Professional Documents
Culture Documents
No. 13-1881
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Appellee,
v.
PAUL ARNOTT,
Defendant, Appellant.
Before
Thompson and Selya, Circuit Judges,
and McConnell,* District Judge.
July 2, 2014
Following the
affirm.
I.
BACKGROUND
We rehearse the facts as found by the district court
December
28,
agents
intercepted
call
between
He parked next to
Thus, he
saw the Saturn roll through a stop sign and, when he relayed this
information to Officer Dalton, the latter initiated a traffic stop.
After arranging for backup, Officer Dalton approached the
Saturn and demanded identification from both the driver (the
defendant) and the passenger (Leavitt).
-3-
Dalton
directed
the
defendant
to
leave
the
He felt a hard
due
course,
federal
grand
jury
indicted
the
of
oxycodone
with
intent
to
distribute,
see
id.
841(a)(1).2
refused
to
suppress
any
evidence.
In
its
bench
decision, the court ruled that both the stop and the search were
justified because the police had probable cause to believe that the
defendant had committed a drug-trafficking offense.
The court
further ruled that Officer Dalton was not obligated to give the
defendant Miranda warnings before handcuffing him because the
questioning up to that point was non-custodial.
Following the defendant's conditional guilty plea to the
substantive offense charged in the indictment3 and the imposition
of sentence, the defendant appealed.
II.
DISCUSSION
When reviewing the district court's disposition of a
Cir. 1995).
We begin with a few words of explanation: although we
reach the same destination as the district court, we get there by
a somewhat different route.
Consequently, a
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See
Ruidaz,
see United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 7 (1989), but less than
probable cause, see Chhien, 266 F.3d at 6.
information
from
police
reports,
if
such
are
-7-
the need for police officers to draw upon their experience and
arrive at inferences and deductions that "might well elude an
untrained person."
By like token, an
if
detention."
his
suspicions
mount
during
the
course
of
the
Agents
The
intercepted
telephone
calls,
the
repeated
Although
of
the
circumstances
gave
Officer
Dalton
The
reasonable
The
The connection
See, e.g.,
United States v. Randle, 815 F.2d 505, 508 (8th Cir. 1987).
In these circumstances, Officer Dalton's apprehension of
danger was reasonable.
at 30.
Seizing the oxycodone pills as part of the search was
also
reasonable.
Officer
Dalton
felt
hard
object
in
the
from the defendant's pocket. See, e.g., Michigan v. Long, 463 U.S.
1032, 1050 (1983) (holding that contraband discovered during a
legitimate search for weapons need not be suppressed under the
Fourth Amendment).
The defendant's reliance on Minnesota v. Dickerson, 508
U.S. 366 (1993), is misplaced.
suppression
of
cocaine
discovered
by
an
officer
only
after
Id.
-10-
The court
(1st Cir. 2005); United States v. Streifel, 781 F.2d 953, 958 (1st
Cir. 1986).
question
witnesses
about
reasonable suspicion.
issues
for
which
the
officers
have
Here,
He was on a public
roadway and was being quizzed by a single officer who made no show
of force.
III.
CONCLUSION
We need go no further. For the reasons elucidated above,
Affirmed.
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