Opinion ID: 2975097
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Seizure of Campbell

Text: “[T]he Constitution forbids . . . not all searches and seizures, but unreasonable searches and seizures.” Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 9 (1968). Encounters between police officers and citizens can be grouped into three categories: “consensual encounters in which contact is initiated by a police officer without any articulable reason whatsoever and the citizen is briefly asked some questions; a temporary involuntary detention or Terry stop which must be predicated upon reasonable suspicion; and arrests which must be based on probable cause.” United States v. Bueno, 21 F.3d 120, 123 (6th Cir. 1994) (quotation marks omitted). No. 06-3321 United States v. Campbell Page 4 In Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491, 497 (1983), the Supreme Court elaborated on what constitutes a consensual encounter: [L]aw enforcement officers do not violate the Fourth Amendment by merely approaching an individual on the street or in another public place, by asking him if he is willing to answer some questions, by putting questions to him if the person is willing to listen, or by offering in evidence in a criminal prosecution his voluntary answers to such questions. Nor would the fact that the officer identifies himself as a police officer, without more, convert the encounter into a seizure requiring some level of objective justification. The person approached, however, need not answer any question put to him; indeed, he may decline to listen to the questions at all and may go on his way. He may not be detained even momentarily without reasonable, objective grounds for doing so; and his refusal to listen or answer does not, without more, furnish those grounds. If there is no detention—no seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment—then no constitutional rights have been infringed. Id. (citations omitted). In short, because a consensual encounter does not amount to a seizure, a police officer does not need reasonable suspicion or probable cause before approaching an individual to make an inquiry. See United States v. Alston, 375 F.3d 408, 411 (6th Cir. 2004) (holding that the defendant’s encounter with police officers, who approached her in an airport because they suspected her of drug trafficking, did not constitute a seizure under the Fourth Amendment because a reasonable person under those circumstances would have felt free to leave). A seizure of an individual, on the other hand, occurs when “under the totality of the circumstances, a reasonable person would have believed that he or she was not free to walk away.” Id. at 411. The police officer’s subjective intent in detaining an individual is irrelevant so long as that intent is not conveyed to the individual in a way that results in the individual believing that he or she is not free to leave. See United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U.S. 544, 554 n.6 (1980). “Examples of circumstances that might indicate a seizure, even where the person did not attempt to leave, would be the threatening presence of several officers, the display of a weapon by an officer, some physical touching of the person of the citizen, or the use of language or tone of voice indicating that compliance with the officer’s request might be compelled.” Id. at 554. Once a consensual encounter escalates to the point where the individual is “seized,” the police officer must have a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity to justify a Terry stop, or probable cause to justify an arrest, in order for the seizure to comply with the Fourth Amendment. See, e.g., Reid v. Georgia, 448 U.S. 438, 440 (1980) (noting that “any curtailment of a person’s liberty by the police must be supported at least by a reasonable and articulable suspicion that the person seized is engaged in criminal activity”). The Supreme Court has explained that, during a Terry stop, “a reasonable search for weapons for the protection of the police officer, where he has reason to believe that he is dealing with an armed and dangerous individual, regardless of whether he has probable cause to arrest the individual for a crime,” is permissible. 392 U.S. at 27. Terry does not require the officer to “be absolutely certain that the individual is armed; the issue is whether a reasonably prudent man in the circumstances would be warranted in the belief that his safety or that of others was in danger.” Id. Because the search is for the limited purpose of ensuring the safety of the officer and others around him, the search must “be confined in scope to an intrusion reasonably designed to discover guns, knives, clubs, or other hidden instruments for the assault of the police officer.” Id. at 29. The final category of a permissible encounter between a police officer and an individual is an arrest based on probable cause. A warrantless arrest is constitutionally valid if, “at the moment the arrest was made, the officers had probable cause to make it—whether at that moment the facts and circumstances within their knowledge and of which they had reasonably trustworthy information No. 06-3321 United States v. Campbell Page 5 were sufficient to warrant a prudent man in believing that the [individual] had committed or was committing an offense.” Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 91 (1964); see also United States v. Caicedo, 85 F.3d 1184, 1192 (6th Cir. 1996) (“Police may arrest a person without a warrant if they have probable cause at the time of the arrest to believe that the person has committed or is committing a crime.”). “Probable cause is a standard more stringent than reasonable suspicion, but does not require any showing that the officer’s suspicions prove to be correct or that they are more likely true than false.” Id. (citations omitted). Once a lawful arrest has been made, the police officer is permitted to search the individual. United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 235 (1973) (holding that following “a lawful custodial arrest a full search of the person is not only an exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment, but is also a ‘reasonable’ search under that Amendment”). This includes a search of the individual’s vehicle. United States v. Robinson, 390 F.3d 853, 871 (6th Cir. 2004) (explaining that this court has allowed searches of automobiles incident to an arrest even if the “arrestee was out of the car, handcuffed, and placed in the back seat of a police cruiser”). With this conceptual framework in mind, we now turn to the issue of whether Campbell was lawfully seized by Officer Salser. The government argues that Officer Salser had “reasonable suspicion” to stop Campbell on the parking lot and conduct a pat down for weapons when the officer first approached him. Alternatively, it contends that Officer Salser had probable cause to arrest Campbell after Campbell’s response to the officer’s first question, based on Campbell’s statement that he did not have any identification with him. This statement, according to the government, took place before Officer Salser seized Campbell and provided probable cause because driving without a license is a violation of Ohio law. Campbell, on the other hand, argues that Officer Salser seized him without probable cause or reasonable suspicion when Officer Salser first asked him to show identification. The district court granted Campbell’s motion to suppress after concluding that Campbell was seized by Officer Salser without reasonable suspicion or probable cause. It determined that Campbell reasonably believed that he was not free to leave when Officer Salser asked Campbell to show some identification. Although the court noted that Officer Salser may have eventually developed a reasonable suspicion to support a Terry stop, the facts supporting that reasonable suspicion arose only after Campbell was seized: After Campbell failed to provide his social security number to Salser, Salser did not believe Campbell’s statements regarding his name and date of birth. In the ensuing exchange with Campbell, Salser may have developed a reasonable suspicion that Campbell had made a false description of his name or birth date. . . . Campbell’s pacing and agitation also made Salser fearful that Campbell might fight him. However, Salser came to this suspicion only after rejecting Campbell’s request to leave the encounter to pick up his girlfriend. The grounds to believe Campbell was potentially involved in some activity only developed after the unreasonable detention. We respectfully disagree. A person is seized when “a reasonable person would not feel free to leave an encounter with police.” Bennett v. City of Eastpointe, 410 F.3d 810, 834 (6th Cir. 2005). In Florida v. Bostick, 501 U.S. 429, 439 (1991), the Supreme Court stated that “a court must consider all the circumstances surrounding the encounter to determine whether the police conduct would have communicated to a reasonable person that the person was not free to decline the officers’ requests or otherwise terminate the encounter.” The Court elaborated that “no seizure occurs when police ask questions of an individual, [and] ask to examine the individual’s identification, . . . so long as the officers do not convey a message that compliance with their requests is required.” Id. at 437. In our view, the interaction between Officer Salser and Campbell No. 06-3321 United States v. Campbell Page 6 did not escalate beyond a consensual encounter until after Officer Salser told Campbell that he “could be on his way just as soon as [I] ID’d him.” Officer Salser’s first statement was that he would like to see Campbell’s ID. The use of the word “like,” as opposed to “need” or “want,” suggests that a reasonable person would feel free to decline this request and leave the scene. Moreover, Salser had not yet called for backup. He was alone with Campbell at this point in the encounter and had neither drawn his weapon nor activated his emergency lights or siren. Nothing about Officer Salser’s first request for identification suggests that Campbell’s freedom to leave the encounter was conditioned on complying with the request. Nor did Officer Salser ask Campbell to accompany him anywhere for further questioning. See United States v. Garcia, 866 F.2d 147, 151 (6th Cir. 1989) (“[T]he one occurrence which seems to distinguish ‘seizures’ from casual contacts between police and citizens is when the defendant is asked to accompany the police or agents to a place to which the defendant had not planned to go.”). In INS v. Delgado, 466 U.S. 210, 216 (1984), the Supreme Court noted that “interrogation relating to one’s identity or a request for identification by the police does not, by itself, constitute a Fourth Amendment seizure.” Moreover, this court has previously held that the use of less permissive language by police officers than the phrase “I’d like to see some ID” did not constitute a seizure. See United States v. Matthews, 278 F.3d 560, 562 (6th Cir. 2002) (holding that a person walking down the street was not detained when an officer driving in a marked police car yelled “Hey, buddy, come here,” with the court characterizing the statement as a request rather than an order). We respectfully disagree with the dissent’s characterization of Officer Salser’s first request for identification as a seizure. The key inquiry of Campbell, according to Officer Salser, was that “before he [Campbell] left I would like to see his ID, just to log that I talked to him.” In the dissent’s view, this language morphs into “that he could not leave until he presented his identification” and that a reasonable person would not feel free to leave “until the Officer fulfilled his duty of logging the encounter.” Dissenting Op. 10-11. The record does not support this characterization. Officer Salser was simply giving Campbell the reason why Salser would like to see Campbell’s ID; he was not at that point conditioning Campbell’s departure on such production. Only later in their exchange—after Campbell said that he had no ID—did Officer Salser “seize” Campbell by creating the condition that “he could be on his way just as soon as [I] ID’d him.” In short, Campbell could have declined Officer Salser’s initial request and left the scene of the encounter. The fact that he chose not to do so did not convert that request into a seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. See Mendenhall, 446 U.S. at 553 (holding that a “person is ‘seized’ only when, by means of physical force or a show of authority, his freedom of movement is restrained”); United States v. Peters, 194 F.3d 692, 698 (6th Cir. 1999) (“Absent coercive or intimidating behavior which negates the reasonable belief that compliance is not compelled, the [government] agent’s request for additional identification and voluntarily given information from the defendant does not constitute a seizure under the Fourth Amendment.”); United States v. Nappier, 155 F. App’x 859, 864 (6th Cir. 2005) (holding that the defendant was not seized when “officers went to the entrance of Nappier’s residence, knocked on the door, waited for him to respond, and asked him to identify himself when he appeared,” because during that period of time “Nappier was free to disregard the officers’ request that he come to the door, was free to decline to answer the officers’ preliminary, nonthreatening questions, and was free to otherwise terminate the encounter”). The district court clearly erred in finding to the contrary. No. 06-3321 United States v. Campbell Page 7