Opinion ID: 2959836
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Probable Cause to Conduct the Williams Search

Text: Williams is the only appellee to claim that the police lacked probable cause to search his vehicle. Williams correctly observes that the district court merely “assumed arguendo that there was probable cause to search the Williams[] vehicle and the Howard vehicle,” and, while he does not dispute the factual account offered by the district court, Williams contends that those facts do not constitute probable cause for the search of his vehicle. Probable cause exists if a law enforcement official, on the basis of the totality of the circumstances, has “knowledge or reasonably trustworthy information sufficient to warrant a person of reasonable caution in the belief that an offense has been committed by the person to be arrested.” Panetta v. Crowley, 460 F.3d 388, 395 (2d Cir. 2006). Williams claims that the phone call intercepted on May 31, 2004 “set forth no basis for believing that Williams would be traveling from Schenectady to New York City and back.” He fails to establish why this particular phone call—separate and apart from all the other intercepted phone calls—should alone be the focus of the court’s attention in discerning whether there was probable cause for the traffic stop. Taken together, the six intercepted phone calls amount to probable cause. The district court noted three phone conversations between Williams and two -10- co-defendants in April and May 2004, all of which related to cocaine. Howard, 406 F. Supp. 2d at 220. In the third of these telephone calls, which took place on May 31, 2004, Williams told a co-defendant that he wanted four kilograms of cocaine and that he would be prepared to pick them up the following day, June 1, 2004. Three additional phone calls intercepted on June 1, 2004, indicated that Williams had gone to New York City to procure the cocaine, and that he had bought two kilograms of the drug while there. Id. at 220-21. These calls were plainly sufficient to provide the police with probable cause to stop Williams. Williams’ other arguments do not negate the existence of probable cause. His claim that the surveillance was defective because “there was no proof that the officers surveilling Williams had ever seen him before, or could identify him” is unavailing. The government does not dispute that the officer who testified at the suppression hearing concerning the surveillance of Williams had not seen Williams previously. Regardless, Williams produced a driver’s license in his own name when he was stopped by state troopers on the highway, allaying any fears of false identification. Likewise, his claim that no officer saw him arrive in or leave New York City is immaterial, as the phone calls indicated that he was in New York City when he procured the drugs and that “it would take him about two and one-half hours to get back to Schenectady.” Id. at 221. Finally, Williams’ assertion that there was no factual basis for the officers’ deduction that he was driving his mother’s vehicle is simply not borne out by the record. The police observed Williams’ mother driving her son’s car earlier in the day, after he left work and stopped by her house, and Williams was ultimately pulled over in a car matching the description of his mother’s vehicle, and which was registered to his mother. Id. at 220. Given the totality of the circumstances, the government plainly had probable cause to -11- believe that Williams was transporting cocaine in his car and therefore to conduct the search of his vehicle.