United States of America v. Vincent Nichols, Jr.

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Argued April 25, 2023
Decided June 2, 2023
Before
KENNETH F. RIPPLE, Circuit Judge
AMY J. ST. EVE, Circuit Judge
DORIS L. PRYOR, Circuit Judge
No. 22-2422
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
VINCENT NICHOLS, JR.,
Defendant-Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the Central District of Illinois.
No. 20-CR-10067
James E. Shadid,
Judge.
O R D E R
After police stopped the car in which he was a passenger, Vincent Nichols, Jr.
was convicted by a jury of possessing a firearm as a felon. 18 U.S.C. § 922(g). On appeal,
he challenges the denial of his motion to suppress, arguing that the officers lacked
sufficiently reliable information to justify the stop of the vehicle under the Fourth
Amendment. Because the district court made no error in determining that the vehicle
stop was valid, we affirm.
In 2020, Peoria Police Sergeant Bryan Sylvester spotted Courtney Andrews—a
man he recognized from earlier police contact—drinking from an open alcohol
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with F ED. R. APP . P. 32.1

-- 1 of 5 --

No. 22-2422 Page 2
container in a local shopping center parking lot. Sylvester watched Andrews get into a
car and drive away with several passengers, including Nichols. Sylvester then radioed
details of the situation to two police officers under his supervision, Tyler Hodges and
Joseph Smiles. Sylvester informed the officers of the direction Andrews was heading,
the car he was driving, and the license plate number. Sylvester and Smiles both testified
that Sylvester informed Hodges and Smiles that Andrews had an outstanding warrant
for his arrest, although there was some confusion regarding how Sylvester learned that
information. Smiles used the squad-car computer to search for Andrews’s name in a
police database, in which he saw that Andrews had an active, outstanding arrest
warrant. Although Hodges was aware of the outstanding warrant, Hodges could not
recall if Sylvester informed him or if he learned it from a police database.
Hodges and Smiles located the car, followed Andrews for about a mile, and then
pulled the car over. Hodges asked Andrews to step out and told him of the outstanding
warrant for his arrest. As Andrews got out of the car, the officers noticed the smell of
burnt cannabis. Hodges then arrested Andrews, who admitted that he had been
smoking a cannabis cigarette.
The officers instructed the passengers—including Nichols, sitting in the front
passenger seat—to leave the car while they searched for contraband, and they patted
the passengers down as they left. After Nichols got out, Smiles saw a handgun on the
seat where he had been sitting. Nichols, it turns out, was not licensed to have a firearm
and was arrested for unlawful possession of the gun.
Nichols, who had two prior Illinois felony convictions (for aggravated battery
with a firearm and unlawful delivery of a controlled substance), was charged with
possessing a firearm as a felon. 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1).
Before trial, Nichols moved to suppress the discovery of the firearm, arguing that
officers did not have “justifiable cause” to stop or search the car. The government,
opposing the motion, countered that the outstanding warrant provided sufficient
justification for the stop.
The court held a suppression hearing where the government called all three
police officers as witnesses. First, Sylvester testified that he recognized Andrews at the
parking lot, saw him with an open container, and conveyed information about him to
Hodges and Smiles. Sylvester recounted that the officers could run a suspect’s name
through a laptop computer in the squad car which would disclose outstanding

-- 2 of 5 --

No. 22-2422 Page 3
warrants. Although he could not recall exactly when or how he learned of Andrews’s
active warrant, Sylvester specified that the timing was “definitely before [Andrews] left
the lot that evening.” Sylvester also testified that Hodges and Smiles provided him with
the information regarding the warrant.
Hodges then testified about the pursuit and stop of the car. He stated that, after
receiving Sylvester’s instructions to tail Andrews, he “was advised” that Andrews had
an outstanding warrant, and that the information would have come “from either
LEADS [the in-car police search system] or the Peoria County Justice Website.” Hodges
did not recall who told him about the warrant, but he confirmed that he initiated the
stop based on his belief that Andrews had an outstanding warrant. The government
also introduced Hodges’s bodycam video of the arrest; the audio on the video captures
Hodges informing Andrews of the active warrant as Andrews stepped out of the car.
Smiles, testifying last, presented more detail about the source of the officers’
knowledge of the warrant. Smiles testified that, after being informed by Sylvester that
Andrews was part of a group drinking alcohol, “we checked him, and he had a valid
warrant.” Upon further questioning, Smiles reported that he searched for Andrews in
the police database through the squad car’s computer. Smiles testified similarly on
cross-examination: “[O]ur sergeant said that [Andrews] got into the vehicle. So we then
ran [Andrews] for a warrant; and then it showed that he had a warrant, so then we
decided to stop the vehicle.” Smiles also stated that “at some point” he told Hodges and
Sylvester of the warrant.
The district court denied Nichols’s motion to suppress. In upholding the validity
of the stop and subsequent search of the car, the court acknowledged some confusion in
the officers’ testimony over “who actually determined that Andrews had a warrant.”
Regardless of which officer determined that Andrews had a warrant, the encounter
captured on the bodycam footage clarified “that the officers knew before the stop that
Andrews did, in fact, have a warrant.”
Nichols proceeded to trial and the jury convicted him of possessing a firearm as a
felon. 18 U.S.C. § 922(g). On appeal, Nichols challenges the denial of his motion to
suppress based only on the legality of the traffic stop.* Nichols principally contends the
district court erred because the record lacks reliable evidence of any justification to stop
* Nichols does not challenge the subsequent search of the car that turned up the
gun in plain view.

-- 3 of 5 --

No. 22-2422 Page 4
the vehicle under Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21 (1968). Such a stop would require police
officers to have been able to point to “specific and articulable facts” that, together with
rational inferences, created a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. Matz v. Klotka,
769 F.3d 517, 522 (7th Cir. 2014) (quoting Terry, 392 U.S. at 21). We review the district
court’s legal conclusions de novo and findings of fact for clear error, United States v.
Edgeworth, 889 F.3d 350, 353 (7th Cir. 2018), and give the district court’s credibility
determinations particular deference. See United States v. Norton, 893 F.3d 464, 467 (7th
Cir. 2018).
Nichols raises a two-pronged challenge to the evidence relied on by the district
court to determine that police had a sufficiently “particularized suspicion” to justify a
Terry stop. Matz, 769 F.3d at 523. First, Nichols suggests that any information Hodges
had about the warrant at the time of the stop was “unreliable” because, according to
Nichols, it came from Sylvester, who “did not have knowledge as to when he knew
there was an arrest warrant [for Andrews].” Nichols contends that this chain of
“unreliable information” was not sufficient under Terry. But the record does not reflect
that Sylvester alone told Hodges about the warrant—the source of Hodges’s
information is unclear. It is true that Sylvester and Smiles testified that Sylvester
communicated information about the warrant to Hodges and Smiles, but Smiles also
testified that he looked up Andrews’s name in the police database and informed
Hodges of the active warrant. Indeed, Smiles testified that he “believed” he was the one
who notified Sylvester of the warrant, not the other way around. Nichols acknowledges
Smiles’s testimony but does not explain why information that Smiles gleaned from the
police database would be “unreliable” or otherwise insufficient to support the stop.
Moreover, it is plausible that both Sylvester and Smiles checked for a warrant and
informed the others. Even if Smiles had been informed about a warrant, it would have
been sound police work to search Andrews’s name in the database himself. Doing so
would have allowed Smiles to verify the warrant’s existence and have it on hand during
the traffic stop.
Nichols next argues that the district court erred in crediting the officers’
testimony, which he sees as marred by irreconcilable inconsistencies. This contention
sweeps too broadly. True, the officers did not all identify Smiles as the source of
information about the warrant, but all agreed that (1) officers can search for warrants
through the squad-car computers and (2) they learned about Andrews’s outstanding
warrant before the stop. Sylvester, for example, did not initially recall how he became
aware of the warrant, but he later testified that the information about the warrant “was
probably broadcasted or disseminated back to me” by Hodges and Smiles. Hodges, for

-- 4 of 5 --

No. 22-2422 Page 5
his part, also did not recall who told him about the warrant, but he testified that he
“was advised that Courtney Andrews had a warrant” before the stop. Hodges’s
testimony is consistent with both Smiles’s account and his own bodycam footage, which
confirmed he was aware of a warrant at the time of the stop. Any gaps in the
recollections of Sylvester and Hodges—particularly given the 17 months that had
elapsed since the arrest—do not create the sort of “definite and firm conviction that a
mistake has been made” that might justify reversing the district court’s factual finding
that the officers knew of the warrant prior to making the stop. Edgeworth, 889 F.3d at 353
(internal quotation marks omitted).
And because the district court did not clearly err in determining that Hodges and
Smiles knew of the active warrant, we see no error in the district court’s conclusion that
the officers had sufficient justification to stop Andrews’s vehicle. The existence of an
outstanding warrant, confirmed by computer records, would have authorized the
police to arrest Andrews, and therefore provided the “minimal level of objective
justification” necessary for an investigatory stop of Andrews’s car. Matz, 769 F.3d at 522;
see, e.g., United States v. Kent, 531 F.3d 642, 650 (8th Cir. 2008) (police had reasonable
suspicion to support investigatory stop where defendant had outstanding arrest
warrant). The officers’ stop of Andrews’s car was thus reasonable.
AFFIRMED

-- 5 of 5 --