US v. Fernandez, 09-1058.

• Decision Date: 01 April 2010
• Docket Number: No. 09-1058.,09-1058.
• Citation: 600 F.3d 56
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Lamont FERNANDEZ, Defendant, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

600 F.3d 56

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Lamont FERNANDEZ, Defendant, Appellant.

No. 09-1058.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard October 5, 2009.

Decided April 1, 2010.

Thomas J. Iovieno, for appellant.

Cynthia A. Young, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Michael K. Loucks, Acting United States Attorney, was on brief, for appellee.

Before BOUDIN, STAHL and LIPEZ, Circuit Judges.

LIPEZ, Circuit Judge.

This case raises an important question of Fourth Amendment law that is unresolved in this circuit: whether a police officer may request identifying information from passengers in a vehicle stopped for a traffic violation without particularized suspicion that the passengers pose a safety risk or are violating the law. Appellant Lamont Fernandez conditionally pled guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm after the district court refused to suppress a gun recovered from him following a traffic stop of a car in which he was a passenger. The handgun was discovered after a police officer asked Fernandez for identification, ostensibly to issue a citation under a state seat belt law, and a computer check revealed an active warrant for his arrest. On appeal, Fernandez argues that the district court erred in failing to find that the inquiry into his identity violated both state law and his Fourth Amendment rights. Concluding that the questioning was lawful, we affirm.

I.

We draw the underlying facts from the findings made by the district court, see United States v. Fernandez, 578 F.Supp.2d 243, 244-46 (D.Mass.2008), and the testimony presented at the suppression hearing. At about 4:30 p.m. on October 20, 2007, Officer Anthony Pistolese was sitting in a parked cruiser across the street from a liquor store in Taunton, Massachusetts, when he observed a red Dodge Magnum pull into the store's parking lot just before three men, two on bicycles and one on foot, arrived there. The man on foot got into the car and the others pedaled away.

The Dodge then pulled out of the parking lot onto Bay Street, cutting off a blue pickup truck that was driving in the same direction. Officer Pistolese testified that the truck's driver was forced to apply the brakes and swerve to avoid a collision. The officer immediately activated his siren and overhead emergency lights, and pulled the car over. Once the red car stopped, the officer remained in his cruiser for "less than two minutes" to initiate a computer check on the license plate number, and then approached the vehicle.

Pistolese asked the driver to roll down the windows, which were tinted, and he could then see that three men were inside and that none of them was wearing a seat belt. Appellant Fernandez was in the front passenger seat. The officer asked the driver for his license and registration, and asked the two passengers for their names and dates of birth. Pistolese testified that he wanted the passengers' identification information so that he could cite all three men for seat belt violations, pursuant to Mass. Gen. L. ch. 90, § 13A, in addition to citing the driver for a moving violation.

Pistolese returned to his cruiser to check for active warrants and received the information from dispatch that there was a warrant for Fernandez, but not for the other two men. Officer Jeffrey Arruda had arrived at the scene while Pistolese was calling in the identification information, and he offered to provide back-up assistance. He pulled his cruiser behind Pistolese's vehicle, which was parked about 20 to 25 feet behind the Dodge. A third officer, Sean Smith, arrived on the scene and parked his cruiser in front of the Dodge. All three officers approached the car.¹ At Smith's request, Fernandez got out of the vehicle, and Arruda noticed "a large weighted object" on the right side of his shorts. Arruda removed the object, a loaded handgun, from Fernandez's waistband. A further search of Fernandez, the other two men, and the car itself turned up a bag of marijuana, two small bags of cocaine, and another firearm. The three men were charged with firearms and narcotics violations in Massachusetts state court and issued citations for failure to wear seat belts. The driver, Thomas Young, also was issued a citation for failure to yield to oncoming traffic.

Fernandez was subsequently indicted in federal court on a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), and the state charges were dismissed. He moved to suppress the firearm on the ground that he was unlawfully stopped and questioned. He contended, inter alia, that both the initial stop of the car and the request for his identity were improper under Massachusetts and federal law. In denying the motion after a hearing, the district court observed that recent Massachusetts cases indicate that officers may issue citations for seat belt violations even if they have not seen the passengers with unfastened seat belts while the vehicle was moving. The court thus held that "it was not improper for Officer Pistolese to ask Fernandez for his name and date of birth." Fernandez, 578 F.Supp.2d at 248.

Fernandez subsequently entered a conditional guilty plea, reserving his right to appeal the suppression issue. The district court imposed a fifty-seven-month term of imprisonment and a three-year term of supervised release. This appeal followed.

II.

Fernandez no longer challenges the propriety of Officer Pistolese's initial stop of the car, focusing instead on the officer's request that Fernandez provide his name and date of birth. He argues that, as a matter of Massachusetts law, the officer had no right to question him in connection with a suspected seat belt violation, and he contends that there was no other justification for the inquiry into his identity. Thus, he argues, the request for identification violated his Fourth Amendment rights.

When reviewing a district court's suppression ruling, we examine its findings of fact for clear error and its conclusions of law de novo. United States v. Scott, 566 F.3d 242, 245 (1st Cir.2009). We will "affirm the denial of a suppression motion `if any reasonable view of the evidence supports it.'" Id. (quoting United States v. Rivera-Rivera, 555 F.3d 277, 283 (1st Cir. 2009)). We find it unnecessary in this case to delve into the mechanics of Massachusetts' seat belt law because, as we shall explain, the lawfulness of Officer Pistolese's request for Fernandez's identification does not depend on whether he properly could be cited for a seat belt violation. See United States v. Graham, 553 F.3d 6, 17 (1st Cir.2009) (noting "the uncontroversial principle that federal law governs the admissibility of evidence in federal prosecutions") (internal quotation marks omitted).²

A. Legal Background

The Supreme Court has long viewed the typical traffic stop to "resemble, in duration and atmosphere, the kind of brief detention authorized in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968)." Berkemer v. McCarty, 468 U.S. 420, 439 n. 29, 104 S.Ct. 3138, 82 L.Ed.2d 317 (1984); see also Arizona v. Johnson, ___ U.S. ___, ___, 129 S.Ct. 781, 786, 172 L.Ed.2d 694 (2009). Like the reasonable suspicion that criminal activity is afoot in the Terry context, the detection of a traffic violation permits officers to effect a limited seizure of the driver and any passengers consistently with the Fourth Amendment. See Johnson, 129 S.Ct. at 788; Brendlin v. California, 551 U.S. 249, 255, 127 S.Ct. 2400, 168 L.Ed.2d 132 (2007) (holding that "during a traffic stop an officer seizes everyone in the vehicle, not just the driver"); United States v. Chaney, 584 F.3d 20, 24 (1st Cir.2009).

The Court has explicitly extended Terry principles to the traffic-stop context and allowed officers to take similar measures to protect their safety, notwithstanding modest additional intrusion on the privacy rights of drivers and passengers. See generally Johnson, 129 S.Ct. at 786 (describing Terry's application in a traffic-stop setting); see also id. at 787 (noting that, "`as a practical matter, the passengers are already stopped by virtue of the stop of the vehicle,'" so "`the additional intrusion on the passenger is minimal'") (citations omitted). Thus, the Court has held that officers may order the driver and any passengers to get out of the car until the traffic stop is complete, see Maryland v. Wilson, 519 U.S. 408, 415, 117 S.Ct. 882, 137 L.Ed.2d 41 (1997); Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U.S. 106, 111 & n. 6, 98 S.Ct. 330, 54 L.Ed.2d 331 (1977) (per curiam) (citing Terry as controlling), and the officers may conduct a frisk for weapons upon reasonable suspicion that the car's occupants are armed and dangerous, Johnson, 129 S.Ct. at 787.

The Court has further "recognized that traffic stops are `especially fraught with danger to police officers,'" id. at 786 (quoting Michigan v. Long, 463 U.S. 1032, 1047, 103 S.Ct. 3469, 77 L.Ed.2d 1201 (1983)), and that all occupants of a vehicle pose a safety risk, Wilson, 519 U.S. at 413, 117 S.Ct. 882. The Court acknowledged that the driver is in a unique position because "there is probable cause to believe that he or she has committed a minor vehicular offense," while "there is no such reason to stop or detain the passengers." Id. Importantly, however, as reiterated by the Court in Johnson,

the risk of a violent encounter in a traffic-stop setting "stems not from the ordinary reaction of a motorist stopped for a speeding violation, but from the fact that evidence of a more serious crime might be uncovered during the stop." ... "The motivation of a passenger to employ violence to prevent apprehension of such a crime ... is every bit as great as that of the driver."

129 S.Ct. at 787 (quoting Wilson, 519 U.S. at 413-414, 117 S.Ct. 882).

Of particular significance in this case is the Court's guidance in Johnson, its most recent traffic-stop decision, on the permissible scope of such stops. The...