United States v. Pinder.
No. 23-4154. 11/26/2024. D.Utah. Judge Rossman. Search Incident to Arrest—Fourth Amendment—Relevance to Crime of Arrest—Motion to Suppress.
November 26, 2024
Deputy Brimhall pulled over Pinder for speeding. Pinder gave him a driver’s license with the name “Luke Palmer.” Pinder did not resemble the driver’s license photo, so Deputy Brimhall used his patrol vehicle computer to look up Luke Palmer’s Social Security number. He then returned to the car and asked Pinder for the last four digits of that number, and Pinder could not answer correctly. Deputy Brimhall ordered Pinder out of the car, handcuffed him, told him he was being detained for using someone else’s ID, and asked him to provide his real name. Pinder then stated that he was on probation and did not want to go to jail but ultimately gave his real name and date of birth. Pinder was arrested for providing someone else’s identifying information to a peace officer with intent to deceive the peace officer, a Utah law violation. Deputy Brimhall then searched the car incident to arrest and discovered, among other things, a handgun and methamphetamine. Deputy Brimhall also found Pinder’s real driver’s license on Hatch, who was a passenger in the vehicle. The government indicted Pinder on charges related to the methamphetamine and the handgun, and Pinder moved to suppress the evidence from the car search as a Fourth Amendment violation. The district court concluded that Pinder’s real driver’s license was relevant to the crime of arrest, and that it was reasonable to believe the license would be found in the car, so it denied the motion in accordance with Arizona v. Gant, 556 U.S. 332, 343 (2009). Pinder then agreed to plead guilty to one count of possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute, while reserving his right to appeal the suppression ruling. The district court sentenced Pinder to 120 months’ imprisonment and five years’ supervised release.
On appeal, Pinder argued that Deputy Brimhall’s car search was not a lawful search incident to arrest. He maintained that because Deputy Brimhall had verified his true identity before the search, his real driver’s license was no longer relevant and thus could not justify the search. Gant authorizes vehicular searches incident to arrest when an officer reasonably believes that evidence relevant to the crime of arrest could be found in the vehicle. Thus, the only question on appeal was whether the district court correctly decided that the search was reasonable. Here, Pinder told Deputy Brimhall he was carrying his friend Luke Palmer’s license specifically to produce an ID to a police officer. This reasonably suggests that Pinder had his own license that he used for other purposes. The Tenth Circuit reasoned that Pinder’s real driver’s license was relevant to the crime of arrest before Deputy Brimhall verified Pinder’s identity and that the verification did not transform the real driver’s license from relevant to irrelevant. Accordingly, the district court did not err in its Fourth Amendment analysis.
Pinder also argued for the Tenth Circuit to adopt the Colorado Supreme Court’s interpretation of Gant in People v. Chamberlain, 229 P.3d 1054 (Colo. 2010), where the court held that there must be a reasonable expectation beyond a mere possibility that evidence might be found in the vehicle for the offense of arrest to justify a search. However, Pinder forfeited this issue by not raising it in the district court, and he did not argue for plain error review.
The denial of the suppression motion was affirmed.