D.Vt.: CI’s information was too generic and didn’t provide RS for stop

The fact the CI said defendant was an African-American female on a bus from Burlington to NYC was not so distinctive to rise to reasonable suspicion, and her detention was unreasonable. Thus, the drugs seized from her are suppressed. United States v. Livingston, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 72450 (D.Vt. June 3, 2016)*:

A reasonably cautious and prudent law enforcement officer could not conclude that Defendant was a felon based solely on the uncorroborated information provided by CS1 derived from an unknown source. Correspondingly, a fair and impartial magistrate judge could not issue an arrest warrant for Defendant merely because she was an African-American female disembarking alone from one of several buses arriving from New York City that day and was alleged to be carrying a large load of narcotics by a confidential source who apparently neither saw her, nor knew her, and whose source of information was not shown to be reliable. See Pringle, 540 U.S. at 371 (“The substance of all the definitions of probable cause is a reasonable ground for belief of guilt, and that the belief of guilt must be particularized with respect to the person to be searched or seized[.]”). This remains true even if the law enforcement officer seeking the arrest warrant attested under oath and in good faith that he or she believed Defendant was “larger” than some unspecified population and that she possessed “manly features.” Those additional descriptors are highly subjective and, in any event, were not demonstrated to be accurate when applied to Defendant.

Because Defendant’s warrantless arrest violated the Fourth Amendment, the evidence seized incident to her arrest and her incriminating statements must be suppressed. See Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 485-86 (1963).