The Colorado-based federal appeals court concluded last week that Denver officers lacked reasonable suspicion when they detained a group of people who happened to park on a public street near a vehicle used by a shooter 12 hours prior and several miles away.

Prosecutors indicted one member of the group, Noah Huerta, for being a felon in possession of a firearm. Huerta sought to exclude evidence of the gun because it flowed from the officers’ allegedly unconstitutional pat-down. A trial judge rejected that request, while acknowledging officers’ assumptions were incorrect at the outset.

But a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit believed the evidence was clear: It was unreasonable for police to suspect Huerta and the rest of his group had any connection to the shooting they were investigating.

“That they merely parked behind the target vehicle at an apartment complex in the daytime nearly twelve hours after the shooting is not the sort of articulable and particularized suspicion required,” wrote Senior Judge Paul J. Kelly Jr. in the Oct. 29 opinion.

In the early morning hours of June 26, 2023, police responded to a shooting in a Denver convenience store parking lot. They got a witness’s description of the suspect and a still image from a surveillance camera. The suspect was a light-skinned Black man with a bald head and a large beard.

Using the security footage, they tracked the suspect’s Ford Expedition to an apartment complex miles from the shooting. The SUV was unoccupied, so Denver police monitored the vehicle.

In the afternoon, 12 hours after the shooting, Detective Eric Shurley saw a sedan park on the street behind the Expedition. A man and two women got out and walked into the apartment building. A few minutes later, the group exited and got into a Dodge Durango that was parked behind the sedan.

Shurley directed officers to stop the Durango “just to be on the safe side.” The Black man he saw was “somewhat similar in appearance” to the shooting suspect.

The Durango pulled into a gas station, and one set of officers parked behind the car with their lights off. The driver and a passenger exited and began walking to the gas station’s convenience store. Shortly afterward, another set of officers pulled in with their police lights on.

Quickly, the officers approached the two people who were walking. The man who Shurley saw, Donta Marshall, had a darker complexion, no beard, a full head of hair and a face tattoo. He did not resemble the shooter at all.

Officer Cory Stuper approached the Durango, and Huerta began to exit. Because police did not know Huerta was even in the vehicle, Stuper immediately handcuffed him. Huerta appeared confused as Officer Ronald Espinosa helped pat him down. Huerta was allegedly “squirmish.”

The officers found a pouch with a firearm magazine, but no gun. After police obtained the driver’s consent to search the Durango, they found a gun near Huerta’s seat that fit the magazine.

Huerta sought to bar the handgun as evidence because officers lacked reasonable suspicion that he was armed and dangerous.

After a hearing, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Philip A. Brimmer noted Marshall did not match the shooter’s description and the encounter at the convenience store did not unfold like a traditional traffic stop. Still, he believed the officers could reasonably view the occupants as “trying to distance him or herself” from “something they didn’t want to be associated with or accused of” by walking into the convenience store.

The officers also had grounds to pat down Huerta, “given his movements and that need to control him to ensure their safety,” Brimmer continued.

However, during oral arguments in September, the 10th Circuit judges had a different take on the encounter.

“The officers believed there was a shooting suspect in the car,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Fansler, referring to Marshall.

“The facial hair was completely different,” said Judge Nancy L. Moritz. Marshall “was very dark-skinned and the suspect was very light-skinned and that was obvious. Just no similarity at all. There was none.”

The police “had no idea what they were looking for, other than the fact that they followed a white car that had been parked behind a black car that had been parked by another black car,” said Kelly. “They apparently thought that it was very odd that these people would go into the convenience store. And that’s a totally unreasonable conclusion.”

Ultimately, the panel agreed that the police’s targeting of Huerta’s group stemmed from a baseless belief that Marshall was their shooting suspect.

“Detective Shurley’s instruction to the officers to pull over the Durango ‘just to be on the safe side’ underscores the lack of any reasonable suspicion that the shooting suspect was in that vehicle,” wrote Kelly.

In addition to finding the occupants’ decision to walk into the convenience store to be normal under the circumstances, the panel also disagreed that Huerta’s slight movements after being grabbed were at all suspicious.

“It was innocuous even in the moment,” wrote Kelly.

The panel reversed Brimmer’s decision and barred the gun and the magazine from being used against Huerta.

The case is United States v. Huerta.