Officers Searching for Subject of Arrest Warrant Were Able to Detain Defendant Who Was Not That Person

US v. Morillo-Lopez: Members of a state-federal task force had a warrant to arrest a person suspected of armed robbery and information that he would be at “one of a few specific residences” in the same block. Officers were armed with a photograph and physical description, Surveilling the block, officers saw two or three men “at least one of whom” matched the description of their target, leave one of the homes and get into a Ford Explorer that then drove away. The Explore stopped at a convenience store and picked up two more men, then went to a nearby gas station.

There officers approached and found M-L in the driver’s seat of the Explorer, with another man in the back seat. An officer “did not believe the picture eliminated M-L” as the target of the warrant and had a brief interaction with him, during which he discovered a firearm in a “cross-body satchel” that was “tightly affixed” to M-L’s body. Another officer with a “fingerprint identification machine” confirmed that the backseat passenger, not M-L, was the wanted man. Nonetheless, because M-L was in the United States unlawfully he was charged with unlawful possession of a firearm. After his motion to suppress was denied, M-L was convicted at trial and sentenced to 8 months in prison.

On appeal, the Fourth Circuit affirmed M-L’s conviction. M-L’s primary contention was that his seizure and search of his satchel violated the Fourth Amendment because there was no evidence that he was engaged in any ongoing criminal activity. The court rejected that argument, holding that because the officers were executing an arrest warrant “there is no additional requirement that officers also have reasonable suspicion of then-ongoing criminal activity.” That M-L was the wrong guy did not make the seizure unlawful, as officers had sufficient evidence to “eliminate a substantial portion of innocent travelers.” The court also found no clear error in the district court’s conclusion that M-L consented to the search of the satchel. The court also held that the evidence was sufficient to sustain M-L’s conviction and that its prior precedent rejecting a Second Amendment challenge to 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(5) was unchanged by Bruen and Rahimi.