United States of America v. DAVID LOPEZ-ARIAS and ANTONIO EGUES

*The Honorable Robert H. Cleland, United States District Judge for
the Eastern District of Michigan, sitting by designation.
1
RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION
Pursuant to Sixth Circuit Rule 206
ELECTRONIC CITATION: 2003 FED App. 0336P (6th Cir.)
File Name: 03a0336p.06
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
_________________
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
DAVID LOPEZ-ARIAS and
ANTONIO EGUES,
Defendants-Appellees.
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No. 02-5154
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Western District of Kentucky at Louisville.
No. 00-00094—Thomas B. Russell, District Judge.
Argued: May 2, 2003
Decided and Filed: September 19, 2003
Before: CLAY and GIBBONS, Circuit Judges;
CLELAND, District Judge.*
2 United States v. Lopez-Arias et al. No. 02-5154
_________________
COUNSEL
ARGUED: Nina Goodman, UNITED STATES
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for
Appellant. Patrick J. Bouldin, WESTERN KENTUCKY
FEDERAL COMMUNITY DEFENDER, INC., Louisville,
Kentucky, Martin N. Kute, Louisville, Kentucky, for
Appellees. ON BRIEF: Nina Goodman, UNITED STATES
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., Terry M.
Cushing, ASSISTANT UNITED STATES ATTORNEY,
Louisville, Kentucky, for Appellant. Patrick J. Bouldin,
WESTERN KENTUCKY FEDERAL COMMUNITY
DEFENDER, INC., Louisville, Kentucky, Martin N. Kute,
Louisville, Kentucky, for Appellees.
_________________
OPINION
_________________
JULIA SMITH GIBBONS, Circuit Judge. Federal drug
enforcement agents arrested defendants-appellees David
Lopez-Arias and Antonio Egues for trafficking in cocaine.
After a federal grand jury indicted them, defendants moved to
suppress certain evidence, alleging that it was obtained as a
result of an unlawful arrest. The district court granted
defendants’ motion to suppress, and the government appeals
from that ruling. For the following reasons, we affirm the
district court’s decision to suppress the evidence.
I.
On or shortly before July 26, 2000, law enforcement
officials in Louisville, Kentucky, received a tip from a
confidential informant, whose reliability had not yet been
tested, that two Hispanic men from Las Vegas were traveling
to Louisville to distribute cocaine. The informant told the

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No. 02-5154 United States v. Lopez-Arias et al. 3
police that the two men intended to stay at the Collier Motel
in Louisville and that a man named Jose intended to deliver
the proceeds of a drug sale to these two men at the motel.
According to the informant, Jose would be driving a white
Toyota with a certain license plate number. A search of state
motor vehicle records revealed that the license plate number
identified by the informant was registered to Jose Barrera
Santiesteban, 104 E. Kingston, Apt. 1, Louisville, Kentucky.
The federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
began surveillance of the Collier Motel on the afternoon of
July 26, 2000. During their surveillance, DEA agents
discovered that a 1992 blue Ford Crown Victoria, which was
parked in front of Room 17 of the motel, was registered to
David Lopez-Arias, whose address matched Santiesteban’s
except for the apartment number. At around 4:00 p.m. on
July 26, defendants Lopez-Arias and Egues exited Room 17
and departed in the Crown Victoria. The undercover DEA
agents followed defendants as they visited several locations,
including an office supply store, where they purchased a set
of digital scales of the type often used to weigh drugs.
Defendants then returned to the motel.
At around 8:15 that evening, Santiesteban arrived at the
motel driving the white Toyota described by the informant.
After speaking with Lopez-Arias, who was outside working
on the Crown Victoria, Santiesteban went into Room 17 with
Lopez-Arias. DEA agents observed Santiesteban carrying a
yellow plastic bag into Room 17. Santiesteban stayed in
Room 17 for about forty-five minutes before leaving in his
white Toyota. DEA agents followed Santiesteban out of the
vicinity of the motel and then stopped him. A drug-sniffing
dog alerted on the Toyota, but the DEA agents did not find
any drugs in the Toyota.
Defendants departed from the motel in the Crown Victoria
shortly after Santiesteban and were followed by DEA agents.
Once the drug-sniffing dog alerted on Santiesteban’s Toyota,
a DEA agent on the scene with Santiesteban ordered the DEA
4 United States v. Lopez-Arias et al. No. 02-5154
agents following defendants to stop the Crown Victoria. Four
DEA agents in four unmarked DEA vehicles activated their
sirens and emergency lights and stopped the Crown Victoria.
The four DEA agents, with weapons drawn, ordered
defendants to exit the Crown Victoria. The DEA agents then
handcuffed defendants and placed them into separate DEA
vehicles. The DEA agents drove the defendants from the
scene of the stop on the street to an adjacent convenience
store parking lot, where they were removed from the DEA
vehicles, read their Miranda rights, and questioned separately.
The DEA agent questioning Egues conducted a pat-down
search of him and found the motel key in his pocket. Egues
stated that the motel room was registered in his name. The
DEA agent asked Egues for consent to search the motel room
and presented him with a written consent form, which Egues
signed within ten to fifteen minutes from the time the DEA
agents stopped the Crown Victoria. A little more than twenty
minutes from the time the DEA agents stopped the Crown
Victoria, Lopez-Arias gave the DEA agent questioning him
verbal consent to search the motel room.
After receiving consent from both defendants, DEA agents
searched Room 17 of the Collier Motel and found a yellow
plastic bag containing twenty-five individually wrapped
packages of cocaine, a black notebook containing $4,100 in
cash, clear plastic wrappers containing cocaine residue, and
two sets of digital scales. DEA agents then formally arrested
defendants and reread them their Miranda rights.
The federal grand jury charged defendants with possessing
more than 500 grams of cocaine with the intent to distribute.
Before trial, defendants moved to suppress all the evidence
that the DEA agents found in the motel room. Defendants
argued that they were arrested without probable cause and
that they did not voluntarily grant consent to search the motel
room. The district court referred defendants’ motion to a
magistrate judge, who conducted an evidentiary hearing. The
magistrate judge issued proposed findings of fact and

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No. 02-5154 United States v. Lopez-Arias et al. 5
conclusions of law and recommended that the motion to
suppress be denied. The magistrate judge found that
defendants voluntarily gave their consent to search the motel
room during a permissible investigatory detention that had not
yet risen to the level of an arrest.
Defendants objected, and the district court rejected the
magistrate judge’s recommendation and granted defendants’
motion to suppress. The district court found that the stop had
risen to the level of an arrest by the time defendants gave their
consent to search the motel room, that no probable cause
existed to support the arrest, and that the consent was
therefore tainted by the illegal arrest. Because the district
court found that the consent was tainted by the illegal arrest,
the district court did not decide whether the consent was
otherwise voluntary. The government appeals the district
court’s ruling to suppress the evidence found in the motel
room.
II.
“This Court reviews the district court’s factual findings in
a suppression hearing for clear error and reviews the district
court’s conclusions of law de novo.” United States v.
Waldon, 206 F.3d 597, 602 (6th Cir. 2000). “A factual
finding will only be clearly erroneous when, although there
may be evidence to support it, the reviewing court on the
entire evidence is left with the definite and firm conviction
that a mistake has been committed. The evidence is reviewed
in the light most likely to support the district court’s
decision.” United States v. Navarro-Camacho, 186 F.3d 701,
705 (6th Cir. 1999) (internal citations and quotation omitted).
However, “this Court reviews de novo the district court’s
determination as to whether certain facts establish a seizure or
detention in violation of the Fourth Amendment.” Waldon,
206 F.3d at 602.
6 United States v. Lopez-Arias et al. No. 02-5154
A. The Seizure
The government does not argue that the DEA agents had
probable cause to arrest defendants at the time defendants
granted their consent to search the motel room. The
government instead argues that defendants gave their consent
to search the motel room during a permissible investigatory
detention that had not yet risen to the level of an arrest.
Since the Supreme Court decided Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1
(1968), courts have recognized that a law enforcement officer
who lacks probable cause to justify an arrest may nevertheless
briefly detain an individual without violating the Fourth
Amendment if the officer possesses a reasonable and
articulable suspicion that the individual has committed a
crime. United States v. Heath, 259 F.3d 522, 528 (6th Cir.
2001). The scope of this brief investigative detention,
however, must be limited to “the least intrusive means
reasonably available to verify or dispel the officer’s suspicion
in a short period of time.” Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491,
500 (1983). Although “[t]he scope of the intrusion permitted
will vary to some extent with the particular facts and
circumstances of each case,” in no event may law
enforcement officers “seek to verify their suspicions by
means that approach the conditions of arrest.” Id. at 500, 409.
To determine whether an investigative detention has
crossed the line and become an arrest, this court considers
factors such as “the transportation of the detainee to another
location, significant restraints on the detainee’s freedom of
movement involving physical confinement or other coercion
preventing the detainee from leaving police custody, and the
use of weapons or bodily force.” United States v. Richardson,
949 F.2d 851, 857 (6th Cir. 1991). In Richardson, this court
concluded that law enforcement officers had crossed the line
from an investigative detention into an arrest when they
placed the defendant in the back of a police car. Id. at 857;
see also United States v. Butler, 223 F.3d 368, 375 (6th Cir.
2000) (“We have long recognized that officers cross the line

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No. 02-5154 United States v. Lopez-Arias et al. 7
from an investigatory stop into an arrest when they place a
suspect in a police vehicle for questioning.”).
But there is no bright line that distinguishes an investigative
detention from an arrest. Royer, 460 U.S. at 506 (stating that
there is no “litmus-paper test” for distinguishing when a
seizure exceeds the bounds of an investigative stop). In
Houston v. Clark County Sheriff Deputy John Does 1-5, 174
F.3d 809, 814-15 (6th Cir. 1999), a case relied upon heavily
by the government, this court went so far as to decide that an
arrest had not occurred when multiple police officers stopped
two suspects at gunpoint, handcuffed them, and forcibly
placed them into police vehicles. This court found that these
protective measures were reasonably necessary because in
Houston the officers, although lacking probable cause,
reasonably believed that the suspects had just shot another
police officer. Id.
In the present case, the district court did not clearly err in
finding that before defendants gave their consent to search the
motel room, they were (1) stopped by four DEA agents
brandishing firearms, (2) handcuffed, (3) placed into the
backseats of separate DEA vehicles, (4) transported from the
scene of the stop, (5) read their Miranda rights, and
(6) questioned. The government, relying on Houston, argues
that all these measures were reasonably necessary for the
protection of the DEA agents. The seizure in the present case,
however, was more like an arrest than the seizure this court
considered in Houston. In addition to taking the same
protective measures as did the police officers in Houston, the
DEA agents in the present case transported defendants from
the scene of the stop and read them their Miranda rights.
Each of these additional measures made the seizure more like
an arrest. See Heath, 259 F.3d at 531 (holding that “an
investigative stop must be confined to the site of the initial
inquiry”); United States v. Obasa, 15 F.3d 603, 608 (6th Cir.
1994) (holding that the reading of Miranda rights during a
seizure is not dispositive but is evidence that the seizure has
crossed the line into an arrest).
8 United States v. Lopez-Arias et al. No. 02-5154
Moreover, in this case, defendants were not suspected of
anything so dangerous as shooting a police officer, as was the
case in Houston. In this case, defendants were suspected of
possessing illegal drugs, just as were the defendants in Heath,
Butler, and Richardson. The seizure in this case was at least
as intrusive as the seizures that this court determined were
arrests in Heath, Butler, and Richardson. Heath, 259 F.3d at
530-31 (recognizing that drug crimes are inherently
dangerous but finding that the transport of the suspect
constituted an arrest); Butler, 223 F.3d at 375 (finding that
placing the drug-crime suspect in a police vehicle constituted
an arrest); Richardson, 949 F.2d at 857 (same). We therefore
agree with the district court that the DEA agents had arrested
defendants by the time defendants consented to the search of
the motel room. Because the DEA agents lacked probable
cause, the arrest was unlawful.
B. The Consent
The government argues that, even if defendants’ consent to
search the motel room was granted during an unlawful arrest,
the district court nevertheless erred in suppressing the
evidence found in the motel room because defendants’
consent to search, according to the government, was
voluntary. For this argument, the government primarily relies
upon United States v. Guimond, 116 F.3d 166 (6th Cir. 1997),
where this court instructed that even if a consent to search
was granted during an illegal seizure, the consent is valid if it
was voluntary, i.e., not the result of coercion. Id. at 170-71
(citing Ohio v. Robinette, 519 U.S. 33, 40 (1996)).
It is without a doubt true that “[t]he Fourth Amendment test
for a valid consent to search is that the consent be voluntary.”
Robinette, 519 U.S. at 40. But the Supreme Court has made
perfectly clear that the exclusionary rule may operate to
exclude evidence obtained as the result of a valid, voluntary
consent to search. In order to deter unlawful seizures, the
Supreme Court has mandated that courts must generally
suppress otherwise admissible evidence obtained as a result

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No. 02-5154 United States v. Lopez-Arias et al. 9
of an illegal seizure. Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 602
(1975). Thus, the Court has held that “statements given
during a period of illegal detention are inadmissible even
though voluntarily given if they are the product of the illegal
detention and not the result of an independent act of free
will.” Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491, 501 (1983) (emphasis
added); see also Kaupp v. Texas, – U.S. –, 123 S. Ct. 1843,
1847 (2003) (per curiam) (reconfirming “well-established
precedent” that requires suppression of a statement given
during a period of illegal seizure unless the statement was an
act of free will sufficient to purge the primary taint of the
unlawful seizure). The Court has applied this analysis to
exclude evidence obtained pursuant to a consent to search that
was granted during an illegal seizure. Royer, 460 U.S. at 507-
08.
Therefore, following Supreme Court precedent, we have
repeatedly held that if a consent to search is given after an
illegal seizure, evidence obtained pursuant to the consent to
search must be suppressed, unless the consent is sufficiently
attenuated from the illegal seizure such that the consent is the
product of an intervening act of free will. United States v.
Caicedo, 85 F.3d 1184, 1190 (6th Cir. 1996); Richardson,
949 F.2d at 858; United States v. Buchanan, 904 F.2d 349,
355-56 (6th Cir. 1990). In other words, not only must the
consent be valid, i.e., voluntary, as required by Robinette, but
the causal chain between the illegal seizure and the consent
must be broken to avoid the consequences of the exclusionary
rule. Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200, 217-19 (1979)
(holding that a voluntary statement must be suppressed under
the exclusionary rule if it was causally connected to an illegal
seizure); Brown, 422 U.S. at 602-04 (holding that
voluntariness is only a threshold requirement); Buchanan, 904
F.2d at 355-56 (suppressing evidence obtained pursuant to a
consent to search given during an illegal seizure even though
the district court found that the consent was given “freely and
voluntarily”); see also United States v. Santa, 236 F.3d 662,
10 United States v. Lopez-Arias et al. No. 02-5154
1In Guimond, a panel of this court seemingly held that if the consent
to search was voluntary, it does not matter that the consent occurred
during an illegal seizure. 116 F .3d at 170 -71. The panel in Guimond did
not address the implications of the exclusionary rule nor did it distinguish
the Supreme Court’s holdings in Royer, Dunaway, and Brown or this
court’s holdings in Caicedo, Richardson, and Buchanan. The Guimond
panel relied upon the Supreme Court’s 1996 d ecision in Robinette, but
Robinette did not overrule Royer, Dunaway, Brown, Caicedo, Richardson,
and Bucha nan . The Robinette Court did not address the issue of an illegal
seizure. Robinette, 519 U.S. at 35 (“W e are here presented with the
question whether the Fourth Amendment requires that a lawfully seized
defendant must be advised that he is ‘free to go ’ before his consent to
search will be recognized as voluntary.” (emphasis added)). To the extent
that Guimond conflicts with Royer, Dunaway, Brown, Caicedo,
Richardson, and Buchanan, we follow the earlier autho rities. Darrah v.
City of Oak Park, 255 F.3d 30 1, 310 (6th Cir. 2001) (holding that “when
a later decision of this court conflicts with one of our prior published
decisions, we are still bound by the holding of the earlier case.”); see also
Kaupp, 123 S.Ct. at 1844 (reconfirming the holding in Brown that a
statement obtained by exploitation of an illegal arrest may not be used
against a criminal defendant).
676 (11th Cir. 2000) (holding that “a voluntary consent to
search does not remove the taint of an illegal seizure”).1
To determine whether a consent to search was sufficiently
attenuated from an illegal seizure such that the causal chain
was broken, courts must consider factors such as the length of
time between the illegal seizure and the consent, the presence
of intervening circumstances, the purpose and flagrancy of the
official misconduct, and whether the officers read the suspect
his Miranda rights before he consented. Kaupp, 123 S.Ct. at
1847; Brown, 422 U.S. at 603-04 (finding that no single
factor is dispositive); Richardson, 949 F.2d at 858. The
burden of persuasion regarding this issue is on the
government. Kaupp, 123 S.Ct. at 1847. In the present case,
the district court appropriately considered these factors and
did not err in finding no intervening act of free will on the
part of defendants between their illegal arrest and their
consent to search the motel room. Defendants granted their
consent to search within half an hour from the initial stop and

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No. 02-5154 United States v. Lopez-Arias et al. 11
during the illegal arrest. There was no intervening time or
event between the illegal arrest and defendants’ consent. See
Buchanan, 904 F.2d at 356 (“Dissipation of the taint resulting
from an illegal entry ordinarily involves showing that there
was some significant intervening time, space, or event.”
(internal quotation and citation omitted)). Furthermore, as the
district court found, the illegality of the arrest was blatant.
See Richardson, 949 F.2d at 859 (finding that placing a
suspect into the back of a police car for twenty minutes
without probable cause constituted a blatant constitutional
violation). Although the DEA agents read defendants their
Miranda rights, this alone was insufficient to break the causal
chain between the illegal arrest and defendants’ consent.
Kaupp, 123 S.Ct. at 1847 (holding that the giving of Miranda
warnings alone was insufficient to purge the primary taint of
the unlawful seizure).
In Brown, the Supreme Court held that a separation of less
than two hours between an illegal arrest and a voluntary
statement was insufficient to break the causal chain between
the two when no intervening event of significance had
occurred. 422 U.S. at 604. The Court found that under such
circumstances, Miranda warnings by themselves were
insufficient to purge the taint of the illegal arrest. Id. at 602.
Therefore, the Court ruled that the statement was inadmissible
regardless of its voluntariness. Id. at 604-05. In Richardson,
this court held that evidence discovered pursuant to a consent
to search was inadmissible because the consent to search was
given twenty minutes into a blatantly illegal arrest. 949 F.2d
at 859 (“We do not believe that the taint had dissipated after
merely twenty (20) minutes of continued improper conduct.”).
In Buchanan, we held that the taint of the illegal seizure was
not purged when only approximately one hour passed
between the illegal entry and the consent to search. 904 F.2d
at 356. As in Brown, Richardson, and Buchanan, in the
present case, there was no intervening act of free will
sufficient to break the causal chain between defendants’
illegal arrest and their consent to search the motel room.
Therefore, the district court properly suppressed the evidence
12 United States v. Lopez-Arias et al. No. 02-5154
discovered in the motel room pursuant to the exclusionary
rule.
III.
For all the foregoing reasons, we affirm the district court’s
ruling to suppress the evidence discovered in the motel room.

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