Court Opinion

ID: 9404689
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-06-23 21:00:25.464862+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:20:16.287476
License: Public Domain

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                                             PUBLISHED

                               UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
                                   FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

                                              No. 21-4634

        UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

                            Plaintiff - Appellee,

                     v.

        XAVIER HOWELL, a/k/a X, a/k/a Xavier Allyson Howell,

                            Defendant - Appellant.

        Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, at
        Norfolk. John A. Gibney, Jr., Senior District Judge. (2:20-cr-00011-JAG-LRL-1)

        Argued: May 5, 2023                                             Decided: June 22, 2023

        Before NIEMEYER and HEYTENS, Circuit Judges, and Max O. COGBURN, Jr., United
        States District Judge for the Western District of North Carolina, sitting by designation.

        Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Niemeyer wrote the opinion, in which Judge
        Heytens and Judge Cogburn joined.

        ARGUED: Jonathan P. Sheldon, SHELDON & FLOOD, PLC, Fairfax, Virginia, for
        Appellant. Amanda L. Cheney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY,
        Norfolk, Virginia, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Jessica D. Aber, United States Attorney,
        Aidan Taft Grano-Mickelsen, Assistant United States Attorney, Richmond, Virginia,
        Andrew Bosse, Assistant United States Attorney, Amanda Turner, Assistant United States
        Attorney, John F. Butler, Assistant United States Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED
        STATES ATTORNEY, Norfolk, Virginia, for Appellee.
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        NIEMEYER, Circuit Judge:

              Suspecting that Xavier Howell was engaged in drug-trafficking activity, law

        enforcement officers in Chesapeake, Virginia, stopped the vehicle he was driving to

        investigate. After a drug dog alerted to the presence of drugs, the officers searched the

        vehicle and recovered methamphetamine and related evidence.

              After Howell was charged with drug trafficking offenses, he filed a motion to

        suppress the evidence recovered from his vehicle (and later from his apartment),

        contending (1) that the officers did not have a reasonable suspicion to make the stop and

        (2) that, in any event, they unduly prolonged the stop — all in violation of his Fourth

        Amendment rights. The district court denied his motion, and, for the reasons given herein,

        we affirm.

                                                    I

              During September 2019, Detective Joseph Beha and Detective Joseph Milewczik of

        the Chesapeake Police Department were investigating drug trafficking in Chesapeake. On

        September 26, they received a tip from a confidential informant that an out-of-town target

        of their investigation would be traveling to Chesapeake to traffic in drugs. The informant

        reported that the target would be meeting with other drug dealers at the Aloft hotel and

        would be staying there overnight. The target would be driving a dark-colored or black

        rental SUV with out-of-state tags from a northern state and would be accompanied by an

        unknown African American female.

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               The detectives took the tip seriously, as the informant had, for some five years,

        provided accurate information to law enforcement that had led to both federal and state

        arrests and convictions. Also, Detective Beha knew that the Aloft hotel was preferred by

        drug dealers as a place to meet and stay, as he had personally been involved in multiple

        prior drug-related arrests and seizures at the hotel.

               Accordingly, Detectives Beha and Milewczik conducted surveillance of the hotel,

        beginning at 7:00 a.m. the next morning, September 27, 2019. When, by approximately

        10:00 a.m., they had seen no vehicle matching the informant’s description, they went inside

        the hotel to check the guest register to see if the target’s name was on it or if other drug

        dealers’ names with whom they were familiar were on it. While they did not find the

        target’s name on the register, they did find the names of two others who they believed were

        involved in drug trafficking, one of whom was Xavier Howell.

               The detectives knew Howell from an earlier drug-trafficking investigation that had

        begun in 2014. As part of that investigation, officers made a controlled purchase of illegal

        drugs from a business in Portsmouth, Virginia, of which Howell had been identified as a

        “director.” At the time, an informant also told officers that he had personally seen Howell

        in possession of drugs. But Howell was not then prosecuted. Detective Beha was also

        aware that Howell had been arrested in Virginia in 2008 for drug trafficking, which resulted

        in his pleading guilty to possession with intent to distribute. Finally, Detective Beha knew

        of Howell’s prior arrests in three other states. Howell was, therefore, on Detective Beha’s

        radar during the current 2019 investigation.            Indeed, as Detective Beha testified,

        “[Howell’s] photograph ha[d] been in front of my and my partner’s desk as part of a big

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        board [used in the] ongoing criminal conspiracy investigation,” as were pictures of other

        targets. And Detective Beha had also been tracking Howell on social media.

               Upon seeing Howell’s name on the hotel register, Detective Beha ran a criminal

        history inquiry for Howell in the Virginia Criminal Information Network/National Crime

        Information Center (VCIN/NCIC) database and discovered that Howell had an outstanding

        arrest warrant from Georgia for failure to appear. That search, however, did not indicate

        whether the warrant was extraditable, such that an officer in another state could act on it.

               Later that morning, shortly before noon, the detectives observed a black Cadillac

        SUV pull up to the front of the hotel. The vehicle had Georgia plates and had a small

        sticker indicating to Detective Beha that it was a rental vehicle. When the driver exited,

        Detective Beha immediately recognized that it was Howell. As Detective Beha later

        testified, “I was very familiar with him.” Howell entered the hotel, while an unidentified

        African American female exited the front passenger side and stood outside the vehicle,

        waiting for Howell to return. About ten minutes later, Howell returned with a small duffel

        bag and placed it in the vehicle. Both Howell and the female then got back in the vehicle

        and drove away.

               As Detectives Beha and Milewczik followed the vehicle in their unmarked vehicle,

        they contacted a nearby traffic enforcement officer, Kenneth Byrd, to update him on the

        situation. They also informed dispatch of the potential need for a K-9 unit. As Detective

        Beha followed the black SUV, he observed that Howell was driving “in an extremely

        cautious manner” — driving under the speed limit and giving unusually early turn signals

        — which Beha interpreted to suggest that Howell was attempting to avoid drawing

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        attention to himself. Detective Beha requested that Officer Byrd conduct a stop, which

        Byrd did. Officer Byrd pulled Howell over at 12:06 p.m. and told Howell (as a ruse) that

        there was some mismatch between the vehicle and its license plate.             Officer Byrd

        acknowledged later, however, that the real reason he pulled Howell over was in furtherance

        of the drug-trafficking investigation and because of the outstanding arrest warrant. He

        testified that he used the ruse in an attempt to forestall Howell’s fleeing.

               After Officer Byrd obtained Howell’s driver’s license and registration, he returned

        to his vehicle and performed an additional VCIN/NCIC inquiry, which confirmed that

        Howell had an outstanding arrest warrant. The response to the inquiry, however, also

        indicated that the warrant was non-extraditable. Around the time that Officer Byrd was

        receiving this information, K-9 Officer C.J. Rombs and his trained drug dog arrived on the

        scene — at 12:11 p.m. — in order to conduct an open-air dog sniff of Howell’s vehicle.

        After brief conversations with the other officers, the female passenger, and Howell, and

        after removing Howell and the female passenger from the vehicle, Officer Rombs had the

        dog conduct the sniff. Within 30 seconds, the dog alerted to the odor of illegal drugs.

        Based on that alert, Officer Rombs allowed the dog to search the interior of the vehicle,

        and the dog alerted to containers in the back of the vehicle — a baby diaper bag, a black

        duffel bag, and a United States Postal Service mailing box. Following a search of the

        vehicle and the containers, the officers recovered approximately two kilograms of

        methamphetamine, cell phones, and incriminating paperwork. The paperwork led the

        officers to an apartment that Howell used, and after obtaining search warrants for the

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        apartment and the cell phones, the officers recovered additional drugs and incriminating

        messages indicative of a drug-trafficking conspiracy.

               After Howell was charged with conspiracy to traffic in illegal drugs, in violation of

        21 U.S.C. § 846, and possession of illegal drugs with intent to distribute, in violation of

        21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1), (b)(1), he filed a motion to suppress the evidence obtained from the

        September 27, 2019 traffic stop, as well as evidence constituting the fruits of that search,

        arguing that the officers lacked reasonable suspicion for the stop and unlawfully extended

        its duration to allow time for the K-9 officer to arrive.

               The district court conducted an evidentiary hearing on the motion to suppress and

        then ruled that the officers had a reasonable suspicion of drug trafficking to justify the stop

        and that the stop was not unlawfully prolonged. Accordingly, it denied Howell’s motion.

               Before trial, the government filed a superseding indictment that added a count

        charging Howell with conspiracy to launder money, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1956(h).

        Following a bench trial, the district court convicted Howell on all charges and thereafter

        sentenced him to 360 months’ imprisonment.

               From the judgment entered on November 15, 2021, Howell filed this appeal,

        challenging only the district court’s denial of his motion to suppress.

                                                      II

               Howell contends first that the government lacked a reasonable suspicion of criminal

        activity to justify stopping him, maintaining that

               [Detective Beha’s] testimony on the reliability of the informant was scant.
               Further, at the time the Government decided to detain Howell they knew that

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               their informant was incorrect, and that his tip was wrong, because the specific
               target they were looking for was not at the Aloft hotel as the informant
               claimed. There was no suspicious drug activity observed at the hotel, a hotel
               where obviously the vast majority of customers were not involved in drug
               activity. So, the informant’s tip was not reliable, he was “absolutely off the
               money in this particular case.”

        (Quoting the district court). Howell argues that “[t]he only information added to Howell’s

        past [criminal record] that still stood — that could conceivably be considered as both

        relevant and suspicious . . . at the time law enforcement detained Howell was that Howell

        was driving a rental car and staying at the Aloft hotel.” Howell thus contends that the

        district court “made a crucial mistake when it found reasonable suspicion because it

        credited and relied on the informant’s tip regarding ‘a suspected drug trafficker’ who would

        be driving a black rental car with out of state plates and a woman would accompany the

        suspect at the Aloft hotel.” That was a mistake, Howell argues, because the confidential

        informant was wrong — “[t]hat target never showed up.”

               The applicable legal principles are not disputed. “The Fourth Amendment prohibits

        ‘unreasonable searches and seizures’ by the Government, and its protections extend to brief

        investigatory stops of persons or vehicles that fall short of traditional arrest.” United States

        v. Arvizu, 534 U.S. 266, 273 (2002); see also U.S. Const. amend. IV. “Since Terry v. Ohio,

        392 U.S. 1 (1968), a ‘reasonable suspicion’ of criminal activity has justified an officer’s

        brief stop or detention of [a] suspect sufficient to permit the officer to allay the suspicion.”

        United States v. Mason, 628 F.3d 123, 128 (4th Cir. 2010). Officers have “reasonable

        suspicion” when they can point “to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with

        rational inferences from those facts, evince more than an inchoate and unparticularized

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        suspicion or hunch of criminal activity.” Id. (quoting United States v. Branch, 537 F.3d

        328, 336 (4th Cir. 2008)). This standard “is not readily . . . reduced to a neat set of legal

        rules,” and therefore in assessing reasonable suspicion, courts look to the totality of the

        circumstances. Id. (quoting United States v. Foreman, 369 F.3d 776, 781 (4th Cir. 2004)).

               Unremarkably, we review the district court’s legal conclusions, including its

        determination of reasonable suspicion, de novo, and we review its factual findings for clear

        error, construing the facts in the light most favorable to the government since it was the

        prevailing party below. See United States v. Drakeford, 992 F.3d 255, 262 (4th Cir. 2021).

               In this case, Detective Beha instructed Officer Byrd to conduct a stop of Howell’s

        vehicle based on Beha’s suspicion that Howell was engaged in drug-trafficking activity.

        As he explained to the district court, his suspicion was based on an aggregation of

        information. First, he related how he had received information from a reliable informant

        that a target of his ongoing drug-trafficking investigation would be meeting other drug

        dealers at the Aloft hotel and that the target would be driving a specific vehicle and be

        accompanied by an African American female. While the vehicle on which Detective Beha

        eventually focused did match the reported description in substantial degree (although it had

        Georgia plates, rather than plates from a northern state), the driver of the vehicle was not

        the target, but was Howell. Detective Beha discovered that Howell was registered at the

        hotel where a meeting of drug dealers was expected. Those facts were connected because

        Detective Beha understood Howell to be a person who might be involved in drug-

        trafficking activities. Thus, when Howell appeared in the black SUV that matched the

        informant’s description and Howell had been registered at the hotel, which was a venue

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        associated with drug trafficking, Detective Beha’s suspicion arose that Howell was

        currently involved in drug-trafficking activities.

               Second, Detective Beha’s historical knowledge of Howell was important for this

        suspicion. Howell had, in 2014, been a “director” of a business that sold illegal drugs

        during a controlled buy, and an informant at the time told officers that he saw Howell in

        possession of illegal drugs. Howell had also been arrested in 2008 for drug trafficking,

        pleading guilty to the offense of possession with intent to distribute. And Howell had been

        arrested three times in other states. Moreover, before September 2019 and the events of

        this case, Howell had continued to be a specific target of Detective Beha’s drug-trafficking

        investigation in Chesapeake, as demonstrated by Howell’s picture being on the board

        displaying potential targets in the investigation. Thus, to Detective Beha, Howell was not

        just an innocent citizen who had arrived in a black SUV — he was a person of long-

        standing interest with respect to drug trafficking. As such, when Detective Beha saw

        Howell arrive at a location where a drug dealers’ meeting was anticipated, Beha reasonably

        suspected that Howell was currently engaged in drug trafficking.

               Third, Detective Beha knew that the Aloft hotel was a location that drug dealers

        preferred, as he had made multiple drug-trafficking arrests and seizures of drugs there. He

        explained that the hotel’s design made it a preferred venue because drug dealers could

        engage with each other in common areas, rather than in bedrooms, which drug dealers

        sought to avoid.

               Finally, contributing to Detective Beha’s suspicion of Howell was Howell’s conduct

        in driving his vehicle. Beha found it meaningful that when he followed Howell in an

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        unmarked car as Howell was driving, Howell seemed to be driving in an overly cautious

        manner, so as to avoid drawing attention to his vehicle.

               In the totality of the circumstances as articulated by Detective Beha, we conclude

        that he had a reasonable suspicion that criminal activity was afoot when he asked Officer

        Byrd to make the stop. The fact that some of the confidential informant’s information

        proved to be erroneous did not preclude the officers from relying on other information that

        had been given them by the informant. See Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 245 n.14 (1983)

        (rejecting the proposition that one inaccuracy in an anonymous informant’s letter

        undermined the probative value of the entire tip); see also United States v. Harris, 39 F.3d

        1262, 1269 (4th Cir. 1994) (“Information of criminal activity given by a known reliable

        informant is enough to sustain a Terry stop”). Indeed, even with respect to the erroneous

        information — that the driver was Howell rather than the expected target — the fact that

        the target and other drug dealers were expected to meet at the Aloft hotel and that one of

        them would be driving a black SUV was still useful. Indeed, such a meeting between the

        target and Howell may have occurred during the night long before Detectives Beha and

        Milewczik began their surveillance.

               While Howell’s criminal history taken alone would not have created a reasonable

        suspicion of current criminal activity, it surely was relevant in connection with the

        anticipated meeting of drug dealers. See United States v. Foster, 634 F.3d 243, 246–47

        (4th Cir. 2011) (noting that criminal history can be a relevant factor when paired with

        “more ‘concrete factors’ to demonstrate that there was a reasonable suspicion of current

        criminal activity” (quoting United States v. Sprinkle, 106 F.3d 613, 617 (4th Cir. 1997))).

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                And finally, while Detective Beha’s knowledge that the Aloft hotel was a preferred

        venue of drug dealers would not be sufficient, taken alone, see Illinois v. Wardlow, 528

        U.S. 119, 124 (2000), it contributed to his assessment, especially since he had the

        information from his own personal experience. It also tended to confirm the information

        that he received from the confidential informant that there would be a meeting of drug

        dealers at that hotel.

                When all of these factors come together at a specific time — as they did here —

        they support a reasonable suspicion of ongoing criminal activity, justifying a brief stop to

        allay that suspicion. In this case, of course, the investigatory stop did not allay that

        suspicion but confirmed it. Shortly after the stop, a drug dog alerted to the presence of

        drugs in Howell’s vehicle, leading to the recovery of drugs and other evidence used in this

        case.

                                                      III

                Howell also contends that even if the officers had reasonable suspicion to justify the

        stop, the stop was unlawfully prolonged in order to allow the K-9 unit to arrive and the

        drug-dog sniff to occur.

                It is undisputed that the stop was initiated at 12:06 p.m.; that the K-9 officer, along

        with his dog, arrived at the scene five minutes later, at 12:11 p.m.; that the K-9 officer

        engaged in conversations and removed Howell and his passenger from the vehicle during

        the next five minutes; that the dog sniff took place at 12:16 or 12:17 p.m.; and that the dog

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        alerted to the presence of drugs within 30 seconds. Thus, by 12:17 p.m., 11 minutes after

        the initiation of the stop, the officers had probable cause to search the vehicle.

               The stop in this case was a Terry stop, which need be justified by only reasonable

        suspicion of criminal activity, and the permissible length of such a stop is determined by

        the “mission” justifying the stop. Illinois v. Caballes, 543 U.S. 405, 407 (2005). “In

        assessing whether a detention is too long in duration to be justified as an investigative

        stop,” it is “appropriate to examine whether the police diligently pursued a means of

        investigation that was likely to confirm or dispel their suspicions quickly.” United States

        v. Sharpe, 470 U.S. 675, 686 (1985). And, of course, the “[a]uthority for the seizure” ends

        when the “tasks tied” to the initial stop “are — or reasonably should have been —

        completed.” Rodriguez v. United States, 575 U.S. 348, 354 (2015).

               “The maximum acceptable length of a routine traffic stop cannot be stated with

        mathematical precision,” but rather “the appropriate constitutional inquiry is whether the

        detention lasted longer than was necessary, given its purpose.” United States v. Branch,

        537 F.3d 328, 336 (4th Cir. 2008). Moreover, even if an individual is stopped for a routine

        traffic violation, the use of a trained drug dog to conduct an open-air sniff during that traffic

        stop does not violate the Fourth Amendment. Caballes, 543 U.S. at 409. But absent

        reasonable suspicion to independently justify the dog sniff, police may not extend a routine

        traffic stop in order to conduct a dog sniff. Rodriguez, 575 U.S. at 354–57; see also United

        States v. Miller, 54 F.4th 219, 228 (4th Cir. 2022). The stop at issue in this case, however,

        was not a routine traffic stop. Rather, the primary purpose of the stop was to allay suspicion

        of Howell’s participation in a possible ongoing drug-trafficking conspiracy. And because

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        we conclude that the initial stop was supported by reasonable suspicion, we readily

        conclude that the arrival of the K-9 officer within 5 minutes of the stop and the completion

        of the dog sniff within 10 to 11 minutes did not amount to an illegal prolonging of the stop.

        See, e.g., United States v. Vaughan, 700 F.3d 705, 712 (4th Cir. 2012) (confirming the

        permissibility of a dog sniff that occurred 16 minutes after the initial traffic stop and 7 to

        10 minutes after reasonable suspicion first developed); Mason, 628 F.3d at 126–30

        (upholding a 15-minute detention on the basis that a reasonable suspicion of drug

        trafficking permitted briefly extending a traffic stop until the drug-sniffing dog arrived);

        Branch, 537 F.3d at 339 (upholding a 30-minute detention that began with a traffic stop

        and then gave rise to a reasonable suspicion of drug activity sufficient to justify continued

        detention until the dog sniff occurred). Here, the mission of the stop was to investigate

        potential drug-trafficking activity, and there is no evidence in the record to suggest that the

        officers failed to “diligently pursue[]” their investigation to confirm or allay that suspicion.

        Sharpe, 470 U.S. at 686.

                                               *       *      *

               In sum, we conclude that the Chesapeake law enforcement officers had a reasonable

        suspicion to justify stopping Howell and that, after stopping him, they diligently engaged

        in what was necessary to allay their suspicion and therefore did not unnecessarily prolong

        the stop. We thus affirm the district court’s denial of Howell’s motion to suppress and

        affirm the judgment.

                                                                                          AFFIRMED

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