Opinion ID: 748373
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Stop & Arrest

Text: 25 Throughout its opinion, the majority places a great deal of emphasis on the events that preceded the stop and arrest of the defendants. 26 Castro and Gomez were the focus of a massive effort by numerous federal and local drug enforcement agents to uncover evidence of illegal drug activity. The agents conducting the surveillance of Castro and Gomez followed them first through the City of Houston and, finally, through several Texas counties. At no time did either Castro or Gomez do anything that conceivably could have served as the basis for finding probable cause of a drug violation.... If these numerous federal and state law enforcement agents had, or believed that they had, probable cause to arrest, it defies all logic and reason to believe they would not have done so during the early surveillance or at some time in the 100-plus miles of trailing through several Texas counties. 27 Instead, the agents orchestrated a routine traffic stop, contacting a local deputy sheriff and instructing him to create his own probable cause. The deputy sheriff did as instructed and, while the agents stood by and watched, ostensibly arrested Castro and Vicencio for a seat belt violation. 28 In so doing, the majority implicitly suggests that the lawfulness of the stop and arrest are somehow dependent on the motives of the federal agents and Deputy Nettles. However, the Supreme Court has made clear that the subjective intentions of police officers play no role in ordinary, probable-cause Fourth Amendment analysis. Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, ----, 116 S.Ct. 1769, 1774, 135 L.Ed.2d 89 (1996). Consequently, the suspicions of the federal officers who followed the Suburban, and the subjective beliefs of Deputy Nettles, have no bearing on the lawfulness of the stop and arrest. Absent compelling evidence to the contrary (which is not present in this case), we are bound by the district judge's findings that the stop and arrest were lawful under the Fourth Amendment.