United States v. Perez

• Decision Date: 07 April 2022
• Docket Number: 20-4285
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff – Appellee, v. Joffrey Izzy PEREZ, Defendant – Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

30 F.4th 369

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff – Appellee,

v.Joffrey Izzy PEREZ, Defendant – Appellant.

No. 20-4285

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued: October 29, 2021

Decided: April 7, 2022

ARGUED: Carnell Travis Johnson, JOHNSON & NICHOLSON, PLLC, Charlotte, North Carolina, for Appellant. Erik August Lindahl, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Charlotte, North Carolina, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: R. Andrew Murray, United States Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Charlotte, North Carolina, for Appellee.

Before MOTZ, DIAZ, and RICHARDSON, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Diaz wrote the opinion, in which Judge Richardson joined. Judge Motz wrote an opinion concurring in the judgment.

DIAZ, Circuit Judge:

Joffrey Izzy Perez appeals the district court's denial of his motion to suppress three ounces of methamphetamine and two firearms seized during a traffic stop. Officers were alerted to the contraband after a canine unit conducted a dog sniff around the exterior of Perez's car. After the court denied his motion, Perez conditionally pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute at least 50 grams of methamphetamine, in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), (b)(1)(A), and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A).

Perez argues that the officers unconstitutionally prolonged the traffic stop to conduct the dog sniff. The district court held otherwise, and we agree. We therefore affirm the judgment.

I.

A.

Officer Jean Marcel pulled over Perez after receiving information that the car Perez was driving had an expired registration tag.¹ Marcel also saw that the car's temporary tag—which had expired two days earlier—was issued by the Moore Automotive Group. Marcel had seen a similar tag during a previous investigation and learned that it was fictitious. As a result, Marcel suspected that the vehicle's tag was also fictitious.

Detective Todd Haigler, one of many officers at the scene, approached Perez (who was in the driver's seat) while Marcel stood on the passenger side. As Haigler spoke with Perez, Marcel examined the plate and radioed that he had pulled over a car with a fictitious tag.

Haigler asked for Perez's license but didn't immediately ask for the car's registration. He contacted police headquarters to confirm the license's status because he didn't have a laptop in his unmarked car. About four minutes and fifteen seconds into the stop, Haigler told Marcel that Perez's "license should not be good" and to begin "working" it up. J.A. 241 at 4:12–16.² He also told Marcel that "[the canine unit] should be on the way."³ Id. at 4:17. Though Haigler contacted headquarters, he had Marcel continue the investigation into why Perez's license wasn't "good"⁴ because Marcel, unlike Haigler, had a laptop in his vehicle.

Marcel returned to his car and began looking up Perez's license on the laptop. Another officer assisting with the stop asked if Marcel "ha[d] paperwork for th[e] car," and Marcel responded that he would "ask [about] that in a minute." Id. at 5:14–16. Though officers requested the car's registration, Perez didn't provide it.

Officers then waited to collect the vehicle identification number (VIN) until Haigler finished speaking with Perez at the driver's window and instructed him to exit the car. According to Marcel, doing so earlier presented some risk that they could be run over while retrieving the VIN. At about the six-minute mark, Perez exited the car at Haigler's request and waited with a handful of officers at the back of the vehicle. Then, at just over eight minutes, Marcel told another officer that Perez had a suspended license because of two prior convictions for driving while impaired. Marcel continued investigating Perez's license and gathering the information necessary to issue a citation.

At roughly eleven minutes and fifty seconds, Marcel asked an officer if he's "getting that [VIN]," which the officer then collected. Id. at 11:49. About a minute later, the officer returned to Marcel, reporting that the car had a valid "tag" and giving him the VIN. Id. at 13:02. Marcel then learned that the car wasn't registered to Perez. He also discovered that the true tag was valid for another month, though the tag affixed to the car was expired.

At about fifteen minutes into the stop, Marcel asked Haigler to move Perez to the side of the road and asked another officer to retrieve the car's registration. Within the next thirty seconds, the canine unit arrived.

After circling the car several times, the canine deputy told Marcel that there were two alerts: on "the driver's side and the trunk." Id. at 17:01. Over the next few minutes, Marcel notified Haigler of the alerts, removed the fictitious tag, and searched the car. During the search, the officers found the methamphetamine and firearms at issue. Marcel ultimately cited Perez for operating a motor vehicle with a revoked driver's license and for operating a motor vehicle with an altered registration plate. Officers arrested Perez and arranged for the car to be towed.

B.

Perez moved to suppress the methamphetamine and firearms seized during the stop. He argued that the officers unconstitutionally prolonged the stop to conduct the dog sniff.

During the suppression hearing, the district court heard from Marcel, Haigler, and the canine deputy, and it reviewed video footage of the traffic stop. Perez contended that the purpose of the stop was pretextual, that the officers intentionally prolonged their investigation of Perez's license and the vehicle's plate while they waited for the canine unit to arrive, and that, in doing so, the officers abandoned the main purpose of the stop.

The district court questioned why a fifteen-minute stop was unreasonable given that the officers were investigating three infractions: "an expired tag[,] [a] possible fictitious tag, and a possible license revocation." J.A. 144. It also noted that the law doesn't require the officers to conduct the investigations "as fast as possible," as long as their duration was "reasonable." J.A. 145. The court explained that there's "no doubt [the officers were] hoping to find contraband as a result of this search," but their "subjective state of mind" was irrelevant because the question was "whether anything they did reasonably or unreasonably prolonged the stop." J.A. 148–49.

The court also asked the government why Marcel and Haigler's duplicative review of Perez's license wasn't an unreasonable delay. It inquired why Haigler or Marcel failed—either individually or "in tandem"—to process or even request the car's registration information for several minutes when the purpose of the stop was to investigate an expired tag. See J.A. 152–53.

The government responded that Haigler and Marcel did work in tandem, with Haigler first checking the license and, after realizing that it "might be suspended," giving it to Marcel to work up. J.A. 154. The government also argued that the standard is not whether "there [is] a remote possibility [that the stop] could have gone faster," (J.A. 153), and that "the law doesn't dictate how the officers go about conducting their investigations into ... traffic offenses," (J.A. 155). Further, anything done (or not done) in the first few minutes "had nothing to do with prolonging the stop, especially since it[ ] occur[ed] at the outset" and was "in the normal course of [a] traffic stop." J.A. 155. The government conceded that this would be "a different kind of case," (J.A. 156), if the only infraction was an expired license plate, but given the number of offenses being investigated, "the propriety of the timing [was] sound," (J.A. 157).

C.

The district court denied Perez's motion, holding that the stop wasn't prolonged. Though the court "share[d] [Perez's] suspicions about why the car was stopped," it reasoned that the officers were investigating multiple infractions. Marcel, the court said, was "methodical" in his investigation, and the court found his testimony credible. J.A. 159–60. And this was so despite finding that Perez impeached Marcel with a prior inconsistent statement between his report—in which Marcel wrote he approached Perez in the driver's seat—and his body worn camera footage, which showed that Haigler spoke to Perez while Marcel stood on the passenger side.

The district court credited Marcel's explanation that any delay in his investigation was because he (1) wasn't "a good multi-tasker," (2) experienced internet connectivity issues, and (3) waited to record the VIN for safety reasons. J.A. 160. It also held that, because of the fictitious tag, the car would be towed,⁵ which "would have far exceeded the [fifteen] minutes it took for the canine to do its thing." Id. Thus, because the law doesn't require Marcel to conduct the "fastest investigation possible," "the canine search ... did not prolong the stop." J.A. 161.

Following the court's ruling, Perez conditionally pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of methamphetamine and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. He waived his right to appeal everything but the district court's finding that the officers had not unconstitutionally prolonged the traffic stop.⁶ The district court sentenced Perez to 180 months' imprisonment.

This appeal followed.

II.

Perez argues that the district court erred in denying his suppression motion because the officers abandoned the purpose of the traffic stop and deliberately delayed their investigation so the canine unit could conduct its dog sniff. He also contends that the court clearly erred by crediting Marcel's testimony after he impeached Marcel with a prior inconsistent statement. We reject these arguments and affirm the district court.

A.

"In considering the appeal of a denial of a motion to suppress, we review the district court's conclusions de novo and its factual findings for clear error." United States v....