United States v. Toussaint

• Decision Date: 22 September 2016
• Docket Number: No. 15–30748,15–30748
• Citation: 838 F.3d 503
• Parties: United States of America, Plaintiff–Appellant, v. Tosh Toussaint, Defendant–Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

838 F.3d 503

United States of America, Plaintiff–Appellant,

v.Tosh Toussaint, Defendant–Appellee.

No. 15–30748

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

Filed September 22, 2016

Kevin G. Boitmann, Diane Hollenshead Copes, Esq., Duane A. Evans, Myles Drew Ranier, Jeffrey Keith Sandman, Julious Collin Sims, Esq., Assistant U.S. Attorneys, U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of Louisiana, New Orleans, LA, for Plaintiff–Appellant.

Robert Stephen Toale, Esq., Gretna, LA, for Defendant–Appellee.

Before KING, SMITH, and COSTA, Circuit Judges.^*

JERRY E. SMITH

, Circuit Judge:

The United States appeals an order suppressing evidence seized in a traffic stop. Although the government maintained that the exigent-circumstances exception to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement validated the stop, the district court held that the exigency had dissipated by the time the officers made the stop. We reverse and remand.

I.

By wiretap, an FBI agent heard Robert Williams, the suspected leader of the “Harvey Hustlers,” a drug-trafficking organization, give permission to an associate to kill a person identified only as “Tye” or “Todd,” who was said to be in the Kennedy Heights neighborhood of Avondale, Louisiana, driving around in a silver Infiniti coupe. The agent immediately got in touch with Detective William Roniger of the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office, who was a member of the task force investigating the Harvey Hustlers. Roniger contacted the sheriff's division that had responsibility for that area of Avondale and met several of its officers, including Deputy Jean Cadet, at a gas station. There they discussed how to find the threatened individual and how to keep themselves safe in a potentially lethal situation.

Roniger and the other officers proceeded to Kennedy Heights and searched for silver Infinitis. As they were leaving the area, they encountered one,¹ and Cadet proceeded to “pace” it.² Cadet concluded the car was going over 35 miles per hour in a 20–mile zone and pulled it over.

Tosh Toussaint was the occupant. Cadet told him to exit the vehicle holding his license, registration, and insurance information, but Toussaint got out without those items and quickly fled on foot. Roniger chased him down, arrested him and gave Miranda warnings, and searched him incident to arrest, finding a 9mm pistol and a bag with rocks of crack cocaine. Toussaint tried to flee and was caught again. By that time, about forty-five minutes had elapsed between the initial threat overheard on wiretap and the stop of Toussaint's car. They brought Toussaint to the sheriff's investigations bureau and interviewed him; only then did they inform him of the potential threat on his life.³

II.

The government charged Toussaint with three crimes relating to the items recovered in the search incident to arrest.⁴ Toussaint moved to suppress the fruits of the traffic stop (the drugs and the gun), as well as the statements he made to police once they brought him to the investigations bureau. The government contested the motion on two grounds: (1) that the stop was legal under the exigent-circumstances exception because of the threat on Toussaint's life, and (2) that the speeding violation provided the officers with enough reasonable suspicion to make the stop.

The district court granted the motion to suppress on both grounds. United States v. Toussaint , 117 F.Supp.3d 822 (E.D. La. 2015)

. It found exigent circumstances when the call was first intercepted but none when the officers encountered Toussaint forty-five minutes later. Additionally, it found that Roniger and his fellow officers' response to the threat was unreasonable, criticizing their lack of urgency and questioning whether they actually believed Toussaint was in need of emergency help.⁵

III.

A.

A ruling on a motion to suppress is reviewed de novo , though the factual findings made en route to that decision are reviewed for clear error. United States v. Gonzalez , 328 F.3d 755, 758 (5th Cir. 2003)

(citations omitted). This evidence is viewed in the light most favorable to the prevailing party—here, Toussaint. Id. Generally, a district court's determination of the existence vel non of exigent circumstances is a factual finding examined for clear error. See, e.g. , United States v. Troop , 514 F.3d 405, 409 (5th Cir. 2008). But when influenced by an incorrect view of the law or an incorrect application of the correct legal test, a factual determination is reviewed de novo . United States v. Mask , 330 F.3d 330, 335 (5th Cir. 2003). Because the court did operate under just such an errant influence, we examine this entire matter de novo .

To decide whether the court erred in suppressing the evidence, we confront the res nova issue of whether officers can justify any stop of a vehicle (as distinguished from the search of a home) under the exigent-circumstances exception. We then examine whether that exception can justify this particular stop. Answering both questions in the affirmative, we reverse the order of suppression.

B.

The Fourth Amendment prohibits only searches that are unreasonable. Although “searches and seizures inside a home without a warrant are presumptively unreasonable,”⁶ officers can respond without a warrant where exigent circumstances justify it.⁷ One recognized exigent circumstance is “the need to assist persons who are seriously injured or threatened with such injury.” Stuart , 547 U.S. at 403, 126 S.Ct. 1943

. That is the “emergency aid” exception to the warrant requirement. Under Stuart and its progeny, officers can enter areas to help persons even though they could not otherwise be legally present without a warrant. Id. In this regard, the police serve a “community caretaking function[ ]” to ensure the safety of citizens.⁸

The vast majority of these cases address warrantless entries into homes.⁹ No federal court of appeals has yet approved (nor has any rejected) the extension of this doctrine to a vehicular stop.¹⁰ But there is no logical difficulty with extending the exception to those particular situations. Federal courts have decided similarly in cases dealing with vehicles that had already stopped.¹¹ Additionally, there is little reason to think that officers should be permitted to enter a home to help someone, as the Court allowed in Stuart

, but would somehow be foreclosed by the Fourth Amendment from stopping a car where, as one example, the officers had received a warning that the driver was armed and intended to kill himself upon reaching a certain destination.¹²

The Fourth Amendment's central concern is warrantless entry into homes,¹³ so stops of persons outside the home are “considerably less intrusive.”¹⁴ Additionally, a person's privacy interest in his or her vehicle is less substantial than is the interest in one's house.¹⁵ Forcing officers to ignore other evidence when they stop vehicles to render emergency aid would “not meet the needs of law enforcement or the demands of public safety.” Fisher , 558 U.S. at 49, 130 S.Ct. 546

. “[T]he ultimate touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is ‘reasonableness,’ ” Stuart , 547 U.S. at 403, 126 S.Ct. 1943, and the benevolent act of trying to notify a driver that his life is in danger epitomizes reasonableness. Because, in proper circumstances, the emergency-aid exception to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement can be used to justify a traffic stop, we turn to whether it can be used to justify this particular stop.

C.

Under existing case law, “[a]n action is ‘reasonable’ under the Fourth Amendment, regardless of the individual officer's state of mind, ‘as long as the circumstances, viewed objectively , justify [the] action.’ ”¹⁶ “The officer's subjective motivation is irrelevant.”¹⁷ Thus, in evaluating whether an exigency actually existed, courts must examine whether there was an objectively reasonable basis for such a belief, divorced from the officer's conduct. And “[w]hen reasonable minds may disagree, we ‘will not second guess the judgment of experienced law enforcement officers concerning the risks of a particular situation.’ ”¹⁸

“Because it is essentially a factual determination, there is no set formula for determining when exigent circumstances may [exist].” United States v. Jones , 237 F.3d 716, 720 (6th Cir. 2001)

. Nevertheless, a court “should consider the appearance of the scene of the search in the circumstances presented as it would appear to reasonable and prudent men standing in the shoes of the officers.”¹⁹ In addition to determining whether there was an objectively reasonable basis for identifying an emergency, courts must decide whether the officer who engaged in conduct without a warrant acted reasonably.²⁰ The existence of an emergency cannot, by itself, immunize the conduct of the officer from scrutiny.

1.

The objective facts—that is, those divorced from the officers' response to the threat on Toussaint's life—are straightforward. FBI agents overheard a threat. A suspected felon gave an associate permission to kill the defendant, and no one—including the district court—contested that that threat was credible. After intercepting the threat, officers searched for the potential victim, found him, and informed him of it—all within forty-five minutes of the first indication that his life was in danger.

From those objective facts, the district court concluded that the exigency had dissipated by the time the officers pulled Toussaint over, citing the forty-five minutes between threat and arrest, the lack of gunfire or signs of distress in the neighborhood, and the absence of anyone menacing Toussaint's vehicle when officers discovered it. But the main thrust of the district court's theory is not that there was no objectively reasonable basis for concluding an emergency existed, but rather that the officers' subjective actions indicate they did not think one existed. That was error.²¹

In both Stuart

and Fisher, the Court emphasized that the intentions and beliefs of the officers do not inform...