Opinion ID: 535568
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Seizure Issue

Text: 15 In Mendenhall, the Supreme Court established a test to determine whether a person has been seized for purposes of the Fourth Amendment. [T]he police can be said to have seized an individual 'only if, in view of all of the circumstances surrounding the incident, a reasonable person would have believed that he was not free to leave.'  Michigan v. Chesternut, 486 U.S. 567, 108 S.Ct. 1975, 1979, 100 L.Ed.2d 565 (1988) (quoting Mendenhall, 446 U.S. at 554, 100 S.Ct. at 1877 (Opinion of Stewart, J.)). This court has firmly embraced that test. See, e.g., United States v. Savage, 889 F.2d 1113, 1116 (D.C.Cir.1989); United States v. Baskin, 886 F.2d 383, 386 (D.C.Cir.1989); United States v. Carrasquillo, 877 F.2d 73, 76 (D.C.Cir.1989); United States v. Lloyd, 868 F.2d 447, 450 (D.C.Cir.1989). Moreover, police 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 question [or] by putting questions to him if he is willing to listen. Royer, 460 U.S. at 497, 103 S.Ct. at 1324 (plurality); see Carrasquillo, 877 F.2d at 76; Lloyd, 868 F.2d at 451. Nor would the fact that the officer identifies himself as a police officer, without more, convert the encounter into a seizure requiring some kind of objective justification. Royer, 460 U.S. at 497, 103 S.Ct. at 1324 (plurality). 16 In determining whether police have seized a citizen, this court has consistently looked to such factors as whether the officers displayed weapons, were physically intimidating or threatening, or approached the citizen at an unusual place or time. See, e.g., Baskin, 886 F.2d at 386-87; Lloyd, 868 F.2d at 450; United States v. Brady, 842 F.2d 1313, 1314 (D.C.Cir.1988). According to the District Court's findings, in this case Maragh was aware of one plainclothes police officer, who approached him in mid-afternoon, in a public place, displayed no weapons, and did not block his path. 17 This case is on all fours with relevant parts of Baskin, a case decided too late for the District Court below to have benefitted from its binding guidance. In Baskin, two police officers approached a passenger who had disembarked from a train, identified themselves as officers, asked whether they could talk to the passenger, to which he replied sure. After asking a few questions about the passenger's ticket and identification, the officers told the passenger that they were members of a narcotics squad, and asked whether a dog they had with them could sniff the passenger's bag. The passenger agreed to both a dog sniff and a hand search by the officers, each of which revealed drugs, for which the police arrested the passenger. Citing the Chesternut and Mendenhall test for seizure noted above, this court concluded that the police did not seize Baskin, as a matter of law, until they arrested him. See Baskin, 886 F.2d at 386-87. 18 In light of cases such as Baskin, we must conclude that the District Court's judgment--that there was a stop in the totality of this case's circumstances--was wrong as a matter of law. The crux of that judgment has two identifiable components. One was the District Court's assertion that a reasonable person of defendant's years could have sensed the maneuvers and the presences of detectives Hanson (who was several feet behind Maragh, see Tr. 42, 46), and Cassidy (who was at the exit). See Maragh, 695 F.Supp. at 1225. Another was the court's conclusion that Detective Beard's identification of himself as a narcotics officer after defendant had denied possession of drugs had an in terrorem  effect on Maragh. See id. 19 The first of these factors is clearly not among this circuit's criteria for seizure. As noted above, in Baskin this court found no Fourth Amendment infirmity even where two officers approached the defendant, identified themselves as officers, received permission to talk to the defendant, asked to examine his ticket, did so, and then told the defendant that they were narcotics officers and asked to search the defendant's bag. See Baskin, 886 F.2d at 386-87. If two officers could directly approach the defendant in Baskin, it is hard to see how we could reach a different result here, where only one officer approached Maragh, even while he may have sensed the maneuvers and presences of other officers standing several feet away. 20 Baskin is similarly dispositive of the second factor central to the District Court's conclusion. 2 Baskin and other cases have rejected the proposition that a consensual encounter becomes an investigative stop at the moment an officer identifies herself as a narcotics officer. See Baskin, 886 F.2d at 386-87; Lloyd, 868 F.2d at 449, 451 (police-citizen encounter was not seizure even though officer identified himself as member of drug interdiction unit); Mendenhall, 446 U.S. at 547-48, 555, 100 S.Ct. at 1873, 1877 (Opinion of Stewart, J.) (respondent should have felt free to break off exchange with officers even though they had identified themselves as federal narcotics agent[s]). The District Court relied on cases from other circuits which came to a contrary conclusion. See Maragh, 695 F.Supp. at 1224-25. While that analysis of Fourth Amendment seizure may have much to be said for it, it is inconsistent with the law of this circuit.