Opinion ID: 178471
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the decision in morgan

Text: I agree with the majority that the only other federal court to decide this question, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, held that the word arrest in U.S.S.G. § 4A1.2(a)(2) includes a citation. United States v. Morgan, 354 F.3d 621, 623-624 (7th Cir.2003) (finding that a traffic stop for continuing to drive with a revoked license, which resulted in the issuance of a citation, but not a trip to jail, was an arrest). However, unlike the majority, I do not find Morgan in the least persuasive. In concluding that arrest within the meaning of § 4A1.2(a)(2) includes citations, Judge Easterbrook, now Chief Judge, writing for the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, began his analysis by concluding, without reasoning or citation to authority, that [c]alling the traffic stop an `arrest' implements the Sentencing Commission's goal. Morgan, 354 F.3d at 623. The court then stated that a defendant who commits a crime, is arrested for that offense, and then commits another crime, is a recidivist whose criminal record should be tallied in full. Morgan, 354 F.3d at 623 (citing to United States v. Coleman, 38 F.3d 856, 860 (7th Cir.1994)). The court determined that the same is true of one who only receives a citation. Next, the court in Morgan stated that [a]t all events, there is no ambiguity. A traffic stop is an `arrest' in federal parlance. Id. at 624. (citing Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 116 S.Ct. 1769, 135 L.Ed.2d 89 (1996)). This conclusory statement is troubling, because I do not believe that Whren stands for that proposition at all. I understand Whren to stand for the unremarkable proposition that [t]emporary detention of individuals during the stop of an automobile by the police, even if only for a brief period and for a limited purpose, constitutes a `seizure' of `persons'  within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Id. at 809, 116 S.Ct. 1769 (citing Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 653, 99 S.Ct. 1391, 59 L.Ed.2d 660 (1979)). Whren does cite to United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 94 S.Ct. 467, 38 L.Ed.2d 427 (1973), stating that we held [in Robinson ] that a traffic-violation arrest ( of the sort here ) would not be rendered invalid by the fact that it was `a mere pretext for a narcotics search.' Whren, 517 U.S. at 813, 116 S.Ct. 1769 (emphasis added). However, the traffic stop in Robinson involved a full custody arrest, not a brief stop, citation, and release. Robinson, 414 U.S. at 221, 94 S.Ct. 467. Further, the court in Morgan did not fully reconcile its ruling with the earlier pronouncement of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in United States v. Joseph, 50 F.3d 401 (7th Cir.1995), that the court would not rewrite the guidelines by interpreting arrest to mean arrest or charge in the absence of a compelling reason ... for believing that the choice of words was a slip of the pen. Id. at 403. The persuasiveness of Morgan is further undermined by the fact that the entire analysis of the issue of whether an arrest includes a citation is limited to a single paragraph of the opinion. Two points, in particular, that the court emphasized are perplexing and troubling. First, the court emphasized that Morgan was caught red-handed driving after his license's revocation. Morgan, 354 F.3d at 623. Second, the court observed that Morgan could have been taken to the stationhouse. Id. at 624. While both points are no doubt true, I do not think that either the weight of the evidence against Morgan nor a hypothetical trip to the stationhouse is remotely relevant to the issue of the meaning of arrest as that term is used in this guideline. Indeed, Judge Easterbrook agreed with this latter proposition in his prior decision in United States v. Childs, 277 F.3d 947 (7th Cir.2002) ( en banc ), in which he pointedly stated, The reasonableness of a seizure depends on what the police do, not on what they might have done. Childs, 277 F.3d at 953 (emphasis in the original). Why should what officers might have done have any more significance in the context of the Sentencing Guidelines than it does in the context of the Fourth Amendment? This case should not turn on either what might have, but did not happen, or on the sentence imposed at a later time, but instead should turn on whether there was as intervening arrest within the meaning of § 4A1.2(a)(2) when Leal-Felix received a citation.