USA v. Ruben Ramirez-Rivera

[DO NOT PUBLISH]
In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Eleventh Circuit
____________________
No. 22-11662
Non-Argument Calendar
____________________
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
versus
RUBEN RAMIREZ-RIVERA,
Defendant-Appellant.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Florida
D.C. Docket No. 2:21-cr-14032-DMM-1
____________________
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2 Opinion of the Court 22-11662
Before N EWSOM, G RANT, and ANDERSON , Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Ruben Ramirez-Rivera appeals the district court’s denial of
his motion to suppress evidence that law enforcement obtained fol-
lowing the traffic stop of a car in which he was a passenger. He
argues, first, that there was no probable cause for the stop because
the testimony of the officer who initiated the stop, Detective Seth
Abelin, did not show that the car’s tag was illegible from 50 feet
away, as required to violate Fla. Stat. § 316.221(2). Second, he con-
tends that law enforcement unreasonably prolonged the stop to
conduct a K-9 sniff test of the car.
Because a motion to suppress evidence presents a mixed
question of law and fact, we review the district court’s factual find-
ings for clear error and its application of the law to the facts
de
novo. United States v. Lewis, 674 F.3d 1298, 1302-03 (11th Cir.
2012). We construe all facts in the light most favorable to the party
that prevailed in the district court.
United States v. Holt, 777 F.3d
1234, 1255 (11th Cir. 2015). We defer to the district court’s factual
determinations unless the district court’s understanding of the facts
is “unbelievable.”
Id. at 1256 (quotation marks omitted).
The Fourth Amendment protects individuals from unrea-
sonable searches and seizures. U.S. Const. amend. IV. Because a
routine traffic stop is a limited form of seizure that is more analo-
gous to an investigative detention than a custodial arrest, we
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22-11662 Opinion of the Court 3
analyze the legality of such stops under the standard articulated in
Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968).
Holt, 777 F.3d at 1256. “
Terry
and its progeny allow an officer to, consistent with the Fourth
Amendment, conduct a brief, investigatory stop when the officer
has a reasonable, articulable suspicion that criminal activity is
afoot.”
United States v. Gonzalez-Zea, 995 F.3d 1297, 1302 (11th
Cir.) (quotation marks omitted),
cert. denied, 142 S. Ct. 506 (2021).
In
Terry, the Supreme Court adopted “a dual inquiry for
evaluating the reasonableness of an investigative stop.”
Id. (quota-
tion marks omitted). Under
Terry’s two-part inquiry, we must
“first examine ‘whether the officer’s action was justified at its in-
ception,’ which turns on whether the officers had a reasonable sus-
picion that the defendant had engaged in, was engaging in, or was
about to engage in, a crime.”
Id. (quoting Terry, 392 U.S. at 20).
Second, we must consider “whether the stop was reasonably re-
lated in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference
in the first place.”
Id. (quotation marks and brackets omitted).
Moreover, “the
duration of the traffic stop must be limited
to the time necessary to effectuate the purpose of the stop.”
Holt,
777 F.3d at 1256 (quotation marks omitted). “Generally, a traffic
stop may not last any longer than necessary to process the traffic
violation.”
Id. However, an officer may prolong a traffic stop in
“special circumstances.”
Id. (quotation marks omitted). Specifi-
cally, “an officer may prolong a traffic stop to investigate the
driver’s license and the vehicle registration, including by requesting
a computer check, or while waiting for the results of a criminal
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4 Opinion of the Court 22-11662
history check that is part of the officer’s routine traffic investiga-
tion.”
Id. Such activities, however, “must not prolong the traffic
stop beyond a reasonable amount of time under the circumstances
of the stop.”
Id. Although we measure the reasonableness of a
stop’s duration under the totality of the circumstances, we have
approved traffic stops lasting, for example, for 14 minutes and
50 minutes.
Id. However, “a police stop exceeding the time
needed to handle the matter for which the stop was made violates
the Constitution’s shield against unreasonable seizures.”
Rodri-
guez v. United States, 575 U.S. 348, 350 (2015). “A seizure justified
only by a police-observed traffic violation, therefore, becomes un-
lawful if it is prolonged beyond the time reasonably required to
complete the mission of issuing a ticket for the violation.”
Id.
at 350-51 (quotation marks and brackets omitted).
As to the use of drug dogs during traffic stops, the Supreme
Court has held that “the use of a well-trained narcotics-detection
dog—one that does not expose noncontraband items that other-
wise would remain hidden from public view—during a lawful traf-
fic stop, generally does not implicate legitimate privacy interests.”
Illinois v. Caballes, 543 U.S. 405, 409 (2005) (quotation marks and
citation omitted).
In
Holt, we concluded that there was no error in the district
court’s denial of Holt’s motions to suppress evidence seized during
two traffic stops involving canine units.
Holt, 777 F.3d at 1257. We
held that the record clearly supported the district court’s findings
that, prior to the arrival of the canine units, neither traffic stop
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22-11662 Opinion of the Court 5
exceeded an ordinary traffic stop in duration or scope.
Id. In par-
ticular, we explained that the length of time that elapsed before the
deployment of the drug dog—27 minutes in the first stop, and only
a few minutes in the second stop—was not unreasonable, and “un-
controverted testimony established that the canine units arrived
while the officers still were conducting routine records checks and
preparing the traffic citations.”
Id. Accordingly, we held that the
use of the canines to sniff the exterior of the vehicles during lawful
traffic stops did not violate the Fourth Amendment.
Id.
Under Florida law, “[e]ither a taillamp or a separate lamp
shall be so constructed and placed as to illuminate with a white
light the rear registration plate and render it clearly legible from a
distance of 50 feet to the rear.” Fla. Stat. § 316.221(2). This Court
has affirmed the constitutionality of traffic stops for violations of
inoperable-tag-light laws.
Holt, 777 F.3d at 1244, 1256-57.
Here, Ramirez-Rivera has not shown that the district court
erred in denying his motion to suppress.
See Holt, 777 F.3d at 1255-
57;
Gonzalez-Zea, 995 F.3d at 1302. First, the court did not err in
deciding that the traffic stop was based on Officer Abelin’s reason-
able suspicion that the car was violating § 316.221(2).
See Gonza-
lez-Zea, 995 F.3d at 1302;
Holt, 777 F.3d at 1256. The record
showed that Officer Abelin had just pulled into the parking lot of a
Frito Lay factory when the car passed by on a parallel road. It was
7:38 p.m. and dark out, and Officer Abelin noticed that one of the
passing car’s tag lights was out, leaving one side of its tag “unread-
able” in the dark. Officer Abelin testified that he made a U-turn,
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6 Opinion of the Court 22-11662
followed the car a short distance, and when he was “[a]bout 30 feet
[away] with [his] light shining on the back rear end of the vehicle
[he] could see the tag. Based on this, the court found that the tag
was not legible from 50 feet away, as required by § 316.221(2). This
finding was not clearly erroneous, because the court’s interpreta-
tion of Officer Abelin’s testimony—that he could not read the tag
until he was 30 feet away—was not “unbelievable,” but was a rea-
sonable understanding of Officer Abelin’s testimony.
See Holt, 777
F.3d at 1256 (quotation marks omitted). Because the court did not
clearly err in its factual finding that the tag was illegible from 50
feet away, it did not err in concluding that the traffic stop was based
on reasonable suspicion and was, thus, lawful.
See id.;
Gonzalez-
Zea, 995 F.3d at 1302.
Second, the district court did not err in finding that law en-
forcement did not unlawfully prolong the stop to conduct the K-9
drug sniff.
See Holt, 777 F.3d at 1256-57. As stated above, the stop
itself was lawful. The record showed that Officer Abelin ap-
proached the car and asked its occupants for identification and, ul-
timately, to step out of the vehicle. Officer Abelin then relayed
their identification information to dispatch, and within five
minutes—while Officer Abelin was waiting to hear back from dis-
patch—a second officer conducted a K-9 sniff of the car and the dog
gave a positive narcotics alert on the car. Because the sniff occurred
while Officer Abelin was still conducting a routine record check, it
did not unlawfully prolong the stop in violation of the Fourth
Amendment.
See Holt, 777 F.3d at 1256-57. Moreover, the entire
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22-11662 Opinion of the Court 7
duration of the stop, between the time Officer Abelin pulled over
the car to when he placed Ramirez-Rivera under arrest, was ap-
proximately eight minutes, which was not an unreasonable
amount of time to conduct a routine record check under the total-
ity of the circumstances.
Holt, 777 F.3d at 1257.
AFFIRMED.
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