United States v. Esquivel-Rios

39 F. Supp. 3d 1175, 2014 WL 3955379, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 111716
CourtDistrict Court, D. Kansas
DecidedAugust 12, 2014
DocketCase No. 10-40060-01-JAR
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 39 F. Supp. 3d 1175 (United States v. Esquivel-Rios) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Kansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Esquivel-Rios, 39 F. Supp. 3d 1175, 2014 WL 3955379, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 111716 (D. Kan. 2014).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

JULIE A. ROBINSON, District Judge.

Defendant Antonio Esquivel-Rios was convicted by a jury on one count of possessing with the intent to distribute methamphetamine, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § -841(a)(1). By order of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, these proceedings were remanded to this Court to reconsider whether the traffic stop of Defendant’s vehicle violated the Fourth Amendment. Defendant renewed his Motion to Suppress to include all post-arrest statements (Doc. 152). The Court conducted an evi-dentiary hearing on March 6, 2014, and the parties submitted supplemental briefing [1177]*1177(Docs. 146, 146, 159, 162). The Court has carefully considered the evidence presented as well as the argument and submissions of counsel. For the reasons explained in detail below, the Court denies Defendant’s Motion to Suppress.

I. Procedural and Factual History

The facts and procedural history of this case are undisputed and the Court assumes the reader is familiar with the Tenth Circuit opinion that precipitates the matters before the Court, United States v. Esquivel-Rios.1 The Court will not restate the pretrial facts in detail, but will provide excerpts from the opinion as needed to frame its discussion on remand.

On March 10, 2011, Defendant was indicted on one count of possession with the intent to distribute approximately 1.25 pounds of a mixture containing methamphetamine, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1). This charge stemmed from a search of Defendant’s vehicle during a car stop on Interstate 70 in Kansas, on May II, 2010, when Kansas Highway Patrol Trooper Andrew Dean stopped his vehicle and found 448 grams of methamphetamine hidden in the dash during a subsequent search. Defendant moved to suppress this evidence, claiming that Trooper Dean stopped his vehicle in violation of the Fourth Amendment. After conducting an evidentiary hearing, this Court denied Defendant’s motion, finding the stop was justified at its inception because Defendant’s vehicle was bearing a Colorado temporary tag that a Kansas Highway Patrol dispatcher reported was not on record and not returning. A jury convicted Defendant on the charged offense. On May 15, 2012, this Court sentenced Defendant to serve 188 months’ custody.

Defendant directly appealed this Court’s denial of his Motion to Suppress to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, claiming the traffic stop was unlawful in the first instance because Trooper Dean _ did not have reasonable suspicion to stop his vehicle.2 The Circuit devoted much discussion to a “garbage in, garbage out” analysis with respect to the computer database, focusing on the “no return” response from the queried database and the dispatcher’s comment prior to the stop that “Colorado temp tags usually don’t return.”3 The court found this “piece of evidence ... suggest[ed]that the database on which the officer relied to justify his stop might bear a real problem—a problem that might mean a ‘no return’ doesn’t suggest criminal conduct but only some bureaucratic snafu.” 4 The court noted that it had reserved judgment on this issue in United States v. Cortez-Galaviz,5 where the court found that an indication of insurance information “not found” was sufficient grounds to stop an individual later found to be engaged in illegal conduct.6 As the court explained, “[t]he defendant in that case asserted the database there was unreliable but produced no evidence suggesting so much.”7 In rejecting defendant’s motion to suppress, the Cortez-Galaviz court placed the onus of establishing the database in ques[1178]*1178tion is unreliable on the defendant.8 Turning to the facts in this case, the court found that it knew nothing about the database on which this case hinges, and further, that this Court “failed to engage with evidence seeming to call the database into question.”9 Accordingly, the court directed this Court “to reconsider, informed now by a full appreciation for all the circumstances surrounding the ‘no return’ report •and their consequences for the database’s reliability,” whether Trooper Dean’s traffic stop of Defendant’s minivan violated the Fourth Amendment.10

The Circuit also directed that if this Court on remand finds reasonable suspicion absent and the Fourth Amendment violated, it should proceed to the question whether exclusion is an appropriate remedy:

If, at the end of the day, the district court on remand finds reasonable suspicion absent and the Fourth Amendment violated, it should proceed to the question (raised by the government below but also as yet unaddressed by the district court) whether exclusion is an appropriate remedy, following the mode of analysis dictated by the Supreme Court in Davis v. United States, — U.S. -—•, 131 S.Ct. 2419, 180 L.Ed.2d 285 (2011) and Herring v. United States, 555 U.S. 135, 129 S.Ct. 695, 172 L.Ed.2d 496 (2009). Even if the district court on remand doesn’t find a Fourth Amendment violation, we believe it would still be prudent for that court to consider the remedial question. Doing so in this and other similarly close eases can help avoid the potential need for (further) remands.11

Evidence at Post-Remand Hearing

Sydney Profancik, a Customer Service Coordinator II with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (“CBI”) testified that the CBI is responsible for maintaining the interface between the National Crime Information Center (“NCIC”) and the Colorado Crime Information Center (“CCIC”), making Colorado criminal justice records available to all federal and state law enforcement agencies through request queries to the- CCIC.12 In 2012, the CBI and the CDMV loaded the CCIC database with temporary tags issued in December 2011 or later.13 Profancik stated that prior to 2012, Colorado temporary tags were not entered into the CBI’s computer system, even though they were in the CDOR system.14 She explained that in 2010, a Kansas dispatcher would not have had access to the CDOR’s records by the usual computer system; rather, in order to access the CDOR’s system, a Kansas dispatcher “would have to have been either through a phone call or through an administrative message to the Department of Revenue.”15 She stated that in 2010, no database existed that could provide law enforcement agencies with responses to queries on Colorado vehicles.16 She testified that when accessing the CBI’s system in 2010, there were no warnings that would have alerted a Kansas dispatcher that the CDOR records regarding temporary tags were not in the CBI or NCIC system; instead, “[i]t [1179]*1179would just state that there was no record.” 17 The CCIC system would not have responded to a temporary tag query with the message “no return.”18

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Related

Ernesto Villarreal, Jr v. State
Court of Appeals of Texas, 2020
United States v. Esquivel-Rios
786 F.3d 1299 (Tenth Circuit, 2015)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
39 F. Supp. 3d 1175, 2014 WL 3955379, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 111716, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-esquivel-rios-ksd-2014.