Post details: CA9: Even under Arvizu BP couldn't show RS for this stop

07/26/12

Permalink 10:35:59 am, by fourth, 429 words, 276 views   English (US)
Categories: General

CA9: Even under Arvizu BP couldn't show RS for this stop

Defendant was stopped 70 miles north of the Mexican border without reasonable suspicion to believe he was smuggling drugs or people. United States v. Valdes-Vega, 685 F.3d 1138 (9th Cir. 2012) (2-1):

In evaluating whether the stop of a vehicle satisfies the reasonable suspicion standard, we must look to the "totality of the circumstances." Arvizu, 534 U.S. at 273 (internal quotation marks omitted). When a border patrol stop is at issue, the totality of the circumstances may include:

(1) characteristics of the area; (2) proximity to the border; (3) usual patterns of traffic and time of day; (4) previous alien or drug smuggling in the area; (5) behavior of the driver, including obvious attempts to evade officers; (6) appearance or behavior of passengers; (7) model and appearance of the vehicle; and, (8) officer experience.

Berber-Tinoco, 510 F.3d at 1087 (quoting United States v. Garcia-Barron, 116 F.3d 1305, 1307 (9th Cir. 1997)). Under the totality of the circumstances approach, reasonable suspicion may exist even when each individual fact is susceptible to an innocent explanation or is not probative. Arvizu, 534 U.S. at 277. This approach "allows officers to draw on their own experience and specialized training to make inferences from and deductions about the cumulative information available to them that might well elude an untrained person." Id. at 273. The court, however, "will defer to officers' inferences only when such inferences rationally explain how the objective circumstances 'arouse[d] a reasonable suspicion that the particular person being stopped ha[d] committed or [was] about to commit a crime.'" ... Accordingly, "reasonable suspicion may not be based on broad profiles which cast suspicion on entire categories of people without any individualized suspicion of the particular person to be stopped." ...

. . .

D. The Totality of the Circumstances Did Not Provide Agents with Reasonable Suspicion to Believe that Valdes-Vega Was Smuggling Drugs or Aliens

The facts of this case, when considered cumulatively, do not create a reasonable suspicion that Valdes-Vega was smuggling drugs or aliens. Taken together they reveal the following profile: a Ford F-150 pickup truck, with Baja California plates, being erratically driven on I-15, 70 miles north of the border, at approximately 2:00 in the afternoon, that slowed down as it passed through the closed Temecula Checkpoint, and whose driver failed to look a Border Patrol Agent in the eyes. Putting aside the erratic driving, this description likely "fit[s] hundreds or thousands of law abiding daily users of the highways of Southern California." United States v. Rodriguez, 976 F.2d 592 (9th Cir. 1992), amended by 997 F.2d 1306 (9th Cir. 1993).

The question, then, is whether the addition of the erratic driving to this equation pushes this otherwise innocent profile to a reasonably suspicious one. ...

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