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IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF ALABAMA

SOUTHERN DIVISION

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA )

 )

v. ) CRIMINAL NO. 16-0058-WS 

 )

JEROME MEGAILE HENRY, )

 )

 Defendant. )

ORDER

On August 9, 2016, the defendant filed a motion to suppress. (Doc. 19). The 

Court entered an order requiring the government to respond by August 16 and for the 

defendant to file any reply by August 21. (Doc. 20). The government filed a response, 

(Doc. 23), but the defendant filed no reply. On August 22, the Court entered an order 

denying the motion to suppress on its merits. (Doc. 25). 

Nine hours later, at 11:38 p.m. on August 22, without any advance notice of his 

intentions, the defendant filed what he labels his “reply to government’s response to 

defendant[’]s motion to dismiss.” (Doc. 26). Because the deadline for filing a reply had 

already passed, and because the Court had already resolved the motion, this filing came 

too late to be considered. Even had the defendant’s reply been timely filed, it could not 

salvage his motion to suppress.

The Court denied the defendant’s motion because, under Supreme Court and 

Eleventh Circuit precedent, a traffic stop supported by probable cause or reasonable 

suspicion does not violate the Fourth Amendment simply because the involved officer 

exceeds his state-law authority in making the stop. The defendant ignores all the 

precedents cited and quoted by the Court and instead repairs to two trial court decisions 

that are from outside the Eleventh Circuit and that were released prior to the 2008 

Supreme Court decision on which the Eleventh Circuit precedents rely. Accordingly, the 

defendant’s cases are neither controlling nor persuasive. 

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The defendant suggests there is a constitutional difference between an officer 

acting beyond his geographic jurisdiction and one acting beyond his subject matter 

jurisdiction. (Doc. 26 at 8). He identifies no authority recognizing such a distinction, 

which is unsupported by the cases cited by the Court. In Virginia v. Moore, 553 U.S. 164 

(2008), for example, two officers arrested the defendant for driving on a suspended 

license even though arrest for such an offense was “prohibited by state law.” Id. at 166-

67. Even though the officers had no state authority to arrest the defendant regardless of

their location, their doing so did not violate the Fourth Amendment because the arrest 

was supported by probable cause. Id. at 176. 

Similarly, in Knight v. Jacobson, 300 F.3d 1272 (11th Cir. 2002), Florida law 

“authorize[d] warrantless arrests for misdemeanors only if they are committed in the 

officer’s presence,” so the defendant in this Section 1983 action lacked state authority 

when he arrested the plaintiff for a misdemeanor assault he did not witness. Id. at 1276. 

Nevertheless, it was “not correct” for the plaintiff to assert that “an arrest supported by 

probable cause in circumstances where arrest is not permitted under state law violates the 

Fourth Amendment.” Id. Likewise, when the defendant in a Section 1983 action arrested 

the plaintiff without state authority to do so, “such state law limitations on an officer’s 

arrest authority are not incorporated into the Fourth Amendment.” Ducre v. Archer, ___ 

Fed. Appx. ___, 2016 WL 3006843 at *1 (11th Cir. 2016).

In Bowling v. Rector, 584 F.3d 956 (10th Cir. 2009), the Section 1983 defendant 

(like the officers here, at least in the defendant’s estimation) was a “limited-authority 

officer [who] acted outside his jurisdiction over particular subject matters under state 

law.” Id. at 967.1 The Court concluded, based on Moore and two Tenth Circuit cases, 

“that for Fourth Amendment purposes, the conduct of officers acting in excess of their 

statutory authority must be tested by Fourth Amendment standards.” Id. at 968. Because 

the warrant obtained by the defendant was valid under the Fourth Amendment,

 1 Specifically, the defendant was a “Ranger,” authorized to enforce state laws regarding 

larceny of farm animals, equipment and supplies, who sought, obtained and executed a search 

warrant to investigate bank fraud and the sale of mortgaged property. 584 F.3d at 960-62, 965.

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“[w]hether or not [the defendant’s] alleged conduct in seeking the warrant violated 

Oklahoma law, it did not violate [the plaintiff’s] constitutional rights.” Id. at 970.2 

For the reasons set forth above and in the Court’s previous order, the defendant’s 

reply, construed as a motion for reconsideration, is denied.

DONE and ORDERED this 23rd day of August, 2016.

s/ WILLIAM H. STEELE

 CHIEF UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

 2 The same principle applied equally in the associated criminal case. United States v. 

Bowling, 619 F.3d 1175, 1186 (10th Cir. 2010). 

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