Court Opinion

ID: 9491361
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:11:57.82009+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:41.392340
License: Public Domain

EDITH H. JONES, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
A person might think that a drug smuggler should be featured on the TV program, “America’s Dumbest Criminals”, for transporting nearly a half ton of marijuana in a vehicle with no license tags. As it turns out, however, this drug smuggler may be among America’s smartest criminals, because under today’s ruling, he will be let go. Not only that, he should receive a reward from the other smugglers along the Rio Grande who will take this opinion to heart and also remove the license plates from their trucks and vans. I dissent.
Not to be misunderstood, I agree that a multi-factor test governs whether a border patrol agent had reasonable suspicion to justify stopping a vehicle near the border. United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 884-85, 95 S.Ct. 2574, 2582, 45 L.Ed.2d 607 (1975); United States v. Inocencio, 40 F.3d 716, 722 (5th Cir.1994). The majority have properly cited that test. In my view, the following factors1 fulfill the reasonable suspicion test: Highway 385 emerges from Big Bend National Park and is a road regularly used by drug and alien smugglers to avoid the permanent border patrol checkpoint on Highway 67; the appellant was traveling around the time of the shift change, when there was a higher probability that no one would be manning the checkpoint;2 the driver was a Hispanic male; Agent Garcia had minutes before stopped Mexican customs agents who have been known to escort vehicles containing contraband; the driver was slouched in his seat, as, in the Agent’s experience, people trying to avoid identification often are;3 and, the driver was traveling at a perceived high speed. Most important, there were no proper identifying license plates on appellant’s van.
Although all of these factors were considered by Agent Garcia, what could be more telling than the lack of vehicle license plates? Why would anyone emerging from the wilderness of Big Bend National Park fail to have license plates, unless to escape identification? The majority attempts no innocent explanation for appellant’s failure to have license plates; instead, the majority simply state that Agent Garcia had no authority, as a Border Patrol agent, to stop the driver for that traffic violation. This is correct but irrelevant for two reasons.
First, the appellant had no constitutional right not to be stopped while driving along in blatant violation of traffic laws. The Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule is intended to combat unconstitutional actions by law enforcement officers, but its premise is the violation of a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy. A person has no reasonable expectation that he will not be stopped for driving without license plates. By analogy, a man involved in a barroom brawl would have no constitutional privacy claim, and hence no ground for suppression, merely because he is arrested by an off-duty school-crossing guard rather than the local beat cop. See, e.g., Fields v. City of South Houston, 922 F.2d 1183, 1188 (5th Cir.1991) (question of officer’s authority to arrest in § 1983 ease turns on constitutional standard and not on Texas law governing arrest). The proper question is not whether Agent Garcia had authority to arrest for traffic violations but whether Agent Garcia had a reasonable suspicion of illegal smuggling activity based on all the conduct he saw.
*383Second, even if appellant had some constitutional right to be arrested only by a traffic law enforcement officer for driving without license plates, that violation may nevertheless be pertinent to the multifactor reasonable suspicion standard.4 One must credit Agent Garcia’s common sense and his eight-plus years of experience when he inferred that the lack of legally-required plates, taken together with the other suspicious circumstances, suggested the possibility of alien or contraband smuggling. Surely, the absence of license plates in that location is as clear an indicator of an intent to elude identification as if the appellant had suddenly sped up on seeing a border patrol car. Appellant may as well have hoisted a flag saying, “Escape attempt underway!”
To ignore the absence of license plates, as the majority have essentially done, is a serious error. From now on, brazen smugglers can simply breeze by border patrol agents after removing their license plates. They will thus successfully hinder law enforcement and investigation5 without any chance that countermeasures can be taken.
Part of the majority’s unreasonable conclusion seems directed at Agent Garcia’s failure to adhere to the niceties of legal language during his testimony. The majority footnotes his confusion between “mere suspicion” and “reasonable suspicion”. Too much is made of this error even for a footnote. As the majority knows, no suspicion is required for routine border or functional-equivalent searches,6 while reasonable suspicion is the basis for stops by roving border patrols like this one. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. at 884, 95 S.Ct. at 2582. Agent Garcia became momentarily confused and then explained the distinction correctly. The whole point of his testimony, however, was to outline the multiple grounds on which he had a reasonable suspicion that appellant was engaged in criminal activity. Even more telling, the district court, which witnessed the testimony, made no mention of Agent Garcia’s verbal mis-step in his findings. If the district court did not consider this exchange significant in judging the witness’s credibility, neither should we.
The Supreme Court has made it clear that “the relevant inquiry is not whether particular conduct is innocent or guilty, but the degree of suspicion that attaches to particular types of non-criminal acts.” United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 10, 109 S.Ct. 1581, 1587, 104 L.Ed.2d 1 (1989) (quoting Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 243-44 n. 13, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 2335 n. 13, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983)). Not only does this case involve a congeries of arguably “innocent” — but certainly suspicious — circumstances, but in addition, the patently illegal act of driving without license tags under circumstances that advertised the appellant’s desire to evade identification by law enforcement agents. Taking these facts together, there was more than reasonable suspicion of illegal conduct.
A final word is in order about the government’s presentation of this case. The government argued in the district court, but not in this court, that Agent Garcia’s actions should be approved under the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule. This court has applied the good faith exception to a Border Patrol stop under similar circumstances. United States v. De Leon-Reyna, 930 F.2d 396, 399 (5th Cir.1991) (en banc). In De Leon-Reyna, an officer’s reasonable but mistaken belief that a truck bore false license plates was held innocuous under the *384good-faith exception. Here, as in De Leow-Reyna, the agent’s misperception about the significance of a traffic violation was reasonable and made in good faith. The government should be chastised for not raising this plainly controlling issue in defense of its conviction and our citizens’ safety from illegal drug importation.
I respectfully dissent.

. AH of these factors are listed in the district court's careful opinion as grounds for reasonable suspicion except that the Mexican Customs’ officials’ car preceded appellant's van by 10-15 minutes.

. The majority believe that the timing is irrelevant since the Highway 385 checkpoint was irregularly staffed. But Agent Garcia testified that he and his colleagues will work a full shift at that checkpoint when assigned to it, and one shift runs from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. The district court thus correctly found that Agent Garcia was reasonably concerned by the time of day in which appellant was traveling.

.The majority discount the driver's slouching because he was “only 5'7" tall” and therefore might not be visible above the driver’s seat. I disagree. Much shorter drivers are clearly visible if they sit upright. Agent Garcia’s observation, found credible by the district court, should not be disbelieved at the appellate level.

.Border Patrol agents often rely on the commission of relevant traffic violations as one ground of reasonable suspicion. See United States v. Garza, 544 F.2d 222, 224 n. 3 (5th Cir.1976) ("The turn from an incorrect lane is relevant not to show violation of traffic laws but to show peculiar driving patterns which support the officers suspicion that aliens might have entered the United States illegally. Naturally, as in the present case, the two may be related."); see also United States v. Espinoza-Santill, 976 F.Supp. 561, 565-66 (W.D.Tex.1997) (traffic violation is a factor a Border Patrol officer may consider in development of reasonable suspicion).

. Agent Garcia testified that he could not identify the van without license lags, and a post-arrest attempt to identify it through the vehicle identification number (VIN) was also fruitless.

. United States v. Cardenas, 9 F.3d 1139, 1147-48 (5th Cir. 1993) (citing United States v. Montoya de Hernandez, 473 U.S. 531, 538, 105 S.Ct. 3304, 3309, 87 L.Ed.2d 381 (1985)); see also 8 U.S.C. § 1357.