A man who has been in prison since pleading guilty in 2020 to trafficking drugs through Utah could now be released after an appeals court decided Wednesday that he was convicted using illegally gathered evidence.
In its ruling, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel concluded that a Utah Highway Patrol trooper unlawfully held up a traffic stop in 2019. Therefore, the judges determined that the evidence gathered during the subsequent car search was inadmissible and shouldn’t have been used to prosecute Antoine Dwayne Frazier.
The case will now return to federal court in Utah, where federal prosecutors can try the case again without evidence from the search. Frazier’s attorney, G. Fred Metos, said it’s likely the case will be dismissed for lack of evidence.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Utah did not respond to a request for comment on the ruling. Utah Highway Patrol declined to comment.
Not relying on ‘hunches’
The trooper, Adam Gibbs, pulled Frazier over at 9:06 a.m. on Nov. 12, 2019, after allegedly observing Frazier speeding four to eight miles over the limit and failing to signal lane changes for more than two seconds.
According to the ruling, Gibbs became increasingly suspicious as he interacted with Frazier. First, he spotted a duffle bag in a backseat, then a can of spray deodorizer in the center console. The trooper also said Frazier didn’t completely roll down his window down as they spoke and paused before answering questions, as if to “come up with the right answer but not necessarily the simple, correct answer.”
Gibbs decided those observations warranted calling in a K-9 to sniff the vehicle for drugs and, later, searching a federal database that tracks vehicle movement across the country. Police found approximately 1,000 fentanyl pills and more than two pounds of cocaine in the car. Frazier was also carrying a gun. The database search found Frazier was in Kansas, heading west, three days prior.
Metos, Frazier’s attorney, argued in a court motion that evidence gathered from the search was inadmissible because the trooper unnecessarily prolonged the stop and didn’t have a reason to search the car — in violation of Frazier’s Fourth Amendment rights against unlawful search and seizure.
U.S. District Court Judge David Nuffer denied Metos’ motion to bar evidence yielded from the search. Nuffer said Gibbs had reasonable suspicion to extend the stop by searching the car because of the duffle bag, air freshener and how Frazier answered the trooper’s questions.
Chief Judge Timothy M. Tymkovich of the 10th Circuit and U.S. Circuit judges Stephanie K. Seymour and David M. Ebel disagreed.
“Our deference to law enforcement judgment extends to reasonable inferences drawn from specific, articulable facts,” Seymour wrote in the ruling, “not inchoate suspicions and unparticularized hunches.”
The traffic stop
At 9:11 a.m. on the day of the traffic stop, five minutes after Frazier was pulled over, the trooper got into his patrol car, according to the ruling. But Gibbs didn’t immediately begin writing a citation. Instead, he arranged the K-9 response. He searched the federal database at 9:19 a.m. The dog arrived at 9:24 a.m.
The appeals court judges didn’t believe the items in Frazier’s car or his behavior justified those extra investigative steps. Someone carrying a duffle bag isn’t grounds for a search, they said. Neither is an apparently unused spray deodorizer. Seymour noted Gibbs never reported smelling any drugs or an air freshener.
And, while Gibbs testified that Frazier “answering questions with questions” made him suspicious, Seymour wrote this was a “dubious” standard to justify a search.
“If officers ask personal, seemingly irrelevant questions during traffic stops, it should be no surprise — let alone grounds for suspicion — when a motorist asks them why,” Seymour wrote.
Each minute Gibbs spent doing tasks unrelated to the citation he unnecessarily and illegally prolonged the stop, the ruling stated.
Federal prosecutors indicted Frazier in 2019 with distributing fentanyl and cocaine and possessing a gun. He pleaded guilty to the charges in September 2020 and was sentenced to 180 months, or 15 years, in prison. He’s been incarcerated at a federal prison in Texas.
Frazier pleaded guilty under the condition that he could appeal the decision to allow evidence from the traffic stop.
“This was a case that Mr. Frazier and I felt strongly about it in terms of the legitimacy for the stop,” Metos said. “We both felt the officer had very weak reasons to search his car, trying to prolong the stop...and the 10th Circuit agreed.”
‘I like to make a difference’
It’s unclear if Gibbs has or will receive any internal discipline related to the ruling. Gibbs has worked for UHP since at least 2014, according to state employee records, and his work has made headlines in southern Utah.
About six months before he pulled Frazier over, St. George News reported Gibbs pulled two cars over in a three-day span and found pounds of methamphetamine worth an estimated $1.5 million.
On May 23, 2019, police records state Gibbs pulled over a 22-year-old motorist driving 90 mph in an 80 mph zone on Interstate 15, near Cedar City.
A probable cause statement said that as Gibbs spoke with the driver and passenger, he saw a marijuana e-cigarette in the center console. He decided to further search the car and discovered 20 pounds of methamphetamine hidden beneath the seat and inside luggage. The driver was indicted in federal court and sentenced to four years in prison.
Three days later, Gibbs pulled over another car on the stretch of interstate outside Cedar City. This car’s tinted windows appeared too dark and the passenger wasn’t wearing a seatbelt.
Gibbs said he checked the driver and passenger’s I.D., and learned neither were valid.
“I also found inconsistent travel plans,” Gibbs wrote, “and I began to be suspicious that the occupants were involved in criminal activity.”
He called for a drug-sniffing dog. When the K-9 arrived, and signaled that it smelled drugs, police found approximately 5 pounds of methamphetamine in the car and arrested the 35-year-old driver and 38-year-old passenger. They told Gibbs, according to police documents, that they were taking the meth to Iowa.
Both were indicted in federal court and pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges. The driver was sentenced to approximately five years and three months in prison, and the passenger was sentenced to about four years in prison.
Three months after those drug busts, Gibbs helped return two girls who’d allegedly been kidnapped by a family member. He told St. George News he posted up on I-15 to keep an eye out for the car that the girls were in — and eventually it drove by.
He stopped the car, and the girls were returned home safely.
Gibbs described his job to St. George News as “like a needle in a haystack, to try to figure out which cars to stop and to be able to investigate what we can, and to find what we can.”
He added, “I like to make a difference. That’s what I like to do.”
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