United States v. Marrico Spears

636 F. App'x 893
Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit·Decided January 21, 2016·No. 14-11267·Unpublished·Cited by 18 cases

Opinions

FORTUNATO P. BENAVIDES, Circuit Judge: *

Defendant-Appellant Marrico Edward Spears (“Spears”) appeals his jury trial [895] conviction and sentence for drug and firearm offenses. Law enforcement officers stopped Spears as he was driving from a house under surveillance for drug activity and, after detaining him for almost forty minutes while attempting to obtain a drug-sniffing dog, searched his vehicle. Spears appeals, inter alia, the district court’s denial of his motion to exclude evidence obtained as a result of the search and seizure, contending the search and seizure violated the Fourth Amendment. For the reasons below, we REVERSE the district court’s denial of Spears’s motion to exclude evidence, and we VACATE his conviction and sentence.

I. BACKGROUND

A. The Drug Investigation

On the day of the search and seizure, Spears visited a house located on New York Avenue in Fort Worth, Texas (the “New York House”) that law enforcement officers were monitoring for drug activity. Horacio Loera (“Loera”), a suspected drug dealer, lived at the New York House. An officer testified that a drug investigation into Loera began in February 2013, when officers “seized approximately 250 pounds of marijuana from a business” -owned by Loera. Through investigation, officers identified multiple people suspected to be Loera’s customers. Once in May 2013 and once in October 2013, confidential informants purchased drugs from people associated with Loera. Also in May 2013, an undercover officer purchased drugs from a person who had very recently visited the New York House.

On January 15, 2014, law enforcement officers asked a confidential informant to order cocaine from a different suspected drug dealer. When the confidential informant placed the order, the suspected drug dealer said he would contact his source. The officers then began conducting surveillance on the suspected drug dealer. The officers observed the suspected drug dealer travel to the New York House and knock on the door, but nobody answered the door. He then told the confidential informant, “I’m not able to get the kilo [of cocaine]. I’m trying — I’ve tried to get a hold of my guy.. I can’t get a hold of him. I went by his house. I can’t get anybody to answer.” An officer testified that based on this, the officers concluded that the suspected drug dealer had tried to get cocaine from the New York House.

The following morning around 9:00 a.m., on January 16, 2014, officers set up surveillance at the New York House. An officer testified that the officers “decided instead of trying to set up the buy again that [they] would move up and go directly to the source of the cocaine.” The officer also answered affirmatively when asked whether the officers “anticipate^ that [the prior day’s] transaction might actually be consummated” that day. ' The record does not contain any further explanation as to why the officers believed a drug transaction might occur that day specifically-

After approximately thirty minutes of surveillance, Loera arrived at the New York House driving a silver sport utility vehicle. Shortly thereafter, Spears arrived at the New York House driving a white truck with an Oklahoma license plate. A third, blue car either arrived near this same time or was already parked in the driveway when surveillance began. The driveway extended all the way down the side of the house, behind the house, [896] and into the backyard. Spears backed his truck into the driveway towards the back of the house — in between the house and the fence — in a manner that completely obstructed the driver’s side and the passenger’s side of the truck from the view of the officers on the street. Had the officers been located directly in front of the driveway, they would have been able to see Spears’s truck better, but from their vantage point they could not see whether Spears exited his truck, entered or exited the house, or talked to Loera. At this time, Spears was unknown to the officers, and he had not previously been identified as a suspect connected with drug activity, the New York House, or Loera.

Spears drove away from the New York House ten to twenty minutes after he arrived, and an officer followed him. Five to ten minutes after Spears left, a red car with Louisiana license plates arrived at the New York House. Officers observed two men get out of the red car, meet with Loera in the front yard, go to the back of the house without carrying anything, return to the car cariying a duffle bag, and put the duffle bag in the trunk of the car. The two men left after approximately five minutes, and officers followed them. Shortly thereafter, Loera left in the sport utility vehicle, and officers followed him as well.

B. The Stop, Search, and Seizure

An officer pulled Spears over after another officer witnessed him commit a traffic violation. As the officer approached Spears’s truck, he observed Spears rummaging around the center console of the truck. The officer asked Spears for his identification and insurance, which he provided, and a few other questions. After speaking with Spears for approximately one minute, the officer returned to his patrol car. After approximately four and half minutes in the patrol car, the officer exited the patrol car and began speaking with Spears again. The officer testified that while he was questioning Spears, Spears appeared nervous, was not giving straight answers, was evasive in responding to questions, and was very non-compliant. When the officer asked Spears where he was coming from, Spears said he was coming from visiting a relative, which the officer believed was an untrue statement. When asked, Spears said he did not have any weapons in the truck, but he did not consent to a search of the truck. The officer then instructed Spears to step outside the truck in order to, in part, pat him down to ensure he did not have any weapons on him, but he refused. When a second officer arrived, they again asked Spears to step outside the truck. Again Spears initially refused, but he complied approximately one minute after being asked. After the pat down, the officers instructed Spears to sit in the back of the patrol car to wait for a drug-sniffing dog to arrive. He complied after protesting for approximately two minutes. When Spears first entered the back of the patrol car, approximately sixteen and a half minutes had elapsed since he was first pulled over.

At some point, officers with both the Fort Worth Police Department and the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (the “DEA”), which were both involved in the drug investigation, had begun trying get a drug-sniffing dog to the traffic stop. DEA officers in particular made multiple phone calls to different agencies, but no drug-sniffing dogs were available. An officer testified that one of the reasons they wanted to use a dog was to get probable cause to search Spears’s vehicle. While still unable to locate a dog, the officers detaining Spears were informed by other officers that they had found a large, vacuum-sealed bag of money in Loera’s sport utility vehicle after stopping Loera. [897] Upon receiving this information, the officers collectively decided there was probable cause to search Spears’s truck, and they proceeded to do so. Almost forty minutes had elapsed from the time Spears was initially stopped until the time the search began.

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United States v. Marrico Spears, 636 F. App'x 893 (5th Cir. 2016).

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