Appellate Case: 23-4154 Document: 78-1 Date Filed: 11/26/2024 Page: 1 FILED United States Court of Appeals Tenth Circuit PUBLISH November 26, 2024 UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS Christopher M. Wolpert FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT Clerk of Court _________________________________
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v. No. 23-4154
TAYLOR NELSON PINDER,
Defendant - Appellant. _________________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Utah (D.C. No. 2:21-CR-00218-HCN-1) _________________________________
Patricia Geary Glenn, Park City, Utah, for Defendant-Appellant.
Nathan H. Jack, Assistant United States Attorney (Trina A. Higgins, United States Attorney, with him on the brief), Salt Lake City, Utah, for Plaintiff-Appellee. _________________________________
Before HARTZ, EBEL, and ROSSMAN, Circuit Judges. _________________________________
ROSSMAN, Circuit Judge. _________________________________
A police officer pulled over appellant Taylor Pinder for speeding.
Mr. Pinder identified himself by giving the officer someone else’s driver’s
license. Mr. Pinder did not resemble the photo on the identification. The Appellate Case: 23-4154 Document: 78-1 Date Filed: 11/26/2024 Page: 2
officer ultimately arrested Mr. Pinder for the Utah misdemeanor offense of
providing someone else’s identifying information to a peace officer with
intent to deceive the peace officer. The officer then searched the car incident
to arrest and discovered contraband, including methamphetamine. Federal
charges followed, and Mr. Pinder moved to suppress the evidence seized
during the search of the car, arguing it violated the Fourth Amendment.
The district court denied the motion. Mr. Pinder then agreed to plead guilty
to one count of possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute,
see 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1), while reserving his right to appeal the suppression
ruling. The district court sentenced Mr. Pinder to 120 months’
imprisonment and five years’ supervised release. This appeal timely
followed.
Exercising jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we agree with the
district court that Mr. Pinder has failed to show a Fourth Amendment
violation. We therefore affirm.
I
When a defendant appeals the denial of a motion to suppress, this
court reviews the district court’s factual findings for clear error and views
the evidence in the light most favorable to the government, but we
determine the reasonableness of the search de novo. See United States v.
Tueller, 349 F.3d 1239, 1242 (10th Cir. 2003). In this appeal, there are no
2 Appellate Case: 23-4154 Document: 78-1 Date Filed: 11/26/2024 Page: 3
factual or evidentiary disputes. The only question is whether the district
court correctly decided the search was reasonable.
II
A
About midnight on April 30, 2021, Deputy Colton Brimhall of the
Wasatch County (Utah) Sheriff’s Office observed a speeding car and pulled
it over. A man (later identified as Mr. Pinder) was driving the car, and a
woman (later identified as Sierra Hatch, Mr. Pinder’s girlfriend) was in the
passenger seat. 1
Deputy Brimhall approached the car and asked Mr. Pinder for his
license. Mr. Pinder produced a license bearing the name “Luke Palmer.”
Aplt. App. vol. I at 72. In Deputy Brimhall’s judgment, the picture on the
license did not look like the person sitting in the driver’s seat of the car he
had just pulled over. The deputy therefore used the computer in his patrol
vehicle to look up Luke Palmer’s Social Security number. He then returned
to the car and asked Mr. Pinder for the last four digits of that number. Mr.
Pinder could not answer correctly.
1 Mr. Pinder does not challenge the lawfulness of the traffic stop. Aplt.
Opening Br. at 7. There is also no dispute the car belonged to Ms. Hatch’s mother, and Mr. Pinder had permission to drive it. 3 Appellate Case: 23-4154 Document: 78-1 Date Filed: 11/26/2024 Page: 4
Deputy Brimhall ordered Mr. Pinder out of the car, handcuffed him,
walked him to the front of his police truck, told him he was being detained
for using someone else’s ID, and asked him to provide his real name. Before
giving his real name, Mr. Pinder denied having his true ID on him and said,
“I hope you don’t take me to jail, sir, like, that’s my friend’s ID, like, I’m on
probation.” Ex. 2 at 07:40 to 07:46. 2 After some discussion about his
probation status—he was on federal supervised release—Mr. Pinder
volunteered, “The only reason my friend let me borrow that [license] is
because, you know, like, usually, like, if I get hassled and you guys run my
name, I get—it’s not cool. Like, you guys, you automatically always go to
jail, you know, and like, I never get treated right.” Ex. 2 at 08:31 to 08:46. 3
Deputy Brimhall and Mr. Pinder further discussed Mr. Pinder’s situation
and Mr. Pinder then gave what turned out to be his real name and date of
birth, as confirmed by Deputy Brimhall’s computer.
By this point, Deputy Brimhall concluded Mr. Pinder had committed
the class A misdemeanor of claiming to a police officer to be a different
2 Exhibit 2 is the video from Deputy Brimhall’s bodycam. The video
does not show a timecode on the screen, such as a timecode embedded by the bodycam itself. We therefore cite to the elapsed time from 00:00, as shown in the video player.
3 Mr. Pinder’s claim about the license belonging to a friend turned out
to be false, although Deputy Brimhall did not learn that until after the events recounted here. 4 Appellate Case: 23-4154 Document: 78-1 Date Filed: 11/26/2024 Page: 5
person who actually exists. See Utah Code Ann. § 76-8-507(2)(b), (3)(b).
Utah law gives police officers authority to arrest, without a warrant, any
person whom the officer reasonably believes to have committed a class A
misdemeanor. See Utah Code Ann. § 77-7-2(2). After confirming the county
jail would take Mr. Pinder, 4 Deputy Brimhall formally arrested him. He
then searched Mr. Pinder incident to arrest (including searching his wallet,
which did not contain a driver’s license) and sat him in the back of the patrol
vehicle. 5
Deputy Brimhall returned to the car Mr. Pinder had been driving. He
informed Ms. Hatch that she would need to exit the vehicle while he
performed a search. Ms. Hatch complied. Deputy Brimhall’s search of the
passenger compartment yielded, among other things, a handgun and
methamphetamine. Deputy Brimhall then arrested Ms. Hatch, on whose
person he found Mr. Pinder’s real driver’s license.
B
The government indicted Mr. Pinder on charges related to the
methamphetamine and the handgun. Mr. Pinder moved to suppress the
evidence gathered from the car.
4 The jail was not automatically taking those accused of nonviolent
misdemeanors, due to Covid protocols.
5 Mr. Pinder does not challenge the lawfulness of his arrest.
5 Appellate Case: 23-4154 Document: 78-1 Date Filed: 11/26/2024 Page: 6
After an evidentiary hearing and oral argument, the district court
denied Mr. Pinder’s motion. The district court concluded Deputy Brimhall
appropriately searched the car under Arizona v. Gant, which authorizes
vehicular searches incident to arrest “when it is ‘reasonable to believe
evidence relevant to the crime of arrest might be found in the vehicle,’” 556
U.S. 332, 343 (2009) (quoting Thornton v. United States, 541 U.S. 615, 632
(2004) (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment)). In the district court’s view, Mr.
Pinder’s real driver’s license was relevant to the crime of arrest, and it was
reasonable to believe the license would be found in the car, thus satisfying
Gant. The district court further stated that searching the car “was likely
[also] justified in light of Mr. Pinder’s conditions of [supervised release].”
Aplt. App. vol. II at 182 n.3. The court denied the suppression motion,
leading to Mr. Pinder’s conditional guilty plea and this appeal.
III
Mr. Pinder claims Deputy Brimhall’s search of the car was not a
lawful search incident to arrest. Mr. Pinder emphasizes Deputy Brimhall
already had verified his true identity by that time, so his real driver’s
license—an item the parties agree might sometimes be the legitimate object
of a search—was no longer relevant and, therefore, could not justify the
search.
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We address this argument by beginning with an overview of the
search-incident-to-arrest doctrine as applied to the vehicle an arrestee
occupies just before the arrest. We then explain why, in light of the
arguments presented, we find unavailing Mr. Pinder’s claim that verifying
an arrestee’s true identity eliminates the justification for a search in these
circumstances.
In New York v. Belton, the Supreme Court held “that when a
policeman has made a lawful custodial arrest of the occupant of an
automobile, he may, as a contemporaneous incident of that arrest, search
the passenger compartment of that automobile,” 453 U.S. 454, 460 (1981)
(footnote omitted). This court, along with most others, interpreted Belton to
mean that such a search of an automobile is valid “without regard to the
fact that the search occurred after [the defendant] had been restrained, and
without regard to the nature of the offense for which he was arrested.”
United States v. Humphrey, 208 F.3d 1190, 1202 (10th Cir. 2000) (citation
omitted).
In Gant, the Supreme Court held that a broad interpretation of Belton
(like this court’s interpretation in Humphrey) was incorrect. See 556 U.S.
at 342–43. Rather, in the automobile context, there are only two permissible
searches incident to the arrest of a recent occupant: (1) “when the arrestee
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is unsecured and within reaching distance of the passenger compartment
at the time of the search”; and (2) “when it is reasonable to believe evidence
relevant to the crime of arrest might be found in the vehicle.” Id. at 343
(internal quotation marks omitted).
This appeal concerns only the second type of search discussed in
Gant—a search of the vehicle for evidence relevant to the crime of arrest.
On that front, the Court explained
In many cases, as when a recent occupant is arrested for a traffic violation, there will be no reasonable basis to believe the vehicle contains relevant evidence. But in others, . . . the offense of arrest will supply a basis for searching the passenger compartment of an arrestee’s vehicle and any containers therein.
Id. at 343–44 (citations omitted).
The district court concluded a motorist’s real driver’s license would be
evidence relevant to the offense of arrest—attempting to deceive a peace
officer with someone else’s identifying information. Mr. Pinder does not
argue his real driver’s license could never be relevant to this offense. He
instead claims the Supreme Court has already decided a person’s real
license is irrelevant to this offense once the police have verified the
motorist’s true identity. As we explain, Mr. Pinder reads too much into the
relevant Supreme Court opinion.
8 Appellate Case: 23-4154 Document: 78-1 Date Filed: 11/26/2024 Page: 9
Mr. Pinder’s argument relies on how Gant is discussed in United
States v. Davis, 598 F.3d 1259 (11th Cir. 2010), and in the Supreme Court
decision affirming it, Davis v. United States, 564 U.S. 229 (2011). In Davis,
a police officer pulled over a car and encountered the defendant in the
passenger seat. 598 F.3d at 1261. The defendant told the officer his name
was Ernest Harris, but bystanders gave the officer the man’s true name. Id.
A records check supported the bystanders’ claim, so the officer arrested the
defendant “for giving a false name and placed him, handcuffed, in the back
of his patrol car.” Id. Soon after, the officer arrested the other occupant of
the car (the driver), searched the car incident to arrest, and found a
handgun in a jacket belonging to the defendant. Id.
A grand jury indicted the defendant on a gun charge. Id. At the time
of that prosecution, the Gant case was pending before the Supreme Court,
but the Eleventh Circuit’s broad interpretation of Belton (similar to this
circuit’s) remained the governing law. Because of Gant’s potential outcome,
the defendant moved to suppress the gun, arguing the Eleventh Circuit’s
interpretation of Belton was incorrect. Id. at 1261–62. The district court
denied that motion and the defendant was convicted. Id. at 1262.
The defendant appealed. During that appeal, the Supreme Court
decided Gant and abrogated the Eleventh Circuit’s broad interpretation of
Belton. Id. at 1262. The Eleventh Circuit summarized the state of the case:
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Davis now relies on Gant to argue that the search after his arrest violated the Fourth Amendment and, therefore, that the gun recovered from his jacket should have been suppressed. The government responds that we should not retroactively apply the exclusionary rule to searches conducted in good-faith reliance on our precedent.
Id. at 1262. The question before the Eleventh Circuit was whether to uphold
the search because, when conducted, it was lawful under that court’s
precedent.
Before answering that question, however, the Eleventh Circuit
addressed an argument apparently no party had made, namely, whether
the search could satisfy Gant’s relevant-to-the-crime-of-arrest exception.
On that issue, the court opined,
There can be no serious dispute that the search here violated Davis’s Fourth Amendment rights as defined in Gant. . . . Davis was arrested for ‘an offense for which police could not expect to find evidence in the passenger compartment,’ because [the arresting officer] had already verified Davis’s identity when he arrested him for giving a false name.
Id. at 1263 (quoting Gant, 556 U.S. at 344) (citation omitted). The Eleventh
Circuit then went on to endorse the government’s argument that Gant
should not invalidate searches conducted in good-faith reliance on pre-Gant
circuit precedent. Id. at 1264. The court thus upheld the defendant’s
conviction.
The defendant petitioned for certiorari on a single question: “Whether
the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies to a search
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authorized by precedent at the time of the search that is subsequently ruled
unconstitutional.” Pet’n for Writ of Certiorari, Davis, 564 U.S. 229 (No. 09-
11328), 2010 WL 2937720, at *i (internal quotation marks omitted). The
Supreme Court granted certiorari without modifying the question
presented, see Davis v. United States, 562 U.S. 1002 (2010), and the Court
ultimately upheld the Eleventh Circuit’s application of the good-faith
exception, see Davis, 564 U.S. at 232.
As part of its analysis of the good-faith question, the Supreme Court
included a comment that forms the linchpin of Mr. Pinder’s argument:
“Although the search turned out to be unconstitutional under Gant, all
agree that the officers’ conduct was in strict compliance with then-binding
Circuit law and was not culpable in any way.” Davis, 564 U.S. at 239–40.
Mr. Pinder says the first half of this sentence amounts to a holding that: (a)
the search was indeed unconstitutional; and (b) it was unconstitutional for
the reasons explained by the Eleventh Circuit, i.e., the arresting officer “had
already verified Davis’s identity when he arrested him for giving a false
name,” Davis, 598 F.3d at 1263.
We are not persuaded. In light of how the case was presented to the
Supreme Court, we understand its statement, “the search turned out to be
unconstitutional under Gant,” Davis, 564 U.S. at 239, as merely descriptive
of the procedural history, not as a holding, or even dictum. Thus, Davis did
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not settle—or even attempt to address—whether a person’s real ID is
relevant to the crime of giving a false ID to a police officer after the police
officer has verified the person’s identity.
C
Although the Supreme Court’s Davis decision did not endorse the
Eleventh Circuit’s conclusion that the search had been unconstitutional, the
Eleventh Circuit may still be correct on the merits. In other words, it may
still be true that a person’s real ID is no longer relevant to the crime of
giving a false ID to a police officer after the police have verified the person’s
true identity through other means. Mr. Pinder argues to this effect as well.
We disagree. Starting from the uncontested premise that Mr. Pinder’s
real driver’s license was relevant to the crime of arrest before Deputy
Brimhall verified Mr. Pinder’s identity, we do not see how that verification
transformed the real driver’s license from relevant to irrelevant. Perhaps
the real driver’s license then became cumulative evidence but calling it
“cumulative” presupposes relevance. See Fed. R. Evid. 403 (establishing
“[t]he court may exclude relevant evidence if,” among other reasons, it is
“needlessly . . . cumulative”); Utah R. Evid. 403 (same). 6 Thus, Mr. Pinder’s
6 Gant did not explain whether “relevant to the crime of arrest,” 556
U.S. at 343 (internal quotation marks omitted), refers to relevance as typically defined in federal and state rules of evidence, or something else. The parties’ arguments presuppose relevance in the rules-of-evidence 12 Appellate Case: 23-4154 Document: 78-1 Date Filed: 11/26/2024 Page: 13
real driver’s license remained relevant even though Deputy Brimhall
verified Mr. Pinder’s identity before searching the car. 7
D
Finally, Mr. Pinder asserts we should not take Gant at face value
when it says “the offense of arrest [may] supply a basis for searching the
passenger compartment of an arrestee’s vehicle and any containers
therein,” 556 U.S. at 344. He urges us instead to adopt the Colorado
Supreme Court’s interpretation of Gant in People v. Chamberlain, 229 P.3d
1054 (Colo. 2010). There, the court characterized a search justified solely by
the offense of arrest as one with no more than a “mere possibility,” id. at
1057, that evidence “might conceivably be found in the arrestee’s vehicle,”
sense. We accept the parties’ interpretation of Gant for purposes of this disposition.
7 In the same context, Mr. Pinder argues “there was no reason to believe his license would be found in the vehicle.” Aplt. Opening Br. at 24. Later in his brief, he asserts he “gave officers a driver’s license belonging to another person which makes it less [rather than more] likely to believe his own driver’s license would be found in the vehicle.” Aplt. Opening Br. at 29 (brackets in original). Mr. Pinder does not elaborate on these assertions. See Eizember v. Trammell, 803 F.3d 1129, 1141 (10th Cir. 2015) (stating that “stray sentences like these are insufficient to present an argument”).
In any event, on this record, we are not persuaded it was unreasonable to suspect Mr. Pinder’s real license would be found in the car. Mr. Pinder told Deputy Brimhall he was carrying Luke Palmer’s license specifically in the event he needed to produce an ID to a police officer. This reasonably suggests Mr. Pinder possessed a license of his own that he used for other purposes. 13 Appellate Case: 23-4154 Document: 78-1 Date Filed: 11/26/2024 Page: 14
Id. at 1056. Gant could not have meant to authorize such searches because,
in the court’s view, it would resurrect the broad reading of Belton that Gant
disapproved. Id. at 1056–57. Thus, the court held there must be “[s]ome
reasonable expectation beyond a mere possibility, whether arising solely
from the nature of the crime or from the particular circumstances
surrounding the arrest.” Id. at 1057.
Mr. Pinder does not tell us where he raised this argument in the
district court. Cf. 10th Cir. R. 28.1(A) (“For each issue raised on appeal, all
briefs must cite the precise references in the record where the issue was
raised and ruled on.”). Although we have no duty to search the record
ourselves, see United States v. Griffith, 928 F.3d 855, 871 (10th Cir. 2019),
we have reviewed the parties’ district-court briefing regarding the motion
to suppress. We have also reviewed the transcripts of the evidentiary
hearing and oral argument. We cannot find where Mr. Pinder asserted
anything like Chamberlain’s interpretation of Gant. He accordingly
forfeited the issue in the district court. See United States v. Salti, 59 F.4th
1050, 1059 (10th Cir. 2023) (holding an argument had been “forfeited by
Defendant because it was not raised in district court”), cert. denied, 144 S.
Ct. 153 (2023). He also does not argue for plain-error review on appeal. We
therefore deem the issue waived, and we do not reach it. See United States
v. Leffler, 942 F.3d 1192, 1196 (10th Cir. 2019) (“When an appellant fails to
14 Appellate Case: 23-4154 Document: 78-1 Date Filed: 11/26/2024 Page: 15
preserve an issue and also fails to make a plain-error argument on appeal,
we ordinarily deem the issue waived . . . and decline to review the issue at
all—for plain error or otherwise.”).
IV
The district court did not err in its Fourth Amendment analysis. 8 We
therefore AFFIRM the district court’s denial of Mr. Pinder’s suppression
motion. 9
8 Given this disposition, we do not reach the district court’s alternative
conclusion based on Mr. Pinder’s supervised-release status. We also do not reach the government’s argument, asserted for the first time on appeal, that Deputy Brimhall’s search should be upheld because he was acting in good faith.
9 We grant Mr. Pinder’s motion to supplement the record.