United States v. Nomee

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• Decided: December 4, 2024
• Docket: 23-4262
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS DEC 4 2024 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, No. 23-4262 D.C. No. Plaintiff - Appellee, 1:23-cr-00029-SPW-1 v. MEMORANDUM* PAUL NOMEE III,

Defendant - Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Montana Susan P. Watters, District Judge, Presiding

Submitted November 20, 2024** Seattle, Washington

Before: McKEOWN, GOULD, and H.A. THOMAS, Circuit Judges.

Paul Nomee III appeals the district court’s denial of his motion to suppress a

concealed handgun as evidence. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, and

we review de novo the denial of a motion to suppress. United States v. Yang, 958

F.3d 851, 857 (9th Cir. 2020). We affirm.

The Supreme Court and Ninth Circuit scrutinize incidents of mistaken

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. identification and arrest by asking “whether the arresting officers had a good faith,

reasonable belief that the arrestee was the subject of the warrant.” Rivera v. County

of Los Angeles, 745 F.3d 384, 389 (9th Cir. 2014) (citing Hill v. California, 401

U.S. 797, 804 (1971)). According to this standard, “sufficient probability, not

certainty, is the touchstone of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment.” Hill,

401 U.S. at 804. Because Officer Anthony and the dispatcher took reasonable steps

to identify Paul Nomee as the subject of an arrest warrant, any error in mistaken

identity does not merit suppression of the recovered handgun.

Officer Anthony executed the mistaken arrest in good faith and under the

reasonable belief that Nomee was Paul Gary Nomee, whose name appeared on two

outstanding warrants. After pulling Nomee over, learning his name, and asking

about the damage to his car, Officer Anthony can be heard expressing a belief that

Nomee had outstanding warrants. Then, before making the arrest, he followed a

reasonable course of action by (1) asking dispatch to run a warrant check and (2)

retrieving Nomee’s driver’s license and reciting the birth date to make sure it

matched an outstanding warrant. Dispatch not only confirmed the match, “ten-four

that’d be him,” but also relayed the offenses listed on the arrest warrants.

Nomee argues that the dispatcher was unreasonable for not telling Officer

Anthony that the outstanding warrants had two different birth dates and were for a

Paul Gary Nomee. But when Officer Anthony gave the dispatcher a birth date

2 23-4262 matching one of the warrants, the dispatcher had good reason to think that the

different birth date on the other warrant was erroneous—not that Officer Anthony

had stopped the wrong Paul Nomee. Because “sufficient probability, not certainty,

is the touchstone of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment,” this error did

not violate Nomee’s Fourth Amendment rights. Hill, 401 U.S. at 804.

AFFIRMED.

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