Opinion
No. 11-10368 D.C. No. 3:10-cr-00778-RS-1
06-15-2012
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. JODY DEMAR FONTENOT, Defendant - Appellant.
NOT FOR PUBLICATION
MEMORANDUM
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by 9th Cir. R. 36-3.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of California
Richard Seeborg, District Judge, Presiding
Submitted June 13, 2012
The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).
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San Francisco, California
Before: GOULD, TALLMAN, and BEA, Circuit Judges.
Jody Fontenot appeals the district court's denial of his motion for suppression of evidence and his subsequent conviction, following a bench trial, for having violated 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), which prohibits felons' possession of firearms. The parties are familiar with the facts underlying the appeal and thus we do not include them save as necessary. We affirm.
A police officer may detain an individual to conduct an investigatory frisk consistent with the Fourth Amendment if the officer has "a reasonable articulable suspicion that [the individual] pose[s] a threat to his safety or the safety of others . . . ." United States v. Terry-Crespo, 356 F.3d 1170, 1173 (9th Cir. 2004) (citing United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 7 (1989)); see also Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968). Here, the police had a reasonable articulable suspicion that Fontenot posed a threat to the safety of others. The police had received a high priority 9-1-1 dispatch that, in the parking lot of a liquor store on the corner of Geneva Avenue and Santos Street in San Francisco, there was a group of "guys" in front of the store and one of them was pulling out a gun. On arrival four minutes after the 9-1-1 call was made, the police saw only one group in the parking lot, a group of three males, one of whom was Fontenot. This met the requirement of "'some minimal level of objective justification' for making the stop." United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 7 (1989) (quoting INS v. Delgado, 466 U.S. 210, 217 (1984)). Further, as discussed by the district court in its opinion below, the 9-1-1 dispatch and the police had received an emergency call from a cell phone with the phone number identified; this "provided the police with sufficient indicia of reliability prior to the Terry stop to justify reliance on [the call.]" Terry-Crespo, 356 F.3d at 1174 (referring to Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1), because it removed a good deal of the anonymity of the call.
AFFIRMED.