United States of America v. Jeremy Noel

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION
File Name: 24a0459n.06
Case No. 24-5599
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
JEREMY NOEL,
Defendant-Appellant.
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ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED
STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR
THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF
TENNESSEE
OPINION
Before: SUTTON, Chief Judge; MURPHY and BLOOMEKATZ, Circuit Judges.
SUTTON, Chief Judge. Police stopped Jeremy Noel for driving without wearing a seatbelt.
Noel challenged his stop on Fourth Amendment grounds, objecting to the district court’s finding
that the officers saw him unbuckled. Because that finding was not clearly erroneous, we affirm.
On October 8, 2020, Officer Dustin Beard and his partner were driving down a street in
Memphis, responding to a dispatch about a suspect in a white sedan. They spotted a white sedan
drive toward them and turn right onto a residential street. Officer Beard saw that the driver, Jeremy
Noel, was not wearing a seatbelt. The officers turned left to follow him, flashed their police lights,
and pulled him over.
The officers approached Noel’s car. Noel was unbuckled in the driver’s seat. Beard leaned
inside the car, where he smelled marijuana and saw loose pills in a baggie. The officers directed
Noel out of the car and asked him if he had a weapon. Noel told them that he had a firearm in his
waistband. They seized his gun, frisked him, and secured him in the back of the patrol car.

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Two more officers arrived on the scene. They soon discovered that Noel was a felon. The officers
arrested Noel and transported him to jail.
A federal grand jury charged Noel with knowingly possessing a firearm as a felon in
violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). Noel moved to suppress the gun, arguing that the officers
violated the Fourth Amendment by pulling him over. The district court rejected his argument.
The magistrate judge credited Officer Beard’s testimony that he witnessed Noel driving without
wearing his seatbelt, a misdemeanor under Tennessee law, and the district court adopted that
finding. Noel pleaded guilty and reserved his right to appeal the suppression ruling. The district
court imposed a 100-month sentence. Noel appeals.
At issue is whether the officers’ “seizure” was “unreasonable” under the Fourth
Amendment. U.S. Const. amend. IV. Three cases orient this appeal.
In the first, Whren v. United States, police witnessed a truck turn without signaling and
drive unreasonably fast, both in violation of D.C. law. 517 U.S. 806, 808–10 (1996). After
stopping the truck, one of the officers saw large plastic bags of crack cocaine through the driver’s
window. Id. at 808–09. The officers arrested the driver and a passenger. Id. at 809. The Supreme
Court rejected the occupants’ invitation to consider the officers’ subjective motivations for pulling
them over. Id. at 810–13. It instead applied an objective test, examining only whether the police
had “probable cause to believe that a traffic violation has occurred.” Id. at 810.
In the second, Atwater v. City of Lago Vista, the police witnessed a mother driving with
her two young children unsecured in the front seat, a misdemeanor under state law. 532 U.S. 318,
323–24 (2001). Police stopped the mother and asked for her identification and insurance
information, which she did not have in her possession. Id. at 324. The Supreme Court affirmed
the constitutionality of her subsequent arrest. Id. at 354–55.

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In the third, United States v. Brooks, we upheld a traffic stop as “reasonable” when an
officer saw an occupant without a seatbelt in violation of state law. 987 F.3d 593, 598–99 (6th
Cir. 2021). In resolving that case, we reviewed the district court’s finding that the officer saw the
occupant unbuckled and found no clear error. Id. at 599.
Taken together, these three cases resolve Noel’s appeal. Driving without a seatbelt, as
Noel did, amounts to a misdemeanor under Tennessee law. Tenn. Code Ann. § 55-9-603. The
district court credited Officer Beard’s testimony that both officers saw Noel with his seatbelt
unbuckled while driving. Nothing in the body camera footage undermines this account. Both
officers saw Noel without a seatbelt in broad daylight through his un-tinted windows. No clear
error occurred in crediting Officer Beard’s testimony.
Noel insists that Beard never drove close enough to see him unbuckled. He notes that
Beard pulled him over “quite a way down” the street he turned on. Appellant’s Br. 14–15. But
this fact does not contradict Beard’s testimony that he could see that Noel’s seatbelt was unbuckled
from his vantage point. See Anderson v. City of Bessemer City, 470 U.S. 564, 575 (1985). Recall
that Beard testified that he saw Noel without a seatbelt, flashed his police lights after both cars
turned, then pulled Noel over further down the residential street. The district court did not clearly
err by adopting Beard’s version of events. See Brooks, 987 F.3d at 599.
Even so, Noel adds, Officer Beard chose to stop him because of his race or because he was
actively looking for a car that looked like Noel’s. But the subjective motivations of the officers
do not matter for Fourth Amendment purposes so long as it was objectively reasonable for the
officers to believe that Noel violated the traffic laws. Whren, 517 U.S. at 812–13.
We affirm.

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