U.S. v. Espinoza

• Citation: 490 F.3d 41
• Decision Date: 13 June 2007
• Docket Number: No. 06-2065.,06-2065.
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellant, v. Benjamin ESPINOZA, Defendant, Appellee.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (1st Circuit)

490 F.3d 41

UNITED STATES of America, Appellant, v. Benjamin ESPINOZA, Defendant, Appellee.

No. 06-2065.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard May 9, 2007.

Decided June 13, 2007.

Robert E. Richardson, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Michael J. Sullivan, United States Attorney, was on brief, for appellant.

Leslie Feldman-Rumpler, for appellee.

Before TORRUELLA, Circuit Judge, SELYA and CYR, Senior Circuit Judges.

SELYA, Senior Circuit Judge.

In this interlocutory appeal, the government challenges a suppression order entered in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. It assigns error both to the district court's determination that an investigatory encounter was undertaken without reasonable suspicion and to the court's assessment of when a seizure occurred. We have jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. § 3731.

The district court made the challenged rulings after holding an evidentiary hearing and mulling the impact of a unique set of circumstances. Judgments of this sort are notoriously fact-sensitive, and an appellate court should defer in large measure to the trial court's superior coign of vantage. So it is here: although we, if sitting as a court of first instance, might not have drawn the same inferences from the underlying facts, we cannot say that the district court lacked the right to draw the inferences that it did. Nor can we say that, given those inferences, the court abused its discretion in suppressing the evidence. Accordingly, we affirm the suppression order.

I. BACKGROUND

In this case, the defendant stands accused of conspiracy to transport, and the transportation of, illegal aliens. See 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(1)(A)(ii), (a)(1)(A)(v)(I). We begin our account with a concise summary of the events leading to those charges, as supportably found by the district court. See United States v. Romain, 393 F.3d 63, 66 (1st Cir.2004); United States v. Lee, 317 F.3d 26, 30 (1st Cir. 2003).

On the morning of February 7, 2005, defendant-appellee Benjamin Espinoza was a front-seat passenger in a commuter van bearing Texas license plates that was traveling through Boston on Interstate 93. The van piqued the interest of Glen Fitzpatrick, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent, who was en route to his office in an unmarked car.

Fitzpatrick was aware that, within the past year, Boston-based ICE agents had intercepted at least two similar extended-passenger vans engaged in the illegal transportation of aliens. Although the van had tinted windows, he could see the silhouettes of several persons (other than the driver and front-seat passenger) inside it. Consequently, he started following the van while at the same time contacting sector communications. This inquiry yielded information that the van was registered to Jesús Zendejas of Dallas, Texas. Fitzpatrick recognized Zendejas's name as having appeared on a suspect's telephone toll records in an earlier ICE investigation of human smuggling — an investigation that had not yet resulted in the filing of any criminal charges.

Fitzpatrick continued to follow the van surreptitiously for approximately twenty-five minutes. At around that time, the van left the expressway and proceeded on the Revere Beach Parkway. In due course, it pulled over and parked near a sandwich shop in Everett, Massachusetts. The driver, Ambrosio Villareal, did not turn off the engine but let it idle. No one disembarked from the van.

Fitzpatrick parked his car some fifty feet away in an adjacent lot and approached the stopped van on foot. He wore civilian clothes and carried a holstered firearm. Upon reaching the van, he flashed his badge and identified himself to Villareal as an immigration officer. Speaking in Spanish, he requested identification. Villareal complied. Then Fitzpatrick, using a hand motion, "directed Villareal to shut off the engine." United States v. Espinoza, 433 F.Supp.2d 186, 188 (D.Mass. 2006) (D.Ct.Op.). The identification that Villareal produced consisted of a Texas driver's license, an alien registration card, and a business card indicating his affiliation with a company called "Mi Tierra."

In approximately the same time frame, Fitzpatrick asked the defendant for identification.¹ The defendant proffered a Texas driver's license and, in response to a direct question, informed Fitzpatrick that he was a naturalized citizen. To buttress that statement, he showed Fitzpatrick a photocopy of his naturalization papers. A conversation ensued regarding Mi Tierra and the employment of Villareal and the defendant as drivers for that firm.

Fitzpatrick next turned his attention to the five passengers in the rear of the van. He questioned them in Portuguese and learned that three of the five had been arrested in Texas by border patrol officers on February 4, 2005 — three days earlier. All three had received notices to appear for removal proceedings. The other two men carried Brazilian passports but had no other identification. Upon completing this phase of his inquiry, Fitzpatrick read Villareal and the defendant their Miranda rights. See Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 444-45, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966).

II. STANDARD OF REVIEW

In examining the presence or absence of reasonable suspicion and the timing of a seizure, we deal with mixed questions of law and fact. Each of those questions requires a searching appraisal of the particular factual context.

As to the first issue — the existence vel non of reasonable suspicion — we must "assess the totality of the circumstances, on a case — specific basis, in order to ascertain whether the officer had a particularized, objectively reasonable basis for suspecting wrongdoing." United States v. Coplin, 463 F.3d 96, 100 (1st Cir.2006) (citing United States v. Arvizu, 534 U.S. 266, 273, 122 S.Ct. 744, 151 L.Ed.2d 740 (2002)). The same is true of the seizure issue, which necessitates careful consideration of "all the circumstances surrounding the encounter." Florida v. Bostick, 501 U.S. 429, 439, 111 S.Ct. 2382, 115 L.Ed.2d 389 (1991).

Given the textured nature of these inquiries, appellate courts must proceed circumspectly and with regard for the district court's superior vantage point. See United States v. Zapata, 18 F.3d 971, 975 (1st Cir.1994) (explaining that an appellate court reviewing the disposition of a suppression motion must "exhibit great respect for the presider's opportunity to hear the testimony, observe the witnesses' demeanor, and evaluate the facts at first hand"). Consequently, we will disturb the trier's factual findings only if they are clearly erroneous.² See Coplin, 463 F.3d at 100; see also Reliance Steel Prods. Co. v. Nat'l Fire Ins. Co., 880 F.2d 575, 576 (1st Cir.1989) (observing that disputes over facts are "the staples of a trial court's diet and comprise an unappetizing, usually unnourishing, bill of fare for appellate digestion"). In this process, credibility calls — with only rare exceptions — are the district court's prerogative. See United States v. Rutkowski, 877 F.2d 139, 144 (1st Cir.1989). Legal conclusions, including ultimate constitutional determinations (such as the sufficiency of the facts as found to support a conclusion that, for example, reasonable suspicion exists or a seizure occurred), engender de novo review. See Ornelas v. United States, 517 U.S. 690, 699, 116 S.Ct. 1657, 134 L.Ed.2d 911 (1996); Zapata, 18 F.3d at 975.

We remain mindful throughout that when two or more legitimate interpretations of the evidence exist, the factfinder's choice between them cannot be deemed clearly erroneous. See Romain, 393 F.3d at 70; see also Anderson v. City of Bessemer, 470 U.S. 564, 573-74, 105 S.Ct. 1504, 84 L.Ed.2d 518 (1985). Thus, if the district court chooses to draw a reasonable (though not inevitable) inference from a particular combination of facts, that inference is entitled to deference. See Ornelas, 517 U.S. at 699, 116 S.Ct. 1657.

III. ANALYSIS

We subdivide our substantive discussion of the district court's decision into two segments, corresponding to the government's twin lines of argument.

A. Reasonable Suspicion.

Typically, brief investigatory stops can be grounded on reasonable suspicion as opposed to, say, probable cause. See Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 19, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968); Zapata, 18 F.3d at 975. That standard is not self-elucidating; we have warned before that the reasonable suspicion calculus "defies precise definition." United States v. Chhien, 266 F.3d 1, 6 (1st Cir.2001). No prefigured mold or cookie-cutter design exists to delineate whether or not a law enforcement officer, at a given time and place, acted on the basis of reasonable suspicion. Instead, that evaluation comprises "a fact-sensitive task, bound up in the warp and woof of the surrounding circumstances." Id. at 8.

Of course, precedent plays an important role in our system of justice, and the case law offers some general guidance. A finding of reasonable suspicion requires "`a particularized and objective basis' for suspecting the person stopped of criminal activity." Ornelas, 517 U.S. at 696, 116 S.Ct. 1657 (quoting United States v. Cortez, 449 U.S. 411, 417-18, 101 S.Ct. 690, 66 L.Ed.2d 621 (1981)). This particularity requirement means, in effect, that such a finding must be "grounded in specific and articulable facts." United States v. Hensley, 469 U.S. 221, 229, 105 S.Ct. 675, 83 L.Ed.2d 604 (1985); see United States v. Monteiro, 447 F.3d 39, 43 (1st Cir.2006). Moreover, the objective nature of the inquiry ensures that courts will focus not on what the officer himself believed but, rather, on what a reasonable officer in his position would have thought. Romain, 393 F.3d at 74.

Here, the government alleges that Fitzpatrick initiated the encounter with the van's occupants based on a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, that is, a suspicion that they were engaged in the illegal transportation of undocumented...