Court Opinion

ID: 9944027
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-02-26 16:01:56.528964+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:55:07.450246
License: Public Domain

United States Court of Appeals
                             For the Eighth Circuit
                         ___________________________

                                 No. 23-2121
                         ___________________________

                             United States of America

                                       Plaintiff - Appellee

                                         v.

                               Mary Lavone Linnell

                                    Defendant - Appellant
                                  ____________

                     Appeal from United States District Court
                 for the Northern District of Iowa - Cedar Rapids
                                  ____________

                           Submitted: January 12, 2024
                            Filed: February 26, 2024
                                 ____________

Before SMITH, Chief Judge, GRUENDER and SHEPHERD, Circuit Judges.
                              ____________

SHEPHERD, Circuit Judge.

       A grand jury indicted Mary Linnell for possession with intent to distribute a
controlled substance, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) and (b)(1)(A), following
a traffic stop in which law enforcement recovered methamphetamine, cocaine, and
drug paraphernalia from the vehicle in which she was a passenger. Linnell moved
to suppress the evidence, arguing that the patrol officer lacked probable cause or
reasonable suspicion to conduct the traffic stop. The district court 1 denied the
motion, and Linnell entered a conditional guilty plea preserving her right to appeal
the suppression ruling. The district court then sentenced Linnell to 92 months’
imprisonment with 5 years of supervised release to follow. Linnell now appeals the
denial of her motion. Having jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we affirm.

                                           I.

       Nicholas Reinert is a police officer with the City of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
While on a nighttime patrol, Officer Reinert passed the home of a known narcotics
dealer, where he noticed an SUV idling at the end of the driveway. From two blocks
away, he watched in his rearview mirror as the SUV entered the road and failed to
stop at a stop sign. Officer Reinert then began following the SUV as it merged onto
the Interstate but decided against immediately stopping the driver because his
forward-facing dashcam did not record the stop-sign violation. While on the
Interstate, Officer Reinert watched as an ambulance signaled and merged into the
SUV’s lane of travel. The SUV did not slow, causing it to trail the ambulance by
two car lengths for approximately one-quarter mile—a distance that Officer Reinert
determined was unsafe given the rainy weather conditions and high rate of speed of
highway travel. He also “paced” the SUV by driving behind it at the same speed,
from which he determined that it was traveling 59 miles per hour in a 55 mile per
hour zone. Officer Reinert then conducted a traffic stop of the SUV for, in relevant
part, (1) running a stop sign, (2) following another vehicle too closely, and
(3) speeding. He made contact with two occupants, including Linnell, who was in
the passenger seat. A canine unit later arrived and alerted to the presence of narcotics
in the SUV. A subsequent search revealed a large quantity of methamphetamine in
a container on the passenger floorboard and drug paraphernalia in and around the

      1
        The Honorable C.J. Williams, Chief Judge, United States District Court for
the Northern District of Iowa, adopting the report and recommendation of the
Honorable Mark A. Roberts, United States Magistrate Judge for the Northern
District of Iowa.
                                      -2-
center console, as well as an electronic scale in Linnell’s purse and cocaine in her
jacket.

       Following her arrest and indictment, Linnell filed a motion to suppress the
evidence that officers recovered from the SUV, alleging that the traffic stop
constituted an unlawful seizure under the Fourth Amendment. After conducting an
evidentiary hearing on the motion in which Officer Reinert testified as the sole
witness, the magistrate judge recommended that the district court deny the motion.
Over Linnell’s objections, the district court adopted the magistrate’s report and
recommendation in full. On appeal, Linnell alleges that the district court erred by
denying her motion to suppress, renewing her argument that Officer Reinert lacked
probable cause or reasonable suspicion to conduct the traffic stop.

                                         II.

       “In reviewing a denial of a motion to suppress, we review the district court’s
findings of fact for clear error, giving due weight to the inferences police drew from
those facts. We review de novo the district court’s legal conclusion that reasonable
suspicion or probable cause existed.” United States v. Mattox, 27 F.4th 668, 673
(8th Cir. 2022) (citation omitted). We will uphold the district court’s denial of a
motion to suppress “unless it is not supported by substantial evidence, is based on
an erroneous interpretation of applicable law, or is clearly mistaken in light of the
entire record.” United States v. Woods, 829 F.3d 675, 679 (8th Cir. 2016) (citation
omitted).

       The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.
U.S. Const. amend. IV. “A traffic stop constitutes a seizure for purposes of the
Fourth Amendment and therefore must be supported by probable cause or reasonable
suspicion.” United States v. Givens, 763 F.3d 987, 989 (8th Cir. 2014). “Probable
cause to conduct a traffic stop exists ‘[a]s long as an officer “objectively has a
reasonable basis for believing that the driver has breached a traffic law.”’” United
States v. Gordon, 741 F.3d 872, 876 (8th Cir. 2013) (alteration in original) (citation
                                         -3-
omitted); see also United States v. Cox, 992 F.3d 706, 709 (8th Cir. 2021) (“[A]
traffic violation—however minor—creates probable cause to stop the driver of a
vehicle.” (citation omitted)). We assess probable cause using a totality-of-the-
circumstances approach, pursuant to which the evidence “must be seen and weighed
not in terms of library analysis by scholars, but as understood by those versed in the
field of law enforcement.” Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 232 (1983) (citation
omitted).

                                          A.

        The district court did not clearly err in finding that the SUV in which Linnell
was a passenger violated three traffic laws, nor did it err in concluding that Officer
Reinert had probable cause to conduct a traffic stop on any of these bases. At the
evidentiary hearing on the motion to suppress, Officer Reinert testified that the SUV
ran a stop sign before entering an intersection. Failing to stop at a stop sign is a
traffic violation under Iowa law. Iowa Code § 321.322(1). Linnell dismisses Officer
Reinert’s observation as unreasonable and incredible since he watched the violation
occur in his rearview mirror, at night, from two blocks away, and chose not to
immediately stop the SUV. But the district court found that Officer Reinert—who
had served with the Cedar Rapids Police Department for approximately four years
and had been involved in around 450 traffic stops—was a credible witness. “We
give great deference to a lower court’s credibility determinations because the
‘assessment of a witness’s credibility is the province of the trial court.’” United
States v. Wright, 512 F.3d 466, 472 (8th Cir. 2008) (citation omitted). Although
Officer Reinert did not conduct a traffic stop after observing the SUV run the stop
sign because his dashcam did not record the event, the failure to videotape the
violation does not undermine his testimony that a violation had indeed occurred. See
id. (affirming where the district court found officers’ testimony that the defendant
failed to stop at a stop sign credible despite the officers’ failure to activate their
dashcams until after the violation occurred).

                                         -4-
                                          B.

       Iowa law also prohibits a motor vehicle from following another vehicle “more
closely than is reasonable and prudent, having due regard for the speed of such
vehicles and the traffic upon and the condition of the highway.” Iowa Code
§ 321.307. Officer Reinert testified that the SUV trailed the ambulance on the
Interstate by two car lengths for one-quarter mile, a distance the district court
equated to a half-second gap between the two vehicles. The dashcam footage, in
which Officer Reinert contemporaneously stated that the vehicles were separated by
two car lengths, corroborates this finding. Under the widely used “two-second rule,”
motorists generally require two seconds of distance between another vehicle to
properly react to an on-road emergency. United States v. Andrews, 454 F.3d 919,
921-22 (8th Cir. 2006). In this vein, “when one car trails another by less than two
seconds, an officer will generally have probable cause to believe that the trailing car
is closer than what is reasonable and prudent.” Id. at 922. “An even stronger
inference of risk exists when the weather is inclement,” as it was when Officer
Reinert observed the SUV. Id. It was thus reasonable for Officer Reinert to conclude
that the SUV was operating in an imprudent manner.

       Linnell argues that the driver of the ambulance failed to maintain a “proper
lookout” before merging into the SUV’s lane of travel, preventing the SUV from
following at a safe distance. See Vasconez v. Mills, 651 N.W.2d 48, 52 (Iowa 2002)
(noting that the “duty of lookout to the rear” requires “sufficient observation to
establish an awareness of the presence of others at a time when a maneuver is
contemplated which may endanger a following vehicle” (emphasis omitted) (citation
omitted)). However, the ambulance activated its turn signal before changing lanes,
notifying the driver that such a move was imminent. See Cox, 992 F.3d at 709-10
(rejecting an argument that the appellant was unable to avoid following another
vehicle too closely where the vehicle applied its brakes, “which should not have been
a surprise” given that it was near an exit). And Linnell offers no explanation for
why the driver of the SUV did not slow to accommodate the ambulance despite

                                         -5-
having the opportunity to do so. See id. (noting that the appellant could have safely
slowed to avoid following the other vehicle too closely).

                                          C.

       Iowa law further prohibits motorists from exceeding the posted speed limit.
See generally Iowa Code § 321.285. Officer Reinert testified that he paced the SUV
and determined that it was traveling at a speed of 59 miles per hour in a 55 mile per
hour zone. Linnell contends that this testimony is incredible, as Officer Reinert did
not use a speed-tracking device, nor does the dashcam footage make clear whether
the SUV was in a 55 mile per hour zone. Again, we see no reason to discount the
district court’s assessment of the veracity of Officer Reinert’s testimony or of the
propriety of the pacing technique to determine speed. See United States v. Gunnell,
775 F.3d 1079, 1083 (8th Cir. 2015) (finding no error where the district court
determined that an officer’s testimony regarding pacing was credible and established
probable cause to conduct a traffic stop). Therefore, it was reasonable for Officer
Reinert to conclude that the SUV was speeding. See United States v. Gaffney, 789
F.3d 866, 869 (8th Cir. 2015) (“The issue is whether the totality of the circumstances
at the time of the stop supports the reasonableness of the officer’s belief that [the
appellant] was speeding at all.”). In sum, the district court did not clearly err in
finding that Officer Reinert observed three traffic violations; accordingly, we find
no error in the district court’s legal conclusion that Officer Reinert had probable
cause to conduct a traffic stop of the SUV. 2

                                         III.

      The judgment of the district court is affirmed.
                     ______________________________

      2
       We therefore need not reach Linnell’s alternative argument that Officer
Reinert lacked reasonable suspicion to conduct a traffic stop.
                                        -6-