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09-4089 U.S. v. Slone

By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//February 22, 2011//

09-4089 U.S. v. Slone

By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//February 22, 2011//

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Search and Seizure
Probable cause

Were the defendant engaged in extended, coordinated activity with another suspect who had just received a large shipment of marijuana, the officers had probable cause to arrest him.

“Knowing that there were drugs in the Explorer and that the Dodge truck followed for an improbably long duration, making a series of turns, to a remote place would alone have furnished law enforcement with probable cause to suspect that the driver of the Dodge truck was engaged in criminal activity. It also makes the case readily and rightfully distinguishable from cases like Ingrao, 897 F.2d at 861-63 (probable cause requires a high degree of suspicion and the standard was not met merely because the defendant was located close to the same place at close to the same time as a suspected drug figure, and there was no evidence of an association between them). Slone argues, ‘If [these facts are] enough to constitute probable cause, any citizen who has the misfortune to be traveling behind a truck or car that is being surveilled would be subject to stop, arrest, and search.’ But that pronouncement at once overstates the implications of our decision and understates the facts of this case. Taking the facts together, the practical probabilities involved—‘common-sense conclusions about human behavior,’ Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 231- 32—teach that the movements of the Explorer and the Dodge truck were not likely the product of misfortune or happenstance. Unlike in Ingrao, the coordinated movements linked the defendants together.”

Affirmed.

09-4089 U.S. v. Slone

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana, Lozano, J., Flaum, J.

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