United States v. Torres

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• Decided: February 20, 2026
• Docket: 25-3281
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FEB 20 2026 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, No. 25-3281 D.C. No. Plaintiff - Appellee, 3:24-cr-01006-RBM-1 v. MEMORANDUM* ANTHONY TORRES,

Defendant - Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of California Ruth Bermudez Montenegro, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted February 10, 2026 Pasadena, California

Before: SCHROEDER, WARDLAW, and BADE, Circuit Judges.

Anthony Torres appeals the denials of his motions to suppress evidence and

to dismiss the indictment. He also argues that the district court erred by denying

his request for an evidentiary hearing. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C.

§ 1291, and we affirm.

1. The district court properly denied Torres’s motion to suppress

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. evidence obtained during an investigatory stop by San Diego Police Department

officers. On the unique facts presented here, the initial stop was supported by

reasonable suspicion. See Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21 (1968) (holding that to

conduct an investigatory stop, “the police officer must be able to point to specific

and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those

facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion”). Police may stop a vehicle if they have

probable cause to believe that the motorist has committed a civil traffic violation.

Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 819 (1996). We have held that Whren

extends to parking violations, and therefore allows an officer to seize the occupants

of an illegally parked vehicle to write a parking ticket. United States v. Choudhry,

461 F.3d 1097, 1101–02 (9th Cir. 2006).

In this case, San Diego police officers approached an illegally parked

vehicle in a red zone with three individuals standing close to the open driver’s

door, with the car lights still on, and ordered them, one of whom was Torres, to

stop. The record reflects that Torres and the two other passengers were the only

people in the immediate vicinity of the vehicle. There is no dispute that the

officers did not know which person was the driver of the illegally parked vehicle,

and the district court determined that all three individuals were “apparent

passengers” of the vehicle. The district court’s finding that Torres was an apparent

passenger of the vehicle was not clearly erroneous given that Torres was in the

2 25-3281 immediate vicinity of the illegally parked vehicle, there were no bystanders nearby,

the driver’s door was open, and the car lights remained on. Given the totality of

the circumstances, the district court did not err in determining that the officers had

reasonable suspicion to briefly stop the apparent passengers of the vehicle to

ascertain the identity of the driver and address the parking violation. See

Choudhry, 461 F.3d at 1101–02.

2. The district court correctly held that the officers did not violate

Torres’s Fourth Amendment rights by asking him whether he was armed. The

officer’s question to Torres, which took no more than three seconds to ask and

answer, did not unconstitutionally prolong the stop. See Rodriguez v. United

States, 575 U.S. 348, 354 (2015) (The “Fourth Amendment tolerate[s] certain

unrelated investigations that [do] not lengthen the roadside detention.”). Indeed,

the entire interaction unfolded in less than twenty seconds. We need not decide

whether the officers had reasonable suspicion to frisk Torres, because Torres ran

away from the officers immediately after he was asked whether he was armed, and

Torres does not dispute that the officers were permitted to pursue and restrain him

based on this conduct.

3. We review a court’s denial of an evidentiary hearing on a motion to

suppress for abuse of discretion. United States v. Keller, 142 F.4th 645, 655 (9th

Cir. 2025) (per curiam). “A simple desire to cross-examine agents that a movant

3 25-3281 has accused of being untruthful does not itself create grounds for an evidentiary

hearing.” Id. Rather, the defendant must “show that there are contested issues of

fact relating to the lawfulness of” the stop, by filing “moving papers . . . [which]

allege facts with sufficient definiteness, clarity, and specificity to enable the trial

court to conclude that contested issues of fact exist.” Id. at 654–55 (internal

quotations and citations omitted). Because Torres has not shown with “sufficient

definiteness, clarity, and specificity” that there are contested issues of fact related

to the lawfulness of the stop, the district court did not abuse its discretion by

denying an evidentiary hearing.

4. Torres also argues that his convictions under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1)

for being a felon in possession of a firearm and felon in possession of ammunition

are unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. But Torres concedes that this

argument is foreclosed by our holding in United States v. Duarte, 137 F.4th 743

(9th Cir. 2025) (en banc). Therefore, the district court properly denied Torres’s

motion to dismiss the indictment.

AFFIRMED.

4 25-3281