United States v. Michael Jones , 500 F. App'x 216 ( 2012 )

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 12-4464
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
MICHAEL ALEXANDER JONES,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern
District of Virginia, at Richmond. John A. Gibney, Jr.,
District Judge. (3:11-cr-00282-JAG-1)
Submitted: December 5, 2012 Decided: December 18, 2012
Before AGEE, DAVIS, and FLOYD, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Michael S. Nachmanoff, Federal Public Defender, Valencia D.
Roberts, Assistant Federal Public Defender, Patrick L. Bryant,
Appellate Attorney, Richmond, Virginia, for Appellant. Neil H.
MacBride, United States Attorney, Michael A. Jagels, Special
Assistant United States Attorney, Richmond, Virginia, for
Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
Michael Alexander Jones appeals the district court’s
denial of his motion to suppress the firearm recovered from his
car after officers stopped his vehicle, ostensibly because they
were suspicious that the car’s windows were tinted more darkly
than was legal. 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). We must also “particularly defer to a district
court’s credibility determinations, for it is the role of the
district court 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) (internal quotation marks
omitted).
Acknowledging that an officer’s subjective motivations
for initiating a traffic stop are irrelevant to Fourth Amendment
analysis, see Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 813 (1996),
Jones in essence contends that the officers’ visual estimate
that his windows were illegally tinted was nothing more than “an
inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or hunch” that his
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windows were too dark and was therefore an insufficient basis
for a stop. United States v. Ortiz, 669 F.3d 439, 444 (4th Cir.
2012) (internal quotation marks omitted). In this respect,
Jones relies heavily on our recent decision in United States v.
Sowards, 690 F.3d 583 (4th Cir. 2012), in which we held that an
officer’s uncorroborated visual estimate that a defendant was
traveling slightly in excess of the posted speed limit was
insufficient to furnish probable cause for a traffic stop absent
additional “indicia of reliability that establish, in the
totality of the circumstances, the reasonableness of the
officer’s visual speed estimate.” Id. at 592.
We decline Jones’ invitation to extend Sowards to this
case. In our view, Jones’ case is more analogous to our
decision in United States v. Mubdi, 691 F.3d 334 (4th Cir.
2012), in which we explained that a traffic stop was properly
supported by probable cause where an officer’s visual speed
estimate was corroborated by a second officer’s almost identical
visual speed estimate. Id. at 341. We held that “this tandem
evidence alone provides sufficient corroboration to support a
finding of probable cause, particularly where the record — . . .
unlike the one in Sowards — does not cast a shred of doubt on
the officers’ ability to estimate speed or on the accuracy of
their visual estimates.” Id.
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Here, likewise, the detaining officers’ visual
estimate that Jones’ windows were illegally tinted was
corroborated by a second officer. Nor does the record
demonstrate any reason to doubt either officers’ ability to
estimate window tint with a reasonable degree of accuracy. Nor
can we conclude that the district court clearly erred in
finding, upon a review of the relevant video footage, that
Jones’ windows “did in fact appear to be dark” and were “dark
enough” for the officers to “check out.”
We therefore conclude that the district court did not
clearly err in crediting the officers’ assertions that they
reasonably believed, based on objective circumstances known to
them at the time of the stop, that Jones’ windows were
potentially illegally tinted. See Mubdi, 691 F.3d at 341.
Because the “cumulative information available” to the officers
sufficed to give them reasonable, articulable suspicion
amounting to more than merely an “inchoate . . . hunch” that
Jones was engaged in criminality at the time of his detention,
we decline to disturb the district court’s suppression ruling.
United States v. Branch, 537 F.3d 328, 336-37 (4th Cir. 2008)
(internal quotation marks omitted).
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 materials
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before the court and argument would not aid the decisional
process.
AFFIRMED
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