Opinion ID: 166692
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Initial Stop of Mr. Lewis’ Truck

Text: Mr. Kilgore argues that he was arrested when Mr. Lewis’ vehicle was first stopped. We disagree. The determination of what point in time Mr. Kilgore was arrested is not dependant on either Mr. Kilgore’s or the officers’ beliefs regarding when an arrest occurred. The police conduct should be judged in terms of what was done rather than what the officer involved may have called it at the time. -8- If an officer tells the suspect he is under arrest but then conducts only a frisk and finds a weapon, a later determination that grounds for arrest were lacking should not render inadmissible the discovered weapon if there were in fact grounds for a stop and the frisk. Obviously the result would be otherwise if the search exceeded that permissible under Terry [v. Ohio , 392 U.S. 1 (1968)]. Wayne R. LaFave et al., 2 Criminal Procedure § 3.8(b) (2d ed.1999) (footnote omitted); see also United States v. Neff , 300 F.3d 1217, 1222 (10th Cir. 2002) (“In measuring the actions of a police officer under the Fourth Amendment, . . . we look at the objective facts, not the officer’s state of mind.”). When the officers first intercepted Mr. Lewis’s truck, they needed only sufficient cause to make an investigative detention. “A seizure by means of an investigative detention is constitutional only if supported by a reasonable and articulable suspicion that the person seized is engaged in criminal activity.” Davis , 94 F.3d at 1468 (internal quotation marks omitted). “While an investigative detention does not require probable cause, it does demand something more than an inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or hunch.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). Here, the officers clearly had a “reasonable and articulable suspicion,” that Mr. Lewis was engaged in criminal activity. A confidential informant provided information that Mr. Lewis and Ms. Hulls were buying over-the-counter decongestant tablets containing pseudoephedrine at a local convenience store and that Ms. Hulls was manufacturing methamphetamine at her residence with -9- Mr. Lewis. When confronted, the convenience store manager had admitted that she had assisted the pair by ordering extra pseudoephedrine for them for eight weeks and that Mr. Lewis and Ms. Hulls were using the pseudoephedrine to manufacture methamphetamine. The officers had also watched Mr. Lewis arrive at the convenience store, enter, and then exit with a white plastic bag, and the manager had notified Officer Miller by cell phone that Mr. Lewis had “purchased a lot of pseudoephedrine tablets.” Aplt. App., Vol. 1, Doc. 7, Attach. A at 3. The officers clearly had “something more than an inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or hunch” that Mr. Lewis both possessed the pseudoephedrine tablets and intended to use them to manufacture methamphetamine. “The government [does have] the burden of demonstrating that the seizure it seeks to justify on the basis of a reasonable suspicion was sufficiently limited in scope and duration to satisfy the conditions of an investigative seizure.” United States v. Shareef , 100 F.3d 1491, 1500 (10th Cir. 1996) (internal quotation marks omitted). Here, however, the only “detention” that has to be justified solel y on the information received from the informant and the store manager was the officer’s initial attempt to stop the vehicle. Mr. Kilgore argues that it was not illegal for Mr. Lewis to purchase the decongestant tablets in the quantity he did and that the officers, therefore, could not stop Mr. Lewis’s truck. First, this is not a situation where a store clerk called -10- the police after a stranger purchased a large amount of cold pills. Here the store manager had been ordering extra tablets for eight weeks for the purpose of assisting Mr. Lewis and Ms. Hulls in manufacturing methamphetamine. Second, the legality of a particular act is not dispositive. “[I]nnocent behavior frequently will provide the basis for a showing of probable cause,” Illinois v. Gates , 462 U.S. 213, 244 n.13 (1983), and, a fortiori, for a showing of reasonable suspicion. “[T]he relevant inquiry is not whether particular conduct is ‘innocent’ or ‘guilty,’ but the degree of suspicion that attaches to particular types of noncriminal acts.” Id.; see also United States v. Arvizu , 534 U.S. 266, 277 (2002) (“A determination that reasonable suspicion exists, however, need not rule out the possibility of innocent conduct.”).