U.S. v. Wright

• Decision Date: 04 May 2007
• Docket Number: No. 06-1351.,06-1351.
• Citation: 485 F.3d 45
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Gregory WRIGHT, Defendant, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

485 F.3d 45

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Gregory WRIGHT, Defendant, Appellant.

No. 06-1351.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard December 4, 2006.

Decided May 4, 2007.

Charles W. Rankin, with whom Michelle Menken and Rankin & Sultan were on brief, for appellant.

Randall E. Kromm, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Michael J. Sullivan, United States Attorney, was on brief, for appellee.

Before TORRUELLA, Circuit Judge, STAHL, Senior Circuit Judge, and LIPEZ, Circuit Judge.

LIPEZ, Circuit Judge.

After several Boston police officers approached the car in which appellant Gregory Wright was sitting, the officers saw Wright run from the car and grab the right side of his sweatshirt. Wright then refused to stop when ordered to do so. Apprehended almost immediately and found to be carrying a gun, he was arrested for being a felon in possession of a firearm. Wright unsuccessfully moved to suppress the gun, arguing that the stop was illegal. He then entered a conditional guilty plea. Because a legal error in the district court's analysis affected its factual findings underlying the issue of reasonable suspicion, we must vacate the judgment and remand for further proceedings.

I.

A. Factual Background

On the evening of November 8, 2004, a caravan of four unmarked police cars was patrolling in Dorchester, Massachusetts. The cars were Crown Victorias, a model widely associated with police departments. The plainclothes officers in the caravan were members of the Boston Police Department Youth Violence Task Force.

At about 7:45 p.m., the caravan was driving north on Blue Hill Avenue and slowed down as the lead car passed a vehicle that had just pulled over in front of a mini-mart at 1216 Blue Hill Avenue. The parked car was partially blocking one of two driveway entrances to the minimart parking lot. Officer Brown, who was sitting in the lead car's front passenger seat, looked to his right as they passed the parked vehicle and observed three people, one of whom he recognized as Omar Edwards, a neighborhood resident. He did not recognize the driver or the passenger seated in the back seat of the parked car. Immediately after passing this parked vehicle, Officer Brown's car pulled over to the right parking lane, in front of the parked car. The rest of the caravan came to a stop in the right travel lane to the rear of the parked car. The front passenger of the second police car, Officer Bordley, then observed the back seat passenger of the parked car, later identified as Gregory Wright, lean forward as though he was looking at the Crown Victoria that had just pulled over in front of his car.¹ Wright then exited his car, on the passenger side, and began to run southward down Blue Hill Avenue. As he ran, Wright put one hand on the right side of his sweatshirt, grabbing or holding onto the sweatshirt pocket.

Officer Brown quickly exited his car, as did a number of the other officers in the caravan. The police ordered Wright to stop running, but he did not obey this directive. Within a matter of seconds, the officers caught up to Wright, who resisted the officers' attempts to frisk him. The police succeeded in patting Wright down and recovered a silver pistol from his sweatshirt pocket. Wright was arrested for being a felon in possession of a firearm, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1).

Wright moved to suppress the gun on the ground that the stop was unlawful. After a hearing, which included testimony by Officers Brown, Bordley, and Celester, the district court made a series of factual findings and concluded, based on those findings, that the officers had reasonable suspicion to stop Wright. Given their centrality to this appeal, we recount those findings in detail.

B. The Court's Findings

1. Wright's Conduct

The first, and most significant, factual issue at the suppression hearing was whether Wright had fled from the police. Wright argued that he had not "fled," but simply had arrived near his pre-designated destination, exited the car, and run to that destination. Given well-established precedent that a defendant's flight from the police contributes to reasonable suspicion, Wright argued that there was insufficient evidence that his running could properly be characterized as flight. In support of a finding of flight, the government argued that the police officers had seen Wright lean forward in his seat, enabling him to better observe the car that had pulled over in front of his vehicle, and that Wright ran when he recognized it as a police car. Two officers, Brown and Bordley, testified to seeing Wright lean forward.

The district court did not credit Officer Brown's testimony, finding it implausible that he had observed Wright's movement through a rearview mirror. Therefore, the pivotal testimony was that of Officer Bordley, who was in the second vehicle, behind Wright's car. Bordley testified that after the lead vehicle pulled over, he saw Wright "lean[] forward to observe the unmarked motor vehicle that had pulled over." He stated that after Wright leaned forward, Wright got out of the car, grabbed the right side of his sweatshirt, and ran down the street.

The court credited Officer Bordley's testimony,² and found that when Wright leaned forward in his seat, he was able to see the Crown Victoria and its occupants, thereby becoming aware that it was a police car which contained police officers. The court also found that Wright then promptly opened the rear passenger door and exited the car, in response to the police presence, and fled down Blue Hill Avenue to avoid interaction with those officers. The court summarized its reasoning as follows: "Can I reason backwards from the fact that what happened next was that the police officers discovered the weapon on Mr. Wright? I think it is undisputed he was carrying a weapon and I do so reason."

The court then proceeded to its second factual finding — that Wright "clutched" or grabbed at his sweatshirt while running. All three police officers who testified described Wright "grabbing" or "tugging at" the right side of his sweatshirt while he ran. Officer Brown described Wright's movement as follows: "Once he exited the vehicle he turned, turned to his right, grabbed onto his hooded sweatshirt pocket right about here and began to run up Blue Hill Avenue." Officer Celester testified that Wright was "tugging" at his clothes with his right hand, in his "waist area," and that he "appeared to be trying to pull something out of his waist area." Officer Bordley said that Wright "stepped out of the motor vehicle, grabbed the right side of his sweater and took off running up Blue Hill Avenue." These statements were the only evidence presented to the district court on this issue.

The court, however, found not simply that Wright had made a grabbing movement, but that he did so because he was carrying a gun. The court explained: "Because he was carrying the weapon in his sweatshirt and the weapon was heavy, naturally, he clutched it and his, he clutched it through the, through the sweatshirt and his clutching of the weapon, the better to run while carrying a heavy object, was observed by the police officers. . . ."

2. High Crime Area

The district court also considered the character of the area in which the stop occurred, in response to the government's attempt to show that it was a "high crime area."

Officer Brown testified that "that area of Blue Hill Avenue, as well as that corridor, is a very high crime area consisting of firearm violence, drug activity, street robberies, breaking and enterings, all type of street crimes actually." He added that he had personally investigated crimes and responded to shootings and drug incidents "in that area."³ Officer Celester described the 1200 block of Blue Hill Avenue as a "trouble spot," and explained that "there's been shootings there, there's been a lot of crime there. It's a high crime area." He further testified more generally that he had previously made arrests "in that neighborhood" and had witnessed crimes being committed "in that area." Officer Bordley explained how he, and other members of the Youth Violence Task Force, determine whether a particular area is a high crime area: "There are weekly and biweekly reports that are done. They keep stats on what's happening in the city, and they have a meeting every two weeks and they report those stats in the meeting." He went on to explain that the "neighborhood around the 1200 block of Blue Hill Avenue" has a "level of criminal activity [that] would be considered high for that area. Numerous arrests for drug offenses, violent crimes, violent assaults, assaults and batteries, firearms arrests, things of that nature." Like the others, he had personally visited the neighborhood for previous criminal incidents.

After the government completed its presentation of the officers' testimony, Wright requested the Police Department reports mentioned by Officer Bordley. These reports provided the number of violent crimes that had occurred throughout the city during the preceding two weeks, broken down by police precinct. In addition, the reports identified certain "hot spots," or specific locations where crime had been particularly high. The district court permitted some additional limited discovery and the city produced incident reports for August 2004.⁴ Wright then offered these reports into evidence and relied on them in his closing argument to the court. Wright cited the reports as evidence that the location of his arrest was not high in crime, according to the Boston Police Department's own definition, because it was not encompassed by any of the "hot spots" identified in the August incident reports.

The district court deemed most of the evidence presented on this issue — including the officers' testimony and the Boston Police Department incident reports — credible:

I find that the Boston Police Department has [a] mapping system and it maps...