U.S. v. Jefferson

• Decision Date: 21 June 1990
• Docket Number: No. 89-2248,89-2248
• Citation: 906 F.2d 346
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellant, v. Sandra Faye JEFFERSON and Shawn Louis Hayden, Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

Page 346

906 F.2d 346

59 USLW 2071

UNITED STATES of America, Appellant, v. Sandra Faye JEFFERSON and Shawn Louis Hayden, Appellees.

No. 89-2248.

United States Court of Appeals Eighth Circuit.

Submitted May 17, 1990.

Decided June 21, 1990.

Louis M. Fischer, Washington, D.C., for appellant.

Jack Nordby, Minneapolis, Minn., for appellees.

Before LAY, Chief Judge, HENLEY, Senior Circuit Judge, and BOWMAN, Circuit Judge.

HENLEY, Senior Circuit Judge.

The government appeals the district court's ¹ suppression of statements made by defendants Shawn Louis Hayden and Sandra Faye Jefferson to a state trooper and evidence obtained from the trooper's search of a rented automobile in which they were passengers that was parked at an interstate rest area. The issue before us is whether a fourth amendment "seizure" ² of the defendants had occurred after the trooper requested and retained Hayden's driver's license, Jefferson's identification card, and the automobile rental agreement; asked Hayden, the driver, to leave the automobile and be seated in a police patrol car; and then joined Hayden in the front seat of the patrol car. We hold that the defendants were seized for purposes of the fourth amendment at least by the end of this series of events. Because the trooper did not have a reasonable suspicion that the defendants were engaged in any criminal activity at the time he seized them, we conclude that the district court properly excluded from evidence the defendants' statements made after they were seized and the items found in the subsequent search of the rental car.

I.

On March 28, 1989 Hayden agreed to a friend's request to drive from Minneapolis, Minnesota, where Hayden resided, to Omaha, Nebraska, to pick up Jefferson at a bus station and return her to Minneapolis. Hayden wanted to use a rental car for the trip, but did not have a major credit card, so he had another friend, Prestley Johnson, rent an automobile for him. The rental agreement did not, however, list Hayden as an authorized driver.

Hayden picked up Jefferson in Omaha at 4:00 a.m. on March 29 and put her two suitcases in the car trunk. The defendants began travelling back to Minneapolis, with Hayden driving and Jefferson in the front passenger seat. When it became too foggy to drive, they pulled into an interstate rest area just west of Des Moines, Iowa. Because of cold weather, Hayden left the engine running to keep warm while waiting for the fog to lift.

A uniformed and armed Iowa Highway Patrol trooper drove into the rest area at around 6:40 a.m. and noticed the defendants' automobile, which bore Minnesota license plates and a rental car decal. The trooper parked his patrol car behind the rental car and radioed the license plate number to his dispatcher, who informed him that the car was registered to a car rental company at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. After calling for backup from another patrolman, the trooper approached the window on the driver's side of the rental car. He testified that his purpose for going to the car was to make a "welfare check," that is, to see if the occupants were suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning or any other difficulties.

The trooper tapped on the window, awakened the defendants, and asked if they were all right. After requesting identification, he received Hayden's driver's license and Jefferson's identification card. He asked Hayden if the vehicle was a rental car, and Hayden replied that it was. The trooper asked to see the rental agreement, which Hayden produced for him. He then asked Hayden to accompany him to the patrol car. The trooper made this request while retaining possession of the items that the defendants had given him.

The trooper did not examine Hayden's driver's license, Jefferson's identification card, and the car rental agreement until he and Hayden were seated together in the front seat of the patrol car. The trooper first checked with the dispatcher to see if there were any outstanding warrants for Hayden or Jefferson and learned that there were none. Next he asked Hayden for the origin and destination of the trip, which Hayden told him. The trooper then noticed that the rental agreement named Prestley Johnson as the renter and that no one else was listed as an authorized additional driver. In response to the trooper's questions, Hayden explained that Johnson had rented the car so that he, Hayden, could pick up Jefferson in Omaha.

The trooper then returned to the rental car to question Jefferson. Jefferson said that she and Hayden had not been anywhere in particular and were not going anywhere in particular. Jefferson also said that she did not know Johnson.

The trooper asked Hayden for permission to search the car, but Hayden refused. Hayden asked the trooper for permission to go to the bathroom, but the trooper refused. Hayden also asked the trooper why he and Jefferson were being detained, to which the officer replied, "I'm just on a fishing expedition."

Over the police radio the trooper then obtained permission from the car rental company to impound the rental car. Although they were allowed to retrieve their personal property from the car, the defendants did not take the two suitcases out of the trunk. After impounding the car, the police conducted a purported "inventory search" of the car and its contents. Inside one of the suitcases were nine kilograms of cocaine.

In granting the defendants' motion to suppress, the district court held that when the trooper went up to the rental car and required the defendants to produce identification, they were seized within the meaning of the fourth amendment. The district court concluded that "[b]ecause the seizure was not based on any articulable and reasonable suspicion, it was unreasonable, and therefore it was in violation of the Fourth Amendment" and that "[a]ll of the physical evidence and the statements of the defendants obtained after this initial unreasonable seizure is tainted by the seizure ... and therefore is not admissible into evidence."

II.

Ordinarily we will not reverse a district court's finding that a fourth amendment seizure occurred unless the finding is clearly erroneous. See United States v. Archer, 840 F.2d 567, 571 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 109 S.Ct. 364, 102 L.Ed.2d 354, cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 109 S.Ct. 365, 102 L.Ed.2d 354 (1988). We may affirm the district court's order in this case, however, without having to address the validity of the precise holding below, which was that a seizure occurred at the point when the trooper requested identification from the defendants while they were seated in the rental car. Until the trooper was seated in the patrol car with Hayden and discovered from the rental agreement that neither Hayden nor Jefferson was listed as an authorized driver, we do not believe that trooper had any basis for even a Terry-type stop of the defendants, see Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968) (requiring reasonable suspicion of criminal activity to justify brief and limited detention of an individual). ³ Thus, if we find that the defendants were seized as a result of any of the events that took place before the trooper examined the rental agreement--those events being his initial questioning of the defendants, his retaining of the defendants' identification papers while requesting that Hayden join him in the patrol car, and his seating next to Hayden in the front seat of the patrol car--then we must uphold the district court's ruling that the seizure of the defendants was unreasonable and that all evidence obtained from the subsequent questioning of the defendants and search of the car is inadmissible under the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine set out in Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963).

A fourth amendment seizure of an individual occurs when governmental authorities "by means of physical force or show of authority ... restrain[ ] the liberty of a citizen." Terry, 392 U.S. at 19 n. 16, 88 S.Ct. at 1879 n. 16. Stated another way, "the police can be said to have seized an individual 'only if, in view of all the circumstances surrounding the incident, a reasonable person would have believed that he was not free to leave.' " Michigan v Chesternut, 486 U.S. 567, 573, 108 S.Ct. 1975, 1979, 100 L.Ed.2d 565 (1988) (quoting United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U.S. 544, 554, 100 S.Ct. 1870, 1877, 64 L.Ed.2d 497 (1980) (plurality)).

Although there is no "litmus-paper test" for determining whether an individual has been seized for purposes of the fourth amendment, see Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491, 506, 103 S.Ct. 1319, 1329, 75 L.Ed.2d 229 (1983) (plurality), previous cases provide some guidance here. We know from Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 99 S.Ct. 1391, 59 L.Ed.2d 660 (1979), that a patrolman's stopping of an automobile travelling down a road and subsequent detention of its occupants to check the motorist's driver's license and the registration of the automobile may "constitute a 'seizure' within the meaning of [the fourth amendment], even though the purpose of the stop is limited and the resulting detention quite brief." Id. at 653, 99 S.Ct. at 1396. See also Michigan Dept. of State Police v. Sitz, --- U.S. ----, 110 S.Ct. 2481, --- L.Ed.2d ---- (1990) (holding "that a Fourth Amendment 'seizure' occurs when a vehicle is stopped at a checkpoint"). The facts of this case are somewhat distinguishable from Prouse and Sitz, however, because here the automobile was already stopped when the trooper approached it.

We have held that an individual was not seized under the fourth amendment when police officers approached a parked car in which he was seated and saw him place his hands down in front of the seat near the area of his feet. See United States v. Pajari, 715 F.2d 1378 (8th Cir.1983). In Pajari we determined that there was no seizure until the individual was ordered to raise his hands and...