Court Opinion

ID: 9468330
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:12:08.831389+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:49.187964
License: Public Domain

RANDALL, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I concur in the majority opinion insofar as it affirms the lower court decision on the basis that the initial stop of the defendant by DEA agents was not a seizure — a Terry stop — requiring reasonable suspicion. I respectfully dissent from the court’s unnecessarily addressing and, I believe, wrongly deciding the question whether there was reasonable suspicion to effect a Terry stop.
*347The law in this Circuit is clear that when a DEA agent approaches a deplaning passenger in an airport and engages him in conversation relating to identity and destination, this police-citizen contact does not rise to the level of a seizure requiring reasonable suspicion. United States v. Elmore, 595 F.2d 1036 (5th Cir. 1979). The encounter before us seems indistinguishable from that in Elmore and in numerous cases subsequent to it where no seizure was found. E. g., United States v. Setzer, 654 F.2d 354 (5th Cir. 1981); United States v. Williams, 647 F.2d 588 (5th Cir. 1981). Although the court’s decision to rehear United States v. Berry and United States v. Zabish, 649 F.2d 385 (5th Cir. 1981),1 en banc may indicate that Elmore is, at the moment, something of an endangered species, it is still controlling law in this Circuit. Cases are being decided on the basis of it (e.g., Setzer) and it is the only precedent necessary to affirm the decision in this case. The court inadvisedly answers the question whether there was sufficient reasonable suspicion of criminal activity to support a seizure that admittedly did not occur.
A review of cases in which this court has examined airport stops by DEA agents fails to disclose any where the court held that suspicion of an airline passenger based solely on that passenger’s having some (or all) of the characteristics contained in the “drug courier’s profile” constituted reasonable suspicion to support a seizure of the person. This Court has only affirmed seizures when there was more than the profile as a basis for the seizure. See e. g., United States v. Berd, 634 F.2d 979 (5th Cir. 1981).2 Recently the Court, in dicta, indicated that a seizure based solely on the profile would be unconstitutional. United States v. Herbst, 641 F.2d 1161, 1167 n. 8 (5th Cir. 1981). Similarly, the United States Supreme Court, in the only decision in which it has reached the question of what constitutes reasonable suspicion, found possession by an airline passenger of several characteristics of the profile wholly insufficient to form reasonable suspicion.3 Reid v. Georgia, 448 U.S. 438, 100 S.Ct. 2752, 65 L.Ed.2d 890 (1980).
The majority contends that our decisions in U. S. v. Berd, supra, and U. S. v. Robinson, supra, allow some of the profile characteristics to be “considered significant when properly evaluated,” thus constituting the basis for reasonable suspicion. These two decisions do not support the majority position. In Berd, two passengers were stopped for questioning at the Atlanta airport based on possession of the profile characteristics. The court found that the seizures occurred, not at the time of the initial stop (citing Elmore), but at a later time when the passengers had been detained and denied *348the freedom to leave. Id. at 985. The court found that the later seizure was reasonable based on the agents subsequent knowledge of additional facts garnered in their questioning of the two passengers rather than only on the profile characteristics on which the initial contact was based. Id. at 986. The Court stated: “We conclude as a matter of law that the additional information acquired by Agent Markonni immediately prior to his seizure of appellants gave the agent reasonable grounds to suspect that appellants were engaged in criminal activity.” Id. Berd in no way supports the proposition that the profile is sufficient. Implicitly, it stands for the proposition that the profile is insufficient as a basis for reasonable suspicion.
In Robinson, this court remanded to the district court for a determination if, and when, a seizure occurred, U. S. v. Robinson, supra at 1215-17, and thus whether facts existed at that time to support reasonable suspicion. Id. at 1217. The court did not approve the drug courier’s profile as a basis for reasonable suspicion.
Moreover, the panel erroneously indicates that Sanford’s “unusually nervous behavior” is a factor distinct from, and thus additional to, the drug profile characteristics and attempts to “couple” nervousness with the profile as a basis for reasonable suspicion. 658 F.2d 347. “Unusual nervousness” is not an additional factor to be considered along with the drug courier’s profile to establish reasonable suspicion but is only a part of that profile.4 Ante, at 658 F.2d 347, n.3. The court, despite attempts to create something more, can cite only profile characteristics as a basis for this seizure. When a seizure has been upheld, it has always been because there was more than the “drug courier profile” as the basis for reasonable suspicion. To depart from that standard flies in the face of prior decisions of this Court.
This court’s unnecessary determination that reasonable suspicion sufficient to justify a Terry stop existed, which is unlikely to be scrutinized because of the existence of a correct basis for the decision (that there was no stop), is ill conceived, and regrettably engrafts erroneous but now binding precedent into the law in this circuit. Cf. U. S. v. Williams, 622 F.2d 830, 851 (5th Cir. 1980) (Rubin, J., specially concurring).

. These cases were consolidated on appeal. United States v. Berry, 636 F.2d 1075, petition for rehearing granted, 649 F.2d 385 (5th Cir. 1981). There were several issues addressed by the court in its initial decision, including whether the initial contacts between the DEA agent and Berry and Zabish were Terry stops, whether there was a subsequent seizure based on reasonable suspicion because of additional information obtained by the agent, and whether there had been evidentia.y errors in the exclusion and inclusion of evidence at trial. The court held that the initial contact was not a Terry stop, that the subsequent seizure was based on reasonable suspicion and that no evidentiary errors had been made. Additionally, the court refrained from addressing whether Berry and Zabish had consented to the search, having held that the seizure prior to the search was proper. Any of these holdings could, of course, be reconsidered en banc.

. The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has likewise determined that the “profile” does not constitute a basis for reasonable suspicion. United States v. Jefferson, 650 F.2d 854 (6th Cir. 1981).

, Judge Thomas Clark, reviewing U. S. v. Mendenhall, supra, in an “airport stop” case, indicated he thought that decision implicitly allowed the profile to be the basis of reasonable suspicion. United States v. Turner, 628 F.2d 461 (5th Cir. 1980). Mendenhall, however, was decided on two different rationales (Justices Rehnquist and Stewart finding that there was no seizure, while Justices Powell, Blackmun and Berger found a seizure based on reasonable suspicion). Thus Mendenhall is no precedent for the proposition alluded to in Turner. Nor was Turner cited by the panel here. See generally, U. S. v. Robinson, supra at 1215.

. Nervousness may, in fact, be “entirely consistent with innocent behavior, especially at an airport where a traveller may be anticipating a long-awaited rendevous with friends or family.” United States v. Andrews, 600 F.2d 563 (6th Cir. 1979).