Opinion ID: 504895
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Application of the Reasonable Person Test

Text: 20 A stop at a fixed checkpoint constitutes a Fourth Amendment seizure 23 --a reasonable person would believe that she was not free to leave. Bengivenga was seized from the time that her bus was stopped at the checkpoint until her arrest, but her situation, as understood by a reasonable person, did not at any time prior to production of the baggage claim stubs involve a degree of restraint associated with formal arrest. 21
22 Routine citizenship checks at fixed checkpoints are characterized by the same two features important to Berkemer 's holding that an ordinary traffic stop does not render a motorist in custody. First, traffic stops are presumptively temporary and brief. Berkemer, 468 U.S. at 437, 104 S.Ct. at 3149. 23 The vast majority of roadside detentions last only a few minutes. A motorist's expectations, when he sees a policeman's light flashing behind him, are that he will be obliged to spend a short period of time answering questions and waiting while the officer checks his license and registration, that he may then be given a citation, but that in the end he most likely will be allowed to continue on his way. 24 Id. Stationhouse interrogation, on the other hand, frequently may be prolonged and a reasonable person might expect questioning to continue until he provides his interrogators the answers they seek. Id. at 437-38, 104 S.Ct. at 3149. Second, traffic stops are less police dominated than stationhouse interrogations. Id. at 438-39, 104 S.Ct. at 3149-50. The public nature of traffic stops reduces the hazard that police might resort to overbearing means to elicit incriminating responses and diminishes the motorist's fear of abuse by the police if he fails to cooperate. Id. at 438, 104 S.Ct. at 3149. That no more than one or two police officers usually participate in a traffic stop also mitigates a motorist's sense of vulnerability. Id. 25 A routine checkpoint stop involves brief detention, limited questioning and possibly production of a relevant document. 24 The degree of restraint associated with arrest is more enduring and less circumspect. A fixed checkpoint mitigates the subjective fear a reasonable person might otherwise experience when their vehicle is stopped by border patrol agents. Id. at 558-59, 96 S.Ct. at 3083. Fixed checkpoints do not take travelers by surprise as they know, or may obtain knowledge of, the location of checkpoints and will not be stopped elsewhere. Id. at 559, 96 S.Ct. at 3083. The law enforcement presence at a fixed checkpoint actually assuages the reasonable person's perception of restraint: The regularized manner in which established checkpoints are operated is visible evidence, reassuring to law-abiding motorists, that the stops are duly authorized and believed to serve the public interest. Id. Even for those travelers directed to secondary inspection points, [t]he objective intrusion of the stop and inquiry ... remains minimal. Id. at 560, 96 S.Ct. at 3084. Like a traffic stop, routine citizenship checks usually take place in the view of other travelers and are usually conducted by one or two officers. Routine citizenship checks at fixed checkpoints do not impose a degree of restraint associated with arrest because the detention is by nature brief and subject to the scrutiny of other travelers, the intrusion is limited in scope, advance notice obtains and visible signs of authority mitigate rather than enhance the perceived degree of restraint. Bengivenga therefore was not in custody at the time Agent Santana questioned her on the bus.
26 Once the agents discovered the suitcases suspected of containing marijuana, their activity shifted from a routine checkpoint stop aimed at detecting illegal aliens to an investigation of drug smuggling. That Bengivenga and her companion were the only passengers destined for the same town as the suitcases which smelled of marijuana coupled with their nervous behavior during the search of the luggage bins made them prime suspects. But the agents, believing that they did not possess probable cause, engaged in further conduct more analogous to a noncustodial investigative stop than a formal arrest. 27 Officers possessing reasonable articulable suspicion of a person's participation in criminal activity may seize the suspect in accord with the Fourth Amendment to conduct an investigative stop--a narrow intrusion involving limited detention accompanied by brief questioning and, if justified, a frisk for weapons. 25 Such investigative stops do not render a person in custody for purposes of Miranda. Berkemer, 468 U.S. at 439-40, 104 S.Ct. at 3150. When Agent Ramos boarded the bus and asked the two women their destination and whether they had any luggage, he was conducting a noncustodial investigation. The women's answers did not completely allay his suspicion because they reconfirmed that their destination coincided with the destination of the luggage. Neither did the questions asked at this time exhaust the permissible scope of investigative questioning. In accord with a policy designed to assure the safety of the agents and the other passengers, Ramos requested the women to exit the bus. As in Berkemer, 468 U.S. at 441-42, 104 S.Ct. at 3151, where an officer asked a motorist to step out of his car and to perform a sobriety test, simply asking passengers to step off a bus and inquiring about ownership of luggage does not render a suspect in custody. 28 The agents then escorted Bengivenga and her companion to the nearby checkpoint trailer to continue the questioning. Several factors counteract the effect that moving a suspect from a bus to a building maintained by law enforcement personnel would ordinarily have on a reasonable person's perception of the situation and the degree of restraint imposed. First, the trailer was only a short distance from the bus. Second, the conduct of the agents remained subject to the public scrutiny to the extent that the bus driver was actually present in the trailer drinking coffee. The agents did not completely isolate the women in an interrogation room. Third, the number of agents did not increase. Only five people were present in the trailer--the bus driver, the two women and the two agents. Changing the locus of the questioning to the trailer had the advantage of eliminating the potentially embarrassing presence of other bus passengers. With Agent Santana preoccupied with completing a baggage receipt form for the bus driver, it was unlikely that the agents might team up to overbear Bengivenga's will. 26 Finally, a reasonable person in Bengivenga's position would have understood that so long as the bus driver remained in the trailer the bus would not depart and if everything checked out she would shortly rejoin the other passengers on the bus. 29 Other than being moved to the nearby trailer, the objective facts do not indicate that the border agents imposed a degree of restraint associated with formal arrest. The agents did not communicate the basis for their suspicions. Their reluctance to assert restraint stemmed from their belief that they did not possess probable cause until after they matched the baggage claim stubs to the three suitcases. At no time during the minute and a half that elapsed in the trailer before formal arrest was Bengivenga given any reason to believe that her detention would be other than temporary. Nor did the nature of the questioning intensify once inside the trailer. The incriminating baggage claim stubs inadvertently surfaced in response to a request to see Bengivenga's bus ticket, a question likely to be routinely asked of any bus passenger who becomes the object of an investigative stop. Rather than successive confrontations with the border agents, Bengivenga was subjected to no more than a routine citizenship check that quickly progressed from an investigative stop to her formal arrest. At no time prior to production of the baggage claim stubs did this situation, as understood by a neutral and reasonable person in Bengivenga's position, involve the degree of restraint associated with formal arrest. 30