United States of America v. Bryan Michael Haskell

NOT FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
BRYAN MICHAEL HASKELL,
Defendant-Appellant.
No. 18-30182
D.C. No.
1:17-cr-00079-BLW-1
MEMORANDUM*
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Idaho
B. Lynn Winmill, District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted July 10, 2019
Seattle, Washington
Before: BERZON and WATFORD, Circuit Judges, and ROTHSTEIN,** District
Judge.
The district court properly denied Bryan Haskell’s motion to suppress the
shotgun found in his car. Under Rodriguez v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 1609
(2015), police officers may not “measurably extend the duration of [a] stop” unless
* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
** The Honorable Barbara Jacobs Rothstein, United States District Judge
for the Western District of Washington, sitting by designation.
FILED
JUL 17 2019
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS

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the cause for the delay falls within the stop’s “mission.” Id. at 1615. Given the
specific circumstances of this case, which are not those of a run-of-the-mill traffic
stop, the officer’s asking whether there was anything in the car he should be
concerned about was reasonably related to his mission.
At the moment the officer asked Haskell about the contents of his car, the
officer intended to leave Haskell with instructions to park the car in the
neighboring middle school parking lot. Haskell, who police learned had been
driving on a suspended license, could not himself drive the car home. Rather, he
would have to contact someone to come and drive the car away. Because Haskell
had not yet made any plans to have the car retrieved, the officers had no way of
knowing how long the car would remain parked outside the school. Nor could the
officers stay with the car until help arrived, given the snowy conditions and their
need to leave the scene to attend to other accidents. As far as the police knew, it
was possible that the car could be left in the school parking lot unattended for days.
In that situation, the officer’s concern as to the car’s potentially dangerous contents
and his request for consent to search the car fell permissibly within the scope of his
mission. Since the officer’s actions did not violate Haskell’s Fourth Amendment
rights, the district court correctly denied his motion to suppress.
AFFIRMED.

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