United States v. Landeros

• Citation: 913 F.3d 862
• Decision Date: 11 January 2019
• Docket Number: No. 17-10217,17-10217
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Alfredo Enos LANDEROS, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

913 F.3d 862

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.Alfredo Enos LANDEROS, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 17-10217

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted September 12, 2018 San Francisco, California

Filed January 11, 2019

Lee Tucker (argued), Assistant Federal Defender; Jon M. Sands, Federal Defender; Federal Public Defender's Office, Tucson, Arizona; for Defendant-Appellant.

Charisse Arce (argued) and Angela W. Woolridge, Assistant United States Attorneys; Elizabeth A. Strange, First Assistant United States Attorney; Robert L. Miskell, Appellate Chief; United States Attorney's Office, Tucson, Arizona; for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Before: Marsha S. Berzon, Johnnie B. Rawlinson, and Paul J. Watford, Circuit Judges.

BERZON, Circuit Judge:

Our question is whether law enforcement officers may extend a lawfully initiated vehicle stop because a passenger refuses to identify himself, absent reasonable suspicion that the individual has committed a criminal offense. We conclude that they may not do so. As a result, we reverse.¹

I.

Early in the morning of February 9, 2016, police officer Clinton Baker pulled over a car driving 11 miles over the speed limit. The stop occurred on a road near the Pascua Yaqui Indian reservation. Alfredo Landeros sat in the front passenger seat next to the driver. Two young women were in the back seat. The driver apologized to Officer Baker for speeding and provided identification.

Officer Baker wrote in his incident report and testified that he smelled alcohol in the car. The two women in the backseat appeared to him to be minors, and therefore subject to both the underage drinking laws and the 10:00 p.m. Pascua Yaqui curfew.² According to the two women's testimony, Officer Baker requested their identification and explained that he was asking because they looked younger than 18 years old "and it was past a curfew." The two women—who were 21 and 19 years old—complied.

As he stated at the suppression hearing, Officer Baker did not believe that Landeros was underage, and he was not. Nonetheless, Officer Baker, in his own words, "commanded" Landeros to provide identification. Later, Officer Baker explained it was "standard for [law enforcement] to identify everybody in the vehicle." Landeros refused to identify himself, and informed Officer Baker—correctly, as we shall explain—that he was not required to do so. Officer Baker then repeated his "demand[ ] to see [Landeros's] ID." Landeros again refused. As a result, Officer Baker called for back-up, prolonging the stop. Officer Frank Romero then arrived, and he too asked for Landeros's identification. The two officers also repeatedly "commanded" Landeros to exit the car because he was not being "compliant."

Landeros eventually did leave the car. At least several minutes passed between Officer Baker's initial request for Landeros's identification and his exit from the car, although the record does not reflect the exact length of time.

Officer Baker testified that, as Landeros exited the car, he saw for the first time pocketknives, a machete, and two open beer bottles on the floorboards by the front passenger seat. Arizona prohibits open containers of alcohol in cars on public highways, Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 4-251. Officer Baker then placed Landeros under arrest. Consistent with Officer Baker's testimony, the government represented in its district court briefing that Landeros was arrested both for possessing an open container³ and for "failure to provide his true full name and refusal to comply with directions of police officers." See Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 13-2412(A) ("It is unlawful for a person, after being advised that the person's refusal to answer is unlawful, to fail or refuse to state the person's true full name on request of a peace officer who has lawfully detained the person based on reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing or is about to commit a crime."); id. § 28-622(A) ("A person shall not willfully fail or refuse to comply with any lawful order or direction of a police officer invested by law with authority to direct, control or regulate traffic.").

The officers handcuffed Landeros as soon as he exited the car. Officer Romero asked Landeros if he had any weapons; Landeros confirmed that he had a knife in a pocket. Officer Romero requested consent to search Landeros's pockets, and Landeros agreed. During that search, Officer Romero found a smoking pipe and six bullets in Landeros's pockets.

Two and a half months later, Landeros was indicted for possession of ammunition by a convicted felon, 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(1), 924(a)(2). He moved to suppress the evidence based on the circumstances of the stop, and also to dismiss the indictment based on alleged abuse by the police officers after the search. The magistrate judge recommended the district court deny both motions, and it did so in a single sentence order. Landeros then entered into a plea agreement that preserved his right to appeal the denials of the two motions. The district court accepted the agreement and sentenced Landeros to 405 days in prison and three years of supervised release.

II.

This case implicates two doctrines, one concerning the circumstances under which law enforcement can prolong a stop, and the other governing when law enforcement can require a person to identify himself.

A.

Rodriguez v. United States held that "[a]n officer ... may conduct certain unrelated checks during an otherwise lawful traffic stop. But ... he may not do so in a way that prolongs the stop, absent the reasonable suspicion ordinarily demanded to justify detaining an individual." ––– U.S. ––––, 135 S.Ct. 1609, 1615, 191 L.Ed.2d 492 (2015). In that case, a police officer stopped Rodriguez for a minor traffic violation. Id. at 1612. The officer collected Rodriguez's license, registration, and proof of insurance, ran a records check on both Rodriguez and a passenger, and questioned the passenger about "where [they] were coming from and where they were going." Id. at 1613. He then returned to the vehicle "to issue [a] written warning" to Rodriguez for the traffic violation. Id.

Although the reasons for the traffic stop were, at this point, "out of the way," the officer continued the stop, asking Rodriguez for permission to walk a dog around the vehicle. Id. When Rodriguez refused, the officer ordered Rodriguez out of the car and called for back-up. Id . Several minutes later, after a deputy sheriff arrived, the officer conducted a dog sniff test, which resulted in the discovery of methamphetamines within the car. Id.

Based on the fruits of that search, Rodriguez was indicted for possession with intent to distribute. Id. He moved to suppress the evidence on the ground that there was no reasonable suspicion of any offense other than the traffic violation, so the stop was unlawfully prolonged by the dog sniff. Id. The district court agreed with Rodriguez that the officer lacked reasonable suspicion to extend the stop after the written warning, but determined that the extension was nonetheless permissible because of its brevity. Id. at 1613–14. The Eighth Circuit affirmed. See United States v. Rodriguez , 741 F.3d 905, 907–08 (8th Cir. 2014), vacated and remanded , 135 S.Ct. 1609.

The Supreme Court vacated the judgment on the basis that law enforcement may not extend a traffic stop with tasks unrelated to the traffic mission, absent independent reasonable suspicion. Rodriguez , 135 S.Ct. at 1616–17. In reaching this conclusion, the Court made clear that it would not have mattered if the police officer conducted the dog sniff test before, rather than after, he issued the warning. What mattered was the added time, not at what point, in the chronology of the stop, that time was added. Id .

This court so emphasized in United States v. Evans , published a month after Rodriguez . 786 F.3d 779, 786 (9th Cir. 2015). There, we held that law enforcement impermissibly extended a traffic stop by running an ex-felon registration check unrelated to traffic safety and unsupported by separate reasonable suspicion. Id ."That the ex-felon registration check occurred before ... the officer issued a ticket [stemming from the initial traffic violation] is immaterial," we explained. Id . (brackets, citation, and internal quotation marks omitted). "[R]ather, the critical question is whether the check prolongs—i.e., adds time to—the stop." Id . (brackets, citation, and internal quotation marks omitted).

We recognize here, for the first time, that Rodriguez at least partially abrogated this circuit's previous precedent, United States v. Turvin , 517 F.3d 1097 (9th Cir. 2008), upon which the magistrate judge relied and to which the government now cites for support. Turvin held that a police officer did not transform a lawful traffic stop into an unlawful one when, without reasonable suspicion, he took a break from writing a traffic citation to ask the driver about a methamphetamine laboratory and obtain the driver's consent to search his truck. Id . at 1098. Turvin concluded that because "the circumstances surrounding the brief pause here were reasonable," the extension was permissible despite the absence of reasonable suspicion. Id. at 1101–02.

Rodriguez squarely rejected such a reasonableness standard for determining whether prolonging a traffic stop for reasons not justified by the initial purpose of the stop is lawful. 135 S.Ct. at 1616. Instead, Rodriguez requires that a traffic stop may be extended to conduct an investigation into matters other than the original traffic violation only if the officers have reasonable suspicion of an independent offense. Id .

Dissenting in Turvin , Judge Paez wrote, "Because I do not believe that reasonable suspicion supported [the officer's] decision to prolong his traffic stop of Turvin, I would affirm the district court's order granting Turvin's motion to suppress." 517 F.3d at 1104 (Paez, J., dissenting). Judge Paez's dissent aligns with the...