United States v. Marc Curry , 478 F. App'x 42 ( 2012 )

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 11-4253
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
MARC JUDSON CURRY,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of
Maryland, at Baltimore. Benson Everett Legg, District Judge.
(1:09-cr-00483-BEL-1)
Submitted: March 19, 2012 Decided: April 19, 2012
Before WYNN and DIAZ, Circuit Judges, and HAMILTON, Senior
Circuit Judge.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
James Wyda, Federal Public Defender, Martin G. Bahl, Staff
Attorney, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellant. Rod J.
Rosenstein, United States Attorney, Ayn B. Ducao, Assistant
United States Attorney, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
Consonant with the terms of his conditional plea
agreement, Marc Judson Curry appeals the district court’s denial
of his motion to suppress evidence obtained during a search of
his car pursuant to a traffic stop. We affirm.
The district court’s legal conclusions underlying a
suppression determination are reviewed de novo while its factual
findings are reviewed for clear error. United States v. Guijon-
Ortiz, 660 F.3d 757, 762 (4th Cir. 2011). Because the district
court denied the motion to suppress, the evidence is construed
on appeal in the light most favorable to the government. United
States v. Perkins, 363 F.3d 317, 320 (4th Cir. 2004).
Curry disputes the district court’s ruling on his
motion by developing two separate strands of argument. He first
claims that the law enforcement officers who detained him
impermissibly prolonged the traffic stop by requesting a Vehicle
Identification Number (“VIN”) verification despite the fact that
reasonable suspicion that he was unauthorized to drive his
vehicle had previously been entirely dissipated by Curry’s
production of his license, his registration, and a bill of sale.
But whatever the merits of this argument may be, the record
demonstrates that the detaining officers were nonetheless
justified in prolonging Curry’s detention longer than was
strictly necessary to issue him a ticket because they possessed
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reasonable suspicion that Curry was engaged in other criminal
activity. See Illinois v. Caballes, 543 U.S. 405, 407 (2005);
United States v. Ortiz, ___ F.3d ___, 2012 WL 604151, at *4 (4th
Cir. Feb. 27, 2012) (slip op.).
In our view, the collective import of Curry’s visible
tremulousness and attempts at concealing items in the glove
compartment and his pants pocket suggested behavior “in which
few innocent people would engage.” United States v. Foreman,
369 F.3d 776, 781 (4th Cir. 2004). See also United States v.
Digiovanni, 650 F.3d 498, 512 (4th Cir. 2011). Coupled with the
detaining officer’s knowledge that Curry previously had been
involved in a drug-related criminal offense, see United
States v. Powell, 666 F.3d 180, 188 (4th Cir. 2011), we conclude
that the assortment of peculiar circumstances observed by the
officer constituted “sufficient objective evidence”
demonstrating reasonable suspicion that Curry was involved in
some sort of criminality. United States v. Branch, 537 F.3d
328, 336 (4th Cir. 2008). Detaining Curry long enough to
investigate his suspicious behavior was therefore justifiable in
this case.
Curry next claims that the drug dog brought onto the
scene by the detaining officers did not alert on his car prior
to jumping inside of it, thereby violating his Fourth Amendment
rights by intruding into his car without probable cause, and
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that the district court erred in determining otherwise. Whether
the dog alerted before entering Curry’s vehicle is a question of
fact, United States v. Mason, 628 F.3d 123, 130 (4th Cir. 2010),
so appellate review is for clear error. Guijon-Ortiz, 660 F.3d
at 762.
Curry’s arguments boil down to an attack on the
credibility of the dog handler’s testimony at the suppression
hearing, which he claims consisted simply of post hoc attempts
to locate the dog’s alert at an earlier point in time than it
actually occurred. But on this score, Curry is up against the
principle that credibility is quintessentially a question for
the district court, whose role it is to “observe witnesses and
weigh their credibility during a pre-trial motion to suppress.”
United States v. Abu Ali, 528 F.3d 210, 232 (4th Cir. 2008).
Nor, in our opinion, does the relevant video footage demonstrate
that the dog handler’s testimony was unworthy of belief.
Accordingly, the district court did not commit clear
error in accepting the dog handler’s testimony that the dog
alerted prior to entering Curry’s vehicle. See Mason, 628 F.3d
at 130. Because the dog’s alert provided probable cause to
enter the vehicle almost immediately after the dog began its
scan, Curry suffered no Fourth Amendment violation from the
dog’s subsequent intrusion into the car’s passenger compartment.
See United States v. Parada, 577 F.3d 1275, 1281-82 (10th Cir.
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2009) (distinguishing between a “general alert” and a “pinpoint
location,” and holding that an alert provided probable cause to
search a car, even in the absence of a pinpoint indication of
the location of the drugs). As a consequence, Curry’s motion to
suppress was properly denied by the district court.
Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the district
court. We dispense with oral argument because the facts and
legal contentions are adequately presented in the material
before the court and argument will not aid the decisional
process.
AFFIRMED
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