Archive | reasonable suspicion

In United States v. Walker (No. 18-3729), __ F.3d __, 2020 WL 3966958 (2d Cir. July 14, 2020), the Second Circuit, in a decision by Judge Pooler (joined by Judges Calabresi and Carney), reversed the district court’s denial of Jaquan Walker’s suppression motion, holding that the police lacked reasonable suspicion to stop Walker based on his purported match to a photograph because the police lacked “little meaningful identifying information” besides the race of the suspect, and even the additional details of “medium-to-dark skin tone, glasses, facial hair, and long hair,” did not suffice to constitute specific, articulable facts upon which to base the stop. In addition, the court held that the search of Walker, which yielded drugs and incriminating statements, was insufficiently attenuated from the unconstitutional stop, despite the subsequent police discovery of an unrelated arrest warrant for Walker. Given that the justification for the stop fell “woefully short …

In today’s United States v. Compton, the Second Circuit (Walker, Raggi, Hall, C.JJ.) held a Border Patrol agent had reasonable suspicion to stop Compton and his brother, found to be transporting 145 pounds of marijuana, based on “(1) the brothers’ avoidance of [a Border Patrol] checkpoint, (2) the checkpoint’s proximity to the [Canadian] border, and (3) the brothers’ peculiar attempt to conceal the avoidance.”  The “peculiar attempt” was the brothers’ “abruptly slow[ing] down” when their SUV came within sight of the checkpoint and then “veer[ing] into the U‐shaped driveway of [a] vegetable stand” where they each bought “a pint of peppers.”

“Because [the agent] had already determined that the SUV had made the abrupt turn into the vegetable stand in order to avoid the checkpoint, [he] could reasonably interpret the pepper purchase to be an attempt to conceal that avoidance.  He could reasonably discount the probability of an alternate …