Everett Miles v. United States
Everett Miles v. United States
Opinion of the Court
Beckwith, Associate Judge:
Appellant Everett Miles challenges the trial court's denial of his motion to suppress tangible evidence, arguing that the police lacked reasonable articulable suspicion to conduct the Terry stop
I.
At the suppression hearing, the government presented the testimony of Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) Officers Juan Sanchez and Shalonda Davis. Officer Sanchez testified that he was on patrol in Southeast D.C. at around 8 a.m. on March 24, 2013, when he heard a series of radio transmissions about a man with a gun. These transmissions were played at the suppression hearing.
As Mr. Miles was walking south in the 4900 block of Alabama Avenue, Officer Sanchez parked his car "[r]ight on F [Street] and the corner," "blocking the sidewalk [Mr. Miles] was walking on to conduct a stop."
Officer Davis herself testified that she was on patrol when she heard a radio transmission for a man who was wearing an Army jacket and carrying a gun near Texas Avenue. While driving toward that location, Officer Davis "saw a subject fitting the description" from the radio transmission-a "black male with an Army print jacket" that was "dark colored." Shown a photo of Mr. Miles wearing the jacket on cross-examination,
According to Officer Davis, she initially drove past Mr. Miles to inform Officer James, who was parked at the end of the block, that she thought she had spotted the subject described in the radio transmission. The two officers drove in Mr. Miles's direction, and Officer James exited his vehicle after Mr. Miles "refused to stop and started running." Officer Davis testified that Officer Sanchez then pulled in front of her car and eventually stopped the fleeing Mr. Miles on foot. In Officer Davis's recollection, Officer Sanchez, in tussling with Mr. Miles, said "[g]un, gun, gun" while trying to hold Mr. Miles's hands over his head. Officer Davis testified that she saw the handle of the gun in Mr. Miles's front waistband and grabbed the weapon.
At the conclusion of the suppression hearing the court made the following findings. At about 8:08 a.m. on March 24, 2013, the MPD dispatcher "received a call from an unidentified citizen who indicated that there was a man with a gun" on the 4500 block of Texas Avenue, Southeast. According to the radio transmission, the subject was a "black male" "wearing a blue Army-type jacket." A few minutes later, the subject was found "within a couple of blocks" of the original location "wearing a jacket that matched in the officer's mind the description provided by the dispatcher." Examining the photo introduced into evidence, the court found that the jacket seemed "mostly gray but [with] a bluish *637tint of the gray." After noting Officer Davis's testimony that the color in the photo was distorted, however, the court found that on the morning of the stop, "the jacket that Mr. Miles was wearing" appeared to be "a blue Army-type jacket." The court also found that Mr. Miles "took off running" when "Officer Sanchez asked Mr. Miles to stop so that Sanchez could investigate further."
In denying Mr. Miles's suppression motion, the trial court concluded that the "running by itself would not be sufficient but running coupled with the fact that he ... match[ed] the description of the individual who was seen with the gun" is "more than sufficient to establish reasonable articulable suspicion and allow the officers to detain Mr. Miles in the way that they did."
II.
Mr. Miles argues that the police lacked reasonable articulable suspicion to stop him and that the trial court therefore erred in denying his motion to suppress. In reviewing the trial court's denial of a motion to suppress, "we defer to the trial court's findings of evidentiary fact unless clearly erroneous, and we view those facts, and the reasonable inferences that stem from them, in the light most favorable to the government." Sharp v. United States ,
"The Fourth Amendment prohibits 'unreasonable searches and seizures' by the Government, and its protections extend to brief investigatory stops of persons"-so-called Terry stops-"that fall short of traditional arrest." United States v. Arvizu ,
"[C]ourts are properly wary of sustaining seizures on the basis of anonymous tips, and require a substantial measure of corroboration of information anonymously provided." Brown v. United States ,
Turning first to the tip's ability to identify a specific person, the two officers' testimony that Mr. Miles was the only person on the street where the officers spotted him mere minutes after the 911 call undoubtedly adds to its reliability in this regard.
The more difficult question, then, is whether there was sufficient corroborating evidence to allow the police to conclude that the tip was "reliable in its assertion of illegality" and thus to reasonably suspect that Mr. Miles was carrying a gun. J.L. ,
*640The only material corroborating circumstance was thus Mr. Miles's flight from the police. The touchstone case on the relevance of a suspect's flight in the reasonable suspicion analysis is Illinois v. Wardlow ,
Wardlow is factually quite distinguishable from the present case-the most obvious differences being that the defendant in Wardlow was present in a high-narcotics-trafficking area and that there was no anonymous tip in that case. And in keeping with the Supreme Court's reminder that the "words of [its] opinions are to be read in the light of the facts of the order under discussion," Armour & Co. v. Wantock ,
While Wardlow is not directly controlling here, the case makes clear that a defendant's flight can be a relevant factor in the reasonable suspicion analysis. At the same time, as Justice Stevens pointed out in his partial concurrence and dissent, the Court in Wardlow stopped short of endorsing "the proposition that 'flight is ... necessarily indicative of ongoing criminal activity,' " and "adher[ed] to the view that '[t]he concept of reasonable suspicion ... is not readily, or even usefully, reduced to a neat set of legal rules,' but must be determined by looking to 'the totality of the circumstances.' "
Our court, too, has made clear that "flight cannot imply consciousness of guilt in all cases." Duhart v. United States ,
Moreover, unlike the cases cited in the government's brief in which we have found reasonable suspicion, there was nothing about the character of Mr. Miles's flight that seemed particularly incriminating. Cf. Pridgen ,
Because Mr. Miles's flight was not "unprovoked" to the same extent as the defendant's flight in Wardlow , and because there are no circumstances-beyond the flight itself-that cast an incriminating light on Mr. Miles's flight, we conclude that Mr. Miles's flight does not sufficiently corroborate the 911 call. Although we recognize that "we cannot reasonably demand scientific certainty from judges or law enforcement officers where none exists," Wardlow ,
III.
For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that the police lacked reasonable suspicion to subject Mr. Miles to a Terry stop. We therefore reverse Mr. Miles's convictions *646and remand for such further proceedings as are appropriate.
So ordered.
See Terry v. Ohio ,
After a jury trial, Mr. Miles was found guilty of carrying a pistol outside a home or place of business,
The radio transmission was played by defense counsel during her cross-examination of Officer Sanchez and was labeled as Defense Exhibit 1. Although counsel did not formally move to have the exhibit admitted into evidence, she repeatedly referred to the exhibit during her suppression argument, and the trial court, without objection from the defense or the government, referred to the transmission as being "in[ ] evidence." We therefore consider and treat it as evidence.
Neither party in this appeal submitted a copy of Defense Exhibit 1 for this court's review. See In re CA.S. ,
Officer Sanchez said that this block of Alabama Avenue is "close to the location on Texas Avenue."
A photograph of Mr. Miles wearing the jacket was admitted into evidence. On cross-examination, Officer Sanchez, examining the jacket as it appeared in the photo, testified that "[f]rom far away [he saw] dark blue [but] right[ ] now it's gray, dark gray."
Officer Sanchez did not provide any further details about what he meant when he said he "block[ed] the sidewalk," but Officer Davis later testified at trial-repeatedly and without contradiction-that Officer Sanchez "literally ... drove right onto the sidewalk."
See supra note 5.
At one point the court stated that "Mr. Miles ... t[ook] off running, as soon as ... contact was made by the officers " (emphasis added). Although on appeal Mr. Miles characterizes this finding as being in tension with the court's finding that Mr. Miles fled after Officer Sanchez told him to stop, the latter finding (referring to Officer Sanchez) is just more precise than the former (referring generally to "the officers").
Put another way, "[t]he trial court's factual findings about the circumstances surrounding [a defendant's] encounter with the police are entitled to deference," but "[t]he legal import of the circumstances is a question of law for our own independent determination." United States v. Turner ,
The Supreme Court has not required such independent corroboration in all anonymous tip cases. In Navarette v. California , the Court approved a vehicle stop where an anonymous 911 caller reported that she had been "[run] ... off the roadway" at a certain mile marker by a vehicle matching a certain description and where the police located the vehicle, down the road, in a location where it reasonably would have been given the lapse in time from the call. --- U.S. ----,
The dissent states that the officers' grounds for stopping Mr. Miles were further strengthened by evidence that someone approached one of the responding officers and told him that the suspect was going to be in the 4300 block of E Street. Post at 647. No witness at the suppression hearing mentioned this evidence, which comprised a seven-second snippet of the radio transmission that was played at the hearing. The dissent acknowledges that "this person's basis for knowledge is also unclear," post at 647, and there is no evidence that he or she was the same person who placed the 911 call. More fundamentally, this report alleged no criminality on the part of the "suspect," the government has not relied upon it as justification for the stop, and the trial court made no reference to it at all in its findings. The evidence could perhaps be viewed as establishing that Mr. Miles likely tracked the suspect's purported route "in the direction of Ridge Road," see post at 646, but it does not do that very well. As an initial matter, the report contained no description indicating that this "suspect" was the black male with a blue Army jacket initially reported to have a gun in the 4500 block of Texas Avenue. And if we accept Officer Sanchez's testimony that Mr. Miles was walking south on Alabama Avenue when officers confronted him at the intersection of Alabama and F Street, his presence in the 4300 block of E Street had him walking away from Texas Avenue's direct path to Ridge Road at that point. In any event, this evidence adds little if any weight to the reasonable suspicion calculus.
While the dissent, relying on Navarette , asserts that the traceability of 911 calls permits an officer to reasonably infer that an anonymous tip called into a 911 line is reliable, there is affirmative evidence in the record that the 911 system here did not work in the way that gave the Navarette Court confidence in the 911 system's ability to discourage dishonest tipsters. See supra note 10 (discussing Navarette v. California ,
See also Kraft v. Kraft ,
One state supreme court has bluntly addressed the effect of racial disparities in police encounters on the assessment of consciousness of guilt. In Commonwealth v. Warren ,
Alternatively, because both Wardlow and the present case involve a defendant's flight and differ primarily in that the present case involves an anonymous tip while Wardlow involved a high-crime area and a defendant holding an opaque bag, we could attempt to determine whether there was reasonable suspicion in the present case by considering whether being the apparent subject of an anonymous tip is a circumstance at least as suspicious as being present in a high-narcotics-trafficking area while holding an opaque bag. But given the differences-both conspicuous and more subtle, see infra -between Wardlow and the present case, and specifically between the circumstances of the flight in each case, an abstract inquiry of this nature would be ill-considered. See Gomez v. United States ,
The government contends that because Mr. Miles failed to argue at the suppression hearing that his flight was provoked and then testified at trial that he did not flee from the officers at all, he cannot argue on appeal that the officers' provocative actions undermined the extent to which his flight evinced consciousness of guilt. We disagree. Mr. Miles clearly contended in the trial court that the police lacked reasonable suspicion to stop him. His failure to argue provocation boiled down to a failure to highlight certain facts that made his conduct less suspicious. This omission did not prejudice the government, as the prosecutor had every incentive to try to establish that Mr. Miles's flight was unprovoked and in fact stated repeatedly in her argument on the motion that the testimony demonstrated that his flight was not provoked. See West v. United States ,
See Armstrong v. United States ,
Courts addressing whether a defendant's flight was provoked have tended to focus on whether the police engaged in "unlawful[ ]" or "improper[ ]" behavior. United States v. Franklin ,
The police officers in Dalton were on patrol and there is no indication in the opinion that they were targeting the defendant.
The present case is also not like Wilson v. United States ,
Dissenting Opinion
The court holds that the police officers in this case lacked reasonable articulable suspicion to stop Mr. Miles. I respectfully dissent.
I.
We view the evidence at the suppression hearing in the light most favorable to the trial court's ruling. United States v. Lewis ,
Two officers testified at the suppression hearing about the stop of Mr. Miles. Officer Juan Sanchez testified that he first saw Mr. Miles near the intersection of Alabama Avenue and F Street. (That intersection falls within the 4300 block of F Street.) Mr. Miles matched the description of the shooter, and Officer Sanchez did not see anyone else who matched that description. Officer Sanchez noticed that another officer, Officer Demond James, was walking about twenty to twenty-five feet behind Mr. Miles, pointing at Mr. Miles. Officer Sanchez parked his police cruiser around the corner of F Street and Alabama Avenue, blocking the sidewalk on which Mr. Miles was walking. Officer Sanchez started getting out of his cruiser and asked Mr. Miles to stop. Mr. Miles then ran in the direction of F Street. After a brief chase, Officer Sanchez grabbed Mr. Miles. While stopping Mr. Miles, Officer Sanchez felt a hard object in Mr. Miles's waistband. Other officers came to assist, and one of them recovered a gun from Mr. Miles's waistband.
Officer Shalonda Davis testified that she first saw Mr. Miles in the 4800 block of Alabama Avenue. Mr. Miles matched the description of the shooter, and Officer Davis did not see anyone else who matched that description. Officer Davis drove past Mr. Miles and enlisted the assistance of Officer James. They drove back towards Mr. Miles, who "refused to stop and started running." Officer Davis sped up to try to stop Mr. Miles, but Officer Sanchez pulled in front of her. Officer Sanchez then stopped Mr. Miles.
The trial court denied Mr. Miles's motion to suppress, concluding that the officers had reasonable articulable suspicion. With respect to the circumstances of the stop, the trial court indicated that Mr. Miles started running after Officer Sanchez asked Mr. Miles to stop.
II.
In my view, the trial court correctly held that the officers had reasonable articulable suspicion to stop Mr. Miles.
First, the police had received a 911 call stating that a man "is shooting a gun" in the air. Although the 911 caller did not provide a name or callback number, the Supreme Court has held that "a reasonable *647officer could conclude that a false tipster would think twice before" calling 911, given that 911 calls "allow for identifying and tracing callers, and thus provide some safeguards against making false reports with immunity." Navarette v. California , --- U.S. ----,
Second, the 911 call supported "an inference that the information was based on personal observation." Goldston v. United States ,
Third, someone approached one of the officers and provided further information about where to find the suspect. It is unclear whether this person was the 911 caller or a different person, and this person's basis for knowledge is also unclear. Notwithstanding these limitations, this face-to-face report added to the officers' grounds for stopping Mr. Miles. See, e.g. , Nixon v. United States ,
Fourth, police officers promptly corroborated innocent details of the 911 caller's information. They found Mr. Miles, who matched the 911 caller's description, where he would have been expected to be based *648on the 911 caller's information about the shooter's location and direction of travel, and they saw no one else who matched that description. See, e.g. , Green v. United States ,
Fifth, Mr. Miles fled after being asked to stop. See, e.g. , Illinois v. Wardlow ,
Taken together, these circumstances more than sufficed to establish the "minimal level of objective justification," Wardlow ,
*649Neither Mr. Miles nor the opinion for the court cites a single case from any court holding that police lacked reasonable articulable suspicion in circumstances comparable to those of the present case, and I am not aware of any such case. The opinion for the court does cite a few out-of-jurisdiction cases that it describes as "involving an anonymous tip and various acts of avoidance or more overt flight." Ante at 645. The opinion does not assert that the basis for suspicion in those cases was comparable to the basis for suspicion in this case. Ante at 645-46. In fact, the basis for suspicion in each of the cited cases was substantially weaker than the basis for suspicion in the present case. United States v. Lowe ,
Although this court has said that " 'case matching' is of limited utility" in deciding Fourth Amendment issues, Gomez v. United States ,
III.
The opinion of the court relies heavily on the view that Mr. Miles's flight was "provoked" by the officers, and thus was significantly less suspicious than unprovoked flight. Ante at 640-46. I disagree.
In concluding that Mr. Miles's flight was provoked, the opinion of the court relies on trial evidence that Officer Sanchez drove onto the sidewalk in order to block Mr. Miles's path. Ante at 643. It is unclear, however, whether this court can appropriately "rely on undisputed trial evidence to ... reverse the trial court's ruling, where the losing party failed to renew the motion to suppress based on the new evidence at trial." Wade v. United States ,
Even if taking such an approach might be appropriate in some circumstances, doing *650so in the present case is unwarranted, because the trial testimony at issue was not undisputed. To the contrary, there was conflicting evidence about whether Officer Sanchez pulled onto the sidewalk before Mr. Miles fled. Officer Davis's suppression-hearing testimony indicated that Mr. Miles fled before Officer Sanchez drove past her cruiser and towards Mr. Miles. Officer Davis's trial testimony was to the same effect. Officer Sanchez's suppression-hearing testimony-the version that the trial court adopted at the close of the suppression hearing-indicated that Officer Sanchez blocked the sidewalk before Mr. Miles fled, but did not indicate that Officer Sanchez drove up onto the sidewalk. Officer James's trial testimony was similar in that respect to Officer Sanchez's suppression-hearing testimony. For his part, Mr. Miles denied at trial that he fled and did not testify that any officer drove up onto the sidewalk. In sum, the opinion for the court adopts a version of the events-that Mr. Miles fled after Officer Sanchez drove up onto the sidewalk to block Mr. Miles's path-that the trial court never found, that no witness testified to, and that was contradicted by the testimony of several witnesses, including Mr. Miles himself. Whatever its proper scope, the doctrine permitting reliance on undisputed trial evidence surely does not authorize this court to reverse the trial court based on such a patchwork version of the facts.
It is true, as the opinion for the court notes, that "[n]o one balked" at trial when Officer Davis testified that Officer Sanchez drove up onto the sidewalk after Mr. Miles had started running. Ante at 643-44 n.17. In isolation, though, that testimony would have given no one reason to balk. And if Mr. Miles wanted to argue that his flight was provoked by Officer Sanchez's driving onto the sidewalk, he should have developed evidence to that effect at the suppression hearing. Failing that, he should have renewed his suppression motion at trial, so that the parties could have made a record on the issue and the trial court could have made an informed finding. Because Mr. Miles neither elicited pertinent testimony at the suppression hearing nor renewed his suppression motion at trial, this court has no valid basis upon which to conclude that Officer Sanchez drove up onto the sidewalk before Mr. Miles fled.
In support of its conclusion that Mr. Miles's flight was provoked, the opinion of the court also relies on Officer Sanchez's testimony that Officer James was walking behind Mr. Miles before Mr. Miles fled. Ante at 643. That is irrelevant, however, in the absence of any indication that Officer Sanchez had reason to believe that Mr. Miles was aware of Officer James's presence some twenty to twenty-five feet behind Mr. Miles. See generally, e.g. , Plumhoff v. Rickard , --- U.S. ----,
The 911 call in this case that a man was shooting a gun might have been baseless, even though officers confirmed its innocent details. The face-to-face report about the suspect's location might also have been baseless. And Mr. Miles might have had innocent reasons for fleeing from the police. As the Supreme Court has repeatedly held, however, "reasonable suspicion need not rule out the possibility of innocent conduct." Navarette , 134 S.Ct. at 1691 (internal quotation marks omitted). See generally, e.g. , United States v. Arvizu ,
The opinion for the court suggests that Wardlow 's holding rested not only on the suspect's flight in a high-crime area but also on the fact that the suspect had an opaque bag. Ante at 640-41. This court has correctly rejected that interpretation of Wardlow . Wilson v. United States ,
Reference
- Full Case Name
- Everett MILES, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES, Appellee.
- Cited By
- 17 cases
- Status
- Published