US v. Mitchell: Police
received a 911 call late one night about a large fight that was happening in a
bar’s parking lot just after closing time. There was a report of at least one
injury, along with a report that someone in the bar had a gun. When police
arrived one of the officers was told by a bystander that a black man wearing
red pants had a gun and was walking down the street away from the bar. That
description went out over the radio and another officer stopped Mitchell, who
met the description, and patted him down, finding a gun. After being charged with
being a felon in possession of a firearm, Mitchell unsuccessfully moved to
suppress the gun. He entered a conditional guilty plea and was sentenced to 30
months in prison.
A divided Fourth Circuit affirmed the
district court’s denial of the motion to suppress. The court conclude that the
officer who stopped Mitchell had reasonable suspicion based on reports from a
known regular (or employee) of the bar about the fight and someone having a
gun, from which officers could “reasonably infer . . . that the person with the gun was
involved in the fight.” The bystander report the corroborated that report (“that
someone in the altercation said they had a gun”). It was therefore “entirely
reasonable” for Mitchell to be stopped and frisked. The court rejected Mitchell’s
argument that the bystander should have been treated as an anonymous tipster
instead of a face-to-face informant.
Judge Wynn dissented, arguing that “at
the end of the day, this is what the majority opinion holds: police officers
may lawfully stop anyone in the vicinity of reported unlawful activity whom a
bystander says has a gun,” even though “carrying a gun is presumptively lawful
in West Virginia and thus is not an ‘illegal activity.’”
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