Opinion ID: 1034416
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Reasonable Suspicion to Conduct a Terry Stop

Text: In reviewing the denial of a motion to suppress, we will review findings of fact for clear error and legal conclusions de novo. United States v. Brown, 500 F.3d 48, 58 (1st Cir. 2007). In this case, there are no factual findings for us to review, given that the district court did not have to issue the memorandum setting forth the rationale for its denial of the motion to -9- suppress after Carrigan pled. We thus review Carrigan's Fourth Amendment claim de novo. Carrigan first aims to establish that the police unduly relied on the information provided by an anonymous 911 tipster and that they lacked reasonable suspicion to conduct an investigatory stop. Our inquiry in this regard is, of course, guided by the Supreme Court's watershed decision in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968). In Terry, the Court delineated the baseline test for determining the constitutionality, under the Fourth Amendment, of investigatory stops conducted by police officers. Brown, 500 F.3d at 54. Under Terry, [p]olice officers may lawfully effect an investigatory stop as long as they can 'point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant' such an intrusion. Id. (citing Terry, 392 U.S. at 21). Reasonable suspicion is a concept that lies somewhere between a visceral hunch and probable cause. See Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119, 123 (2000) (reasonable suspicion is a less demanding standard than probable cause and requires a showing considerably less than preponderance of the evidence but still requires at least a minimal level of objective justification for making the stop). Whether the officers had enough information to possess reasonable suspicion must be evaluated through a broad-based consideration of all the attendant -10- circumstances. Brown, 500 F.3d at 54 (citing Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491, 500 (1983); United States v. Chhien, 266 F.3d 1, 5 (1st Cir. 2001)). As recounted above, a 911 caller reported being the victim of an assault. He provided a description of the alleged perpetrator of the crime and of the car he was driving, a license plate number, the direction the vehicle was traveling and a phone number where he was successfully reached twice. He provided some of this information to the 911 operator while the purported perpetrator's vehicle was still allegedly in his sight. He was then called back twice and twice he recounted the incident in a way that seems reasonably consistent and coherent. Carrigan argues that the description of the clothes the alleged perpetrator was wearing differed in several aspects from what Carrigan was wearing when the police first observed him approaching the car, and that, in any case, the description was corroborated only in innocent details. The caller said the perpetrator of the alleged assault was wearing a brown-and-blue hat (which he also described as two-toned), a black leather jacket and baggy jeans. Sgt. Fitzgerald testified during the evidentiary hearing that, when he first spotted Carrigan coming out of the bar, he was wearing a blue and orange hat (with alternating blue and orange panels all the way around), a brown leather jacket with orange square patches and black jeans. We think that the -11- descriptions sufficiently matched and that, although the caller stated that the hat was brown and blue, and it turned out to be orange and blue, the discrepancy is not so large as to warrant a finding of an improper identification. On the same token, the caller described the jacket as black leather when, according to Sgt. Fitzgerald, it was a leather jacket with brown and orange patches. We, however, do not think the lack of a perfect match is dispositive in this case. Carrigan further argues that, aside from corroboration of innocent and readily observable details regarding his general appearance, the tipster did not provide information that could be deemed reliable. In fact, he says, the caller only provided a license plate and car type, which are also readily observable elements that could have been used, for example, by someone trying to frame him. He cites United States v. Monteiro, 447 F.3d 39 (1st Cir. 2006), in support of his argument that corroboration of a license plate number does not provide reasonable suspicion. In Monteiro, we reviewed the reliability of a tip received through a third party that included a license plate number for a car that was spotted by police days after the tip was received. We found that the mere offering of a license plate number by a tipster, although providing a solid means of identi[fying] the suspect, did nothing to corroborate the tipster's assertion that the suspect had committed a crime. Id. at 47. We also stated, however, that the -12- amount of information required to establish the requisite quantum of suspicion depends on the reliability of the tip. Id. at 48. That is, the more unreliable a tip appears, the more information will be required to establish reasonable suspicion. Carrigan's argument might be stronger if the police had relied solely on the caller's information and moved in to detain Carrigan as soon as they spotted him leaving the bar and walking to the Acura. But the information that the police had at the time they conducted the Terry stop did not consist of information provided by the 911 caller alone. Indeed, once Carrigan got into the Acura, the police began observing him. They saw that, after driving down the street, Carrigan apparently attempted to avoid several police cars that were blocking the upcoming intersection and acted suspiciously when he entered a driveway, drove to the very end of it and shut off the car's lights. The police then further observed Carrigan back down the driveway almost all the way to the street, open and close his door and drive up the driveway once again. The Supreme Court has stated that evasive behavior is another pertinent factor in determining reasonable suspicion. Wardlow, 528 U.S. at 124. Given what the officers already knew, they reasonably interpreted Carrigan's behavior as unprovoked flight warranting further investigation. Although it is wellsettled that individuals have a fundamental right to be left alone, it is also settled that [f]light, by its very nature, is not -13- 'going about one's business'; in fact, it is just the opposite. Id. at 125. It was at this point, once they had matched the description provided by the caller and had observed Carrigan behaving suspiciously, that the officers decided to move in. A broad-based consideration of the different pieces of individual information the police possessed up to the point of the stop leads us to conclude that the officers had reasonable suspicion to initiate a Terry stop. See Brown, 500 F.3d at 54. We emphasize that it is the sum total of the available information that justifies the finding of reasonable suspicion; no single individual piece of information provided by either the caller or by the police's direct observation of Carrigan would be enough, on its own, to justify the Terry stop. We now turn to Carrigan's second argument regarding suppression: that the Terry stop became a de facto arrest, and that the police officers lacked probable cause to arrest him.