Court Opinion

ID: 9477629
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:27:32.684217+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:58.094911
License: Public Domain

GLASSER, District Judge,
dissenting:
Believing that the stopping of the truck did constitute a seizure, I would affirm the suppression order issued by the court below.
The search and seizure jurisprudence spawned by Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), has provided thinly veiled cries of frustration in the effort to distinguish one case from another and to find the touchstones that would serve as reliable guides in arriving at correct Fourth Amendment answers in each case. Illustrative is the frequently cited observation by LaFave in “Case-by-Case Adjudication”versus “Standardized Procedures”: The Robinson Dilemma, 1974 S.Ct.Rev. 127 at 141: “A highly sophisticated set of rules, qualified by all sorts of ifs, ands, and buts and requiring the drawing of subtle nuances and hairline distinctions may be the sort of heady stuff upon which the facile minds of lawyers and judges eagerly feed, but they may be literally impossible of application by the officer in the field.”
That lawyers or at least judges “eagerly feed” upon that heady stuff is debatable. The effort to find the reliable touchstones for all cases is surely doomed to failure because “[sjtreet encounters between citizens and police officers are incredibly rich in diversity,” Terry, 392 U.S. at 13, 88 S.Ct. at 1875, as this case once again demonstrates. This case also demonstrates, as do countless others, that, like the Rule Against Perpetuities, it is one thing to put the rules of search and seizure in a nutshell. It is quite another thing to keep them there.
The events immediately preceding and attendant upon the stopping of the moving ice cream truck were succinctly described by DEA Agent Masiello. Two dark-skinned black males, sloppily dressed, had exited an apartment building and entered a Jack and Jill ice cream truck. After the truck had proceeded to leave the area and travelled approximately fifteen to twenty yards, Agent Masiello and his partner waved their arms in front of the truck at which point it stopped. He and his partner approached the driver’s side of the vehicle and Masiello identified himself as a DEA agent. Two other agents immediately thereafter approached the vehicle from the rear and appeared at the passenger side. The only reasons for which the defendants were stopped were because the truck was in front of a designated address and Agent Masiello believed they were “Africans as opposed to American blacks.”
“The question is whether it is an unreasonable seizure under the Fourth ... Amendment ] to stop an automobile, being driven on a public highway, for the purpose of checking the driving license of the operator and the registration of the car, where there is neither probable cause to believe *840nor reasonable suspicion that the car is being driven contrary to the laws governing the operation of motor vehicles or that either the car or any of its occupants is subject to seizure or detention in connection with the violation of any other applicable law.” That question, put by the court in Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 650, 99 S.Ct. 1391, 1394, 59 L.Ed.2d 660 (1979), is essentially the question here.
The answer to that question can be found in several pronouncements in the course of the opinion in that case:
The Fourth ... Amendment ] [is] implicated in this case because stopping an automobile and detaining its occupants constitute a “seizure” within the meaning of [that] Amendment, even though the purpose of the stop is limited and the resulting detention quite brief.
* * * * * *
An individual operating or traveling in an automobile does not lose all reasonable expectation of privacy simply because the automobile and its use are subject to government regulation. Automobile travel is a basic, pervasive, and often necessary mode of transportation to and from one’s home, workplace, and leisure activities. Many people spend more hours each day traveling in cars than walking on the streets. Undoubtedly, many find a greater sense of security and privacy in traveling in an automobile than they do in exposing themselves by pedestrian or other modes of travel. Were the individual subject to unfettered governmental intrusion every time he entered an automobile, the security guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment would be seriously circumscribed. As Terry v. Ohio ... recognized, people are not shorn of all Fourth Amendment protection when they step from their homes onto the public sidewalks. Nor are they shorn of those interests when they step from the sidewalks into their automobiles.
440 U.S. at 653, 662-63, 99 S.Ct. at 1400-01.
United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U.S. 544, 100 S.Ct. 1870, 64 L.Ed.2d 497 (1980), upon which the majority places considerable emphasis in support of their conclusion, is factually distinguishable in a significant respect. Sylvia Mendenhall was approached by two federal agents who identified themselves as such as she was walking through the Detroit Metropolitan Airport upon arriving on a flight from Los Ange-les. She was asked to show her identification and airline ticket which she furnished. In deciding that what had transpired to that point was not a seizure, the Court said that a seizure occurs only when an officer “by means of physical force or show of authority, has in some way restrained the liberty of a citizen,” 446 U.S. at 552, 100 S.Ct. at 1876, and nothing in the record suggests that Ms. Mendenhall “had any objective reason to believe that she was not free to end the conversation ... and proceed on her way, and for that reason we conclude that the agents’ initial approach to her was not a seizure.” 446 U.S. at 555, 100 S.Ct. at 1878.
Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491, 103 S.Ct. 1319, 75 L.Ed.2d 229 (1983), upon which the majority also relies, is virtually identical, factually, with Mendenhall. Relying upon Mendenhall, the court reaffirms that:
[L]aw enforcement officers do not violate the Fourth Amendment by merely approaching an individual on the street or in another public place, by asking him if he is willing to answer some questions, by putting questions to him if the person is willing to listen, or by offering in evidence in a criminal prosecution his voluntary answers to such questions. Nor would the fact that the officer identifies himself as a police officer, without more, convert the encounter into a seizure requiring some level of objective justification. The person approached, however, need not answer any question put to him; indeed, he may decline to listen to the questions at all and may go on his way. He may not be detained even momentarily without reasonable, objective grounds for doing so; and his refusal to listen or answer does not, without more, furnish those grounds. If there is no detention — no seizure within *841the meaning of the Fourth Amendment— then no constitutional rights have been infringed.
460 U.S. at 497-98, 103 S.Ct. at 1323-24 (citations omitted).
The distinctions between Mendenhall, Royer, and this case are, to me, plain. To begin with, neither Mendenhall nor Royer provided a factual occasion for invoking the teaching of Delaware v. Prouse that stopping an automobile and detaining its occupants is a seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. That the Court in Mendenhall was aware of the distinction is reflected in its decision at 446 U.S. at 556-57, 100 S.Ct. at 1878-79, as follows:
Moreover, stopping or diverting an automobile in transit, with the attendant opportunity for a visual inspection of areas of the passenger compartment not otherwise observable, is materially more intrusive than a question put to a passing pedestrian, and the fact that the former amounts to a seizure tells very little about the constitutional status of the latter. See also Delaware v. Prouse,—
To the extent that the majority regard Mendenhall and Royer as dispositive insofar as these cases hold that a seizure occurs when in view of all the circumstances a reasonable person would have believed that he was not free to leave, a threshold requirement not satisfied here, I would also find this case distinguishable. Having been caused to bring this ice cream truck to a stop and immediately surrounded by two federal agents on the driver’s side and two federal agents on the passenger side, a reasonable man would presumably have believed that they were not there to buy a dixie cup. I would add that I can discern no legal significance in the fact that the ice cream truck was stopped while moving in a parking lot rather than on a public street.
Assuming then, that the defendants were seized, was there probable cause or even reasonable suspicion to believe that the truck or its occupants were subject to seizure or detention in connection with the violation of any applicable law? Agent Ma-siello having stated the reasons for the stopping of the defendants to which reference has previously been made, I am driven to conclude that neither probable cause nor reasonable suspicion existed.
The government urges that the district court judge overlooked the crucial fact that the agents had warrants for the arrest of the defendants even if he correctly concluded that the stop of the truck constituted a seizure. The inquiry then shifts to the validity of the warrant. The Fourth Amendment commands that a warrant particularly describe the persons to be seized. A determination of whether that command was obeyed here will not be materially assisted by the citation of cases. Rather, it seems to me, a common sense appraisal of the descriptions in the warrants will supply the answer. Those descriptions are: John Doe Number One, also known as “Gbenro”; John Doe Number Two, also known as “Ni-ran.” Each John Doe is then described as “a male fluent in Yoruba, a Nigerian dialect, residing at 24 Walden Maple Court, Baltimore, Maryland 21207 and reached at telephone number (301) 485-9597.” It is undisputed that both the address and the telephone number were wrong. “The validity of the warrant must be assessed on the basis of the information that the officers disclosed, or had a duty to discover and to disclose, to the issuing magistrate.” Maryland v. Garrison, 480 U.S. 79, 107 S.Ct. 1013, 1018, 94 L.Ed.2d 72 (1987). This information furnished to the magistrate was obtained from a “crisscross directory that was over 15 months old” which could support the conclusion that the duty to discover was not discharged. Agent Ma-siello learned that the address and telephone number were wrong on May 5 or 6, 1987. That fact was not disclosed to the issuing magistrate until May 8, a day after the arrest was made.
It is also interesting to note that the warrants do not even describe the John Does as being black. The assumption that one must be black to be fluent in Yoruba excludes the possibility of fluency in that dialect by white persons and others. The nicknames aside, the warrants describe males fluent in a Nigerian dialect, hardly a description that can be regarded as more *842particularized than would be one of a male fluent in Creole, a French dialect.
In view of the foregoing, the seizure of the defendants can hardly be said to be based upon more than an “inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or ‘hunch.’ ” Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 27, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1883, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). It may be that the officers had reasonable suspicion once Obalaja showed his license with the middle name that ended in “Niran.” By then, however, the suspicion was too late. The critical moment for reasonable suspicion to have been in the minds of the agent was when the ice cream truck was stopped, not thereafter.
It would be an affectation of research to cite authorities for the proposition that the fruits of that poisoned seizure were tainted and were properly suppressed.