United States v. William Andrews, Jr.

We remanded this case to the district court 2 for clarification of its factual findings in support of its determination that William Andrews’s motion to suppress should be granted. The district court has now certified further findings to us; we interpret them as saying that Deputy Brown’s testimony that Mr. Andrews was following too close was not credible and that there was therefore no probable cause for stopping his vehicle.

We take this occasion to observe that the fourth amendment is not violated if an objectively good reason for a traffic stop exists, whatever the actual subjective motive of the officer making the stop may have been. We believe that the district court found that the government failed in its burden to prove that there was an objective basis for the stop in this case, a finding that we conclude was not clearly erroneous. We therefore affirm the judgment of the district court.