United States v. Darnell St. Clair

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• Decided: March 14, 2023
• Docket: 21-50286
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS MAR 14 2023 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, No. 21-50286

Plaintiff-Appellee, D.C. No. 2:20-cr-00526-SB-1

v. MEMORANDUM* DARNELL CORNELIUS ST. CLAIR, AKA Big Brownie,

Defendant-Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California Stanley Blumenfeld, Jr., District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted February 16, 2023 Pasadena, California

Before: O’SCANNLAIN, HURWITZ, and BADE, Circuit Judges.

Darnell St. Clair appeals the district court’s denial of his motion to suppress

the firearm that was discovered when an officer frisked him after he fled from the

lawful stop of a vehicle in which he was a passenger. We have jurisdiction under

28 U.S.C. § 1291, and we affirm.

1. St. Clair does not contest that there was reasonable suspicion to stop

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. the vehicle in which he was a passenger. Rather, he only argues that the officer

who detained him lacked reasonable suspicion to do so and to frisk him after he

fled from the vehicle.

When an officer performs a lawful traffic stop, he may reasonably “order a

passenger back into an automobile that he voluntarily exited.” United States v.

Williams, 419 F.3d 1029, 1034 (9th Cir. 2005). There is no dispute that the traffic

stop was lawful, St. Clair matched the description of one of the individuals who

had fled the vehicle after it crashed, and St. Clair was found in close temporal and

spatial proximity to the crash. The officers therefore had the authority to control

St. Clair’s movements to investigate the incident. The district court did not err in

concluding that there was reasonable suspicion to detain St. Clair.

2. We need not decide whether the frisk was justified by reasonable

suspicion that St. Clair was armed and dangerous because the firearm would have

inevitably been discovered during a lawful search incident to arrest. There was

probable cause to arrest St. Clair for violating California Penal Code § 148, which

prohibits a person from resisting, delaying, or obstructing a police officer when the

officer has reasonable suspicion to detain the person. See Velazquez v. City of

Long Beach, 793 F.3d 1010, 1018–19 (9th Cir. 2015) (citing Garcia v. Superior

Ct., 99 Cal. Rptr. 3d 488, 500 (Ct. App. 2009)) (listing elements of section 148).

St. Clair’s flight from the arresting officer in the parking lot “delayed the

2 performance of [the officer’s] duties and created probable cause to arrest for

violating [section] 148.” In re Andre P., 277 Cal. Rptr. 363, 364 (Ct. App. 1991)

(citing People v. Allen, 167 Cal. Rptr. 502 (Ct. App. 1980)) (finding “a garden

variety section 148 violation” on nearly identical facts). A command to stop is not

an element of a § 148 violation. See Allen, 167 Cal. Rptr. at 505–06 (rejecting

defendant’s argument “that the officer must advise the individual that he is under

arrest or that the officer wants to detain him”).

AFFIRMED.