U.S. v. Sandridge

• Decision Date: 30 September 2004
• Docket Number: No. 03-6046.,03-6046.
• Citation: 385 F.3d 1032
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Seneca SANDRIDGE, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

385 F.3d 1032

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Seneca SANDRIDGE, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 03-6046.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued August 12, 2004.

Decided and Filed September 30, 2004.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, Curtis L. Collier, J Steven S. Neff (argued and briefed), Asst. U.S. Attorney, Chattanooga, TN, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

LaFonda Jones, Asst. Federal Public Defender, Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee, Inc., Chattanooga, TN, Nikki C. Pierce (argued and briefed), Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee, Greeneville, TN, for Defendant-Appellant.

Before: MOORE and COLE, Circuit Judges; MARBLEY, District Judge.^*

OPINION

COLE, Circuit Judge.

Defendant-Appellant, Seneca Sandridge, brings this appeal following his plea of guilty to one count of possession with intent to distribute cocaine base, in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1) and (b)(1)(B). Sandridge appeals the district court's denial of his motion to suppress evidence that was seized from his vehicle and person pursuant to a traffic stop on March 27, 2002. Sandridge also appeals the sentence imposed by the district court; he contends that the district court erred when, for drug quantity determination purposes, it converted $919 in cash seized from him at the time of his arrest into an equivalent amount of cocaine base.

For the reasons discussed below, we AFFIRM the denial of Sandridge's motion to suppress. However, we VACATE the sentence imposed by the district court and REMAND the case to that court for re-sentencing based on a base offense level reflecting only the amount of drugs possessed by Sandridge.

I. THE SUPPRESSION MOTION

On March 27, 2002, Officer Phillip Grubb of the Chattanooga Police Department observed Sandridge driving a yellow Cadillac in downtown Chattanooga, Tennessee. At the first evidentiary hearing held by the magistrate judge, Officer Grubb testified that "a day or two" earlier, he had seen Sandridge driving in the same vehicle and had run a license check on the mobile data terminal ("MDT") — a police-wired laptop — in his patrol car. At a second evidentiary hearing, Grubb testified that he was not sure of the exact day he conducted the license check and that he might have conducted it a few weeks before the March 27 stop, rather than a few days earlier, as he previously testified. In any event, Grubb testified that the license check revealed that Sandridge did not have a valid driver's license. Accordingly, when Officer Grubb saw Sandridge driving in Chattanooga again, on March 27, 2002, he stopped him on the suspicion that he was still driving without a valid license. At this point, Grubb ran another license check, which confirmed that Sandridge was, indeed, still driving without a valid license.

While Officer Grubb was checking Sandridge's license, another officer arrived on the scene. The two officers then approached Sandridge and asked him to get out of the car. Sandridge refused and attempted to restart the engine and drive off, at which point an altercation ensued between Sandridge and the police officers. Eventually, Sandridge was arrested for driving without a valid driver's license and resisting arrest. The officers then searched the vehicle and Sandridge. In the car, they found 20.9 grams of cocaine base, a set of electronic scales, and marijuana. (The marijuana appears never to have been part of this federal action). In addition, the officers found $919 in cash on Sandridge's person.

Sandridge attacked Grubb's credibility with respect to Grubb's contention that he ran a license check on him prior to March 27. Specifically, Sandridge contended that there was no evidence that Grubb ran any license check prior to March 27. Brian Hackett, an investigator for the Federal Defender Service of Eastern Tennessee, testified at the first evidentiary hearing that he had obtained the MDT records from the Chattanooga Police Department for a two-week period prior to March 27, 2002, and that there was no record of a check on Defendant's license during that time. Hackett also testified that he had spoken with Shirley Varner, Technical Services Operator for the Chattanooga Police Department, and that she told him that any check on Sandridge's license would have appeared on the MDT records.

At the second evidentiary hearing, Sandridge presented additional MDT records — this time, dating back to February 2002. These records, too, contained no indication that Officer Grubb had run a check on Sandridge's license prior to the one conducted on March 27, 2002, the day of the stop. When confronted with these computer records, Officer Grubb insisted that he had made an inquiry on Sandridge's license prior to March 27, 2002, although he was not sure why there was no record of it.

Despite the lack of evidence supporting Grubb's testimony, the magistrate judge found Grubb credible, and recommended denial of Sandridge's motion to suppress. The district court adopted the magistrate judge's recommendation to deny the motion to suppress, stating that "computers do make mistakes as anyone who has worked with them is well aware."

Sandridge then moved the district court to reconsider its denial of his suppression motion and explained that he had recently discovered new evidence — namely that, previously, no MDT record was submitted for March 5, 2002; instead, records for September 5, 2002 had been mistakenly submitted. When a printout of the MDT records for March 5, 2002 was obtained, it showed that a license check had, in fact, been run for Sandridge on March 5, 2002. There was no dispute before the district court that Officer Grubb ran that check.

Based on this new information, Sandridge renewed his attack on Grubb's credibility. He argued that the new evidence proved Grubb's lack of credibility, since Grubb testified that he had performed a license check "a day or two" before he stopped Sandridge on March 27, 2002, when the check was actually performed twenty-two days before. (Puzzlingly, Sandridge fails to acknowledge Grubb's subsequent testimony that it may have been a few weeks before March 27 that he ran the check). In addition to attacking Grubb's credibility, Sandridge also argued that the March 5 license check was too "stale" to be relied on by Officer Grubb three weeks later, on March 27, 2002, when he pulled Sandridge over on the traffic stop.

The district court rejected both the credibility and staleness arguments, and adhered to its decision to deny Sandridge's motion to suppress. After Sandridge pleaded guilty to one count of possession with intent to distribute cocaine base, this timely appeal followed.

At issue is whether Officer Grubb had reasonable suspicion to stop Sandridge's car on March 27, 2002. As explained above, Grubb initially testified that he ran the license check a day or two before the stop; but at the second suppression hearing, Grubb testified that he was not certain of the date and may have run the check a few weeks before. Although initially, police records did not support Grubb's testimony that he ran a license check prior to March 27, 2002, the subsequently-uncovered MDT record showed that a license check was, in fact, run on Sandridge on March 5, 2002.

Before analyzing whether the March 5 check provided Officer Grubb with reasonable suspicion on March 27, we first address Sandridge's request for a new evidentiary hearing based on his insinuation — made for the first time on appeal — that the March 5 check might not have been conducted by Officer Grubb (but rather, by some other officer). There was never any dispute in the district court that Officer Grubb was the one to order the March 5 check. Indeed, in his motion for reconsideration, Sandridge made repeated representations that the March 5 license check was run by Officer Grubb. The following excerpt from Sandirdge's motion for reconsideration is but one example of that:

Officer Grubb did not take steps to further investigate by effecting a traffic stop on Mr. Sandridge on March 5, 2002. Prior to stopping Mr. Sandridge [on] March 27, 2002, Officer Grubb did not perform another license inquiry to ascertain the status of his license, instead he relied on the information from a check made three weeks earlier. Officer Grubb knew from the inquiry on March 5, 2002 that all Mr. Sandridge had to do was to go get his driver's license....

The arguments in his brief on appeal are also based on the fact that Officer Grubb was the one who ran the March 5 check. For instance, Sandridge renews his argument that Grubb's March 5 search did not provide reasonable suspicion for the March 27 stop because, by March 27, the information gleaned on March 5 was "stale." Never does Sandridge contend that anyone other than Officer Grubb conducted the search. However, Sandridge's brief makes several vague and indirect references to the contrary, apparently to support his request for a supplemental evidentiary hearing based on the March 5 MDT record he presented in his motion for reconsideration.

Because such references contradict other arguments that Sandridge presents, we reject them as a basis for a new evidentiary hearing. "The case precedent in this circuit instructs courts to withhold judgment on issues not fully developed by the briefs or in the record. Issues adverted to in a perfunctory manner, unaccompanied by some effort at developed argumentation, are deemed waived. It is not sufficient for a party to mention a possible argument in the most skeletal way, leaving the court to ... put flesh on its bones." Popovich v. Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas, 276 F.3d 808, 823 (6th Cir.2002) (internal quotations and citation omitted). More importantly, as already explained, the record leaves little question that it was Officer Grubb who ran the March 5 license check on Sandridge's car.

We now turn to the central legal question: Whether...