United States v. Aquino Urraca, 2024 WL 5153648 (6th Cir. 2024)
When a judge begins an opinion noting the officer found “one suspicious thing after another,” one might get an idea where it will end for the defendant, in this case Euclide Aquino Urraca. In May 2022, Sgt. Jeff Fuller of the Tennessee Highway Patrol stopped Urraca’s semitrailer for a regulatory inspection. The sergeant noticed Urraca sitting oddly, with his back not touching the driver’s seat. Sgt. Fuller checked the truck registration with the Department of Transportation and found the trucking company had the worst possible score (99) for a company still allowed to operate. Under federal law, troopers had the authority to stop any truck for an inspection if the company’s score was 70 or worse (the higher the number, the worse the score). After stopping the truck, another driver told Fuller the truck had been “swerving all over” as if the trucker had been distracted.
And it just got worse. During the next 90 minutes of the truck inspection, the sergeant “noticed one irregularity after another.” Urraca’s paperwork for the truck and cargo was strewn throughout the cabin. His electronic logbook was set up incorrectly. The bills of lading were outdated. When Fuller pointed this out and asked for a current bill of lading, Urraca could only produce screenshot on a cell phone, but even that document had unexplained, inexplicable discrepancies. Urraca said he was transporting air fryers, and the bill showed scheduled deliveries in Tennessee, North Carolina and Maryland. When the sergeant inspected the trailer, though, the cargo consisted of Craftsman tools (“a ‘hot item’ for theft”) and not air fryers. The boxes were labeled for delivery in “Philadelphia,” though that city was not a listed destination.
Sgt. Fuller inspected the cab for required safety equipment. He asked Urraca’s co-driver to lift the seat to check for a fire extinguisher. The co-driver stalled, which seemed odd to Fuller because the inspection had already taken over an hour and truckers usually want to get back on the road as quickly as possible.
Urraca had been friendly and chatty to this point. Then Fuller asked about a heavily taped box under the bunk, and Urraca and his co-driver looked away and spoke to each other in Spanish. Urraca said the box “got to be some shit of the truck owner.” Sgt. Fuller got his drug detection police service dog. Returning to the cab, he noticed the box had been moved to a cabinet. The dog sniff of the truck led to the discovery of 20 kilograms of cocaine in the box.
The trial court ruled the sergeant lacked reasonable suspicion to extend the inspection detention. The judge said he believed the sergeant’s testimony, except for Fuller’s assertion that he subjectively believed the box likely contained narcotics at the time of the search. The trial court determined the dog sniff was unreasonable and suppressed the cocaine. The prosecution appealed.
The appellate court reversed, but you knew that from the first line. The court of appeals held the objective facts known at the time of the dog sniff justified the investigation, reminding, “reasonable suspicion sets a modest bar.” It is a “commonsense” standard based on “the factual and practical considerations of everyday life” (Kansas v. Glover, 589 U.S. 376 (2020)). The reasonable suspicion standard requires only a “minimal level of objective justification” for an officer’s actions (Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119 (2000)).
The appellate court cited both drivers’ suspicious behavior, the paperwork irregularities, the stalling and the evasive responses about the box as providing reasonable suspicion to extend the stop.
The court also addressed Uracca’s challenge to relying on nervousness in response to questions about the box. “The term ‘nervousness’ at any rate deserves elaboration and context. At one end of the spectrum is the kind of baseline anxiety that is inevitable (and hardly suspicious) when the police stop anyone, including a judge. At the other end is the kind of change in demeanor — from candid and calm to nervy and evasive in response to a particular question or line of questions — that is more unusual and plays a legitimate role in the reasonable-suspicion assessment.” The court noted the latter type of nervousness is part of the “commonsense” inferences based on “the factual and practical considerations of everyday life” the Supreme Court holds to be proper in assessing the reasonableness of a search.
The court concluded the dog sniff was permissible, and the subsequent search (which uncovered the cocaine) was lawful under the automobile exception. Therefore, the Sixth Circuit reversed the district court’s decision to suppress the evidence.
