Opinion ID: 415225
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: At Time of Apprehension

Text: 9 Shaw's first contention is that the district court erred in not suppressing as evidence the rifle and shells seized by the officers from his pickup during the initial stop on the night of December 25, 1980. 10 It is a cardinal principle of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence that searches conducted outside the judicial process of obtaining a warrant are per se unreasonable, except those conducted in a few narrowly defined situations. The exceptional situations are those in which the societal costs of obtaining a warrant, such as danger to law officers or risk of loss or destruction of evidence, outweigh the interest of recourse to a neutral magistrate. Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U.S. 753, 759, 99 S.Ct. 2586, 2590, 61 L.Ed.2d 235 (1979); Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 455, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 2032, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971). Predicated on this exigent circumstances rationale is the so-called automobile exception, first articulated by the Supreme Court in Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 45 S.Ct. 280, 69 L.Ed. 543 (1925). In Carroll, the Supreme Court held that a warrantless search of an automobile on a highway is not unreasonable within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment so long as the police have probable cause to believe that the contents of the automobile offend against the law. Id. at 159, 45 S.Ct. at 287. 11 Recently, in United States v. Edwards, 577 F.2d 883 (5th Cir.) (en banc), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 968, 99 S.Ct. 458, 58 L.Ed.2d 427 (1978), this Court stated that probable cause to search an automobile exists when trustworthy facts and circumstances within the officer's personal knowledge would cause a reasonably prudent man to believe that the vehicle contains contraband. Id. at 895. We stressed that probable cause is the sum total of layers of information and the synthesis of what police have heard, what they know, and what they observed as trained officers. Id., quoting Smith v. United States, 358 F.2d 833, 837 (D.C.Cir.1966), cert. denied, 386 U.S. 1008, 87 S.Ct. 1350, 18 L.Ed.2d 448 (1967). Each individual layer of information is not to be weighed. Rather, the laminated total of the facts available is the source of the justification for a vehicle search without a warrant. United States v. Edwards, supra, 577 F.2d at 895, quoting Smith v. United States, supra, 358 F.2d at 837; Doescher v. Estelle, 666 F.2d 285, 289 (5th Cir.1982). 12 Shaw argues that the totality of the circumstances known to the officers prior to the time the driver's seat of the truck was pulled back and the gun was discovered did not rise to the level of reasonable belief. Examining the information known to the police prior to the search, we aggregate the critical facts. The police officers proceeded to the Natchez Trace Highway approximately 20 minutes after a reported sniper shooting had occurred near the Ballard Creek rest stop. They were relying on Mr. Brinkley's report that he had seen a late model two-tone Ford pickup with chrome on the side and which appeared to be red and white, parked on the side of the road with its lights off, immediately before the shooting. The officers knew that the Natchez Trace is an isolated highway of limited use; large trucks are banned on the road and there is virtually no traffic on the unlit highway late at night. 13 Moments after reaching an area approximately 300 yards north of the site from which Brinkley said the shot had been fired, the officers observed, proceeding toward them from the direction of the Ballard Creek rest stop, a late model brown or maroon and white two-tone Ford pickup, travelling at an unusually slow rate of speed. 2 No other vehicle was seen on the highway. One of the policemen recognized the driver as Shaw, whom he knew had recently been released from jail on a rape conviction. The pickup rapidly accelerated and the police gave chase. Shaw stopped three miles later when the police overtook the vehicle and signalled the driver to stop. Shaw got out of the cab of the pickup at the police's request. Through the door Shaw had left open as he exited the truck, one of the officers saw in plain view several live .35 caliber rifle shells on the floor of the truck. There is no contention that these shells were not validly seized. 3 Whether the sum total of these layers of information to this point justified an actual search of the truck is the question before us. 4 14 Shaw contends that because the truck he was driving was dark brown and beige, rather than the red and white described by Brinkley and Mrs. Johnson, that the police necessarily lacked the probable cause on which to predicate the search. We must disagree. Photographs of the truck reveal it to be a brown color, close to maroon in tone. One of the officers at trial, when asked to relate the color of the truck, described it as dark red or maroon. Certainly this truck, illuminated by headlights on an otherwise dark highway, would reasonably be within the range of Mr. Brinkley's description. 15 Shaw relies heavily on Dyke v. Taylor Implement Manufacturing Co., 391 U.S. 216, 88 S.Ct. 1472, 20 L.Ed.2d 538 (1968). In that case, someone in a passing car had fired shots at the house of a non-striker during a labor dispute. A witness called police and described only a kinda (sic) old make, model car. Shortly thereafter, the police observed a suspicious car, into which a shot had been recently fired, which then sped away. The police had not been informed that the car in question had been hit by a bullet. The police pursued the car, the driver was arrested for reckless driving, and the car was searched without a warrant after it was taken to the police station. The Supreme Court reversed the defendants' convictions and ruled that no probable cause existed to justify the warrantless search. In Dyke, the sum total of information available to the police was a description from a witness of an older model car, and the fact that the car they observed had sped up when pursued. 16 A recent decision of this Court is more directly analogous to the instant case than is Dyke. In United States v. Edwards, 577 F.2d 883 (5th Cir.) (en banc), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 968, 99 S.Ct. 458, 58 L.Ed.2d 427 (1978), a defendant charged with possession of stolen mail was initially stopped by police for driving without a valid license. Prior to the stop, the police had been told that a person meeting the defendant's description had earlier been seen conversing with a woman suspected of stealing welfare checks from private mailboxes. When the defendant was first approached for questioning, he acted suspiciously and leaned down as if to hide something on the floor under the seat. At this point, the Court said, probable cause to search the car did not exist. The officers' suspicions were held to have ripened into probable cause, however, when they saw several identification cards containing pictures of the suspected woman under different names. The cards were lying on the seat in plain view. Id. at 895-96. 17 There was a similar ripening here. The officers were informed there had been a sniper shooting on the Natchez Trace Highway. They saw a vehicle which closely matched the description given on the otherwise deserted highway. The driver of the vehicle initially drove off at high speed when the police presence became obvious. Finally, several live rifle shells were seen lying on the floor of the truck in plain view. The laminated total of facts within the knowledge of the police clearly was sufficient to warrant men of reasonable caution, Carroll v. United States, supra 267 U.S. at 162, 45 S.Ct. at 288, to conclude that there was probable cause to believe that the pickup contained some evidence of the shooting. To hold otherwise would not serve the purposes of the Fourth Amendment, but rather would undermine its ultimate standard of reasonableness. See Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U.S. 433, 439, 93 S.Ct. 2523, 2527, 37 L.Ed.2d 706 (1973). This was no haphazard or discriminatory stop. We find that the district court correctly ruled that the police had probable cause to believe Shaw's truck contained evidence of the crime, and we uphold denial of Shaw's motion to suppress. 5