Opinion ID: 65371
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The Body Language of Rodriguez and His Passenger

Text: Rodriguez next complains that the district court inappropriately considered the body-language response of Rodriguez and his passenger to the agents. Coronado noted, as does the Government in its brief, that Rodriguez's passenger crouched down in his seat after looking at Coronado, and that Rodriguez failed to look at him when he was stopped in Barnhart, Texas. Where, as here, the appellant challenges the visual impressions and factual inferences of a law enforcement officer, the question is probably one of fact reviewable for clear error rather than one of law reviewed de novo, but the two frameworks yield the same result. Rodriguez is correct that a suspect's failure to look at an officer adds little, if anything, to the reasonableness analysis. See United States v. Moreno-Chaparro, 180 F.3d 629, 632 (5th Cir.1998) (holding that [w]e are persuaded that in the ordinary case, whether a driver looks at an officer or fails to look at an officer, taken alone or in combination with other factors, should be accorded little weight.). In its brief, the Government does not argue otherwise: the failure-to-look observation is not one of its asserted grounds of reasonable suspicion on appeal, although it may have been considered by the trial judge. It is unclear whether crouching down, the Government's eighth asserted ground of reasonable suspicion, should be treated differently; if it is an effort to evade the eye of the law enforcement officer, it is conceivable that it could be. But both these sub-claims are non-issues. The agents did not place much weight on them in the suppression hearing (especially the failure-to-look claim), and Rodriguez has provided no authority to the effect that agents are forbidden from considering them altogether (indeed, no such authority exists). Accordingly, this claim does not weaken the reasonable suspicion the Government claims supported the stop.