NO PROBABLE CAUSE to ARREST, just being close to the wrong people at the wrong time.

The district court found inexplicable discrepancies between, on the one hand, the events as depicted in an audio recording and reports of agents nearly contemporaneous with the arrest and, on the other hand, later statements, reports and testimony of the agents. Accordingly, the district court discredited the later statements, reports and testimony, and confined its determination of probable cause to the sparse earlier evidence. The government does not challenge the adverse credibility finding on appeal, but contends that the remaining evidence was sufficient to establish probable cause.

As the district judge noted, the relevant inquiry is what the agents knew, collectively, at the time they arrested Collins. Facts uncovered after the arrest are irrelevant. See Allen v. City of Portland, 73 F.3d 232, 236 (9th Cir. 1996) (amended opinion) (stating that facts uncovered “as a result of a stop or arrest cannot be used to support probable cause unless they were known … at the moment the arrest was made.”). As the facts already recited indicate, the only thing the agents knew about Collins was that he had shown up (perhaps in the white Cadillac) in a public parking lot, had talked briefly to the driver of another car in that lot, and had gone into a fast-food restaurant and purchased a drink. It is true that the agents were expecting a person or persons to arrive in the lot who would be carrying stolen checks. At least one such person, Flores, did arrive and was carrying checks. Entirely missing, however, was any connection between Collins and Flores other than the fact that they appeared (from somewhere) in a public parking lot relatively contemporaneously. Equally missing is any connection between Collins and Pass.

These facts did not give rise to a fair probability that Collins was part of the conspiracy. The principal fact that tied Collins to this criminal activity was his “mere propinquity to others independently suspected of criminal activity,” which “does not, without more, give rise to probable cause.” Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U.S. 85, 91, 100 S.Ct. 338, 62 L.Ed.2d 238 (1979) (holding that officers lacked probable cause to search the defendant solely because of his presence in a tavern in which the officers suspected the bartender dealt heroin). The facts showed only that Collins was close to the wrong people at the wrong time.

The connections ended there. Collins was not associating with a suspected conspirator.

The government challenges this conclusion, primarily relying on Maryland v. Pringle,540 U.S. 366, 124 S.Ct. 795, 157 L.Ed.2d 769 (2003). In Pringle, the Supreme Court held that officers had probable cause to arrest the defendant for possession of cocaine because officers found cocaine in the rear seat of a vehicle in which Pringle was the front-seat passenger, they found a large amount of cash in the glove box in front of Pringle, and the other two occupants denied ownership of the cocaine. Id. at 368, 372, 124 S.Ct. 795.

The intimate interior of a private vehicle is worlds apart from the public parking lot of a strip mall.

Unlike the interior of a private vehicle, the public parking lot setting does not support the inference that everyone in a segment of the parking lot probably knows each other ( and that they are participating in the others’ illegal activities).

Read full case here: U.S. v. Collins, 427 F.3d 688 (9th Cir. 2005), https://casetext.com/case/us-v-collins-99