Court Opinion

ID: 9496353
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:24:18.791487+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:31.204645
License: Public Domain

*455DAVID A. NELSON, Circuit Judge
dissenting.
The stars that must be in alignment before the issuance of a writ of habeas corpus can be justified in this case include all of the following:
1) Petitioner Joshua’s Fourth Amendment right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures must be found to have been so jeopardized by what happened here that the state courts were required, as a matter of federal law, to exclude the evidence of Joshua’s criminal activity.
2) Joshua must be found to have been denied his Sixth Amendment right to counsel, a finding dependent upon his satisfying both branches of the test in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984):
a) he must show that his lawyers were guilty of “incompetence” (see Kimmelman v. Morrison, 477 U.S. 365, 382, 106 S.Ct. 2574 (1986)) when they failed to support their suppression arguments with a citation to United States v. Hensley, 469 U.S. 221, 105 S.Ct. 675 (1985), and
b) he must show a reasonable probability that the state courts would have reached a different result if their attention had been called to Hensley.
3) The state court decisions on both the admissibility of the evidence and the alleged denial of right to counsel must have been “contrary to, or involved1 an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States_” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d).
I am not persuaded that any of these prerequisites can fairly be held to have been met. But perhaps the clearest ground for - affirming the district court’s denial of habeas relief is that Joshua flunks the “prejudice” branch of the Strickland test. As I read the state court record, the conclusion that Joshua suffered no prejudice as a result of his lawyers’ failure to cite Hensley is the only conclusion that could reasonably be reached.
To start with the proceedings before the state common pleas court, I note that defense counsel made a timely objection to the admission in evidence of the “Read & Sign” bulletin on which Trooper Hannon relied in detaining Joshua. The lawyer argued that the bulletin constituted “hearsay on hearsay” and that it “was never verified.” Although a citation to Hensley would obviously have been appropriate at that point,1 it is crystal clear that such a citation would not have changed the common pleas court’s decision to deny Joshua’s motion to suppress. This is so because the denial of the motion was based on the court’s conclusion that Mr. Joshua lacked standing to challenge the search of his drug-laden companion — a conclusion that could not logically have been affected by anything in Hensley. If the result would have been the same in any event, there could have been no prejudice.
As to the proceedings in the Ohio court of appeals, I believe it is equally clear that Mr. Joshua was not prejudiced by his appellate lawyer’s failure to cite Hensley. Echoing the argument made by trial counsel in objecting to the introduction of the *456“Read & Sign” bulletin, appellate counsel told the court of appeals that Mr. Joshua had been detained for 42 minutes because Trooper Hannon “had received hear-say from the dispatcher that the dispatcher had hear-say from another trooper who had read a hear-say document drafted seven (7) days earlier by [Trooper Mik-esh] stating that she had heard from unknown sources within the Columbus police that Aaron Joshua may be transporting cocaine between Columbus and Portsmouth on a regular basis.... ” Again, it is true, there was no citation to Hensley— but again the failure to cite Hensley did not affect the outcome. The court of appeals simply finessed the unverified hearsay issue, holding that Joshua’s detention could be justified by articulable facts that were unrelated to the read-and-sign bulletin and that were sufficient, standing alone, to give trooper Hannon a basis for suspecting criminal activity. That holding, like the trial court’s holding, could hardly have been affected by a citation to Hensley. Against this background, I do not believe it was unreasonable for the state court of appeals subsequently to conclude that Joshua had failed to prove he was prejudiced by his lawyers’ performance.
Although the absence of prejudice is in itself sufficient to require rejection of Joshua’s claim, it seems to me that the claim founders on the “incompetence” branch of Strickland as well. Joshua has made a colorable argument that his attorneys’ failure to cite Hensley was “unreasonable under prevailing professional norms and ... was not sound strategy.” Kimmelman, 477 U.S. at 381, 106 S.Ct. 2574 (citing Strickland, 466 U.S. at 688-89, 104 S.Ct. 2052). But that argument is not so compelling, in my view, that its rejection by the state court of appeals must be considered unreasonable. Given the “strong presumption” of constitutionally effective representation, id., Mr. Joshua’s Hensley issue would have to be more clearly meritorious than it is, in my view, for the state court to have been required to find his attorneys’ performance deficient. It does not seem to me that the Hensley issue has such obvious merit.
I do not read Hensley as requiring the state to present proof, in every instance, of the facts known to a police officer who issues a wanted flyer or other intelligence report that is relied upon by another officer. The essential holding of Hensley, as I understand it, is that the officer who acts on the flyer need not be privy to the facts underlying its issuance — what matters, for purposes of determining whether a search or seizure is constitutional, is whether the issuing officer had a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. See Hensley, 469 U.S. at 232-33, 105 S.Ct. 675. It does not necessarily follow from this that the state must always put on evidence of the facts known to the issuing officer, regardless of whether the arresting officer has information outside the intelligence report that lends credence to it.
The totality of the evidence presented at Joshua’s suppression hearing strongly suggests that his detention for the relatively short time it took the officers to complete their investigation could be justified without the presentation of any additional evidence. The hearing transcript contains evidence of the following facts, among others:
—At 11:07 on the morning of the drug bust, Trooper Hannon pulled Joshua over for speeding. The legitimacy of the speeding stop is uncontested.
*457—The vehicle driven by Joshua was a red Pontiac Sunfire with out-of-state plates.2 The car had been rented from the Enterprise car rental concern. Joshua produced some rental papers for Trooper Hannon’s inspection, but the papers pertained to a maroon Geo Tracker and not to the red Pontiac. Trooper Hannon, not unreasonably, asked the dispatcher to cheek this discrepancy with Enterprise. At 11:22 a.m., having called Enterprise, the dispatcher advised the trooper that Mr. Joshua was entitled to be driving the Pontiac.
—In the meantime, shortly after 11:10 a.m., the dispatcher had been alerted to the existence of the “Read & Sign” bulletin. The bulletin indicated that Trooper Mikesh was in receipt of information — information originating with the police department of Columbus, Ohio — to the effect that “an Aaron Joshua ... was transporting crack cocaine between Columbus and Portsmouth twice a week ... and that he was on parole [for] previous drug activity....” This information was promptly radioed to Trooper Hannon. Significantly, Joshua himself had already told the trooper that Portsmouth was his destination and that he was driving there from Columbus.
—Trooper Hannon — again not unreasonably — asked the dispatcher to call for a drug-sniffing dog and to check with the police in Columbus and Portsmouth to see if there were any outstanding warrants for Joshua. There proved to be none, but the Portsmouth police officer with whom the dispatcher spoke turned out to be familiar with Joshua. The officer promised to “have a detective call [the dispatcher] back with further information.” The dispatcher advised Trooper Hannon of this development at approximately 11:15 a.m., during the same radio transmission in which he reported the results of his calls to Columbus and to Trooper Mikesh, the officer in charge of the drug dog.
—Trooper Hannon’s testimony, when read in conjunction with the dispatcher’s, shows that the point at which the trooper learned about the Portsmouth police department’s familiarity with Joshua and its promise to have a detective call back preceded the point at which the trooper learned that the car rental company had no problem with Joshua’s driving the Pontiac. This timing, as we shall see, may have some relevance to our inquiry.
—Joshua was not free to leave the scene of the stop, of course, while the telephone calls and radio transmissions I have described were taking place. During the 10 minutes or so when Trooper Hannon was the only officer present, however, Joshua and his passenger were acting “[q]uite normal,” according to -the trooper, “like I would *458expect any person that I had stopped for [a] speeding violation to act.”
—At 11:17 a.m. a second state highway patrolman, Trooper Barnes, arrived on the scene. With the arrival of the backup unit, according to Trooper Hannon, the behavior of the occupants of the Pontiac changed dramatically:
“They became extremely nervous, both Mr. Joshua and Miss Chapman began looking over their shoulder. Mr. Joshua was looking out the driver’s side window trying to see behind him, there was constant activity in the vehicle. I’ve never stopped a vehicle where I’ve seen so much activity and so much concern from the occupants about what was going on around them and behind them.” (Emphasis supplied.)
—Trooper Barnes confirmed this account, testifying that “I noticed that there was a lot of movement in the vehicle.... [Joshua] kept looking back. He was continually keeping his eyes on myself and Trooper Hannon by either physically turning around or looking through the rearview mirror.” When asked if Joshua’s movements were “the usual type of movements” made by the subject of a traffic stop, Trooper Barnes answered “No.” As the trooper went on to explain,
“Most people will turn and look, but not continually on a non-stop basis, you know. Eventually, they’ll kind of relax and settle down, but that wasn’t the case in this instance.”
• — At a time not entered in the log, according to the dispatcher’s testimony, but probably at his first opportunity after completing his phone calls (i. e., sometime after 11:22 a.m.), the dispatcher ran a criminal history check on Joshua. The dispatcher testified unequivocally that he transmitted the results of the criminal history check to Trooper Hannon.
—At 11:48 a.m., while Trooper Mikesh was on her way to the scene with her drug dog, the dispatcher received the promised call from Portsmouth. The caller, a Detective Sgt. Brewer, confirmed that the Portsmouth police department was familiar with Aaron Joshua. Detective Brewer went on to tell the dispatcher that “Joshua might be considered dangerous and possibly carried a weapon.” The dispatcher so advised all units.
—Trooper Mikesh, who had just heard the dispatcher’s latest report over her radio, reached the scene at 11:49 a.m. She saw Mr. Joshua seated in the Pontiac with both his hands outside the door and his head craned uncomfortably over his left shoulder. Trooper Hannon told her that there had been a lot of movement in the car — and Trooper Mikesh observed more movement as she approached the vehicle: “I observed Mr. Joshua make a sudden movement,” she testified, “and reached down underneath with his right hand underneath the driver’s seat.” Trooper Mikesh immediately ordered Joshua and his companion to get their hands up. When satisfied that it was safe to do so, she ordered them to put their hands on the dash. Thereafter, the windows of the Pontiac having been raised, Trooper Mikesh had her dog *459sniff the vehicle. There has been no contention that the dog (or any other dog) could have been brought to the car earlier than this dog was.
—At 11:53 a.m. the dog alerted on the right seam of the right front door, aggressively scratching at the vehicle. The occupants of the Pontiac were then patted down, Trooper Mikesh handling the (visibly pregnant) passenger, Ms. Chapman. Some ten bundles of crack cocaine were found in a plastic bag secured just below Ms. Chapman’s enlarged abdomen. Her arrest, and that of Joshua, followed.
Given this considerable body of evidence, which bespeaks excellent police work throughout, I believe that a competent attorney could reasonably conclude that the government had carried its burden of proof at the suppression hearing. With respect to the 15-minute period from 11:07 a.m. to 11:22 a.m., it is obvious that Trooper Hannon did not need the “Read & Sign” bulletin to justify Joshua’s detention from the point at which the discrepancy in the rental papers was first noticed to the point at which the discrepancy was resolved. Joshua was driving a car that did not belong to him, after all, and he claimed to have rented it. The car described in his rental papers was not the car he was driving. Any conscientious police officer would have wanted to assure himself that the car had not been stolen, and it was not unreasonable for Joshua to be kept at the scene while his story was being checked with the car rental company.
We do not know the precise time at which Trooper Hannon first noticed the discrepancy in the rental papers, but it is probably fair to infer that it was a little after 11:15 a.m. This was only eight minutes after the speeding stop. Joshua had not theretofore been free to leave, of course, but there was a good reason for his detention, the interval was very short, and it was still close to the time of the speeding infraction.
When Trooper Hannon learned, at 11:22 a.m., that the car had not been stolen, Joshua should and doubtless would have been allowed to depart had the trooper not known of other suspicious facts. But by 11:22 a.m. the trooper had knowledge of several such facts, and he had knowledge of more soon thereafter.
Fact number one was that Joshua said that he was driving — by a somewhat improbable route — from Columbus to Portsmouth.
Fact number two was that the highway patrol was in receipt of information, said to have originated with the Columbus police department, that a man with Joshua’s name — a man on parole in connection with a drug offense — was transporting crack cocaine from one Ohio city to another twice a week. The identity of the cities is of critical importance. The drugs were not reported to be moving from Cleveland to Chillicothe, or from Toledo to Youngstown, or from Canton to Gallipohs; they were reported to be moving from Columbus to Portsmouth, the very cities named by Mr. Joshua himself. The detailed nature of the intelligence from the Columbus police department, coupled with the information provided independently by Joshua,. thus gave rise to articulable grounds for believing that the intelligence furnished by the Columbus police was accurate. What *460policeman would not have called for a drug dog under these circumstances?
Fact number three was that before the all-clear arrived from the rental car company, Trooper Hannon had learned of a highly interesting telephone conversation between his dispatcher and a police officer in Portsmouth. The State of Ohio has a population of 11 million people, most of whom are strangers to the Portsmouth police — but Trooper Hannon was aware, at approximately 11:17 a.m., that Aaron Joshua was known to the police of Portsmouth. Joshua might not have been known in Chillicothe, or Youngstown, or Gallipolis, but he was known by the police in the very city to which it had been reported he was transporting drugs. It was not objectively unreasonable, therefore, to detain Joshua a little longer so that the dispatcher could get a reading on him from the Portsmouth detective who was supposed to call the dispatcher back.
Fact number four is that although Joshua and his companion had not behaved suspiciously while there was only one officer on the scene, they began acting strangely when the backup arrived. The change in behavior would be consistent with the hypothesis that Joshua was not worried about being stopped for speeding, and was not worried about having his rental papers checked, but was very worried by the trooper’s being reinforced — -an indication to Joshua that the highway patrol might be investigating something beyond a speeding offense and an irregularity in rental papers. The constant movement within the Pontiac would be consistent both with heightened nervousness and with activity to get drugs positioned where they would be hard to detect if the car were searched.
Fact number five' — -at least if the dispatcher’s memory was not playing tricks on him — is that Trooper Hannon was made aware of Joshua’s criminal history sometime after 11:22 a.m. The record does not show what that history was, but one can reasonably infer that the dispatcher thought it significant enough to merit telling Trooper Hannon about it.
Fact number six is that by 11:48 a.m. the troopers were advised of the warning of the Portsmouth detective that Joshua might be armed and dangerous. And fact number seven is that as soon as it was possible to have a drug dog sniff the Pontiac, the dog signaled that there were drugs in the car.
All of these facts, as I say, were brought out at the suppression hearing. In their totality, I believe, they were sufficient to suggest that there was no deficiency in the state’s proof — ie., that Hensley did not require further verification of the “Read & Sign” bulletin. Cf. Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 244-45, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983). That being so, I am not persuaded that the failure to cite Hensley in support of the suppression motion necessarily bespoke incompetence.
If I am wrong in this, however — and if I am wrong in my Strickland analysis- — • Joshua would still not be entitled to habeas relief if the federal exclusionary rule (made applicable to the states in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961)) would not render the evidence of Joshua’s guilt inadmissible. I do not believe it would.
The exclusionary rule was developed by the judiciary to serve prophylactic purposes — to deter wrongdoing by those responsible for enforcing the law. See Arizona v. Evans, 514 U.S. 1, 115 S.Ct. 1185, 131 L.Ed.2d 34 (1995). Here there was no wrongdoing at all by the police officers who seized the evidence; their work was highly professional from start to finish. There is no reason to suppose that the *461Columbus police officers who initially provided the information in the “Read & Sign” bulletin were guilty of any wrongdoing either — and there is every reason to suppose they were not. Neither do I see any wrongdoing on the part of the prosecutor, who, in a borderline ease, elected not to incur the expense of bringing a police officer from Columbus to Chillicothe for the purpose of justifying a police bulletin that appears to have been accurate. If the federal courts are going to second-guess this kind of judgment call on the part of state prosecutors, requiring the exclusion of vital evidence as a result, I believe the courts will have gone far beyond the original purpose of the exclusionary rule. That rule rests solely on policy considerations, after all, and I can see no sound policy reason for excluding the evidence of Joshua’s crime under the circumstances presented here.
Finally, at the risk of belaboring the obvious, I would reiterate that we are not reviewing the decisions of the state courts on direct appeal. The fact that we may think the state courts reached the wrong result is not controlling. Absent “an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law,” as Congress has told us in the provision codified at 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d), or a decision “contrary” to such law, the granting of federal habeas relief is forbidden. I do not believe that the decisions rendered by the state courts in the matter now before us fail the statutory test, and I therefore believe that the district court acted correctly in denying Joshua’s application for the writ. My colleagues on the panel having seen the matter differently, I respectfully dissent.

. "If Aaron Joshua's court-appointed trial counsel had been familiar with the Supreme Court's opinion in Hensley," as I acknowledged in an earlier draft of this dissent, "he probably would (and should) have cited it....”

. The make and model of the vehicle were established at a preliminary hearing the transcript of which was incorporated in the record of the hearing on Joshua’s motion for suppression of evidence.