United States v. Williams

• Decision Date: 23 January 2014
• Docket Number: No. 12–4374.,12–4374.
• Citation: 740 F.3d 308
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. Leconie WILLIAMS, IV, Defendant–Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

740 F.3d 308

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee,

v.Leconie WILLIAMS, IV, Defendant–Appellant.

No. 12–4374.

United States Court of Appeals,

Fourth Circuit.

Argued: Oct. 31, 2013.

Decided: Jan. 23, 2014.

ARGUED:Mary Elizabeth Davis, Davis & Davis, Washington, D.C., for Appellant. Jonathan Allen Ophardt, United States Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., for Appellee. ON BRIEF:Rod J. Rosenstein, United States Attorney, Office of the United States Attorney, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellee.

Before NIEMEYER and WYNN, Circuit Judges, and LOUISE W. FLANAGAN, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina, sitting by designation.

Affirmed by published opinion. Judge WYNN wrote the opinion, in which Judge NIEMEYER and Judge FLANAGAN joined.

WYNN, Circuit Judge:

Late one night in June 2009, a police officer saw a car stopped in the middle of the road in a residential district. The officer activated his vehicle lights and the car pulled over to the side of the road. Thereafter, another officer joined in approaching the car and saw the driver, Defendant Leconie Williams, IV, remove something from his waistband and drop it inside of the vehicle. That object turned out to be a gun which led to Defendant's conviction at a jury trial of a firearm offense.

On appeal, Defendant contends that the evidence discovered during the stop should have been suppressed at trial because the traffic offense for which he was cited did not apply to the road on which he had stopped his car. Because another closely related traffic law barred the conduct for which Defendant was cited, we reject Defendant's argument. We also reject Defendant's argument challenging the exclusion of 404(b) evidence. Accordingly, we affirm.

I.

On June 12, 2009, at around 1:00 a.m., Major Joseph McCann, a Prince George's County police officer, was driving through a residential area when he saw a vehicle stopped in the “middle of the road.” J.A. 34, 41, 47. As McCann approached the vehicle, he saw a person who had been bent over into the driver's side window of the car stand up and walk away from the vehicle. McCann observed the vehicle sitting still in the road for thirty seconds to a minute. Defendant, the driver, waved for McCann to drive past him. McCann remained behind Defendant, who began to pull away. McCann then activated his lights, and Defendant pulled over to the side of the road.

Sergeant Edward Finn arrived and pulled up behind McCann. As the officers approached Defendant's vehicle, Finn observed Defendant remove an object from his pants and drop it with a thud onto the floorboard. The officers removed the car's three occupants, conducted a search, and found a gun on the floorboard by the driver's seat.

During the process of handcuffing the three occupants of the vehicle, Defendant stated “that's mine, that's my gun.” J.A. 106. Finn cited Defendant for violating Section 21–1001(b) of the Maryland Code's Transportation Article, which prohibits leaving a vehicle standing such that it obstructs traffic.¹

Ultimately, the government indicted Defendant on two firearm charges: felon in possession of a firearm (Count One), in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), and possession of a firearm with an altered serial number (Count Two), in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(k). Before trial, Defendant moved to suppress the gun, arguing that McCann lacked probable cause to initiate the traffic stop. The district court denied the motion because it found that McCann had a reasonable suspicion that Defendant violated a different provision of the Maryland Code—Section 21–1001(a) of the Transportation Article. ² The district court also granted the government's motion to exclude evidence of alleged police misconduct by McCann and Finn.³

The case proceeded to a trial, at which the jury could not reach a verdict on Count One and acquitted Defendant on Count Two. A mistrial was granted on Count One. At the second trial, on Defendant's motion, the district court re-affirmed its earlier decisions on the gun-suppression and police-misconduct evidence issues. The jury found Defendant guilty on Count One, and the district court sentenced Defendant to 120 months' imprisonment.

Defendant raises two issues on appeal. First, he argues that the district court erred by denying his motion to suppress the gun recovered from the traffic stop. Second, he contends that the district court erred by excluding evidence of earlier alleged incidents of police misconduct. We address each in turn.

II.

Defendant's main argument on appeal is that the evidence seized from the car as a result of the stop should have been suppressed because McCann lacked probable cause or reasonable suspicion to stop his car. We review factual findings regarding the motion to suppress for clear error and legal conclusions de novo. United States v. McBride, 676 F.3d 385, 391 (4th Cir.2012).

The Fourth Amendment guarantees “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures[.]” U.S. Const. amend. IV. “Because an automobile stop is a seizure of a person, the stop must comply with the Fourth Amendment's requirement ‘that it not be ‘unreasonable’ under the circumstances.' ” United States v. Wilson, 205 F.3d 720, 722–23 (4th Cir.2000) (en banc) (quoting Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 810, 116 S.Ct. 1769, 135 L.Ed.2d 89 (1996)). “As a result, such a stop ‘must be justified by probable cause or a reasonable suspicion, based on specific and articulable facts, of unlawful conduct.’ ” Id. at 723 (quoting United States v. Hassan El, 5 F.3d 726, 729 (4th Cir.1993)).

Probable cause exists where “the officer ‘had reasonably trustworthy information ... sufficient to warrant a prudent [person] in believing that the petitioner had committed or was committing an offense.’ ” United States v. Sowards, 690 F.3d 583, 588 (4th Cir.2012) (alteration in original) (quoting Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 91, 85 S.Ct. 223, 13 L.Ed.2d 142 (1964)). Crucially, this principle holds true even for the most basic traffic offense: “ ‘When an officer observes a traffic offense—however minor—he has probable cause to stop the driver of the vehicle.’ ” Hassan El, 5 F.3d at 730 (quoting United States v. Cummins, 920 F.2d 498, 500 (8th Cir.1990)). Moreover, an officer who observes a traffic offense may have probable cause even where he has additional motives for the stop. “[I]f an officer has probable cause or a reasonable suspicion to stop a vehicle, there is no intrusion upon the Fourth Amendment. That is so regardless of the fact that the officer would not have made the stop but for some hunch or inarticulable suspicion of other criminal activity....” Id.; see also United States v. Branch, 537 F.3d 328, 335 (4th Cir.2008) ( “Observing a traffic violation provides sufficient justification for a police officer to detain the offending vehicle for as long as it takes to perform the traditional incidents of a routine traffic stop.”).

Finally, a police officer's inability to identify the correct code section at the time of a stop does not undermine valid probable cause or reasonable suspicion that a driver violated a traffic law. In that regard, we agree with the Sixth Circuit that

in order for traffic stop to be permissible under the Fourth Amendment, a police officer must know or reasonably believe that the driver of the car is doing something that represents a violation of the law. This is not to say that officers must be able to, at the time of a stop, cite chapter and verse—or title and section—of a particular statute or municipal code in order to render the stop permissible.

United States v. Hughes, 606 F.3d 311, 316 (6th Cir.2010).

This does not, however, give the government license to “look for after-the-fact justifications for stops....” Id. Nor do we suggest that a police officer's mistake of law can support probable cause to conduct a stop when the underlying conduct was not, in fact, illegal. See United States v. McDonald, 453 F.3d 958, 961 (7th Cir.2006) (collecting cases and stating that “[w]e agree with the majority of circuits to have considered the issue that a police officer's mistake of law cannot support probable cause to conduct a stop. Probable cause only exists when an officer has a reasonable belief that a law has been broken.... An officer cannot have a reasonable belief that a violation of the law occurred when the acts to which an officer points as supporting probable cause are not prohibited by law.” (internal citation omitted)).

The facts in this matter show that McCann pulled Defendant over because Defendant had stopped his car in the middle of the road. Specifically, McCann saw Defendant's vehicle positioned in the middle of the road, observed that the car was stopped in the road for at least thirty seconds, and saw Defendant's attempt to wave him past when he pulled up behind Defendant. Defendant argues that McCann incorrectly identified that conduct as illegal under Md.Code Ann., Transp. § 21–1001(b). It is true that Md.Code Ann., Transp. § 21–1001(b) does not apply to roadways in residential areas and the stop at issue here undisputedly occurred in a residential area. Therefore § 21–1001(b) could not be the basis for conducting a stop of Defendant's vehicle. Nonetheless, we uphold the trial court's determination in this matter because the conduct that McCann set forth as a basis for the stop was plainly illegal under Maryland law, albeit in a different section than the one in the traffic citation. Specifically, the transportation section of the Maryland code requires that “a vehicle that is stopped or parked on a two-way roadway shall be stopped or parked parallel to the right hand curb or edge of the roadway, with its right hand wheels within 12 inches of that curb or edge of the roadway.” Md.Code Ann., Transp. § 21–1004(a). Under that section, “stop” means “to halt even momentarily a vehicle, whether or...