U.S. v. Holloway
| Decision Date | 27 May 1992 |
| Docket Number | No. 91-8044,91-8044 |
| Citation | 962 F.2d 451 |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Michael Anthony HOLLOWAY, Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
LeRoy M. Jahn, Diane D. Kirstein, Asst. U.S. Attys., Ronald F. Ederer, U.S. Atty., San Antonio, Tex., for plaintiff-appellant.
Richard R. Shreves, Austin, Tex. (court-appointed), for defendant-appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas.
Before DAVIS, JONES, and EMILIO M. GARZA, Circuit Judges.
This case is an appeal of a district court order suppressing cocaine found concealed in the undergarments of Michael Anthony Holloway. Cocaine was seized when, acting on information supplied by a reliable confidential informant, officers in an unmarked vehicle pulled out in front of Holloway and forced him to stop his vehicle. Holloway reversed, accelerated, and backed into an unmarked police unit moving up behind him, damaging both vehicles beyond repair. Officers then arrested Holloway and found crack cocaine in a plastic bag tucked inside his underwear. Prior to trial, Holloway moved to suppress this evidence on the grounds that it was the finding of an illegal search. Following a hearing, the district court granted Holloway's motion to suppress. The government appeals. Finding that the search of Holloway's person which revealed crack cocaine was incident to a lawful arrest, we reverse the district court's order suppressing the evidence and remand this case for trial.
The government's case rests in large part on the information relayed to officers Staha and Thompson on August 21, 1989 from a confidential informant--information officer Staha testified to at trial:
A The confidential informant told us about a subject that was selling "Crack" cocaine in the Rosewood Projects [in Austin, Texas] and ... [the] informant told us his name, which was "Mike" Holloway; the car he was driving, which was a Chrysler New Yorker; and told us where we could find the vehicle, which was in the Rosewood Projects.
Q Okay. Did he tell you anything about ... Holloway's possession of cocaine?
A Yes, sir. He told us that he was selling "Crack" cocaine in the projects and he was in possession of "Crack" cocaine, and he usually kept his "Crack" cocaine in his underwear.
Q Had this confidential informant provided information to you in the past?
A Yes, he has.
Q Was it regarding individuals who possessed and sold "Crack" cocaine?
A That's correct.
Q And had that information then led to the arrest and subsequent prosecutions of those people?
A Yes, sir.
Q All right. Did you know the person that was identified to you as--or had been named to you as Holloway?
A I'd known him when I used to work the streets ... in uniform. I knew Michael from an establishment called Martin's Drive-in.
Q All right. What did you know about Holloway?
A Personal knowledge, from informants and other sources of information, I knew he was a drug dealer out in east Austin area.
Q Okay. Besides the confidential informant that you first told the Court about, did other confidential informants give you information about Holloway being a drug dealer?
A Yes, sir.
Q All right. And did you have information that Holloway had recently--at least at the time that you were on the streets out there in August--recently gotten out of the penitentiary for selling narcotics?
A Yes.
Q Did the other officer and officers that were with you working that day, were they also aware of Mr. Holloway's prior drug dealing propensities?
A Oh, yes, sir.
Q All right. And did y'all talk about this?
A Holloway was--when we target an individual, Holloway was a person that we had targeted in the past. We never was able to make a case on him, but pretty much the whole Repeat Offenders Program office knew about Michael Holloway.... 1
Acting within hours of receiving this information, officers Staha and Thompson, who were in an unmarked police unit, arranged for a marked unit to stop and investigate Holloway's Chrysler New Yorker. Expecting that the investigation would turn up narcotics, they also arranged for additional support and, accordingly, they were soon joined by officers Clark and Duty--two additional plainclothes officers in another unmarked unit.
At approximately 4:45 on a August 21, 1989, while waiting for the marked unit, officers Staha and Thompson observed Holloway and another individual get into a Chrysler New Yorker. The vehicle pulled away from the curb and started to leave. Deciding they had to act, Staha and Thompson drove their vehicle into the street and blocked Holloway's direction of travel. The officers then got out of the vehicle and--their guns drawn and Staha displaying his badge--yelled "police, police, police."
Holloway came to a momentary stop ten to fifteen feet in front of the officers. Unaware that the unit occupied by officers Duty and Clark was pulling up behind him, Holloway then reversed his vehicle, accelerated, and rammed into the unit occupied by Clark and Duty with enough force to damage both vehicles beyond repair. The officers then helped Holloway out of his vehicle, frisked him, and found a bag containing seven rocks of crack cocaine concealed in his underwear.
A grand jury indicted Holloway for possessing more than 5 grams of cocaine base with intent to distribute--a violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1). Holloway moved to suppress the plastic bag containing crack cocaine as the product of an illegal search, and, after a hearing during which testimony was taken and exhibits were introduced, the district court granted that motion to suppress. The government appeals.
The issues the government brings before us require us to make two determinations: (a) when Holloway was "seized" for Fourth Amendment purposes 2 and, (b) whether, at the time of that seizure, officers had the requisite reasonable suspicion to initiate an investigatory detention of Holloway or probable cause to arrest him.
Precisely when an arrest takes place is generally a question of fact, 3 and this court accepts a district court's purely factual findings unless clearly erroneous. 4 However, in reviewing a district court's ruling on a motion to suppress based on live testimony at a suppression hearing, we do not readily accept a district court's factual findings if they are influenced by an incorrect view of law. See United States v. Gallo, 927 F.2d 815, 819 (5th Cir.1991) () (emphasis added); United States v. Muniz-Melchor, 894 F.2d 1430, 1433-34 (5th Cir.1990) (), cert. denied, 495 U.S. 923, 110 S.Ct. 1957, 109 L.Ed.2d 319 (1990), quoting United States v. Maldonado, 735 F.2d 809, 814 (5th Cir.1984).
The government has no quarrel with the district court's factual findings in this case and challenges the district court's determination that the officers did not have probable cause to conduct a warrantless search and arrest of Holloway--a mixed question of law and fact 5--on the grounds that the district court's determination was influenced by an incorrect view of law. Id. (); United States v. Basey, 816 F.2d 980, 988 (5th Cir.1987) (). Accordingly, the government's appeal is limited to pure questions of law and the legal element of a mixed question of law and fact--questions this court may freely review. See Muniz-Melchor, 894 F.2d at 1439 n. 9; Basey, 816 F.2d at 988.
The district court found that:
This was not an investigatory stop as the Government insists, because, as Officer Howard Staha testified, the officers' intent at all times was to arrest the Defendant. As Staha testified, the Austin officers had a strong desire to arrest Holloway for a long time. Upon receiving the information from the confidential informant, they immediately moved to arrest Holloway; not to obtain a warrant; not to investigate, but to arrest. Holloway's actions after he was accosted by the officers is, unfortunately, irrelevant. 6
The government challenges this determination, asserting that the officers' intention was to stop Holloway so as to either dispel their reasonable suspicion or, should their suspicion prove valid enough to establish probable cause, arrest him. The government asserts that the officers never had an opportunity to dispel their suspicion and that they seized Holloway only after he attempted to escape--a time when the officers allegedly had probable cause to arrest him. 7
Our determination of when Holloway was seized for Fourth Amendment purposes is guided by a series of recent Supreme Court decisions culminating in California v. Hodari D., --- U.S. ----, 111 S.Ct. 1547, 113 L.Ed.2d 690 (1991). 8 The facts in Hodari D. are somewhat analogous to those now before us: upon a showing of authority by police officers, Hodari D., a juvenile, attempted to flee and was pursued. Ultimately, Hodari D. was tackled by a police officer, but not until after he had discarded a small rock--a rock which the officers retrieved and determined to be crack cocaine. The Court held that Hodari D. was not seized until tackled and that the cocaine he abandoned while fleeing--prior to his seizure--was not the fruit of an illegal seizure. --- U.S. at ----, 111 S.Ct. at 1551. Specifically, ...
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