U.S. v. Mangum

• Citation: 100 F.3d 164,321 U.S.App. D.C. 348
• Decision Date: 22 November 1996
• Docket Number: No. 95-3033,95-3033
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Kevin MANGUM, Appellant.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (District of Columbia)

Page 164

100 F.3d 164

321 U.S.App.D.C. 348

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Kevin MANGUM, Appellant.

No. 95-3033.

United States Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit.

Argued Oct. 31, 1996.

Decided Nov. 22, 1996.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (No. 94cr00411-01).

Howard B. Katzoff, appointed by the court, Washington, DC, argued the cause, and filed the briefs, for appellant.

William D. Weinreb, Assistant United States Attorney, argued the cause, for appellee, with whom Eric H. Holder, Jr., United States Attorney, John R. Fisher, Elizabeth Trosman and Peter R. Zeidenberg, Assistant U.S. Attorneys, Washington, DC, were on the brief.

Before: WALD, SENTELLE and ROGERS, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge WALD.

WALD, Circuit Judge:

Kevin D. Mangum appeals from a judgment entered by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia convicting him after a jury trial of unlawful possession of a firearm by a convicted felon in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) and sentencing him to 37 months of incarceration. We reject his appeal and affirm his conviction.

On October 18, 1994, Mangum was indicted on five counts: (1) unlawful possession of a firearm by a convicted felon (18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1)) (Count One); (2) possession of a firearm with an obliterated, removed, changed or altered serial number (18 U.S.C. § 922(k)) (Count Two); (3) carrying a pistol without a license (D.C.Code § 22-3204(a)) (Count Three); (4) possession of an unregistered firearm (D.C.Codes 6-2311(a)) (Count Four); and (5) unlawful possession of ammunition (D.C.Code § 6-2361(3)) (Count Five). ¹ Appellant filed three pretrial motions: (1) a motion to suppress evidence; (2) a motion for disclosure of confidential informant and exculpatory information; and (3) a motion to bifurcate trial, or, in the alternative, for severance of counts. Following a hearing, the district court denied the first two motions and disposed of the third by severing Count One of the indictment from the remaining counts. The judge then held a jury trial on Count One, and the jury found Mangum guilty. Appellant was sentenced to 37 months of incarceration and the government voluntarily dismissed the four remaining counts of the indictment.

All five charges against Mangum arose out of an incident on September 3, 1994, when police, acting on an informant's tip, stopped appellant and removed a gun from a knapsack that was in the trunk of the car in which he was a passenger. In late August 1994, Detective Andre Williams, a six-year veteran of the Metropolitan Police Department ("MPD"), received a detailed tip from a confidential informant that appellant carried a gun each day to his place of employment, a barbershop in the 700 block of H Street, N.E., and kept the gun in his knapsack while he worked. The informant stated that appellant normally left work with the gun at the end of the day and was picked up by friends in a black Nissan automobile bearing Virginia license plates numbered NOL-113. Detective Williams conveyed this information to several other police officers (including Officer Leon Johnson, also of the MPD), telling them that appellant was a six-foot-tall, light-skinned, stockily-built man named Kevin Mangum, and he subsequently provided the officers with appellant's picture.

On September 3, 1994, Officer Johnson received word from Detective Williams that appellant was in the barbershop with the gun and would probably emerge from the shop fifteen minutes before it closed. ² Johnson and two other officers parked their car a block away from the barbershop and watched as a black Nissan automobile fitting the earlier description drove up and Mangum emerged from the barbershop carrying a brownish knapsack. The driver of the automobile got out and opened the trunk, and appellant placed the knapsack in the trunk. At that point, the driver returned to his seat, and Mangum got into the car on the other side. The car then pulled away from the shop.

Shortly thereafter, the officers stopped the car, asked its occupants to get out, patted them down for weapons and, finding none, asked the driver to open the car's trunk. The driver opened the trunk, and Officer Johnson removed the knapsack. He asked the driver and Mangum in turn whether the knapsack belonged to them. Both of them disclaimed ownership. Mangum stated: "it's not my bag, it's the driver's." Transcript ("Tr.") I, at 26-27, 37. Officer Johnson then searched the knapsack, finding inside a pair of shorts containing Mangum's driver's license and a loaded handgun.

The confidential informant who gave the tip to Detective Williams had been arrested about three years earlier and had agreed to provide information to the police in exchange for a favorable disposition of his case. Since that time, the informant had provided information on approximately 30-35 occasions. Id. at 41-42. This information had proved reliable every time, and on at least six occasions, it had resulted in criminal convictions.

On appeal, appellant claims that the district court erred in denying each of his three pretrial motions. Additionally, appellant contends that he was prejudiced by the trial judge's allegedly erroneous questioning of a government witness. We find that none of appellant's contentions has merit. Accordingly, we affirm the conviction.

I. DISCUSSION

A. Suppression of Evidence Under Fourth Amendment

Appellant filed a pretrial motion to suppress evidence, which the district court denied. The court found that the police had probable cause to stop the car and search the knapsack on the basis of the reliable informant's detailed tip and the officers' corroboration of this tip. Appendix of Appellant ("A.A.") 14-18. The court also held that the appellant lacked standing to challenge the search of the knapsack because he had disclaimed ownership of and therefore had no privacy interest in the bag. A.A. 20-21. The court found that the officers could not and need not have obtained a search warrant prior to stopping the car, since they did not have probable cause to search appellant until they had corroborated the details of the tip by observing Mangum. Finally, the court held that the police did not arrest appellant prior to finding the gun, but had only conducted a lawful "investigative detention and weapons search" pursuant to Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). A.A. 14-16. ³

On appeal, Mangum argues that the district court erred in refusing to suppress the evidence obtained during the stop and search of the car in which Mangum was a passenger. Appellant concedes that the police officers' corroboration of the informant's tip provided reasonable articulable suspicion for an investigative Terry stop of the vehicle and pat-down of its occupants. Brief of Appellant, at 12. However, he claims that, because "the detention, seizure, and search exceeded the scope of a legitimate investigative stop," the stop crossed the line into a warrantless "arrest" that was unjustified by probable cause and the evidence thereby seized must be suppressed. Id. at 16, 88 S.Ct. at 1877. Appellant advances four reasons why the stop crossed the line into an arrest: (1) three police cars and seven or eight officers were involved in the stop; (2) appellant was not free to leave or refuse to answer the officers' questions; (3) the officers did not conduct "further investigation" before they opened the trunk and searched appellant's bag; and (4) the officers had already intended to arrest him when they removed him from the automobile. Id. at 14-15, 88 S.Ct. at 1876-77.

The government counters that the trial court did not err when it refused to suppress the evidence. Its response proceeds on a number of theories: (1) seizing the gun and other items from appellant's backpack was not the "fruit" of his detention under the Fourth Amendment; (2) the investigatory stop never crossed the line to being an arrest; (3) even if appellant was arrested, the arrest was justified by probable cause; and (4) appellant lacked standing to challenge the seizure of the knapsack since he had disclaimed ownership of it. Brief for Appellee, at 7.

We agree with the government that the trial judge did not err in refusing to suppress the evidence obtained during the stop and search of the car in which Mangum was a passenger because the legitimate investigatory stop never turned into an arrest and because Mangum lacked standing to challenge the search of his knapsack. ⁴ It is true that the "[t]emporary detention of individuals during the stop of an automobile by the police, even if only for a brief period and for a limited purpose, constitutes a 'seizure' of 'persons' within the meaning of [the Fourth Amendment]" and therefore is subject to the limitation that it be "reasonable" under the circumstances. Whren v. United States, --- U.S. ----, ----, 116 S.Ct. 1769, 1772, 135 L.Ed.2d 89 (1996). A legitimate investigatory stop may cross the line into an arrest "if the duration of the stop or the amount of force used is 'unreasonable' under the circumstances." United States v. Laing, 889 F.2d 281, 285 (D.C.Cir.1989). The government carries the burden of showing that the measures employed during the stop were justified.

We conclude that the scope and duration of the investigatory stop at issue here were reasonable under Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), and its progeny. Based on their corroboration of the innocent details of the tip, the officers clearly had a reasonable, articulable suspicion sufficient to stop the car in which Mangum was a passenger, to complete a protective weapons search of its occupants, and to conduct reasonable further investigation. In Adams v. Williams, the Supreme Court held that "[a] brief stop of a suspicious individual, in order to determine his identity or to maintain the status quo momentarily while...