Opinion
22-2422
06-02-2023
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. VINCENT NICHOLS, JR., Defendant-Appellant.
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
Argued April 25, 2023
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois. No. 20-CR-10067 James E. Shadid, Judge.
Before KENNETH F. RIPPLE, Circuit Judge AMY J. ST. EVE, Circuit Judge DORIS L. PRYOR, Circuit Judge
ORDER
After police stopped the car in which he was a passenger, Vincent Nichols, Jr. was convicted by a jury of possessing a firearm as a felon. 18 U.S.C. § 922(g). On appeal, he challenges the denial of his motion to suppress, arguing that the officers lacked sufficiently reliable information to justify the stop of the vehicle under the Fourth Amendment. Because the district court made no error in determining that the vehicle stop was valid, we affirm.
In 2020, peoria police Sergeant Bryan Sylvester spotted Courtney Andrews-a man he recognized from earlier police contact-drinking from an open alcohol container in a local shopping center parking lot. Sylvester watched Andrews get into a car and drive away with several passengers, including Nichols. Sylvester then radioed details of the situation to two police officers under his supervision, Tyler Hodges and Joseph Smiles. Sylvester informed the officers of the direction Andrews was heading, the car he was driving, and the license plate number. Sylvester and Smiles both testified that Sylvester informed Hodges and Smiles that Andrews had an outstanding warrant for his arrest, although there was some confusion regarding how Sylvester learned that information. Smiles used the squad-car computer to search for Andrews's name in a police database, in which he saw that Andrews had an active, outstanding arrest warrant. Although Hodges was aware of the outstanding warrant, Hodges could not recall if Sylvester informed him or if he learned it from a police database.
Hodges and Smiles located the car, followed Andrews for about a mile, and then pulled the car over. Hodges asked Andrews to step out and told him of the outstanding warrant for his arrest. As Andrews got out of the car, the officers noticed the smell of burnt cannabis. Hodges then arrested Andrews, who admitted that he had been smoking a cannabis cigarette.
The officers instructed the passengers-including Nichols, sitting in the front passenger seat-to leave the car while they searched for contraband, and they patted the passengers down as they left. After Nichols got out, Smiles saw a handgun on the seat where he had been sitting. Nichols, it turns out, was not licensed to have a firearm and was arrested for unlawful possession of the gun.
Nichols, who had two prior Illinois felony convictions (for aggravated battery with a firearm and unlawful delivery of a controlled substance), was charged with possessing a firearm as a felon. 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1).
Before trial, Nichols moved to suppress the discovery of the firearm, arguing that officers did not have "justifiable cause" to stop or search the car. The government, opposing the motion, countered that the outstanding warrant provided sufficient justification for the stop.
The court held a suppression hearing where the government called all three police officers as witnesses. First, Sylvester testified that he recognized Andrews at the parking lot, saw him with an open container, and conveyed information about him to Hodges and Smiles. Sylvester recounted that the officers could run a suspect's name through a laptop computer in the squad car which would disclose outstanding warrants. Although he could not recall exactly when or how he learned of Andrews's active warrant, Sylvester specified that the timing was "definitely before [Andrews] left the lot that evening." Sylvester also testified that Hodges and Smiles provided him with the information regarding the warrant.
Hodges then testified about the pursuit and stop of the car. He stated that, after receiving Sylvester's instructions to tail Andrews, he "was advised" that Andrews had an outstanding warrant, and that the information would have come "from either LEADS [the in-car police search system] or the Peoria County Justice Website." Hodges did not recall who told him about the warrant, but he confirmed that he initiated the stop based on his belief that Andrews had an outstanding warrant. The government also introduced Hodges's bodycam video of the arrest; the audio on the video captures Hodges informing Andrews of the active warrant as Andrews stepped out of the car.
Smiles, testifying last, presented more detail about the source of the officers' knowledge of the warrant. Smiles testified that, after being informed by Sylvester that Andrews was part of a group drinking alcohol, "we checked him, and he had a valid warrant." Upon further questioning, Smiles reported that he searched for Andrews in the police database through the squad car's computer. Smiles testified similarly on cross-examination: "[O]ur sergeant said that [Andrews] got into the vehicle. So we then ran [Andrews] for a warrant; and then it showed that he had a warrant, so then we decided to stop the vehicle." Smiles also stated that "at some point" he told Hodges and Sylvester of the warrant.
The district court denied Nichols's motion to suppress. In upholding the validity of the stop and subsequent search of the car, the court acknowledged some confusion in the officers' testimony over "who actually determined that Andrews had a warrant." Regardless of which officer determined that Andrews had a warrant, the encounter captured on the bodycam footage clarified "that the officers knew before the stop that Andrews did, in fact, have a warrant."
Nichols proceeded to trial and the jury convicted him of possessing a firearm as a felon. 18 U.S.C. § 922(g). On appeal, Nichols challenges the denial of his motion to suppress based only on the legality of the traffic stop.[*] Nichols principally contends the district court erred because the record lacks reliable evidence of any justification to stop the vehicle under Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21 (1968). Such a stop would require police officers to have been able to point to "specific and articulable facts" that, together with rational inferences, created a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. Matz v. Klotka, 769 F.3d 517, 522 (7th Cir. 2014) (quoting Terry, 392 U.S. at 21). We review the district court's legal conclusions de novo and findings of fact for clear error, United States v. Edgeworth, 889 F.3d 350, 353 (7th Cir. 2018), and give the district court's credibility determinations particular deference. See United States v. Norton, 893 F.3d 464, 467 (7th Cir. 2018).
Nichols raises a two-pronged challenge to the evidence relied on by the district court to determine that police had a sufficiently "particularized suspicion" to justify a Terry stop. Matz, 769 F.3d at 523. First, Nichols suggests that any information Hodges had about the warrant at the time of the stop was "unreliable" because, according to Nichols, it came from Sylvester, who "did not have knowledge as to when he knew there was an arrest warrant [for Andrews]." Nichols contends that this chain of "unreliable information" was not sufficient under Terry. But the record does not reflect that Sylvester alone told Hodges about the warrant-the source of Hodges's information is unclear. It is true that Sylvester and Smiles testified that Sylvester communicated information about the warrant to Hodges and Smiles, but Smiles also testified that he looked up Andrews's name in the police database and informed Hodges of the active warrant. Indeed, Smiles testified that he "believed" he was the one who notified Sylvester of the warrant, not the other way around. Nichols acknowledges Smiles's testimony but does not explain why information that Smiles gleaned from the police database would be "unreliable" or otherwise insufficient to support the stop. Moreover, it is plausible that both Sylvester and Smiles checked for a warrant and informed the others. Even if Smiles had been informed about a warrant, it would have been sound police work to search Andrews's name in the database himself. Doing so would have allowed Smiles to verify the warrant's existence and have it on hand during the traffic stop.
Nichols next argues that the district court erred in crediting the officers' testimony, which he sees as marred by irreconcilable inconsistencies. This contention sweeps too broadly. True, the officers did not all identify Smiles as the source of information about the warrant, but all agreed that (1) officers can search for warrants through the squad-car computers and (2) they learned about Andrews's outstanding warrant before the stop. Sylvester, for example, did not initially recall how he became aware of the warrant, but he later testified that the information about the warrant "was probably broadcasted or disseminated back to me" by Hodges and Smiles. Hodges, for his part, also did not recall who told him about the warrant, but he testified that he "was advised that Courtney Andrews had a warrant" before the stop. Hodges's testimony is consistent with both Smiles's account and his own bodycam footage, which confirmed he was aware of a warrant at the time of the stop. Any gaps in the recollections of Sylvester and Hodges-particularly given the 17 months that had elapsed since the arrest-do not create the sort of "definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been made" that might justify reversing the district court's factual finding that the officers knew of the warrant prior to making the stop. Edgeworth, 889 F.3d at 353 (internal quotation marks omitted).
And because the district court did not clearly err in determining that Hodges and Smiles knew of the active warrant, we see no error in the district court's conclusion that the officers had sufficient justification to stop Andrews's vehicle. The existence of an outstanding warrant, confirmed by computer records, would have authorized the police to arrest Andrews, and therefore provided the "minimal level of objective justification" necessary for an investigatory stop of Andrews's car. Matz, 769 F.3d at 522; see, e.g., United States v. Kent, 531 F.3d 642, 650 (8th Cir. 2008) (police had reasonable suspicion to support investigatory stop where defendant had outstanding arrest warrant). The officers' stop of Andrews's car was thus reasonable.
AFFIRMED
[*] Nichols does not challenge the subsequent search of the car that turned up the gun in plain view.