U.S. v. Campbell, 90-2148

• Decision Date: 11 September 1991
• Docket Number: No. 90-2148,90-2148
• Citation: 942 F.2d 890
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Darryl Wayne CAMPBELL, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 890

942 F.2d 890

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Darryl Wayne CAMPBELL, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 90-2148.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

Sept. 11, 1991.

Stanley G. Schneider, Schneider & McKinney, Houston, Tex., for defendant-appellant.

Jeffery A. Babcock, Paula C. Offenhauser, Asst. U.S. Attys., Henry K. Oncken, U.S. Atty., Houston, Tex., for plaintiff-appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas.

Before THORNBERRY, JOLLY and SMITH, Circuit Judges.

E. GRADY JOLLY, Circuit Judge:

In this drug case, federal officers were engaged in surveillance of a known drug trafficker, Darryl Wayne Campbell. The surveillance resulted in a high speed chase, a collision, and an arrest. This appeal primarily requires us to consider whether Campbell's arrest for cocaine possession was lawful, with Campbell contending that the cocaine was not discovered until after his arrest. We conclude that the arrest was lawful. The district court thus committed no error in denying Campbell's suppression motion, and we affirm his conviction and his sentence.

I

Acting on information that Campbell was distributing large quantities of drugs, federal agents followed Campbell when he left a car dealership in Houston, Texas, on February 2, 1989, accompanied by a young woman and an unknown man. The threesome drove to Houston's, a nearby trendy restaurant, and later returned to the car dealership. After approximately half an hour, Campbell and the woman left the dealership in Campbell's truck and stopped for gas before travelling to Papa's Garage. Daniel Morales, the owner of Papa's Garage, was reputed to be directly connected with cocaine-distributing entrepreneurs in South America and a wholesaler or a warehouseman for the illicit drug. The agents did not expect Campbell to visit Morales, whom they believed was Campbell's drug supplier, and viewed this turn of events as fortuitous.

When Campbell arrived at Papa's Garage, he drove his truck into the interior of the building where he could not be seen. Within a short time, a few men came from the garage to stand on the outside. Five minutes later, Campbell drove his truck out of the garage and onto the street. As Campbell turned into the street, he made direct eye contact with Michael Statlander, an agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration ("DEA"), who then immediately concluded that the surveillance had been compromised. Agent Statlander and the other federal agents decided to follow Campbell anyway.

Campbell, however, immediately began changing traffic lanes. The government argued at the suppression hearing that these movements constituted evasive driving actions that served no purpose other than to identify members of the surveillance team. At some point, Agent Statlander pulled up directly behind Campbell at a stop light in an unmarked car and observed Campbell looking into his side- and rear-view mirrors. Agent Statlander then unsuccessfully hand-motioned to Campbell to pull his truck over to the side of the road. Campbell, however, refused to yield and accelerated his truck to 100 m.p.h. Agent Statlander tried to stay behind Campbell, as did other members of the surveillance team, some of whom were driving vehicles equipped with lights and sirens.

After a high speed chase, the federal authorities cornered Campbell on a dead-end street, where he was forced to stop after colliding with an agent's car. Agent Statlander testified that he intended to arrest Campbell at this time because his reckless driving posed a threat to public safety. At some point, however, Statlander was informed that Campbell possessed cocaine and arrested him for drug possession.

The exact moment of Campbell's arrest is the subject of dispute because the agents did not discover that Campbell possessed cocaine in his truck until the young woman in the truck jumped out of the passenger seat and threw an uncovered box containing two kilograms of the drug in the agents' plain view. The government, of course, contends that Campbell was arrested after the box of cocaine had been found. Campbell contends otherwise. The district court, we assume, accepted the government's view of the sequence of events. We make this assumption because the court orally denied Campbell's motion to suppress the cocaine, although it failed to render any written findings on this question. All parties agree, however, that after Campbell's arrest, officers saw in plain view a nine-millimeter firearm lying on the front seat of the truck.

We pretermit any procedural discussion of this case since it is irrelevant to the main issue before us on appeal. Suffice it to say that Campbell entered a conditional guilty plea to possession with intent to distribute more than 500 grams of cocaine in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1), (b)(1)(B) and carrying a firearm during and in relation to a drug trafficking offense in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c). See Rule 11(a)(2), Fed.R.Crim.P.

II

Campbell contends that his arrest was unlawful: first, because the only crimes that the federal officers had probable cause to believe he had committed were local traffic offenses, which they were not authorized to enforce, Tex.Rev.Civ.Stat.Ann. art. 6701d § 143A(a) (Vernon 1977) (classifying traffic law violations as misdemeanors); Tex.Code Crim.Proc. Ann. § 2.122 (Vernon Supp.1991) (granting federal agents, inter alia, powers to arrest for felony offenses only); and second, there was no probable cause for the arrest based on cocaine possession at the time the arrest occurred because the cocaine was not discovered until after he was placed under arrest. Campbell thus argues that the district court erred in denying his motion to suppress the cocaine obtained as the result of these unlawful seizures.

We conclude that the district court did not err. Our review of the evidence establishes that at the time of the stop, the agents had a reasonable suspicion that a drug-related crime was being committed. See United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 109 S.Ct. 1581, 104 L.Ed.2d 1 (1989). Campbell was a well-known cocaine dealer. He visited Papa's Garage, the business of a man that the agents believed to be a major conduit of South American drugs and with whom agents knew Campbell had had prior contacts. He drove his truck into the interior of Papa's Garage where he could not be observed by others. While he was inside the garage, several individuals came from the garage and began looking up and down the street. He stayed in the garage for only a short period of time. Agent Statlander testified at the suppression hearing that it was his opinion, based on his experience and training as a law enforcement agent, that Campbell's conduct at Papa's Garage was consistent with a covert drug transaction. In addition, when Agent Statlander hand-motioned to Campbell to stop his truck, Campbell immediately began driving erratically and at speeds up to 100 m.p.h. in order to evade the law enforcement officers, with reckless disregard for public safety. We thus easily conclude that the agents had reasonable suspicion that some drug-related crime was occurring, and that the officers had a lawful right to detain Campbell to make appropriate inquiries. See Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968).

We also conclude that once they stopped Campbell, they were certainly entitled to take action to protect their safety before attempting to effectuate a formal arrest. See United States v. Colin, 928 F.2d 676 n. 2 (5th Cir.1991) (noting that for safety reasons, officer would have been justified in handcuffing defendant before formally arresting him). Campbell had just collided with an agent's car after being cornered on a dead-end street at the conclusion of the high-speed chase. Agent Statlander, the arresting officer, testified that he was afraid that Campbell would still attempt to escape by assaulting the agents with his truck. Therefore, to secure the safety of all officers, Agent Statlander pulled Campbell out of the vehicle, threw him to the ground, and patted down his outer clothing for weapons. At the same time, another agent, apparently also feeling the danger of the situation, drew his gun at the front of Campbell's truck.

Almost simultaneously with Agent Statlander's removing Campbell from the truck and forcing him to the ground, another agent called out that a box of cocaine had just been thrown out from the passenger side of the truck. At this point, Statlander informed Campbell that he was under arrest for possession of cocaine. ¹

Although Campbell argues that Statlander testified at the suppression hearing that he arrested Campbell before learning about...