[As noted here some months ago, Point of Law will from time-to-time reprint cases summarized by other sources. The following cases are recent 10 th Circuit opinions as reviewed by the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center’s Legal Division]:
(Reprinted from The Informer, FLETC Legal Division, November, 2025)
United States v. Watkins, a/k/a Crazy Gun
No. 23-6210 (10th Cir. 2025)
A motel manager told police officers that a man matching the description of a carjacking suspect was staying in Room 231. The rooms were accessible only from open-air walkways around a 6 central courtyard. Room 231 was a second-floor unit at the end of one of the walkways. The walkway extended a few feet past the door, which faced a perpendicular walkway. One of the room’s windows, above an air-conditioning unit, overlooked the extension. There was a short railing enclosing two sides of the extension. The room was accessible from the parking lot via an outdoor staircase. Below are two photographs depicting the outside of Room 231.
The officers climbed the exterior stairway and walked to room 231. One of the officers looked into the window above the AC unit, where the curtains were open approximately one-inch.
Inside, the officer saw Watkins sitting on a bed. The officer saw a handgun with an extended magazine next to Watkins. After the officers arrested Watkins, they obtained a search warrant for Room 231, where they seized, among other things, a handgun, an extended magazine and ammunition.
The government charged Watkins with being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition.
Watkins filed a motion to suppress the evidence found in Room 231.
First, Watkins claimed that the officer violated the Fourth Amendment when he physically intruded upon the curtilage of the motel suite. Curtilage is the area to which extends the intimate activity associated with the sanctity of the home. In this case, the court reviewed the two photographs above, which depict the outside of Room 231. The court concluded that the photo evidence established that the walkway, including the extension next to Room 231, on which the officer stood, was part of the motel’s common area and it was freely accessible to all staff, guests, and visitors. As such, the court held that the extension was a place accessible to the public, not an area “intimately tied” to the motel room; therefore, it was not considered curtilage, and the officer did not violate the Fourth Amendment when he stood there and made his observations.
Next, Watkins claimed that even if the walkway’s extension was not curtilage, the officer’s peering through the one-inch gap in the otherwise closed window curtain intruded upon his reasonable expectation of privacy in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
Again, the court disagreed. A person in a dwelling has no reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to what can be seen, heard, or smelled by someone in a public place with one’s natural senses. Here, the officer made his observations from a place freely accessible to the public, the motel’s open-air walkway, using only his unaided eye. Consequently, the court held that the officer’s observations did not violate Watkins’s reasonable expectation of privacy.
United States v. McGregor
No. 23-1399 (10th Cir. 2025)
Two Aurora, Colorado, police officers assigned to the Department’s Gang Intervention Unit (GIU) were on patrol in a residential area when they observed a white Nissan traveling 25 mph 7 over the speed limit. When the officers activated their vehicle’s lights and sirens to initiate a stop, both officers observed the driver making ‘furtive gestures’ before pulling his vehicle over.
Specifically, the first officer observed the driver “leaning to the left and then leaning to the right, and at one point leaning so far over to the right that [the officer] lost sight of the driver”.
The second officer made similar observations; he noted that the driver “leaned way over to the passenger’s side” and that “this was a dramatic lean-over that [was] frantic and abrupt”. Like the first officer, the second officer also recalled that the driver “got his whole body over the console moving over to the right such that at one point in time [the officer] couldn’t see the driver”. These observations caused both officers to harbor personal safety concerns, with the first officer stating that he was “worried that the driver was either concealing or attempting to conceal something or retrieving something from the passenger’s side of the car”. All these observations were made after the officers activated their lights but before the driver came to a stop.
As officers approached the vehicle, one officer observed the driver, Clover McGregor, put his hands and head outside of the vehicle, which made the officer “uneasy” because he thought the driver was tracking his location. It was then that both officers recognized McGregor as part of an “extremely violent criminal street gang involved in armed robberies, car jackings, high-speed pursuits, and aggravated assaults involving weapons” based on their prior experience in the GIU.
When the first officer began to question McGregor, McGregor revealed that he was on parole for robbery and that he was driving to a urinalysis appointment as a requirement of his parole conditions. When the officer then asked McGregor for his driver’s license, he began “reaching all around in different areas” with his hands inside the car, which made the officer nervous because McGregor’s wallet was clearly visible in his lap. The officer then asked McGregor to place his hands behind his head and step out of the vehicle. Once McGregor exited, the first officer patted him down for weapons and, finding none, asked him to sit down on the curb next to the car. The officers then searched the passenger seat of McGregor’s vehicle and discovered a gun. McGregor was arrested and charged with one count of possession of a firearm by a felon in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1).
McGregor moved to suppress the gun from evidence as the fruit of an unlawful search because officers did not have reasonable suspicion that he was armed and dangerous. The district court denied the motion, McGregor entered a conditional guilty plea, and reserved his right to appeal the suppression ruling, and this is his appeal.
The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals reviewed the denial of the motion to suppress and agreed with the lower court’s decision. The court concluded that, while each of the factors cited by the officers considered alone may not have justified a warrantless search, they did justify the search when considered as part of the totality of circumstances facing the officers that day.
Specifically, the court noted the following factors: (1) the “furtive gestures” which were described in great detail by the officers in terms of what they observed and how they perceived these gestures based on their training and experience; (2) the officers’ knowledge that McGregor was affiliated with a violent local gang; and (3) his admitted criminal history as a convicted robber on parole. With each of these factors considered together, it provided the officers with reasonable and articulable suspicion that McGregor was presently armed and dangerous and provided the officers with lawful authority to search his vehicle.
United States v. Huerta
No. 25-1050 (10th Cir. 2025)
A shooting occurred at a convenience store in Denver, Colorado in the early morning hours of June 26, 2023. Police identified a suspect, described as “a light-skinned black male who is bald with a thick beard and muscular build”. A security camera captured a photo of the suspect.
Police located the suspect’s vehicle, a black Ford Expedition several hours later, unoccupied and parked on the street outside of an apartment complex several miles from the shooting location.
Members of the Denver Police Department were provided with a photo of the suspect and put into position to surveil the vehicle while uniformed officers waited nearby.
Approximately twelve hours after the shooting occurred, a detective observed a black sedan pull up and park directly behind the Expedition. He radioed that two black females and “a black male [in] a white T-shirt, white hat [and] red pants” exited the black sedan and “milled around a little bit” before entering the complex. Shortly thereafter, the group exited the complex and got into a white Dodge Durango SUV parked behind the black sedan. One of the surveilling detectives instructed the uniformed officers to “stop [the Durango] out of the area just to be on the safe side” because of the “proximity of the target vehicle” because the black male was “somewhat similar in appearance” to the shooting suspect.
Nearby officers observed the Durango pull up to a pump at a gas station and noticed the Durango had expired plates and decided to stop it. The officers pulled up behind the Durango but did not have their emergency lights or sirens activated. The officers watched the Durango as the Durango’s driver and front seat passenger (a man later identified as Mr. Marshall) exited the vehicle and walked towards the gas station’s convenience store. Marshall, a black male, was thought to be the one who looked “somewhat similar” to the suspected shooter. But Marshall was not light skinned or bald, did not have a ‘thick beard” and had a tattoo on his face.
As an officer approached the back left door of the Durango, a female exited. As another officer approached the back right door of the vehicle, he noticed there was a fourth occupant later identified as Noah Huerta, who began to exit the vehicle with his left hand “somewhat near his waistband”. An officer instructed, “don’t reach for anything” and placed his hands on Huerta’s shoulder and wrist as he exited the car. The officer then turned Huerta around, held his arms behind his back, and placed handcuffs on him.
As Huerta asked what was going on, the officers told him to relax but he then tensed up and “started to turn his body, both left, right and kind of lean towards the car”. A nearby officer testified that Huerta was “squirmish” and that he tried to “cant his body away” and appeared not to be listening to the officer’s commands. The officers saw that Huerta “had a pouch attached to his belt loop”, with the pouch tucked into Huerta’s back right pocket. An officer felt the exterior of the pocket, determined there was a firearm magazine inside, and then asked if he had a gun, which Huerta denied. The officers patted down Huerta but did not find a firearm and then put him in the back of the patrol vehicle because Huerta was “all over the place”.
Officers conducted name clearances on Huerta and Marshall and learned that they both had violent felony convictions. Officers obtained consent to search the vehicle from the female driver and found a nine-millimeter handgun in the vehicle near Huerta’s seat. The magazine found on Huerta fit the recovered handgun. Huerta was arrested and charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm or ammunition contrary to 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1).
Huerta did not contest the validity of the stop based on the Durango’s expired plates, but he did move to suppress the firearm and magazine obtained from the search, arguing that the officers lacked reasonable suspicion that he was armed and dangerous to justify the pat down that yielded the magazine. He also argued that the subsequent search of the vehicle, premised mainly upon what the officers discovered during the unlawful frisk, was also inadmissible as the police lacked reasonable suspicion that any of the occupants of the vehicle were armed and dangerous. The district court denied Huerta’s motion to suppress, finding that the totality of the circumstances established reasonable suspicion that he was armed and dangerous. In addition, the court ruled that, even if the pat down was illegal, the firearm would have been inevitably discovered during a protective sweep of the car.
The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed on both points and found that officers lacked lawful authority to conduct a pat down and that the officers wouldn’t have inevitably discovered the firearm during a protective sweep of the vehicle as they lacked reasonable suspicion to believe that Huerta – or any of the other passengers – were armed and dangerous.
First, the court looked at the government’s claim that they had information that the shooting suspect was in the Durango and found that any potential connection that the occupants of the Durango had to the suspect vehicle was attenuated at best because: 1) there was no information connecting them to the vehicle; and 2) they merely parked behind the target vehicle in an apartment complex in the daytime nearly twelve hours after the shooting. Further, the fact that Huerta shared some basic similarities with the suspect did not support the conclusion. Although both the suspect and Marshall were both back men with facial hair, the shooting suspect was described as a light skinned black male who was bald with a thick beard and muscular build. In contrast. Marshall was not bald, did not have a full beard, sported a notable tattoo on his face and was not light skinned. Additionally, the detective’s radio broadcast to stop the vehicle “just to be on the safe side” reflected nothing more than an ‘inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or hunch”, rendering the frisk of Huerta, a passenger in a vehicle with Marshall, unreasonable under the circumstances.
Next, the court addressed the passengers’ decision to exit the vehicle and recognized that it may, at times, be suspicious for a motorist to walk away from his vehicle during an ordinary traffic stop but this was not such a stop. At the time the two front-seat passengers exited the vehicle and walked towards the convenience store, the patrol car had just pulled up behind the Durango without any lights or sirens activated. It was only several moments later, and after the occupants exited the vehicle, that a second patrol car pulled up with lights activated.
Accordingly, court concluded that it was not reasonable for the officers to find this behavior unusual, particularly given the fact that they were operating on a mere “hunch” that the suspected shooter was in the vehicle.
Finally, with respect to Huerta’s behavior, body camera video showed that officers exited and approached the Durango as Huerta exited the vehicle. He held a phone in his left hand and his right hand was visibly empty. As Huerta exited the vehicle, an officer grabbed him and, in a matter of seconds, turned him around and placed his hands behind his back. Given that Huerta appeared unaware of the stop, and how quickly he was restrained, the court did not think it was unusual that he would be “squirmish”, particularly because he was already restrained. Even though the government argued that Huerta made a “furtive” movement – moving his right hand up towards his waistline – as he was exiting the vehicle, the government admitted the movement was “slight” and “likely innocuous in hindsight”. Body camera footage did not show anything more than Huerta briefly placing his left hand on his thigh as he was exiting the vehicle.
The Tenth Circuit concluded that, even when considering the attendant circumstances individually and in the aggregate, the record did not support the “minimal level of objective justification” required under the reasonableness standard to believe Huerta was armed and dangerous.
Moreover, the Tenth Circuit rejected the lower court’s finding that the gun would have been inevitably discovered during a protective sweep of the Durango because the officers only asked the driver of the Durango for consent to search the car because they discovered the magazine during an unlawful frisk. As a result, the court concluded that the officers lacked reasonable suspicion to believe that Huerta – or any of the other passengers – were armed and dangerous at the time they searched the Durango.
