Court Opinion

ID: 9498320
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:14:36.684305+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:45.950216
License: Public Domain

HEANEY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I find nothing in the record to support the majority’s assertion that Mendoza’s warrantless arrest was supported by probable cause. Thus, I respectfully dissent from that portion of the opinion.
Officers may only execute a warrantless arrest where the facts and circumstances would support “ ‘a prudent person’s belief that the suspect had committed or was committing a crime.’ ” United States v. Cabrera-Reynoso, 195 F.3d 1029, 1031 (8th Cir.1999) (quoting United States v. Magness, 69 F.3d 872, 874 (8th Cir.1995)). And while the majority is correct that we are to give “due weight” to the inferences drawn by experienced law enforcement officers, United States v. Payne, 119 F.3d 637, 642 (8th Cir.1997), those inferences must still be reasonable, see Kuehl v. Bur-tis, 173 F.3d 646, 650 (8th Cir.1999) (recognizing that the latitude given to trained officers in making a probable cause determination is not without its limits).
Here, the government suggests that the officers properly suspected that Mendoza was Holmes’s drug source. Given the evidence, this is simply not a reasonable deduction. The only identifying features proffered by the government for Holmes’s drug source were: 1) that Holmes’s source promptly delivered the drugs on bicycle during Porras’s first undercover buy; and 2) Holmes’s statement that her source was Hispanic. None of our cases support the warrantless arrest of a person based on such limited characteristics. In Cabrera-Reynoso, there was probable cause to believe that the defendant was connected to criminal activity because after numerous undercover drug buys, the defendant was positively linked to a known drug house; the government had strong evidence that the defendant had met with the drug seller prior to the undercover buys; and officers were given a detailed description of the defendant’s vehicle. 195 F.3d at 1031-32. Thus, they had reason to believe that the defendant was a drug source. Id. at 1032. Similarly, in United States v. Adams, 346 F.3d 1165, 1169-70 (8th Cir.2003), there was probable cause to arrest a defendant whose associate stated, against his own penal interest, that the defendant traded him drugs for guns. In United States v. Martin, 28 F.3d 742, 744-45 (8th Cir.1994), the defendant matched the height, weight, race, and hair color of a robbery suspect, and his van had been linked to the crime.
In each of the above cases, some circumstance positively connected the suspect/defendant to the crime to the exclusion of others. Mendoza, on the other hand, was not singled out by any particular feature known to the officers prior to his arrest. As a matter of fact, the only distinguishing feature proffered by the government is the fact that Mendoza is Hispanic. Without a more accurate description of a person, the relevance of this characteristic is questionable at best; it certainly does not provide probable cause to believe that a Hispanic person in Holmes’s neighborhood was her drug source merely because she identified her source as Hispanic.
*670The majority suggests that we must give weight to the officers’ expertise in believing that a drug source would arrive shortly after Porras’s second transaction. I disagree. The officers’ belief in this regard was not based on any specialized training, but on their observation of the first transaction when a source arrived to give Holmes the drugs. During that exchange, the source, admittedly a Hispanic male, rode to Holmes’s house on a bicycle. I find it both disingenuous and troubling for the government to maintain that Mendoza met the description of the drug source because he was Hispanic, but ignore the fact that he arrived after the second drug deal in a vehicle rather than on a bike. This was not one of many transactions, such that officers had the opportunity to create a “track record” and thus form a reasonable belief of what may happen; rather, this was the second of two discrete drug deals. Such a short history does little to inform the officers about the signature of a source, if one exists, and the lack of any detailed corroboration further casts doubt on the reasonableness of the officers’ suspicions of Mendoza.
The government argues that the officers’ suspicions were properly aroused when Mendoza drove around the block twice before stopping at Holmes’s house, surveyed the scene as he exited his sport utility vehicle, and then returned to his vehicle and left. Accepting this argument neglects our responsibility to consider evidence which tends to negate the possibility that a suspect committed a crime, which is also crucial to the probable cause inquiry. Adams, 346 F.3d at 1170. Mendoza introduced uncontradicted testimony that police operations, such as the one that was underway when Mendoza arrived, typically involve several officers and many police vehicles. Indeed, Holmes’s sister testified that when she arrived at the house minutes after the officers entered, the street was so crowded that she was forced to park in the driveway. She testified that she saw a sport utility vehicle-presumably Mendoza’s-circle the block, which she simply attributed to the dearth of street parking. Moreover, Officer Porras himself testified that it is not uncommon for police operations such as the one at Holmes’s house to attract attention and spectators. Given these circumstances, I find nothing particularly suspicious about Mendoza’s act of circling the block and then exiting his vehicle for a short time before returning to it.
In sum, I find the officers’ arrest of Mendoza to be unjustified. He matched only very general characteristics of the person that officers believed to be the drug source: he was Hispanic. Other circumstances, such as the fact that Mendoza arrived at the house in a sport utility vehicle, while the first source rode a bike, conflicted with the notion that he was the source. Moreover, I cannot agree that the government can establish a pattern of behavior for Holmes’s source based on one past transaction. Lastly, given the fact that there was no parking and a large-scale police operation underway, Mendoza’s act of driving around the block and looking at Holmes’s house is understandable. The combination of these features may have been sufficient to support an investigative stop of Mendoza’s vehicle, and that investigation may have yielded probable cause to believe Mendoza had committed or was committing a crime. See United States v. Bell, 183 F.3d 746, 749 (8th Cir.1999) (noting that motor vehicles and their occupants are subject to investigative detentions when officers harbor a reasonable suspicion that the vehicle or its occupants are involved in criminal activity). That, however, is not what happened. The officers here immediately executed a warrantless arrest of Mendoza *671without probable cause to believe he was Holmes’s drug source.
For the foregoing reasons, I respectfully dissent.