Opinion ID: 698699
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Suppression of Evidence Seized from the Vehicle

Text: 7 Shulze and Dockter contend that the district court erred in failing to suppress the evidence Deputy Meier seized from the parked vehicle they occupied on October 25, 1993. They argue that Deputy Meier seized them within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment when he pulled his vehicle behind them and activated his amber flashing lights. Because at that juncture Deputy Meier had neither observed any criminal activity nor developed a reasonable and articulable suspicion of illegal activity, they contend that this seizure was unlawful and that the fruits of the subsequent search of the vehicle must be suppressed. The district court held that Deputy Meier did not seize the appellants until he asked Dockter for his driver's license, and at that point Deputy Meier had developed a reasonable and articulable suspicion of criminal wrongdoing to justify his subsequent detention of the occupants and search of the vehicle. The determination [of] whether a seizure occurred is a question of law that we review de novo. United States v. Angell, 11 F.3d 806, 809 (8th Cir.1993), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 114 S.Ct. 2747, 129 L.Ed.2d 865 (1994). 8 [N]ot all personal intercourse between policemen and citizens involves 'seizures' of persons. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 19 n. 16, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1879 n. 16, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). [I]n order to determine whether a particular encounter constitutes a seizure, a court must consider all the circumstances surrounding the encounter to determine whether the police conduct would have communicated to a reasonable person that the person was not free to decline the officers' requests or otherwise terminate the encounter. Florida v. Bostick, 501 U.S. 429, 439, 111 S.Ct. 2382, 2389, 115 L.Ed.2d 389 (1991). The test is necessarily imprecise, because it is designed to assess the coercive effect of police conduct, taken as a whole, rather than to focus on particular details of that conduct in isolation. Michigan v. Chesternut, 486 U.S. 567, 573, 108 S.Ct. 1975, 1979, 100 L.Ed.2d 565 (1988). However, circumstances indicative of a seizure  'would be the threatening presence of several officers, the display of a weapon by an officer, some physical touching of the person of the citizen, or the use of language or tone of voice indicating that compliance with the officer's request might be compelled.'  Angell, 11 F.3d at 809 (quoting United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U.S. 544, 554, 100 S.Ct. 1870, 1877, 64 L.Ed.2d 497 (1980) (opinion of Justice Stewart)). 9 The facts of this case are not unlike those in Angell, where a law enforcement officer was investigating an unattended van parked in the middle of a rural public road when he encountered the defendants as they stopped at a nearby stop sign. 11 F.3d at 807. We concluded that the officer's admonition to the defendants to [s]tay there, I want to talk to you was not a seizure because neither [the officer]'s language nor his conduct constituted anything other than what a reasonable person would have construed as a consensual encounter between a law enforcement officer and a member of the public. Id. at 809. In reaching this conclusion, we found relevant that the events occurred on a public road in the presence of only one officer, the officer did not block the pathway of the [defendant]'s car, did not draw a weapon, and did not physically touch the defendants. Id. 10 Likewise, we conclude in this case that Shulze and Dockter were not seized within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment when Deputy Meier pulled his vehicle behind their parked car and activated his amber warning lights. At the time of the encounter, the two cars were the only vehicles in the area, Deputy Meier was the only law enforcement officer on the scene, he did not block the appellants' vehicle or in any manner preclude them from leaving, he did not draw his weapon, and his tone of voice was inquisitive rather than coercive. We agree with the district court's assessment that [t]here was no behavior by the officer that would differentiate this encounter from one where an officer approaches a stranded motorist to offer assistance. (Shulze's Addend. at 11.) In fact, Dockter's statement that the car had stalled demonstrates that the officer's conduct in approaching the vehicle was a not unexpected routine roadside assistance call. The fact that Deputy Meier activated his amber warning lights only strengthens and does not detract from this conclusion. We conclude that the district court correctly denied the motion to suppress the evidence obtained from the October 25, 1993, encounter. 11