse its discretion in 

holding that probable cause supported the traffic stop.

Dean also challenges the district court’s ruling that the officers had probable cause to 

search his vehicle based on the odor of marijuana. We have held that “an officer’s detection of 

the smell of marijuana in an automobile can by itself establish probable cause for a search.” 

United States v. Johnson, 707 F.3d 655, 658 (6th Cir. 2013) (internal quotation marks and 

citations omitted). Therefore, the magistrate judge’s finding that the officers had probable cause 

to search Dean’s car turned on the credibility of Neely’s testimony that he smelled raw marijuana 

coming from the vehicle.

Dean points out that his car contained only “approximately one gram of marijuana”

located in a plastic bag and enclosed in the center console and that Beasley did not smell 

marijuana. The magistrate judge found it to be improbable that Neely’s nose detected the smell 

of the marijuana in the center console, but he hypothesized that the odor could have come from 

marijuana that recently had been in the vehicle.

We must review the factual findings of the magistrate judge, who had the opportunity to 

observe the live testimony, for clear error, and in this case we cannot say that the court clearly 

erred in finding Neely’s testimony to be credible. The court’s theory that a larger quantity of 

marijuana previously was in Dean’s car and gave rise to the odor is plausible given Dean’s dazed 

demeanor and the presence of marijuana in his car. Finding no clear error in the factual findings 
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supporting the lower court’s probable-cause determination and in the absence of any legal error, 

we uphold the denial of Dean’s motion to suppress.

Supervised Release Condition

Dean’s second issue on appeal concerns the written judgment entered after his 

sentencing. At the sentencing hearing, the district court stated, “He needs to participate in drug 

testing and treatment as directed by his probation officer.” The written judgment reads:

The defendant shall participate as directed in a program (outpatient and/or 

inpatient) approved by the Probation Officer for treatment of narcotic addiction or 

drug or alcohol dependency which may include testing for the detection of 

substance use or abuse. Further, the defendant shall be required to contribute to 

the costs of services for such treatment not to exceed an amount determined 

reasonable by the Probation Officer.

Thus, the written judgment added the requirement that the defendant contribute to the costs of 

treatment in an amount determined by the Probation Officer.

The government concedes that the district court abused its discretion by adding an 

additional supervised-release condition in the written judgment that was not pronounced at 

sentencing. We therefore remand the sentencing order to the district court for entry of an 

amended judgment that conforms to the oral pronouncement of the supervised-release condition

at sentencing. 

CONCLUSION

The district court did not clearly err in finding Beasley’s and Neely’s testimony to be 

credible and, as a result, correctly determined that they had probable cause to stop Dean and 

search his car. We therefore AFFIRM the court’s denial of Dean’s motion to suppress. 

However, the government concedes that the district court abused its discretion by adding a 

condition to the supervised-release portion of the written judgment. We REMAND this matter to 
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the district court with instructions to enter an amended judgment that conforms to the oral 

pronouncement of the conditions of supervised release at the sentencing hearing.