Opinion ID: 1467131
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: analysis

Text: The Fourth Amendment provides that [t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated. U.S. Const. amend. IV. A warrantless search or seizure is ` per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment  subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions.' United States v. Roark, 36 F.3d 14, 17 (6th Cir.1994) (quoting Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 357, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967)). The Supreme Court has identified three types of reasonable, and thus permissible, warrantless encounters between the police and citizens: (1) consensual encounters in which contact is initiated by a police officer without any articulable reason whatsoever and the citizen is briefly asked questions; (2) a temporary involuntary detention or Terry stop which must be predicated upon reasonable suspicion; and (3) arrests which must be based upon probable cause. United States v. Alston, 375 F.3d 408, 411 (6th Cir.2004) (quoting United States v. Bueno, 21 F.3d 120, 123 (6th Cir.1994)). The second of these exceptions was first spelled out by the Supreme Court in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), where it held that an officer may, consistent with the Fourth Amendment, conduct a brief, investigatory stop when the officer has a reasonable articulable suspicion that criminal activity is afoot. Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119, 123, 120 S.Ct. 673, 145 L.Ed.2d 570 (2000) (citing Terry, 392 U.S. at 30, 88 S.Ct. 1868). To determine whether a particular stop is permissible under the Fourth Amendment, a court must look at the `totality of the circumstances' of [the] case to see whether the detaining officer has a `particularized and objective' basis for suspecting legal wrongdoing. United States v. Arvizu, 534 U.S. 266, 273, 122 S.Ct. 744, 151 L.Ed.2d 740 (2002) (quoting United States v. Cortez, 449 U.S. 411, 417-18, 101 S.Ct. 690, 66 L.Ed.2d 621 (1981)). This process allows officers to draw on their own experience and specialized training to make inferences from and deductions about the cumulative information available to them that `might well elude an untrained person.' Id. (quoting Cortez, 449 U.S. at 418, 101 S.Ct. 690); see also Ornelas, 517 U.S. at 699, 116 S.Ct. 1657 (noting that appellate courts must give due weight to inferences drawn from [the] facts by resident judges and local law enforcement). While an officer must be able to articulate more than an inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or `hunch' of criminal activity in order to justify a investigatory stop, Wardlow, 528 U.S. at 123-24, 120 S.Ct. 673 (internal quotation marks omitted), the likelihood of criminal activity need not rise to the level required for probable cause, and it falls considerably short of satisfying a preponderance of the evidence standard. Arvizu, 534 U.S. at 274, 122 S.Ct. 744 (citing United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 7, 109 S.Ct. 1581, 104 L.Ed.2d 1 (1989)). After detaining a person for a Terry stop, the officer may conduct a reasonable search for weapons ... where he has reason to believe that he is dealing with an armed and dangerous individual. Terry, 392 U.S. at 27, 88 S.Ct. 1868. However, in order to arrest the person or to conduct a subsequent search of the person's vehicle or packages, the officer must have probable cause to believe that a criminal offense has been or is being committed. Devenpeck v. Alford, 543 U.S. 146, 152, 125 S.Ct. 588, 160 L.Ed.2d 537 (2004). Probable cause exists if the facts and circumstances known to the officer warrant a prudent man in believing that an offense has been committed. Henry v. United States, 361 U.S. 98, 102, 80 S.Ct. 168, 4 L.Ed.2d 134 (1959); accord Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 91, 85 S.Ct. 223, 13 L.Ed.2d 142 (1964); Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 175-76, 69 S.Ct. 1302, 93 L.Ed. 1879 (1949); Logsdon v. Hains, 492 F.3d 334, 341 (6th Cir.2007). Whether probable cause exists depends on the reasonable conclusion to be drawn from the facts known to the arresting officer at the time of the arrest. Devenpeck, 543 U.S. at 152, 125 S.Ct. 588. In order to deter law enforcement officials from violating the Fourth Amendment by stopping persons without reasonable suspicion or by arresting them without probable cause, the Supreme Court has directed that all evidence obtained by an unconstitutional search and seizure [is] inadmissible in federal court regardless of its source. Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 654, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961); see also Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 34 S.Ct. 341, 58 L.Ed. 652 (1914) (establishing the exclusionary rule). This exclusionary rule is supplemented by the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine, which bars the admissibility of evidence which police derivatively obtain from an unconstitutional search or seizure. See Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 484-85, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963); Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U.S. 385, 392, 40 S.Ct. 182, 64 L.Ed. 319 (1920). However, in order to exclude evidence under these constitutional doctrines, the defendant must show more than the mere fact that a constitutional violation was a `but-for' cause of [the police's] obtaining [the] evidence. Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U.S. 586, 592, 126 S.Ct. 2159, 165 L.Ed.2d 56 (2006). [B]ut-for causality is only a necessary, not sufficient condition for suppression. Id. Rather, the more apt question in such a case is whether, granting establishment of the primary illegality, the evidence to which instant objection is made has been come at by exploitation of that illegality or instead by means sufficiently distinguishable to be purged of the primary taint. Id. (quoting Wong Sun, 371 U.S. at 487-88, 83 S.Ct. 407 (internal quotation marks omitted)). In the instant case, we find that Johnson was not unreasonably seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment. As a preliminary matter, we note that Pearce does not have standing under the Fourth Amendment to challenge Officer Shaughnessy's initial stop of Johnson. The Supreme Court has found that `Fourth Amendment rights are personal rights which, like some other constitutional rights, may not be vicariously asserted.' Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 133-34, 99 S.Ct. 421, 58 L.Ed.2d 387 (1978) (quoting Alderman v. United States, 394 U.S. 165, 174, 89 S.Ct. 961, 22 L.Ed.2d 176 (1969)). In order to qualify as a person aggrieved by an unlawful search and seizure one must have been a victim of a search or seizure, one against whom the search was directed, as distinguished from one who claims prejudice only thorough the use of evidence gathered as a consequence of a search or seizure directed at someone else. Id. at 134-35, 99 S.Ct. 421 (internal quotation marks omitted) (emphasis altered); see also Minnesota v. Carter, 525 U.S. 83, 88, 119 S.Ct. 469, 142 L.Ed.2d 373 (1998) ([I]n order to claim the protection of the Fourth Amendment, a defendant must demonstrate that he personally has an expectation of privacy in the place searched, and that his expectation is reasonable. (emphasis added)). As Pearce himself was not seized or detained in any manner during Officer Shaughnessy's initial stop of Johnson, he has no standing under the Fourth Amendment to challenge the lawfulness of that stop. While Pearce would have standing to challenge his own arrest, and possibly the police's subsequent search of the Taurus, for lack of probable cause, he has failed to do so. Moreover, even if Pearce had brought such a challenge, it would lack merit. After Officer Svoboda observed a gun magazine in plain view on the passenger-side floorboard of the car which Pearce had just exited, the police clearly had probable cause to arrest Pearce and to search the vehicle. Accordingly, we affirm the district court's denial of Pearce's motion to suppress. While Johnson's motion to suppress does not suffer from a standing deficiency like Pearce's motion, we find that it was nevertheless appropriately denied on its merits. [2] Officer Shaughnessy's brief investigatory detention of Johnson [3] was permissible under the Fourth Amendment because, in light of the totality of the circumstances, Officer Shaughnessy had an objectively reasonable suspicion that his safety or that of others was in danger. Terry, 392 U.S. at 27, 88 S.Ct. 1868. When Officer Shaughnessy entered a known high-crime area in his marked police cruiser, he observed Johnson exit a vehicle, glance towards him, hunch over, place his right hand in the small of his back, and start backing away. Based on his own experience and specialized training, Arvizu, 534 U.S. at 273, 122 S.Ct. 744, Officer Johnson reasonably suspected that Johnson had a weapon and was getting ready to fire. J.A. at 75-76. Indeed, even from a layman's perspective, Johnson's behavior, while susceptible of an innocent explanation  Johnson may have simply been trying to put his wallet away  might also have been reasonably viewed as an attempt to conceal a weapon and/or other contraband material, such as narcotics, from a police officer who had just appeared on the scene. See Arvizu, 534 U.S. at 277, 122 S.Ct. 744 (A determination that reasonable suspicion exists ... need not rule out the possibility of innocent conduct.). When combined with the fact that Johnson was engaged in such behavior in an area known for criminal activity and on a street where a crime-related homicide had recently occurred, Officer Shaughnessy's observations provided a sufficient basis for temporarily detaining Johnson to determine whether or not he was actually engaged in wrongdoing. See, e.g., United States v. Paulette, 457 F.3d 601, 606 (6th Cir.2006) (finding that the officers had a reasonable suspicion that [the defendant] was engaged in criminal activity based upon his hand movements consistent with drug-dealing activity, efforts to evade the police upon noticing them, and presence in a high crime area); see also Wardlow, 528 U.S. at 124, 120 S.Ct. 673 (noting that, while an individual's presence in an area of expected criminal activity, standing alone, is not enough to support a reasonable, particularized suspicion that the person is committing a crime, police officers are not required to ignore the relevant characteristics of a location in determining whether the circumstances are sufficiently suspicious to warrant further investigation). The cases cited by Johnson in support of his contention that Officer Shaughnessy lacked reasonable suspicion are inapposite. In United States v. Patterson, we found that police officers lacked reasonable suspicion for a Terry stop of the defendant when, acting on an anonymous tip from a drug hotline, they went to a particular street corner and observed the defendant's companion throw an object away after seeing the officers approaching. 340 F.3d 368, 370-72 (6th Cir.2003). In reaching our conclusion in that case, we emphasized that the officers there lacked an individualized suspicion that the defendant was engaged in wrongdoing. See id. at 372. Unlike the officers in Patterson, however, Officer Shaughnessy did not stop Johnson because of the activities of other persons in the same general area, but rather because of Johnson's own hunching forward and hand-placement which reasonably suggested that he might be carrying a weapon. In United States v. Baldwin, we found that the police lacked reasonable suspicion to detain the defendant when the police heard gunshots in a particular area, briefly followed an individual fleeing from that area, and then came across the defendant in his car after losing the trail of the fleeing individual. 114 Fed.Appx. 675, 679-81 (6th Cir.2004) (unpublished). In reaching that conclusion, we noted that [e]ven if the fleeing pedestrian may have been involved in the shooting incident, as the Government contends, there has been no showing of any specific, articulable facts which gave rise to a reasonable suspicion that [the defendant] was connected to the firing of the gunshots. Id. at 680. The instant case, however, is quite distinguishable. As opposed to the record in Baldwin, where the only evidence suggesting that the defendant was involved in criminal activity was his presence in an area near a crime scene, the testimony in this case demonstrates that not only was Johnson in a high-crime area, but that he was also acting in a way suggestive of his carrying of a gun. In summary, we conclude that Officer Shaughnessy had reasonable suspicion to stop Johnson for a brief investigatory detention and to conduct a protective pat-down to ensure that Johnson was not carrying any weapons. As this stop was lawful under the Fourth Amendment, we hold that any evidence discovered by the police while conducting it or as a potential result of it  i.e., the firearms evidence uncovered during the police's subsequent search of the Taurus  was properly not suppressed by the district court. [4] Accordingly, we affirm the district court's denial of Johnson's motion to suppress.