United States v. Paetsch

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Police were able to isolate one car in a group of twenty carrying a homing beacon from money stolen minutes earlier during a bank robbery. Twenty-nine minutes into the stop, police removed defendant Christian Paetsch from his car after seeing him act suspiciously and disobey their orders by putting his hands back inside his car. About an hour after this, and after police had removed everyone from their cars, they looked through Paetsch's car window and saw a money band that banks use to wrap currency. Soon afterward, an officer with a homing beacon isolated the tracker's signal as coming from Paetsch's car. In total, police detained the other 28 people for 2 hours and 18 minutes. After conditionally pleading guilty to a bank robbery and a firearm charge, Paetsch appealed the district court's denial of his motion to suppress evidence. He argued that the barricade's group seizure was unreasonable at its inception and, if not, became unreasonable because of its duration and the police's tactics used during the barricade. The Tenth Circuit evaluated the police stop at two separate stages affecting Paetsch: first, the 29 minutes he was detained as part of the general barricade seizure, and, second, the 64 minutes or so after officers developed individualized suspicion of him due to his suspicious behavior. Finding that Paetsch's Fourth Amendment rights were not violated at either stage, the Tenth Circuit affirmed the district court's order denying his suppression motion. View "United States v. Paetsch" on Justia Law