by David Kim

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed the denial of a defendant’s motion to suppress and vacated his guilty plea, holding that a U.S. Forest Service officer exceeded the permissible scope of a traffic stop by abandoning the stop’s stated purpose from the outset and pursuing an unrelated criminal investigation into whether firearms were present in the vehicle. Applying the totality-of-the-circumstances framework from its prior decision in United States v. Buzzard, 1 F.4th 198 (4th Cir. 2021), the Court concluded that the specific circumstances of this encounter were insufficient to justify the officer’s firearms-related inquiries as a legitimate officer-safety measure.

Background

On September 6, 2021, Nathaniel Martin was a passenger in a vehicle driven by Melisa Jarvis through a remote section of the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia. Officer Joshua Radford, a Forest Service law enforcement officer patrolling alone, encountered the pair twice during his patrol. During the second encounter, roughly 45 minutes after the first, Radford observed the vehicle illegally parked on a single-lane bridge in violation of West Virginia law. After Radford pulled up behind the vehicle, Jarvis drove across the bridge and parked on the roadside, and Radford parked ahead of her. Both occupants then exited voluntarily.

Radford activated his body-worn camera, though it did not begin recording audio until 30 seconds after he began speaking with Jarvis and did not capture video until two minutes into the stop. During that unrecorded interval, Radford informed Jarvis that the stop concerned the bridge obstruction, requested her driver’s license, and immediately asked whether there were firearms in the vehicle. Jarvis confirmed the presence of one. Once audio recording began, Radford asked whether there was anything else in the car. He subsequently requested Martin’s license, inquired about the disclosed firearm’s location, retrieved it from beneath the driver’s seat, and posed the same question again, prompting Jarvis to reveal a second firearm under the passenger seat.

Radford then returned to his patrol vehicle to run license and criminal history checks via radio, as cellular service was poor. He did not run a serial-number check on the firearm. While awaiting a response from dispatch, he discussed ginseng-poaching concerns with Martin and Jarvis. Approximately 12-and-a-half minutes into the stop, dispatch reported that Martin had prior felony convictions. Radford requested backup, arrested Martin, secured the second firearm, and released Jarvis without any citation for the bridge obstruction. Radford then drove Martin to a nearby family gathering, spoke with Martin’s mother about the firearm, released him, and advised him that criminal charges were possible.

Nearly two-and-a-half years later, Martin was charged as a felon in possession of a firearm under 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(1) and 924(a)(8). He moved to suppress all evidence and inculpatory statements obtained during the stop, contending that Radford had abandoned the stop’s purpose and unlawfully extended it to conduct a firearms investigation. Following a hearing at which Radford was the sole witness, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia denied the motion, crediting Radford’s testimony and finding that his questioning did not impermissibly extend the stop and was justified by legitimate officer-safety concerns given the remote forest location. Martin entered a conditional guilty plea preserving his right to appeal the suppression ruling.

Analysis

The Court framed the dispute under the second prong of Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), which evaluates whether an officer’s actions remained reasonably related in scope to the stop’s initial justification. Because Martin did not contest the stop’s inception, the sole question was whether Radford’s conduct exceeded the stop’s permissible boundaries.

The Court explained that a traffic stop’s permissible scope is defined by its underlying mission, i.e., resolving the traffic violation and attending to related safety concerns. Rodriguez v. United States, 575 U.S. 348 (2015). Officers may conduct standard tasks – checking licenses, running warrants, inspecting registration – and may pose general safety-related questions so long as they do not extend the stop. Id. The Fourth Circuit’s decision in Buzzard permitted an officer’s mid-stop inquiry about illegal items where specific circumstances — a nighttime stop in a high drug-crime area, the officer’s knowledge of the passenger’s criminal history, and the passenger’s erratic behavior — supported the question as related to officer safety and the question did not prolong the stop.

The Court concluded that the present case involved materially different facts from Buzzard on multiple grounds. Rather than posing firearms questions mid-stop after encountering troubling behavior, Radford led the encounter with that line of questioning, offering only a brief mention of the bridge obstruction before pivoting to investigate weapons. Although he had the ability to immediately pursue the customary checks associated with the traffic violation, Radford instead prioritized probing for firearms. The Court characterized this sequence as an abandonment of the stop’s mission from its inception.

The Court further determined that the objective circumstances undercut any officer-safety rationale. Unlike Buzzard, this stop occurred in broad daylight; neither occupant behaved suspiciously; and Radford himself testified that he did not feel endangered even after learning of a firearm. Several of Radford’s own actions further contradicted a genuine safety concern, according to the Court. He allowed Jarvis to reach into the vehicle and later re-enter it without knowing the firearm’s location; he let Martin stand unsecured several feet away; he waited nearly five minutes to retrieve the disclosed weapon; and he placed the retrieved firearm back in the vehicle after examining it. The Court noted that after arresting Martin, Radford drove him to a family gathering and released him, conduct the Court viewed as inconsistent with authentic apprehension about danger.

Additionally, the Court observed that Radford never returned to the stop’s stated purpose. Rather than addressing the bridge obstruction, he shifted to discussing ginseng poaching, and he ultimately released Jarvis without any citation. Referencing Rodriguez’s instruction that “[t]he reasonableness of a seizure depends on what the police in fact do,” the Court concluded that Radford’s conduct amounted to a criminal investigation unrelated to the stop’s mission that the specific circumstances did not justify.

Conclusion

Thus, the Court held that Radford’s firearms questioning exceeded the permissible scope of this stop. It reasoned that Radford did not diligently pursue the mission of addressing the bridge-obstruction violation but instead led with firearms questions, continued that inquiry after obtaining licenses and registration, never returned to the stop’s original purpose, and lacked the sort of case-specific circumstances that made the officer-safety inquiry permissible in Buzzard. Because “the reasonableness of a seizure depends on what the police in fact do,” the Court concluded that Radford abandoned the stop’s mission from the outset, engaged in an unrelated criminal investigation, and could not justify that questioning on the facts of this encounter.

Accordingly, the Court reversed the denial of Martin’s suppression motion and vacated his guilty plea. See: United States v. Martin, 2026 U.S. App. LEXIS 10979 (2026).  

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