Court Opinion

ID: 9484053
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:39:05.297662+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:59.218312
License: Public Domain

SEYMOUR, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Mr. Soto was stopped early on a December morning while driving his uncle’s car. The temperature was eight degrees above zero and the car heater was broken. Mr. Soto’s hands were shaking and he could not provide his uncle’s address. The majority concludes as a matter of law that these innocuous facts provide the basis for an objectively reasonable suspicion that Mr. Soto was carrying drugs or weapons in the car. I cannot agree and I must therefore respectfully dissent.
As the majority recognizes, the officer making a traffic stop may request a driver’s license and registration, run a computer check, and issue a citation. Once the driver has produced a valid license and proof that he is entitled to operate the car, “he must be allowed to proceed on his way, without being subject to further delay by police for additional questioning.”
United States v. Walker, 933 F.2d 812, 816 (10th Cir.1991) (quoting United States v. Guzman, 864 F.2d 1512, 1519 (10th Cir.1988), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 112 S.Ct. 1168, 117 L.Ed.2d 414 (1992). “Any further detention for questioning is beyond the scope of the Terry stop and therefore is illegal unless the officer has a reasonable suspicion of unlawful activity.” United States v. Dewitt, 946 F.2d 1497, 1501-02 (10th Cir.1991), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 112 S.Ct. 1233, 117 L.Ed.2d 467 (1992).
In assessing whether an officer has reasonable suspicion to further detain and question a person on matters unrelated to the traffic violation, we apply the analysis used by the Supreme Court in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). See Dewitt, 946 F.2d at 1501. Because Terry is the source of the reasonable suspicion doctrine, it is appropriate to return to that case for guidance on the principles governing our determination of this question. In Terry, the Supreme Court upheld a limited warrantless intrusion on Fourth Amendment interests when that intrusion is supported by reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. The Court stated unequivocally that the authority to trench upon these constitutional protections must be “narrowly drawn.” Terry, 392 U.S. at 27, 88 S.Ct. at 1883 (emphasis added).
[I]n justifying the particular intrusion the police officer must be able to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion. The scheme of the Fourth Amendment becomes meaningful only when it is assured that at some point the conduct of those charged with enforcing the laws can be subjected to the more detached, neutral scrutiny of a judge who must evaluate the reasonableness of a particular search or seizure in light of the particular circumstances. And in making that assessment it is *1561imperative that the facts be judged against an objective standard; would the facts available to the officer at the moment of the seizure or the search “warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief" that the action taken was appropriate? Anything less would invite intrusions upon constitutionally guaranteed rights based on nothing more substantial than inarticulate hunches, a result this Court has consistently refused to sanction. And simple “ ‘good faith on the part of the arresting officer is not enough.’ * * * If subjective good faith alone were the test, the protections of the Fourth Amendment would evaporate, and the people would be ‘secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects,’ only in the discretion of the police.”
Id. at 21-22, 88 S.Ct. at 1880 (citations and footnotes omitted) (emphasis added).
The facts upon which the majority relies here simply do not provide the basis for an objectively reasonable inference that Mr. Soto was carrying drugs in the car. While detaining Mr. Soto, Officer Barney twice questioned him on matters unrelated to his speeding offense. The first time, Mr. Soto provided his driver’s license and the car registration with shaking hands and did not respond when Officer Barney asked him to recite his uncle’s address. Thereupon Officer Barney asked Mr. Soto if he had drugs or weapons in the car. The majority recognizes that we have held nervousness alone does not support a reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct, see Walker, 933 F.2d at 817, Guzman, 864 F.2d at 1520; see also United States v. Tapia, 912 F.2d 1367, 1371 (11th Cir.1990). The majority also recognizes that Mr. Soto’s shaking could well have been caused at least in part by the extreme cold. Nonetheless, the majority concludes that reasonable suspicion existed as a matter of law because in addition Mr. Soto could not state his uncle's address. Even assuming that these two facts could support a reasonable inference of criminal activity, the only criminal activity that could be rationally related to these facts is the suspicion that Mr. Soto was driving a stolen car.
Officer Barney questioned Mr. Soto a second time on matters unrelated to the speeding violation after Officer Barney had written a ticket and received an NCIC report indicating that the car had not been reported stolen. Even assuming that the facts had previously allowed a reasonable inference that the car was stolen, and that this inference somehow justified questions about drugs and guns, once the NCIC check came back negative the basis for inferring criminal activity of any sort evaporated. The only circumstance offered by the majority to support this additional questioning is the fact that Mr. Soto was still nervous.1
I cannot agree that under our caselaw Officer Barney had an objectively reasonable suspicion justifying his questioning about weapons or narcotics. At most, the facts originally may have entitled Officer Barney to suspect a stolen car. The reasonableness of even that inference disappeared after the negative NCIC report. We are left to determine whether a reasonable suspicion of the presence of illegal drugs or guns can objectively arise from nervousness and shaking hands in eight-degree weather coupled with the failure to provide a relative’s address upon request. In holding that it does, the majority relies on cases which, as the majority’s description of them reveals, contain circumstances in addition to those present here that make a more compelling case for reasonable suspicion. See maj. at 1555.
None of the cases cited by the majority contain so little to arouse suspicion as the present case does. For example, in United States v. Horn, 970 F.2d 728 (10th Cir.1992), in addition to the extremely suspicious ownership papers noted by the major*1562ity, we pointed as well to the “unusual and provocative way defendant pulled his car to a stop at an angle to the highway,” id. at 732. However, the suspicious-looking and irregular papers in Horn are enough to distinguish that case. The majority here also makes an unjustified leap in equating Mr. Soto’s failure to provide his uncle’s address with “an inability to explain the right to possession of the vehicle.” Maj. at 1555 n. 2. In United States v. Turner, 928 F.2d 956, 958-59 (10th Cir.1991), defendant’s attire, well-manicured hands, and expensive possessions were inconsistent with his asserted occupation as a mechanic in the view of the police officer who was also a mechanic. Moreover, the police officer had returned the driver’s license and car registration before asking questions regarding guns and drugs, a critical distinction from the present case. In United States v. Pena, 920 F.2d 1509, 1511-12 (10th Cir.1990), the police officer was justly suspicious when the driver said the car belonged to his brother but the officer determined that the car was registered to a woman the driver admitted he did not know. In United States v. Arango, 912 F.2d 441, 443 (10th Cir.1990), unlike here, the police officer could observe the lack of luggage in the bed of the truck to undermine the driver’s story of a two week vacation trip, in addition to the lack of credible information establishing his right to possess the truck. In United States v. Corral, 899 F.2d 991 (10th Cir.1990), the officer observed that the spare tire was out of place on top of the hatch floor, and that the floor of the hatch was bulged where the spare tire should have been. In addition, there is no indication the officer possessed the driver’s license, which the driver “showed” to the officer, see id. at 992, when the officer asked the question regarding drugs and weapons. Finally, in United States v. Rivera, 867 F.2d 1261 (10th Cir.1989), the officer smelled “a strong odor of car freshener,” which he had learned to associate with attempts to conceal the presence of cocaine, id. at 1262, in addition to the factors the majority mentions, see maj. at 1555.
As these cases demonstrate, none of our prior decisions upholds a finding of reasonable suspicion based solely on nervousness and something as common and innocent as the inability to provide the address of a relative. Indeed, the majority sanctions “as ‘reasonably suspicious’ a combination of factors that could plausibly describe the behavior of a large portion of the motorists engaged in travel upon our interstate highways.” Tapia, 912 F.2d at 1371.
Finally, I cannot agree with the majority’s articulation of the essential difference between its position and my dissent. See maj. at 1556. The issue as I see it is whether an objectively reasonable suspicion of the presence of drugs or guns can be based on a defendant who is nervous and shaking in cold weather and who does not provide the address of the person whose car he is driving when that car has not been reported stolen. In my view, these facts simply do not provide the requisite objective reasonable belief that a defendant is harboring drugs or guns. I disagree with the majority’s position that an officer who has a reasonable suspicion of a particular criminal activity may therefore legitimately question a defendant about unrelated criminal conduct. The Supreme Court in Terry stated that the “demand for specificity in the information upon which police action is predicated is the central teaching of this Court’s Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.” 392 U.S. at 21 n. 18, 88 S.Ct. at 1880 n. 18. Accordingly, the Court held that “in justifying the particular intrusion the police officer must be able to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion.” Id. at 21, 88 S.Ct. at 1880 (emphasis added). If the Court's demand for specificity and particularity is to have any meaning at all in the context of a Terry stop, it must limit police intrusion to those questions that are themselves supported by a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.. To the extent that our cases can be read to support the majority’s condoning of questioning unsupported by specific reasonable suspicion, they are contrary to the teaching of Terry. *1563Moreover, the specific issue was apparently not raised in the cases the majority cites, see at 1556.
The majority opinion flies in the face of fundamental Fourth Amendment jurisprudence by holding that reasonable suspicion as to one particular criminal activity justifies questioning about unrelated criminal conduct for which an officer does not have reasonable suspicion. In addressing the particularity requirement in the related context of searches pursuant to a warrant, the Supreme Court has emphasized that
[b]y limiting the authorization to search to the specific areas and things for which there is probable cause to search, the [particularity] requirement ensures that the search will be carefully tailored to its justifications, and will not take on the character of the wide-ranging exploratory searches the Framers intended to pro-hibit_ “Just as probable cause to believe that a stolen lawnmower may be found in a garage will not support a warrant to search an upstairs bedroom, probable cause to believe that undocumented aliens are being transported in a van will not justify a warrantless search of a suitcase.”
Maryland v. Garrison, 480 U.S. 79, 84-85, 107 S.Ct. 1013, 1016, 94 L.Ed.2d 72 (1987) (quoting United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798, 824, 102 S.Ct. 2157, 2172, 72 L.Ed.2d 572 (1982)). We have pointed out that “ ‘[t]he particularity requirement ensures that a search is confined in scope to particularly described evidence relating to a specific crime for which there is demonstrated probable cause.’ ” United States v. Snow, 919 F.2d 1458, 1461 (10th Cir.1990) (emphasis added) (quoting Voss v. Bergsgaard, 774 F.2d 402, 404 (10th Cir.1985)). See also Voss, 774 F.2d at 408 (Logan, J., concurring) (“The breadth of a warrant must be justified by the breadth of the probable cause.”); 1 Wayne R. LaFave & Jerold H. Israel, Criminal Procedure § 3.4(f) at 227 (1984) (“[T]he requirement of particularity is closely tied to the requirement of probable cause to search.”).
The circumstances in this case, applicable as they are to a large segment of the public, do not comply with the Supreme Court’s admonition that the authority to undertake a warrantless seizure upon reasonable suspicion must be narrowly drawn. Moreover, there is no rational, specific, ar-ticulable relation between the facts upon which Officer Barney purported to rely and an objectively reasonable suspicion that Mr. Soto was carrying drugs or weapons. I must respectfully dissent from the majority’s holding to the contrary. Accordingly, I would hold that the detention and further questioning of Mr. Soto was illegal.

. Officer Barney testified that he had a feeling or hunch or suspicion that the car contained drugs at the time he stopped the car and before he ran the NCIC check. This suspicion was apparently based primarily on Mr. Soto's nervousness. See Appellee’s Supp.App. at 34-35. Absent reasonable objective circumstances, a "hunch," of course, does not justify a seizure. See Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 27, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1883, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968); United States v. Guzman, 864 F.2d 1512, 1520 (10th Cir.1988).