United States v. Tyson Lingelbach

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• Decided: January 9, 2024
• Docket: 23-30032
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS JAN 9 2024 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, No. 23-30032

Plaintiff-Appellee, D.C. No. 1:21-cr-00115-SPW-1 v.

TYSON DANIEL LINGELBACH, MEMORANDUM*

Defendant-Appellant.

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

Argued and Submitted December 4, 2023 Portland, Oregon

Before: BERZON, NGUYEN, and MILLER, Circuit Judges.

Tyson Lingelbach pleaded guilty to possessing an unregistered firearm, in

violation of 26 U.S.C. § 5861(d). As permitted by his plea agreement, Lingelbach

appeals the district court’s denial of his motion to suppress the firearm, which was

found in a search of his vehicle. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, and

we affirm.

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. In an appeal from the denial of a motion to suppress, we review the district

court’s legal conclusions de novo and its underlying factual findings for clear error.

United States v. Bynum, 362 F.3d 574, 578 (9th Cir. 2004).

Under Michigan v. Long, police officers may search the passenger

compartment of a vehicle—“limited to those areas in which a weapon may be

placed or hidden”—when they have “a reasonable belief based on ‘specific and

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

reasonably warrant’ the officers in believing that the suspect is dangerous and the

suspect may gain immediate control of weapons.” 463 U.S. 1032, 1049–50 (1983)

(quoting Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21 (1968)). Even when a suspect is “effectively

under [the officers’] control during [an] investigative stop,” id. at 1051, officer

safety may justify a protective search in circumstances where “if the suspect is not

placed under arrest, he will be permitted to reenter his automobile, and . . . then

have access to any weapons inside,” id. at 1052.

At the time of the search in this case, the district court found, the officers

had “chose[n] not to arrest” Lingelbach and then “chose to unload and disarm the

[firearm] before allowing [Lingelbach] to return to his vehicle. Lingelbach argues

that the protective search of his vehicle was not justified because, although he

would have been armed upon returning to the vehicle, there was no evidence that

he was dangerous. We disagree. The officer first encountered Lingelbach on the

2 side of a road at 2:00 a.m. Lingelbach’s initial movement startled that officer,

leaving him concerned that Lingelbach was reaching for the gun “situated right

next to [him].” Those facts, coupled with the direct knowledge—rather than mere

suspicion—of the presence of a firearm, caused the officer to have a reasonable

fear for his safety, as Lingelbach was later to be released back to his vehicle. The

existence of that fear about officer safety was demonstrated when, at the end of the

interaction, the officer advised Lingelbach to “literally just sit there” and not move

if stopped in the future. The district court did not clearly err in finding that the

officer’s reasonable fear justified a limited protective search of the vehicle to make

the weapon safe.

AFFIRMED.