These guys better call Saul

This is kind of a wild case. The Court of Appeals holds that the police had the right to detain a driver and his passengers while they searched the car for contraband (finding nothing) even though there was no probable cause to detain these people.

The case is United States v. Fiseku, decided on October 4. Having binge-watched all of Breaking Bad and now watching Better Call Saul, this sounds like something out of those TV shows. The police officer, Groppuso, saw Fiseku's car stopped on the side of the road in the middle of the night. Fiseku told the officer his car was not working properly and he was in town (Bedford, Westchester County) visiting a friend. The officer drove away, but something smelled fishy about all this so he immediately returned to the scene, but in doing so, he saw Fiseku drive into a parking lot, where he met up with two men who had somehow materialized out of thin air. The officer radioed for backup and they all questioned and/or cuffed these three men, who gave inconsistent answers to their questions about where they were going and what they were up to. The officers searched the care with the driver's consent, finding guns, walkie talkies, a screwdriver and some duct tape. And some gloves.

The detention was legal. The police can conduct an investigative stop under Terry v. Ohio, the Supreme Court's seminal 1968 ruling, if they have reasonable suspicion that criminal activity is afoot. The parties agree the officers had reasonable suspicion to question these guys but that they did not have probable cause to arrest Defendant until the officers looked inside the trunk. This case, the Second Circuit holds, "presents 'unusual circumstances' under which an officer may handcuff a suspect without 'transforming a Terry stop into an arrest.'"

Groppuso had reason to think these men were up to no good when he saw them in the parking lot. As this was a quickly evolving situation, the officer recognized how little he knew about the situation, prompting the pat-down frisk and handcuffs as a means to prevent them men from attacking the officer. While handcuffs are normally the "hallmark of a formal arrest," officers may take "reasonable steps to protect" themselves in special circumstances like this one. Here is the reasoning:

Gruppuso stumbled upon a suspicious scenario in the middle of the night in a remote, wooded location where three suspects had, it appeared, arranged to meet. His goal was not simply to identify the men, but to confirm or rebut his suspicion that they had committed, or were poised to commit, a home invasion or some other crime. The likelihood of ongoing or imminent criminal activity heightened the risk that one or more suspects might be armed and that they might attempt to fight or flee. Gruppuso made quick decisions about how best to protect both himself and the public, acting in
the face of uncertainty about how many associates might be present, what sort of criminal activity they might be involved in, or whether any of them might have access to a weapon.

Gruppuso made the cautious choice to restrain Fiseku in handcuffs at the outset of the investigatory stop so he could safely turn his attention to the two suspects in the vehicle and the two newly arrived police cruisers. Under these circumstances, “handcuffing was a less intimidating—and less dangerous—means of ensuring [officer] safety . . . than holding [Fiseku] at gunpoint.”