United States v. Lewis

• Decision Date: 22 February 2012
• Docket Number: No. 11–1136.,11–1136.
• Citation: 672 F.3d 232
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America v. Ahmoi LEWIS, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit

672 F.3d 232

UNITED STATES of America

v.Ahmoi LEWIS, Appellant.

No. 11–1136.

United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.

Argued Dec. 8, 2011.Filed: Feb. 22, 2012.

George H. Hodge, Jr., Esq. (argued), St. Thomas, VI, for Appellant Ahmoi Lewis.

Nelson L. Jones, Esq. (argued), Office of the United States Attorney, District of the Virgin Islands, St. Thomas, VI, for Appellee United States of America.

Before: FISHER, GREENAWAY, JR., and ROTH, Circuit Judges.

OPINION

GREENAWAY, JR., Circuit Judge.

After receiving a tip from a reliable source that individuals in a white Toyota Camry were carrying firearms, police officers in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands initiated a traffic stop of the vehicle. During the traffic stop, a firearm was discovered on the driver, Appellant Ahmoi Lewis (“Lewis”). Before pleading guilty to two firearm offenses, Lewis unsuccessfully moved to suppress the firearm as the fruit of an unlawful search and seizure. We must determine whether the traffic stop was supported by the requisite reasonable suspicion of criminal activity under the Fourth Amendment based on either: (1) the illegal tints on the vehicle's windows; or (2) the tip that firearms were in the possession of the individuals in the vehicle. We hold that neither basis establishes the reasonable suspicion necessary for the traffic stop. Hence, the firearm discovered on Lewis should have been suppressed. We will vacate Lewis's judgment of conviction and sentence, reverse the denial of his motion to suppress, and remand for further proceedings.

I. BACKGROUND

On July 28, 2010, the District Court held a pretrial hearing on Lewis's motion to suppress. The first law enforcement officer to testify at the suppression hearing was Officer Evans Jackson (“Jackson”), a peace officer employed in the enforcement section of the Virgin Islands Department of Planning and Natural Resources. Jackson testified that on April 9, 2010, he received a phone call from a reliable source stating that there were firearms in a white Toyota Camry, with the number “181” in the license plate, located in the vicinity of the Gottlieb gas station. Jackson had known the source for approximately two years at the time and testified that he had received reliable information from the source in the past.¹ The phone call was brief, lasting approximately one minute. Jackson did not inquire about how the source learned of the information in the tip. More importantly, the source provided no details about the legal status of the firearms.

Jackson was traveling on foot at the time that he received the tip, without his patrol vehicle. He determined that he could not investigate the tip himself. Jackson called his partner, Officer Gerald Mercer (“Mercer”), and asked to be picked up. Mercer was off-duty at the time, and Jackson instead asked Mercer whether any other officer was nearby. Mercer replied that Officer Kendelth Wharton (“Wharton”) was next to him. Jackson spoke to Wharton and relayed the tip that he had received about the white Toyota Camry. Jackson had no further involvement in the traffic stop.

The only testimony at the suppression hearing specifically related to the traffic stop came from Officer Jose Mendez (“Mendez”), an officer with the Virgin Islands Police Department. Mendez testified that he responded to a request for assistance from Wharton over the police radio system in the area of the Ulla Muller Elementary School. Mendez was the second officer to arrive on scene. Upon Mendez's arrival, Wharton had already initiated the traffic stop of Lewis's vehicle.² Wharton was positioned by the driver's side of the vehicle, and Mendez positioned himself by the passenger's side. Mendez observed that the vehicle was heavily tinted, preventing both him and Wharton from seeing how many occupants were inside.

Although the testimony was unclear as to how many occupants were inside the vehicle, Lewis was the driver and Jesus Grant (“Grant”), Lewis's co-defendant, was in the front passenger's seat. Lewis and Grant were ordered out of the vehicle individually. Based on their respective positions on the street, Wharton handled Lewis when he exited the vehicle, while Mendez handled Grant. When Mendez asked Grant if he had any weapons on him, Grant became argumentative, a struggle ensued, and Mendez eventually placed Grant in handcuffs. Upon frisking him for weapons, Mendez discovered a hard object in Grant's waist area. Mendez searched further and discovered a firearm on Grant, at which point Mendez placed Grant under arrest. Mendez had no knowledge of Wharton's interaction with Lewis but noted that Lewis also was placed under arrest.

On cross-examination, Lewis's counsel questioned Mendez about whether Wharton provided any information about why he initiated the traffic stop of the vehicle:

Q. [W]hat did you hear on the 911 call that indicated [Wharton] needed assistance for a traffic stop?

A. Well, to my understanding, I don't know what was his reasons to make that stop. All I responded was [a] request of a fellow officer, he needed assistance in making a stop....

Q. The point is that you don't know whether he was making a traffic stop because he was planning to stop a vehicle in the traffic, or whether there was a traffic violation. Is that correct?

A. That's correct.

(App.64–65.)

Officer Terrance Celestine (“Celestine”), an officer in the Traffic Bureau of the Virgin Islands Police Department, testified about what happened to the vehicle following the arrest. Celestine testified that he received a phone call from Wharton on April 9, 2010, requesting his assistance in determining whether the tints on a vehicle involved in a traffic stop were in violation of Virgin Islands law.³ Wharton informed Celestine that the vehicle was located under the sally port at the Virgin Islands Police Department. On April 10, 2010, the day after the traffic stop, Celestine inspected the vehicle's tints. Based on his initial inspection, the tint on the vehicle surpassed the AS1 line—a demarcation on a windshield that serves as a boundary rendering illegal any obstruction crossing below the line. Using a tint meter, Celestine discovered that the tints far exceeded the 35% threshold permissible under Virgin Islands law.⁴ Celestine issued a citation that day for illegal tints.

After the three officers testified, the District Court heard argument on the motions. The Government asserted that the totality of the circumstances—the tip Jackson received from the reliable source and the tints that Celestine discovered on the vehicle—rendered the traffic stop constitutionally valid. Lewis's counsel, on the other hand, argued that suppression of the firearm was warranted because Jackson's source was unreliable and the tip failed to provide any information that would lead officers to believe that Lewis illegally possessed the firearm.

In a ruling from the bench, the District Court concluded that suppression of the firearm recovered from Lewis was not warranted. The District Court first addressed whether the tip that Jackson received provided the requisite level of reasonable suspicion to conduct the traffic stop:

[T]he Court ... agrees with the defense that the tip certainly cannot be the basis for the stop, because the fact that someone has a firearm is not a basis for a stop, in and of itself. And I believe there's case law in our circuit that makes that very clear, because the ownership of a firearm is not illegal in the Virgin Islands. You simply have to have a license, of course, to possess one. But someone saying that someone has a firearm doesn't mean that you can just stop them. So a stop based on the tip certainly would present problems for the government.

(App.103.)

The District Court then determined that the illegal tints provided the necessary justification for the traffic stop:

But that's not all that's attendant here. In fact, what we have here is a—the tip information was that there were some firearms, there was a description of the vehicle, there was a description, I believe, identification of the specific license plate number for that vehicle. But there's more. And this is, I think, what presents a problem for the defense. The vehicle that was described was heavily tinted. The testimony during this hearing revealed that. And the Court is aware that it is a violation of the law to have tint in excess of a certain amount. So while there's been some concern about the motivation for the stop, again, that's not dispositive here. Once there is a valid reason for the stop—here, a tint that exceeds the limit.... even if it's pretextual, even if there is some motive that is questioned by the defense, there is certainly a valid reason for the stop: a violation of the tint requirements.

(App.103–04.) The District Court went on to reason that, once the traffic stop was initiated, the resulting discovery of the firearm on Lewis was lawful.

On October 5, 2010, Lewis conditionally pled guilty to two of the eleven counts in the charging information: Count Three (possession of a stolen firearm) and Count Six (unauthorized possession of a firearm). The District Court sentenced Lewis on January 13, 2011 to a term of fourteen months of imprisonment on Count Three, a concurrent term of fourteen months on Count Six, and three years of supervised release.

On January 14, 2011, Lewis filed a timely appeal from the judgment of conviction, challenging the District Court's denial of his motion to suppress. ⁵

II. JURISDICTION AND STANDARD OF REVIEW

The District Court had jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. § 3231. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 to review the District Court's judgment of conviction. We review a district court's order denying a motion to suppress under a mixed standard of review. United States v. Tracey, 597 F.3d 140, 146 (3d Cir.2010). We review findings of fact for clear error, but we exercise plenary review over legal determinations. Id.

III. ANALYSIS

The Fourth Amendment protects...