CA6: When stopping def. on RS, officer said “I know you have a gun” and defendant laid out spread eagle; that suggested a gun

Defendant was nervous and furtive in a high crime area having apparently done a drug deal, and that made the stop reasonable. The validity of the stop, however, doesn’t answer the question of the frisk. Here, when the officer said “I know you have a gun” (based on the fellow officer rule), defendant laid down spread eagle. That added to the reason to frisk. [If you know it’s going to happen anyway, why does that suggest a gun?] United States v. Carter, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 4878, 2014 FED App. 0194N (6th Cir. March 12, 2014)*:

At the suppression hearing, Wildman testified that he did not believe Carter had a gun until Carter laid down on the ground with his arms spread away from his body. Once that occurred, Wildman testified, he based his suspicion that Carter was armed on three factors: Whitacre’s claim that Carter had recently conducted a drug deal; Carter’s nervousness; and Carter’s unusual response to Wildman yelling “I know you have a gun.” The district court found three additional factors to justify the pat-down search: the neighborhood’s character as a high-crime area; recognition that drug dealers often carry guns; and Carter’s attempt to flee.

When Whitacre told Wildman that Carter and Johnson had just conducted a drug deal and requested that he stop Carter, Wildman was allowed to invoke the “fellow officer rule” and “conduct a stop based on information obtained” from Whitacre. United States v. Lyons, 687 F.3d 754, 765-66 (6th Cir. 2012). Although nothing said by Whitacre to Wildman directly suggested that Carter was armed or dangerous, the officers could reasonably rely on the well-known fact that drug-trafficking often involves the use of weapons, creating the necessary nexus between drug transactions and weapons searches. See United States v. Hardin, 248 F.3d 489, 499 (6th Cir. 2001) (“This Court has held many times that guns are ‘tools of the trade’ in drug transactions.” (quoting United States v. Arnott, 704 F.2d 322, 326 (6th Cir. 1983))).