United States of America, Plaintiff-appellant, v. Allen Thomas Cagle, Defendant-appellee, 849 F.2d 924 (5th Cir. 1988)

The government appeals from the district court's grant of Allen Thomas Cagle's motion to suppress evidence seized from him at the El Paso International Airport. As we agree with the district court that the evidence was the result of an unlawful seizure, we affirm.

On June 14, 1987, United States Border Patrol agent John Moore ("Moore") was assigned to duty at the El Paso International Airport.¹  At approximately 3:00 a.m., Moore observed Allen Thomas Cagle ("Cagle") enter the airport terminal carrying a blue suitcase. Cagle, who appeared nervous to Moore, proceeded in a hurry to the American Airlines ticket counter. There were four or five other people in front of Cagle in the line. Moore knew that the next scheduled departure for an American Airlines flight was at 3:39 a.m. According to Moore, however, Cagle appeared to be looking around a lot while he was in line, as if he were nervous or in a hurry. After checking his suitcase, Cagle left the ticket counter and headed for the departure gate, glancing around him as he did so. By this time, Moore's suspicions were aroused and, along with another agent, he proceeded to the American Airlines baggage area to examine Cagle's bag.

Moore removed Cagle's suitcase from the baggage conveyor belt and shook it; nothing rattled. The suitcase--which was hardshelled--was then placed on the floor, and Moore attempted to feel its contents. He was unable to detect any shoes, bottles or other items of that nature inside the suitcase. At that point, the agents apparently noticed a substance, which appeared to be baby powder, issuing from a seam in the suitcase. The agents compressed the sides of the suitcase and smelled baby powder.²  At that point, Cagle's suitcase was taken to the Border Patrol office at the airport and the agents went to the departure gate area in search of Cagle.

The agents found Cagle waiting for his flight to board. Moore approached Cagle and identified himself. Moore asked Cagle if he had checked any luggage and Cagle responded that he had checked one suitcase. Moore asked to see the baggage check and Cagle refused to show it to him. The agents then asked Cagle to accompany them to their office; Cagle declined their offer. The agents then advised Cagle that he was free to leave, and Cagle boarded his flight.

After Cagle and his flight departed without the suitcase, the agents contacted the El Paso Police Department and requested a narcotics detection dog. The dog alerted to Cagle's suitcase, indicating the presence of narcotics. The agents then contacted the Drug Enforcement Administration ("DEA") which sent DEA agent Jose A. Delgado ("Delgado") to the scene. Delgado took the suitcase to the DEA office and obtained a search warrant at approximately 10:45 a.m. The suitcase was then opened, and was found to contain various items of clothing along with eleven pounds of marijuana in a securely packaged parcel.³ 

On August 18, 1987, a federal grand jury returned a two count indictment charging Cagle with several violations of federal narcotics laws. Count One alleged that Cagle "unlawfully, knowingly, and intentionally did possess with intent to distribute a quantity of marihuana, a Schedule I Controlled Substance, in violation of Title 21, United States Code, Section 841(a) (1)." Count Two charged that Cagle used a facility in interstate commerce to facilitate the carrying on of an unlawful activity involving controlled substance offenses in violation of the Travel Act, Title 18, United States Code, section 1952. On September 25, Cagle filed a motion to suppress all the evidence obtained from him during the airport episode. On October 15, the district court granted Cagle's motion. The court concluded that when the agents took Cagle's suitcase to their office and thereby prevented it from being loaded on the departing American Airlines flight, they performed a "seizure" in the fourth amendment sense. Finding that the agents did not have probable cause for the seizure until much later, when the narcotics dog alerted, the court ruled that the seizure was illegal and suppressed all the evidence arising directly or indirectly from that seizure. The government later filed timely notice of appeal from the district court's grant of Cagle's suppression motion.

On appeal, the government argues that the district court erred in finding that the agents unlawfully seized Cagle's suitcase when, without a warrant or probable cause, they prevented it from being loaded on Cagle's flight. The government contends that the agents' actions constituted merely an investigative detention, see Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S. Ct. 1868, 20 L. Ed. 2d 889 (1968), so minimally intrusive of fourth amendment interests that strong government interests justified the seizure based only on specific articulable facts that the suitcase contained contraband, see United States v. Place, 462 U.S. 696, 706, 103 S. Ct. 2637, 2644, 77 L. Ed. 2d 110 (1982). The district court concluded, and the government does not dispute, that probable cause to seize Cagle's suitcase did not exist until the narcotics sniffing dog alerted to the presence of narcotics in the bag. Therefore, narrowing the focus of our inquiry to the agents' actions prior to the dog's alert, we must determine whether those actions constituted a seizure and, if so, whether or not the agents needed probable cause to justify that seizure.

"A 'seizure' of property occurs when there is some meaningful interference with an individual's possessory interests in that property." United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109, 113, 104 S. Ct. 1652, 1656, 80 L. Ed. 2d 85 (1983). It is clear that the agents' removal of Cagle's bag from the conveyor belt, their compression of the bag to procure a scent, and their subsequent sniff of the bag did not constitute a seizure. See United States v. Lovell, 849 F.2d 910, 915 (5th Cir. 1988); United States v. Garcia, 849 F.2d 917, 919 (5th Cir. 1988). It is equally apparent, however, that the agents' prolonged detention of the suitcase surely did so. In Lovell, there was no suggestion that if the agents had not smelled marijuana, Lovell's travel would have been interfered with or his expectations with respect to his luggage--that the common carrier would transport the bags to Lovell's destination for him to reclaim when he arrived--frustrated. Lovell, at 916. The momentary delay occasioned by the agents' actions, therefore, did not constitute a meaningful interference with Lovell's possessory interests in his checked luggage. Id. Here, by contrast, Cagle's expectations were clearly frustrated when his suitcase failed to make his flight solely because of the agents' actions. Under the circumstances, we must conclude that there was a seizure of Cagle's suitcase when the agents' prolonged detention of the bag caused it to miss Cagle's flight.

Our inquiry is not complete, however, for we must now "examine whether the agents' conduct in this case was such as to place the seizure within the general rule requiring probable cause for a seizure or within Terry 's exception to that rule." See Place, 462 U.S. at 708, 103 S. Ct. at 2645. We need not, and do not, decide whether the agents possessed a reasonable suspicion that Cagle's suitcase contained contraband for the agents' conduct clearly exceeded the limits of a permissible investigatory detention under Terry and Place. We note that the detention in this case lasted approximately an hour and a half. In Place, the Court, while declining to adopt any outside time limitation on a permissible Terry stop, noted that a ninety minute detention is sufficient, in and of itself, to render a seizure unreasonable. Id. at 710, 103 S. Ct. at 2646. We fail to see how this ninety minute detention was any less intrusive than that condemned in Place. Moreover, just as in Place, the agents' conduct disrupted Cagle's travel plans.⁴  Finally, we observe, as did the Court in Place, that the police could have employed more diligent, less intrusive investigatory techniques.⁵  See id. at 709, 103 S. Ct. at 2645. Consequently, we must conclude that the seizure of Cagle's luggage went beyond the narrow authority possessed by police to briefly detain luggage reasonably suspected to contain narcotics. See id. at 710, 103 S. Ct. at 2646. Therefore, probable cause was required to justify the warrantless seizure of the suitcase. Since it is undisputed that the agents did not have probable cause, the seizure was unreasonable and the district court properly granted Cagle's motion to suppress.⁶ IV.

For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM.