Court Opinion

ID: 9497228
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:46:16.763522+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:04.322488
License: Public Domain

RIPPLE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The key question in this case is the type of detention to which Mr. Jackson was subject while waiting for Officer Sapetti to investigate his identity. As noted by the majority, the subjective intent of both parties- — -Officer Sapetti and Mr. Jackson— are irrelevant to the inquiry: The justification for the stop, as well as the nature of the resulting detention, both are governed by an objective standard. See Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 813, 116 S.Ct. 1769, 135 L.Ed.2d 89 (1996) (holding that “[sjubjective intentions play no role in ordinary, probable-cause Fourth Amendment analysis”); Ochana v. Flores, 347 F.3d 266, 270 (7th Cir.2003) (“A suspect is under custodial arrest when ‘a reasonable person in the suspect’s position would have understood the situation to constitute a restraint of freedom of movement of the degree which the law associates with formal arrest.’ ”) (quoting United States v. Ienco, 182 F.3d 517, 523 (7th Cir.1999)). However, whereas the unstated intentions of Officer Sapetti in instituting the stop may be irrelevant to the probable cause determination, his stated intentions — that he was not placing Mr. Jackson under arrest — are a factor to consider in assessing whether a reasonable person in Mr. Jackson’s circumstances would conclude that he was under arrest. See Ochana, 347 F.3d at 270 (“Ochana had no reason to believe that he was under custodial arrest for any offense. He was not told that he was under arrest -”); United States v. Corral-Franco, 848 F.2d 536, 541 (5th Cir.1988) (accord); cf. United States v. Menden-hall, 446 U.S. 544, 555 n. 6, 100 S.Ct. 1870, 64 L.Ed.2d 497 (1980) (“We agree with the District-Court that the subjective intention of the DEA agent in this case to detain the respondent, had she attempted to leave, is irrelevant except insofar as that may have been conveyed to the respondent.”); United States v. Pratt, 355 F.3d 1119, 1124 (8th Cir.2004) (“Although the officers testified that they did not believe they had arrested Pratt when they physically restrained him, this fact does not change the outcome. An officer’s uncommunicated subjective intent is irrelevant to the question of whether an individual has been seized.” (citation omitted; emphasis added)).
Considering Officer Sapetti’s statements and the other circumstances surrounding Mr. Jackson’s detention, I do not believe that the detention amounted to a full custodial arrest. Officer Sapetti did not tell Mr. Jackson he was under arrest; to the contrary, the officer told Mr. Jackson that he was not under arrest. Officer Sapetti detained Mr. Jackson for the purpose of investigating his identity; the officer gave no indication that Mr. Jackson’s moving violations were the reason for his being held. Furthermore, the nature of the detention, as communicated by Officer Sapet-ti to Mr. Jackson, was going to be brief— the officer was going to handcuff Mr. Jackson and secure him in the police car; Mr. Jackson was not being transported to police headquarters for booking. Far from suggesting an arrest, Mr. Jackson’s detention has all of the markings of a Terry stop — “a brief, investigatory stop,” United States v. Ocampo, 890 F.2d 1363 (7th Cir.1989), for the purpose of determining whether “criminal activity may be afoot,” Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 30, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). And, therefore, Officer Sapetti’s search of Mr. Jackson must be evaluated as a search incident to a Terry stop.
It is well-established that an officer conducting a Terry stop may conduct a protective search of the suspect for the pur*719pose of “the discovery of weapons which might be used to harm the officer or others nearby.” Terry, 392 U.S. at 26, 88 S.Ct. 1868. Furthermore, if during a lawful patdown of a suspect’s outer clothing, an officer “feels an object whose contour and mass makes its identity immediately apparent” and “if the object is contraband, its warrantless seizure [is] justified.” Minnesota v. Dickerson, 508 U.S. 366, 375, 113 S.Ct. 2130, 124 L.Ed.2d 334 (1993). The question, therefore, is whether it was “immediately apparent” to Officer Sapetti that the object located on Mr. Jackson was contraband. Stated another way, was Officer Sapetti “acting within the lawful bounds marked by Terry at the time' he gained probable cause to believe that the lump in [Mr. Jackson’s pants] was contraband.” Dickerson, 508 U.S. at 377, 113 S.Ct. 2130.
The district court did not reach this question. It concluded that Mr. Jackson’s detention constituted an arrest and consequently evaluated Officer Sapetti’s search according to the broader standard for a search incident to an arrest. It did not evaluate the search in light of Terry and Dickerson to determine whether the nature of the contraband became apparent to Officer Sapetti during the course of a reasonable search for weapons, or whether it became apparent only after manipulation of the object beyond that which Terry allows. See Dickerson, 508 U.S. at 378, 113 S.Ct. 2130. Because this issue is one that is best addressed by the district court in the first instance, I would remand the case to the district court to determine whether Officer Sapetti’s actions were consistent with Terry and its progeny.
For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.