United States v. Sherwood

Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit·Decided March 10, 2025·No. 23-5122·Unpublished

Opinion

FILED

United States Court of Appeals UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS Tenth Circuit

FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT March 10, 2025

Christopher M. Wolpert

Clerk of Court

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff - Appellee,

v. No. 23-5122 (D.C. No. 4:20-CR-00307-JFH-1)

ADAM DOUGLAS SHERWOOD, (N.D. Okla.)

Defendant - Appellant.

ORDER AND JUDGMENT *

Before MATHESON, BACHARACH, and CARSON, Circuit Judges.

The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures. But police officers may, under Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), perform investigatory stops and frisk persons they reasonably suspect have committed a crime. In this case, the district court held that officers had sufficient facts to create reasonable suspicion for a Terry stop and search. Exercising jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we affirm.

*

This order and judgment is not binding precedent, except under the doctrines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. It may be cited, however, for its persuasive value consistent with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 and 10th Cir. R. 32.1.

I.

Police dispatch in Tulsa, Oklahoma, received multiple emergency calls from different callers reporting gunshots throughout the night of May 22, 2020, with one caller reporting shots fired from a white Chevrolet Silverado at 6415 S. Mingo Road in Tulsa. Thirty minutes after the first call, Tulsa Police Officer Andrew DeGeorge saw a white Chevrolet Silverado pull into the 6415 S. Mingo Road parking lot. Based on the emergency calls—and Officer DeGeorge’s disputed testimony that the truck’s license plate was not illuminated in compliance with Oklahoma law—he stopped the truck and approached the driver’s side window. The driver, Kenneth Rosenberg, did not roll down the window until commanded by Officer DeGeorge. Defendant Adam Sherwood sat in the passenger seat holding an open container of beer, and a woman, Chasidy St. Clair, sat in the back seat.

When asked, Rosenberg could not produce any identification, and both he and St. Clair admitted to being formerly convicted on felony gun charges. The occupants denied having any firearms or illegal drugs in the vehicle. However, Officer DeGeorge later testified that throughout the encounter the truck’s occupants acted “squirrelly” and “nervous to a higher degree” than those involved in a run-of-the-mill traffic stop. He also noticed what he thought looked like a gun holster in the center console and asked for consent to search the vehicle, which Rosenberg denied.

Officer DeGeorge informed Rosenberg that because of Defendant’s open container of beer, he had probable cause to search the vehicle. He then called for backup and waited to search the vehicle until other officers arrived. Officer

DeGeorge ordered Rosenberg out of the vehicle and saw an empty gun holster on his hip when he exited. He searched Rosenberg, then walked to the other side of the truck and ordered Defendant to exit. Defendant exited the truck, and Officer DeGeorge placed him in handcuffs for officer safety, but explicitly told Defendant he was not under arrest. He asked Defendant if he had anything he “should be aware of,” and Defendant responded that he had a pocketknife in his left front pocket. Officer DeGeorge patted down Defendant and felt something in his left front pocket. He reached into the pocket and removed a small ball of cash and a baggie containing a brown crystalline substance police later determined was methamphetamine. He found no pocketknife on Defendant.

While Officer DeGeorge searched the occupants, another officer searched the truck and found “a fully loaded Ruger LCR revolver,” a green zippered bag containing “digital scales and multiple plastic baggies,” and “a magazine and chamber loaded Lorin semiautomatic pistol” without a serial number. The officers then Mirandized Defendant and arrested him. They later obtained a search warrant for his phone and uncovered text messages establishing that Defendant had distributed drugs.

State prosecutors first charged Defendant with drug and weapons offenses in Tulsa County District Court, but after the Supreme Court issued McGirt v. Oklahoma, 591 U.S. 894 (2020), a federal grand jury charged Defendant with drug conspiracy, possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute, unlawful use of a communications facility, possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking

crime, and being a felon in possession of a firearm. At trial, Defendant moved to suppress evidence obtained from his person, the truck, and his phone, based on the theories that Officer DeGeorge lacked (1) reasonable suspicion to initiate the traffic stop, (2) probable cause to search the truck, (3) reasonable suspicion to frisk Defendant and also exceeded the scope of Terry when he reached into Defendant’s pocket, and (4) that the Oklahoma state judge lacked legal authority to issue the warrant to search Defendant’s phone.

The district court rejected Defendants arguments, and a jury convicted Defendant on the drug-conspiracy, possession-of-methamphetamine-with-intent-to- distribute, and unlawful-use-of-a-communications-facility charges. The district court, following the presentence report, issued a two-level enhancement according to U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1(b)(1) for Defendant’s firearm possession.

Defendant appealed, alleging the district court erred in denying his motions to suppress and abused its discretion in enhancing his sentence for unconvicted conduct.

II.

“When reviewing the denial of a motion to suppress, we view the evidence in the light most favorable to the government, accept the district court’s findings of fact unless they are clearly erroneous, and review de novo the ultimate question of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment.” United States v. Leon, 80 F.4th 1160, 1164 (10th Cir. 2023) (quoting United States v. Cortez, 965 F.3d 827, 833 (10th Cir. 2020)). “Factual findings ‘are clearly erroneous when they are unsupported in the record, or if after our review of the record we have the definite and firm conviction’” that the district court

made a mistake. Stone v. High Mountain Mining Co., LLC, 89 F.4th 1246, 1251 (10th Cir. 2024) (quoting Holdeman v. Devine, 572 F.3d 1190, 1192 (10th Cir. 2009)).

We apply the same two-part test as the district court when making Fourth Amendment reasonableness determinations. United States v. Madrid, 713 F.3d 1251, 1255–56 (10th Cir. 2013). An investigatory detention is reasonable if it is “justified at its inception” and the officer’s actions are “reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place.” Id. at 1256 (quoting Terry, 392 U.S. at 20). We evaluate reasonableness based on the “totality of the circumstances” to determine whether “the detaining officer ha[d] a ‘particularized and objective basis’ for suspecting legal wrongdoing.” United States v. Arvizu, 534 U.S. 266, 273 (10th Cir. 2002). The evidentiary burden required for a Terry stop is lower than that to establish probable cause; Terry requires only “articulable facts that criminal activity ‘may be afoot,’ even if the officer lacks probable cause.” United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 7 (1989) (first citing Terry, 392 U.S at 30, then citing United States v. Montoya de Hernandez, 473 U.S. 531, 541 (1985)). An officer may not rely on mere “inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or ‘hunch.’” Id. (citing Terry, 392 U.S. at 27).

III.

Defendant’s overarching theory is that the district court wrongly denied his motion to suppress evidence that officers obtained during the (a) initial traffic stop, (b) truck search, (c) Defendant’s pat-down, and (4) search of Defendant’s phone.

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