Opinion ID: 221152
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Retention of Chavez’s Bus Ticket

Text: If, as the Government urges, Agent Basset returned Chavez’s bus ticket immediately after questioning Chavez about his luggage and checking the ticket for luggage receipts, then Agent Basset’s brief retention of Chavez’s ticket, without more, did not transform the consensual encounter into a seizure. See United States v. Boone, 67 F.3d 76, 79 (5th Cir. 1995) (holding that the defendant was not seized where officers at a bus station held the defendant’s ticket while asking him a series of questions, many of which concerned information from the ticket); United States v. Soto-Lopez, 995 F.2d 694, 698 (7th Cir. 1993) (holding that the defendant was not seized where one officer read information from the defendant’s airline ticket and another officer took notes; observing that the officers immediately returned the ticket after examination and did not retain the ticket for an “unusual length of time”); cf. United States v. Lambert, 46 F.3d 1064, 1068 & n.3 (10th Cir. 1995) (explaining that police officers’ retention of the defendant’s driver’s license became improper only after the officers were able to accomplish their purpose in requesting the license, namely, to verify the defendant’s identity). Two portions of the transcript of the hearing on the motion to suppress support the Government’s account of when Agent Basset returned the ticket. consensual until after Agent Basset discovered the immigration “warrant,” we do not reach the question whether the district court correctly determined that Agent Basset had justification to detain Chavez earlier in the encounter. We also express no opinion on whether there might be other reasonable views of the evidence that would allow us to affirm the district court’s ruling. 11 First, the prosecutor asked Agent Basset on direct examination if he returned Chavez’s ticket after examining it. Agent Basset responded, “Yes, ma’am, I did.” (ROA, vol. III at 29.) Second, the prosecutor asked Agent Basset if he had “any prolonged retention of [Chavez’s] personal effects like the passport or the ticket.” Agent Basset answered, “No. I do encounters on a daily basis, and when I review something, I’ll hand it right back to them.” (Id. at 31.) Despite this testimony, Chavez argues that the record shows that Agent Basset retained the ticket until after he searched Chavez’s bag. Chavez relies on two other portions of Agent Basset’s testimony to reach this conclusion. First, on direct examination, after Agent Basset testified to discovering the wine in Chavez’s bag, the prosecutor asked Agent Basset why he was suspicious that Chavez might be engaged in some kind of criminal activity. Agent Basset stated that he became increasingly concerned when Chavez told him that the wine was not the reason he was acting nervous. The prosecutor then asked if Agent Basset was suspicious because Chavez claimed that he was moving to the East Coast with only one small bag and because of Chavez’s “sort of unusual ability to converse.” (Id. at 23.) Agent Basset responded that those factors raised his awareness level, but, in addition, Chavez’s hand was shaking when Agent Basset took his ticket and Chavez did not appear comfortable when Agent Basset returned the ticket. Apparently, Chavez believes that because Agent Basset testified to Chavez’s nervousness upon the return of the ticket after he testified to Chavez’s nervousness upon 12 the discovery of the wine, Agent Basset necessarily returned the ticket after searching Chavez’s bag and finding the wine. (See Aplt. R. Br., at 4 (“In context, by talking of returning the ticket at the end of a sequence of events following his questioning of Mr. Chavez about the trip and his searching of Mr. Chavez’[s] bag, [Agent Basset] confirms . . . that he returned the ticket after the questioning [of] Mr. Chavez and searching his bag.”).) Chavez’s interpretation of this portion of the testimony is not implausible; however, there is another interpretation that is at least equally (and probably more) plausible. One could read the portion of Agent Basset’s testimony discussed above and conclude that Agent Basset was not listing the circumstances that made him suspicious in any sort of temporal order. Rather, he was just responding to the prosecutor’s questions, and the flow of the questioning guided Agent Basset’s responses rather than the precise sequence of events. In our view, this represents a logical interpretation of Agent Basset’s testimony, especially given that Agent Basset also mentioned taking Chavez’s ticket after he mentioned Chavez’s nervousness upon the discovery of the wine. It is undisputed that Agent Basset took Chavez’s ticket before he searched Chavez’s bag and found the wine, so reading this portion of the testimony as Chavez suggests—i.e., as if Agent Basset were recounting all of the events in the precise order in which they happened—leads to an absurd conclusion that cannot be squared with a part of the record that is clear. Second, Chavez relies heavily on a statement made by Agent Basset when defense counsel was cross-examining him about his suspicion of criminal activity: 13 At a point when I was speaking with him and I asked him did he have any luggage, I looked at his ticket to see if he had any luggage tickets. He did not. I gave it back to him. I asked him about the red wine. He stated that that’s not why he was nervous. I then called EPIC, and there was some form of warrant for him. It was at the time that I was calling EPIC, I was thinking: Does this guy have a warrant? Is he running from something? At that point, that’s when that thought process starting crossing my mind because . . . I didn’t believe it was drug-related and I didn’t believe it was the alcohol that was making him nervous. At that point, I didn’t know why, and that was the next logical step for me, to think that maybe he was running from something. (ROA, vol. III at 51 (emphasis added).) Chavez argues that “[b]ecause [Agent Basset] asked about the red wine just after handing back the ticket, it is clear that [Agent Basset] had the ticket while searching the bag; otherwise, he would not have known about the wine to ask about it.” (Aplt. Br., at 18–19.) Again, Chavez’s interpretation is not implausible, but it is not the only reasonable interpretation. In concluding that Agent Basset “asked about the red wine just after handing back the ticket,” Chavez implicitly interprets Agent Basset’s testimony as meticulously recounting an exhaustive sequence of events. In our view, however, it is just as reasonable to infer that although Agent Basset was testifying about events in a temporal order, he was not listing everything that happened during the encounter. Because Agent Basset was asked only about why he suspected Chavez of criminal activity, it seems likely that Agent Basset would mention only the events that led to his suspicion—i.e., his discovery that Chavez was moving to the East Coast with only one bag and Chavez’s nervousness after the discovery of the wine. Thus, while the above testimony indicates 14 that Agent Basset asked about the red wine at some point after returning the ticket, the testimony does not necessarily suggest that he did so immediately after handing back the ticket. Ultimately, we need not decide which interpretation of Agent Basset’s testimony regarding the return of the ticket is more reasonable. Rather, we simply need to determine whether the testimony can reasonably be construed to support the view that Agent Basset returned the ticket after questioning Chavez about his luggage but before searching Chavez’s bag. See Broomfield, 201 F.3d at 1273. For the reasons explained above, we conclude that it can.