United States v. Russell Teter

NOT PRECEDENTIAL UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT _________________ No. 23-2671 _________________ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. RUSSELL TETER, Appellant ________________ On Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania (M.D. Pa. No. 3-21-cr-00105-001) District Judge: Honorable Robert D. Mariani ________________ Submitted Under Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a) September 20, 2024 Before: RESTREPO, McKEE, and SMITH Circuit Judges

(Opinion filed: December 18, 2024) ______________ OPINION* ______________ McKEE, Circuit Judge.

*This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7 does not constitute binding precedent.

Russell Teter filed a motion to suppress drugs seized during a traffic stop. After the District Court denied his motion, he entered a conditional guilty plea to possession with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of methamphetamine in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) and (b)(1)(A). In doing so, he preserved his right to challenge the District Court’s denial of his suppression motion. He now appeals that denial of his motion to suppress.1 We will affirm.2 In Terry v. Ohio, the Supreme Court explained that “a police officer may in appropriate circumstances and in an appropriate manner approach a person for purposes of investigating possibly criminal behavior even though there is no probable cause to make an arrest.”3 “The Court recognized in Terry that the policeman making a reasonable investigatory stop should not be denied the opportunity to protect himself from attack by a hostile suspect.”4 Accordingly, when an officer “has reason to believe that [s/]he is dealing with an armed and dangerous individual,” s/he may engage in a protective search.5 “The sole justification of the search in the present situation is the protection of the police officer and others nearby, and it must therefore be confined in scope to an intrusion reasonably designed to discover guns, knives, clubs, or other hidden instruments for the assault of the police officer.”6 Only a search that is “reasonably related in scope” to this purpose will not exceed the limits of the Fourth Amendment.7 While Terry recognized the constitutionality of a pat-down protective search, it did not hold that a pat-down was the only permissible method of conducting a protective search.8 Rather, the Court recognized that “the[] limitations [of a protective search] w[ould] have to be developed in the concrete factual circumstances of individual cases.”9 Several years later, in Adams, the Supreme Court held that an officer’s reaching into an individual’s waistband to search for a gun, without first conducting a pat-down, did not exceed the limits of the Fourth Amendment.10 Since Adams, several courts of

Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143, 146 (1972). 5 Terry, 392 U.S. at 27. appeals have recognized that a pat-down is not the sole constitutional method of conducting a protective search.11 Here, the protective search was reasonably limited in scope. Similar to Adams, the detective only searched the area where he suspected that Teter had a weapon. The detective made the reasonable decision to protect himself by grabbing the object in Teter’s sweatshirt based on his prior experience, as well as Teter’s possession of a knife, and the fact that Teter refused to comply with instructions to get out of the car and then reached towards the bulge in his sweatshirt. This limited search was reasonably related to its protective purpose and did not violate the Fourth Amendment.

For the foregoing reasons, we will affirm the District Court’s Judgment and Conviction Order.