Opinion ID: 202709
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Drug Seizure Evidence

Text: 24 On February 21, 2001, Pierre was driving in a convenience store parking lot when he was stopped by Fall River Police Officer David Murphy. Officer Murphy later testified that he stopped Pierre because he was aware at the time [that Pierre] did not have an active license. After confirming that Pierre's license had been suspended, Officer Murphy arrested Pierre for driving with a suspended license. Pierre was taken to the Fall River Police Department where he was searched as part of the booking process. During the search, police officers recovered cocaine from Pierre's pocket. 25 Pierre filed a motion to suppress the February 21 traffic stop evidence, arguing that Officer Murphy did not have reasonable suspicion to stop Pierre. The district court denied the motion after an evidentiary hearing. The court found that Pierre had reasonable suspicion to stop Pierre for driving without a license. The cocaine seized during the traffic stop was admitted at both the 2003 and 2004 trials. Pierre argues that the information on which Officer Murphy based the traffic stop was stale, and that introduction of the seized cocaine therefore violated his Fourth Amendment rights. 26 We review the district court's ultimate determination of reasonable suspicion on a motion to suppress de novo. United States v. Capelton, 350 F.3d 231, 240 (1st Cir.2003). We review subsidiary factual findings for clear error. Id. 27 A traffic stop constitutes a seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. United States v. Chhien, 266 F.3d 1, 5 (1st Cir.2001). As a result, the stop must be supported by a reasonable and articulable suspicion of criminal activity. Id. at 6. Reasonable suspicion requires more than a naked hunch that criminal activity is afoot, but less than probable cause. Id. Its existence is assessed on a case-by-case basis, in light of all the attendant circumstances. Id. When evaluating a claim of staleness, courts do not measure the timeliness of information simply by counting the number of days that have elapsed. United States v. Bucuvalas, 970 F.2d 937, 940 (1st Cir.1992), abrogated on other grounds by Cleveland v. United States, 531 U.S. 12, 121 S.Ct. 365, 148 L.Ed.2d 221 (2000). Rather, a court must assess the nature of the information, the nature and characteristics of the suspected criminal activity, and the likely endurance of the information. Cf. id. 28 At the suppression hearing, Officer Murphy testified that from September 1999 to September 2000 he had worked in the vice and intelligence unit of the Fall River Police Department. During that time, Pierre's name came up often in conversation; fellow officers frequently discussed his drug dealing, and Officer Murphy was informed that Pierre did not have an active license. Officer Murphy testified that after he left the vice unit, he continued to talk with detectives there regarding Pierre, and no one ever informed him that Pierre's license status had changed. 29 Pierre relies on United States v. Laughrin, 438 F.3d 1245 (10th Cir.2006), a Tenth Circuit case, to argue that Officer Murphy's information (from the time he served in the vice unit) was so old as to be meaningless, and therefore could not justify a traffic stop. Laughrin, however, is distinguishable. In that case, a police officer had stopped the defendant based on his knowledge, which was at least twenty-two weeks old, of the defendant's driving record. Id. at 1246-47. The officer previously had stopped the defendant when he was driving on a suspended license, but the court noted that there was no indication from the officer's testimony about the length of the license suspension. Id. at 1248. The court stated that if there had been testimony about the length of the suspension, the court might have been able to affirm the finding of reasonable suspicion. Id. In the absence of such testimony, however, it held that the officer's information was too stale to justify the stop. Id. 30 Here, however, Officer Murphy offered testimony indicating that Pierre's license had been suspended during the entire year that Officer Murphy had served in the vice unit. This testimony suggests that Pierre's license was suspended on an ongoing basis, rather than for a short period of time, making the suspicion that it was still inactive some five months later more reasonable. Moreover, Officer Murphy testified that he kept in touch with some of the detectives in the vice unit, and that none of those detectives ever informed him during conversations about Pierre of any change in Pierre's license status. Although he did not explicitly state as much, the import of Officer Murphy's testimony was that because Pierre's license status was relevant to future investigations and cases, he would have expected someone to have informed him if Pierre's license status had changed. We hold that Officer Murphy had reasonable suspicion to stop Pierre's car, and that the district court did not err in failing to suppress the cocaine seized incident to Pierre's arrest. 31 Pierre cursorily states that the February 21 evidence was irrelevant and unduly prejudicial. See Fed.R.Evid. 403. This argument has been waived, see United States v. Zannino, 895 F.2d 1, 17 (1st Cir.1990) ([I]ssues adverted to in a perfunctory manner, unaccompanied by some effort at developed argumentation, are deemed waived.), and is without merit in any event. Evidence that Pierre was driving without a license served to corroborate Mickens's testimony that Pierre did not have a license and employed people to drive him around. Likewise, evidence that Pierre was carrying cocaine when he was stopped in February 2001 is directly relevant to his participation in a drug distribution conspiracy between April 1998 and September 2001.