United States v. Esquivel-Rios

• Citation: 725 F.3d 1231
• Decision Date: 02 August 2013
• Docket Number: No. 12–3141.,12–3141.
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. Antonio ESQUIVEL–RIOS, Defendant–Appellant.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (10th Circuit)

725 F.3d 1231

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee,

v.Antonio ESQUIVEL–RIOS, Defendant–Appellant.

No. 12–3141.

United States Court of Appeals,Tenth Circuit.

Aug. 2, 2013.

Michael M. Jackson, Topeka, KS, for Defendant–Appellant.

James A. Brown, Assistant United States Attorney, Topeka, KS, (Barry R. Grissom, United States Attorney, with him on the brief) for Plaintiff–Appellee.

Before HARTZ, BALDOCK, and GORSUCH, Circuit Judges.

GORSUCH, Circuit Judge.

Garbage in, garbage out. Everyone knows that much about computers: you give them bad data, they give you bad results. There was a time when the enforcement of traffic laws depended on officers lying in wait behind billboards watching cars flow past. Today, officers nearly as often rely on distant computer databases accessed remotely from their dashboards, stopping passersby when the computer instructs. But what if the computer turns out to be a good deal less reliable than the officer's eagle eye? What if the computer suggests you've broken the law only because of bad data—garbage in, garbage out? Today's case requires us to wrestle with these questions for the first time, bringing the Fourth Amendment face-to-face with Charles Babbage. ¹

Our case began when Kansas Trooper Andrew Dean, a regular before this court, sat watching traffic along I–70. At some point, a minivan caught his eye. There was nothing special about the minivan except maybe the fact it bore a Colorado temporary 30–day registration tag. But even that didn't suggest anything amiss: the tag looked genuine enough, it was displayed in the right place, its expiration date hadn't yet passed. All the same, Trooper Dean decided to verify the tag with a law enforcement database. He called in the tag number to a dispatcher who soon replied “that's a negatory on record, not returning.” Because of—and only because of—the dispatcher's “no return” report, Trooper Dean turned on his lights and stopped the minivan. After a brief discussion, the trooper sought and received permission to conduct a search, one that eventually yielded a secret compartment containing over a pound of methamphetamine and Mr. Esquivel–Rios's trial and conviction on federal drug charges.

Before and after trial the defense argued that Trooper Dean's traffic stop violated the Fourth Amendment and that all evidence found during the stop should be suppressed. But the district court disagreed. In its view, the trooper had reasonable suspicion to believe the minivan was displaying a forged tag. In Kansas, as elsewhere, vehicles must be registered with some lawful authority. When a law enforcement database yields no information about a registration tag, the court reasoned, that raises a non-trivial possibility the tag wasn't lawfully issued in the first place but falsified in some way.

The district court's reasoning was right as far as it went. This court and others have regularly upheld traffic stops based on information that the defendant's vehicle's registration failed to appear in a law enforcement database—at least when the record suggested no reason to worry about the database's reliability. See, e.g., United States v. Cortez–Galaviz, 495 F.3d 1203, 1205–06 (10th Cir.2007); United States v. Garcia–Ballesteros, 74 F.3d 1250, 1996 WL 3920, at *1 (10th Cir.1996) (unpublished table decision); see also United States v. Stephens, 350 F.3d 778, 779–80 (8th Cir.2003).

The difficulty we face in this case stems from that last and critical qualification. When Trooper Dean asked about the minivan's temporary tag, the dispatcher replied not only that the tag yielded a “no return” response from the queried database. The dispatcher also added that “ Colorado temp tags usually don't return.” And this is a piece of evidence our cases haven't confronted before: evidence admitted by a district court suggesting that the database on which the officer relied to justify his stop might bear a real problem—a problem that might mean a “no return” doesn't suggest criminal conduct but only some bureaucratic snafu.

In Cortez–Galaviz we took pains to reserve judgment on the question what to do with an investigative detention based on a report from a gravely unreliable database. The defendant in that case asserted the database there was unreliable but produced no evidence suggesting so much. In rejecting the defendant's motion to suppress, we emphasized that his theory was promising but his proof lacking: if, we said, a future defendant could bear the burden of making “a demonstration” based on evidence that the database in question “is unreliable,” that “might well form a persuasive basis for a suppression motion.” 495 F.3d at 1209;see also United States v. Mounts, 35 F.3d 1208, 1213 n. 4 (7th Cir.1994) (if the defendant had shown that “a large percentage of registered automobiles ... did not appear on Georgia's computer system and that this fact was common knowledge” the case might be different, but in that particular case the defendant “did not make such a showing”).

Today, we find ourselves facing a good deal more directly the problem we anticipated—and on which we reserved judgment—in Cortez–Galaviz.

Of course, nothing in life is perfect. Neither does anyone expect or even want some sort of maniacally perfect, all-knowing, all-seeing HAL 9000 computer in the government's hands—a situation that would itself no doubt raise Fourth Amendment questions. Instead, the law expects and takes account of human (and computational) frailties, requiring less, far less, than perfect certainty of a traffic violation before an officer may initiate a brief investigatory stop. The Supreme Court tells us that only “reasonable suspicion” is needed for a traffic stop to comply with the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against unreasonable seizures.

That standard requires the officer to possess a “particularized and objective” basis for thinking unlawful activity is afoot. United States v. Cortez, 449 U.S. 411, 417, 101 S.Ct. 690, 66 L.Ed.2d 621 (1981). But it requires “considerably less” than a preponderance of the evidence and “obviously less” than that required for probable cause to effect an arrest. United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 7, 109 S.Ct. 1581, 104 L.Ed.2d 1 (1989); United States v. Johnson, 364 F.3d 1185, 1194 (10th Cir.2004). To satisfy the reasonable suspicion standard, an officer need not “rule out the possibility of innocent conduct,” or even have evidence suggesting “a fair probability” of criminal activity. Poolaw v. Marcantel, 565 F.3d 721, 736 (10th Cir.2009); see also United States v. Vercher, 358 F.3d 1257, 1261 (10th Cir.2004). Equally important, reasonable suspicion can be shown by evidence that is inherently less reliable in kind than the sort of evidence needed to establish probable cause. Alabama v. White, 496 U.S. 325, 330, 110 S.Ct. 2412, 110 L.Ed.2d 301 (1990); Johnson, 364 F.3d at 1194. Concerns with the “quality” of the information law enforcement possesses, too, sometimes may be offset by its “quantity.” White, 496 U.S. at 330, 110 S.Ct. 2412. So, for example, worries about a computer database's reliability might diminish if officers also possess other facts independently suggestive of unlawful activity. Given all this, it is pretty plain that no one—and no computer—has to be perfect, or even close to perfect, to provide or help provide legally sufficient grounds for a traffic stop.

What do these general principles mean for our particular case? We know that Trooper Dean relied only on the database report to support his stop: he had no other quantum of evidence that might mitigate shortcomings of the database. We know the database undoubtedly qualifies as “objective” evidence in the sense that it is independent from the trooper's beliefs or biases. Neither is it alleged to evince anyone else's. But it is a much harder question whether the computer's “no return” report, taken in light of the dispatcher's comment, qualifies as “particularized” evidence that supplied Trooper Dean some “specific[ ]” reason to think that the minivan might be engaged in criminal activity. See Cortez, 449 U.S. at 418, 101 S.Ct. 690.

It's a harder question because at this point we know almost nothing about the database on which everything hinges. We don't know how it operates, why it “usually” fails to yield information about Colorado temporary tags—or, for that matter, even its name. We don't know if officials systemically decline to place information about Colorado temporary tags into the database because of their fleeting 30–day life span. We don't know if instead information from Colorado takes, say, two weeks (half the usual life span of a temporary tag) to reach the database. We don't know if Colorado temporary tags “usually don't return” thanks to some other glitch altogether. Neither do we know whether a difference exists between a tag that doesn't “return” and one that isn't “on file,” another term Trooper Dean reported hearing before but also isn't exactly sure about.

To add to the confusion, we can't even be sure what it means that Colorado temporary tags usually don't return. The dispatcher's use of the term “usually” (rather than “always”) suggests some Colorado temporary tags do “return” with registration information. But to say a problem usually occurs suggests it occurs more often than not. Cf. 19 Oxford English Dictionary 361 (2d ed.1991). So it seems Colorado temporary tags don't return over half the time. But still we don't know how much more than half the time the problem occurs. And we don't know why it occurs. Though threadbare, the record seems to suggest “no returns” occur as a result of at least two very different causes—unlawful conduct by the driver (forgeries and the like) and some sort of bureaucratic bumbling (whether failure to enter into the database in a timely fashion or something else altogether). Yet, how often “no returns” occur and how often they are attributable to wrongful conduct as opposed to bureaucratic...