Opinion ID: 65371
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Rodriguez's Abruptly Pulling into a Convenience Store

Text: Rodriguez's final claim is that his decision to stop at a convenience store in Barnhart, Texas after he had been followed for approximately twenty miles by a vehicle [driven by Coronado] that had refused to pass, along with the fact that Rodriguez had gone into the store for what Agent Coronado decided was a suspiciously short period of time, could not give rise to any additional suspicious inferences. For this proposition, and without explanation, he again cites Jones, 149 F.3d at 369-71. The Jones court held that a number of highly circumstantial pieces of evidence were insufficient as a basis of reasonable suspicion. We read this citation to contend that Rodriguez's brief stop at the convenience store is analogous to one or all of those pieces of circumstantial evidence. Review of this question, which goes to the totality of the circumstances, is de novo. In Jones, the suspect look[ed] like a tourist, was driving northbound on Highway 118 approximately eighty (80) miles north of the Texas-Mexico border at 7:00 a.m., after sunrise, with his lights on in a Toyota 4 Runner with fresh mud on it with a blue tarp over something in the rear cargo area; the court found that that description, even in conjunction with the SUV's broken taillight, was far more consistent with [defendant] being a tourist coming from Big Bend National Park than an alien smuggler or drug smuggler who crossed the Rio Grande before dawn that morning. Id. at 371. The Government does not contend that the convenience store stop was one of its bases for reasonable suspicion. Coronado did mention it, however, in his report. Like many of the individual considerations the Government cites, this fact, in isolation, would not support a finding of reasonable suspicion. In this case, however, the Government can rely on other more probative sources of suspicion besides the one Rodriguez attacks here. Among the sources of suspicion the district court could have credited were the BOLO report and Rodriguez's errant driving, as well as the road's status as a recognized corridor for narcotics and illegal alien smuggling and the agents' own experience in anti-smuggling operations. Therefore, the district court did not err in finding that reasonable suspicion supported the seizure, whether or not it considered Rodriguez's convenience store stop. Of the eight factors we mentioned in Jacquinot, 258 F.3d at 427, in describing the totality-of-the-circumstances test for reasonableness, only the first factorproximity to the border could conceivably be of assistance to Rodriguez (the Ford Tempo appears to have been close to the border when Hardin first saw it, but was not when it was ultimately stopped). All the other Jacquinot factors favor a finding of reasonable suspicion.