United States v. Jaquez

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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