United States Court of Appeals
Fifth Circuit
F I L E D
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT August 15, 2005
Charles R. Fulbruge III
Clerk
No. 04-10978
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
versus
ADAM ORLANDO JAQUEZ,
Defendant-Appellant.
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Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Texas
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Before JOLLY, WIENER, and DENNIS, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Defendant-Appellant Adam Orlando Jaquez appeals the district
court’s denial of his motion to suppress a handgun found during a
search of his car. The handgun was entered in evidence to support
his conditional guilty plea of unlawful possession of a firearm by
a convicted felon in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). As we
conclude that the investigative vehicle stop that led to the search
was not supported by reasonable suspicion, we reverse the district
court’s suppression ruling, vacate Jaquez’s conviction and
sentence, and remand.
On the night of November 19, 2002, Abilene Police Officer
Jennifer Holderead was on patrol when she received a call on her
police radio that gun shots had been fired in the area of 10th and
Pine Streets in Abilene, Texas, a high crime area. The dispatcher
indicated only that “a red vehicle” was involved in the incident.
Some 15 minutes later, Holderead observed a red car traveling
away from the area where the shots were reported to have been
fired. She stopped the car and told the driver, Jaquez, that she
had pulled him over because his car matched the description of a
vehicle involved in a report of gun fire in the area. Holderead
asked Jaquez if he had any weapons in the vehicle and he responded
that he did not. She then obtained his consent to search the
vehicle. Holderead asked Jaquez to step out of the vehicle and
patted him down for weapons, finding brass knuckles in his right
front pants pocket. Jaquez told Holderead that he had recently
been released from prison, and she radioed for backup. She then
escorted Jaquez to the back of her patrol car to detain him, at
which point Jaquez told her that there was a loaded firearm under
the driver’s seat of his vehicle. He said that the gun had been
given to him by his girlfriend’s mother for protection. Holderead
confined Jaquez in the backseat of her patrol car while she
retrieved the gun —— a fully loaded .38 caliber pistol —— from
underneath the driver’s seat of Jaquez’s car.1
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Noting that the gun was fully loaded, and that there were no
spent casings or extra ammunition in the vehicle, Holderead
concluded that Jaquez probably was not responsible for the shots
fired. She nevertheless arrested him for unlawful possession of a
firearm.
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Jaquez was subsequently indicted on a charge of unlawful
possession of a firearm by a convicted felon in violation of 18
U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). At the hearing on Jaquez’s motion to suppress
the handgun, Holderead acknowledged that at the time she stopped
Jaquez’s car she had no specific information about the car reported
to have been involved in the “shots fired” incident other than the
fact that it was red; she had no further description of that
vehicle or its occupants. It is undisputed that Holderead stopped
Jaquez only because (1) he was driving a red car, (2) in the
general vicinity of the incident reported 15 minutes earlier, (3)
late at night, (4) in an area known for its high crime rate.
“There is no question but that the stopping of a vehicle and
the detention of its occupants is a ‘seizure’ within the meaning of
the Fourth Amendment.” United States v. Shabazz, 993 F.2d 431, 434
(5th Cir. 1993) (citing Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648 (1979)).
Searches and seizures of motorists suspected of criminal activity
are analyzed under the framework established in Terry v. Ohio, 392
U.S. 1 (1968). Shabazz, 993 F.2d at 434. An investigative vehicle
stop is permissible under Terry only when “the officer has a
reasonable suspicion supported by articulable facts that criminal
activity may be afoot.” United States v. Neufeld-Neufeld, 338 F.3d
374, 378 (5th Cir. 2003) (quoting United States v. Sokolow, 490
U.S. 1, 7 (1989)). An officer’s mere hunch or unparticularized
suspicion is not sufficient; rather, a minimal level of objective
justification for the stop must be present. Sokolow, 490 U.S. at
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7. The government bears the burden of showing the reasonableness
of a warrantless search or seizure. United States v. Chavis, 48
F.3d 871, 872 (5th Cir. 1995).
The reasonableness of an investigative stop is a question of
law, which we review de novo. See Goodson v. City of Corpus
Christi, 202 F.3d 730, 737 (5th Cir. 2000). The precise issue to
be determined is whether, when viewed in the context of the
totality of circumstances confronting her, including all
information available at the time that she decided to stop Jaquez,
Holderead had reasonable suspicion to do so. See United States v.
Silva, 957 F.2d 157, 160 (5th Cir. 1992) (citing United States v.
Cortez, 449 U.S. 411, 417-18 (1981)). We conclude, as a matter of
law, that Holderead did not have reasonable suspicion to make an
investigative stop of Jaquez’s car and that the stop and subsequent
search were therefore in violation of his Fourth Amendment right to
be free of unreasonable searches and seizures.
The facts are undisputed that at the time she pulled Jaquez
over, Holderead knew only that “a red vehicle” had been involved in
a reported incident approximately 15 minutes earlier, in the same
general area where she first spotted the car. Except for its
color, she did not have any particular information about the
vehicle, such as its make or model, or any description of its
occupant(s). The sparse and broadly generic information provided
by the dispatcher, without more, was insufficient to support a
determination of reasonable suspicion, as required under Terry.
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In arguing that such minimal information is enough to validate
a vehicle stop, the government relies primarily on our decision in
State v. Hall, 557 F.2d 1114 (5th Cir. 1977), in which we affirmed
the convictions of three bank robbers, after holding that the law
enforcement officer had reasonable suspicion sufficient to support
an investigative stop of their vehicle. But the officer in Hall
had significantly more detailed information than Holderead had in
this case. In Hall, the officer had been told to look for a “red
1969 two-door Ford,” id. at 1116; Holderead knew only that she was
looking for “a red vehicle.” Moreover, the officer in Hall had
been given a description of the bank robbers —— “[t]wo of the
robbers were black men and the third was described as either a
black with a light complexion or a white man” —— id. at 1115;
Holderead had no information whatsoever concerning the driver or
occupants of the vehicle for which she was looking. This case is
substantially distinguishable from Hall. We conclude that the
scant facts known to Holderead when she stopped Jaquez were, as a
matter of law, insufficient to support reasonable suspicion.
It follows, therefore, that the stop was unlawful. “Under the
‘fruit of the poisonous tree’ doctrine, all evidence derived from
the exploitation of an illegal search or seizure must be
suppressed, unless the Government shows that there was a break in
the chain of events sufficient to refute the inference that the
evidence was a product of the Fourth Amendment violation.” United
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States v. Rivas, 157 F.3d 364, 368 (5th Cir. 1998) (citing Brown v.
Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 602-03 (1975)).
The government contends in the alternative that even if the
stop was not justifiable by reasonable suspicion, Jaquez consented
to the search and thereby cured any previous taint. Even if given
voluntarily, however, consent does not validate a search that is
the product of an unlawful stop —— seizure —— and not an
independent act of free will sufficiently attenuated to break the
chain of events between the Fourth Amendment violation and the
consent. See United States v. Chavez-Villarreal, 3 F.3d 124, 127-
28 (5th Cir. 1993). “To determine whether the causal chain was
broken, we consider: (1) the temporal proximity of the illegal
conduct and the consent; (2) the presence of intervening
circumstances; and (3) the purpose and flagrancy of the initial
misconduct.” Id. at 128; Brown, 422 U.S. at 603-04. The
government bears the burden of proving admissibility. Chavez-
Villarreal, 3 F.3d at 128.
Application of Chavez-Villarreal’s tripartite test to the
facts of the instant case leads inexorably to the conclusion that
Jaquez’s consent did not break the causal chain flowing from the
unlawful vehicle stop. First, there was close temporal proximity
between the unlawful investigative stop and Jaquez’s consent to the
search of the vehicle. His consent was obtained shortly after he
was stopped and as an immediate step in the same series of events.
Second, there were no material intervening circumstances between
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the stop and the consent. Finally, the unlawfulness of the stop
and detention is particularly clear when viewed in the context of
Holderead’s statement that her sole reason for stopping Jaquez was
to determine whether he had been involved in an earlier incident
involving gun fire in the area. Even after Jaquez told Holderead
that he had no weapons, she nevertheless requested consent to
search his vehicle, which suggests that the very purpose of her
unlawful stop was to secure his consent to search the vehicle. See
Brown, 422 U.S. at 605 (finding “a quality of purposefulness” in an
illegal arrest undertaken for “investigation” or for “questioning”
and holding that such purpose supported suppression). We conclude,
therefore, that Jaquez’s consent to the search did not cure the
taint of the illegal stop.
The handgun found in Jaquez’s car should have been suppressed
because it was a product of an unlawful search and seizure in
violation of the Fourth Amendment. We accordingly REVERSE the
district court’s denial of Jaquez’s motion to suppress the firearm,
VACATE his conviction and sentence, and REMAND for further
proceedings consistent with this opinion.
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