USA V. SHANE NAULT, No. 20-30231 (9th Cir. 2022)
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Defendant pled guilty to possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine and felon in possession of a firearm, but reserved the right to appeal the denial of the motions. An officer stopped the vehicle after learning that the vehicle— whose registered owner had an outstanding arrest warrant—was in the parking lot of a gas station.
In his motion to suppress, Defendant argued that the officer unconstitutionally prolonged the vehicle stop when he asked Defendantto provide his license, registration, and proof of insurance because the suspicion that motivated the stop had evaporated once the officer determined that Ross was not in the vehicle. The government countered that the stop was supported by independent reasonable suspicion because the officer began to suspect that Defendant was intoxicated shortly after initiating contact.
The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s denial of Defendant’s motions to suppress. The panel wrote that the circumstances of the officer’s encounter with Defendant’s implicate the same vehicle safety purpose discussed in Rodriguez v. United States, 575 U.S. 348 (2015), under which a routine document check would remain part of the officer’s mission even when the suspicion that justified a stop was based on an outstanding warrant rather than a traffic violation.
The court wrote that Defendant failed to make a substantial preliminary showing that any statement or omission in the affidavit was intentionally or recklessly false or misleading, where an expert report provided by Defendant at most establishes that the canine’s alert was unreliable on a single unrelated occasion.
Court Description: Criminal Law. The panel affirmed the district court’s denial of Shane Nault’s motions to suppress evidence and to traverse a search warrant that resulted in the discovery of methamphetamine and a firearm in Nault’s vehicle. Nault pled guilty to possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine and felon in possession of a firearm, but reserved the right to appeal the denial of the motions. An officer stopped the vehicle after learning that the vehicle— whose registered owner, Joei Ross, had an outstanding arrest warrant—was in the parking lot of a gas station. In his motion to suppress, Nault argued that the officer unconstitutionally prolonged the vehicle stop when he asked Nault to provide his license, registration, and proof of insurance because the suspicion that motivated the stop had evaporated once the officer determined that Ross was not in the vehicle. The government countered that the stop was supported by independent reasonable suspicion because the officer began to suspect that Nault was intoxicated shortly after initiating contact. Assuming without deciding that the officer lacked reasonable suspicion that Nault was intoxicated until he first asked Nault whether he had been drinking, the panel held that even if the officer’s request came before he developed independent suspicion, the officer’s continuation of the stop to request Nault’s documents did not violate the Fourth Amendment because UNITED STATES V. NAULT 3 that request fell within the mission of the stop. The panel wrote that the circumstances of the officer’s encounter with Nault implicate the same vehicle safety purpose discussed in Rodriguez v. United States, 575 U.S. 348 (2015), under which a routine document check would remain part of the officer’s mission even when the suspicion that justified a stop was based on an outstanding warrant rather than a traffic violation. The panel wrote that because the mission of the officer’s stop encompassed his routine request for documents, Nault was lawfully detained when the officer began noticing signs of impairment, at which point his continued detention was supported by independent reasonable suspicion of a DUI, and that the evidence acquired during the subsequent investigation and search of the truck—further indicia of intoxication from the officer’s field sobriety tests, and a positive alert from a dog sniff— was not tainted. The panel concluded that this evidence, combined with evidence from a controlled methamphetamine buy from Nault out of the same truck a month earlier, amounted to probable cause that amply supported a subsequently issued search warrant; and that the district court correctly denied the motion to suppress. In his motion to traverse the search warrant, Nault argued that the search warrant affidavit failed to disclose information about the dog sniff and requested a hearing under Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154 (1978). Holding that the district court properly denied the motion, the panel wrote that Nault failed to make a substantial preliminary showing that any statement or omission in the affidavit was intentionally or recklessly false or misleading, where an expert report provided by Nault at most establishes that the canine’s alert was unreliable on a single unrelated occasion. 4 UNITED STATES V. NAULT Dissenting, Judge Tashima wrote that the majority should have analyzed this case not as a traffic stop under Rodriguez, but as an investigatory stop under Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968); that asking Nault for his license, registration, and proof of insurance was not part of the officers’ mission, which was to look for and arrest Ross; that the driving credentials of Nault, who was not traveling on or parked on a public street or highway, were no more suspect than those of every other motorist on the road that day; and that the officers therefore were not permitted under the Fourth Amendment to detain him in order to conduct a traffic safety investigation.
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