United States v. Hollingsworth

1

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. LONNIE LORENZO HOLLINGSWORTH, JR., Defendant-Appellant.

No. 22-11250

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit

April 4, 2023

DO NOT PUBLISH

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida D.C. Docket No. 5:21-cr-00035-JA-PRL-1 Before WILSON, ROSENBAUM, and LUCK, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM

Lonnie Hollingsworth, Jr., appeals his conviction and sentence for unlawful possession of ammunition by a convicted felon. See 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(1), 924(a)(2). Police officers found a single round of ammunition in Hollingsworth's backpack upon taking him into custody for an involuntary mental-health examination under Florida's Baker Act. See Fla. Stat. § 394.463. The district court denied Hollingsworth's motion to suppress the evidence, concluding that probable cause existed to detain him under the Baker Act. Then, after finding Hollingsworth guilty at a bench trial, the court sentenced him to three years of imprisonment, with three years of supervised release to follow. Among the conditions of his supervised release, he was required to notify others of any risk he posed to them, as instructed by the probation officer. On appeal, he argues that suppression was required because the officers lacked probable cause to detain him under the Baker Act, and that the district court plainly erred by imposing the risk-notification condition, which, in his view, unconstitutionally delegated judicial authority to the probation officer. After careful review, we affirm.

I.

On April 5, 2021, Hollingsworth made a 911 call. Claiming an "emergency," he told the dispatcher to relay a message to Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods for Woods's role in a 2013 incident involving Hollingsworth. The gist of the message was that when "God can put [him] in a position to do it," Hollingsworth was "going to unload a whole fucking clip in his fucking face, in his whole fucking cranium in front of all his employees and his bosses." Hollingsworth continued to discuss the 2013 incident and then ended the call. During the call, Hollingsworth sounded angry and was cursing beyond what he said in the message set forth above.

Officer Robert Crossman was dispatched to a RaceTrac gas station in Ocala, Florida, to address the threatening 911 call. When Crossman arrived, Hollingsworth was outside livestreaming the events on his cell phone and "ranting" about the 2013 incident. Stating that he had unsettled business or "beef" from that incident, in which he had been shot multiple times, he demanded the "sheriff's department to come out in full force" and to "bring all your boys," including "helicopters and everybody," with "them guns drawn." He said he had "already died before" and "didn't care."

Soon after Crossman arrived at the scene, Officer Shelby Prather arrived with her field trainee, Officer Branden McCoy and took over primary responsibility. The officers questioned Hollingsworth further about the 911 call and the 2013 incident.

Hollingsworth explained to the officers that he had been shot multiple times during an incident in March 2013. It appears that he later pled guilty to and was convicted of attempted strongarm robbery based on that incident. But Hollingsworth believed that the Marion County Sheriff's Office had lied about the circumstances surrounding the shooting. He also discussed problems obtaining disability benefits for his injuries or other redress for the 2013 incident because of his conviction. It's not clear whether Woods, who became sheriff in 2017, played any personal role in the prior incident.

Hollingsworth was generally calm, cooperative, and responsive during the encounter, but his "behavior was pretty erratic and obsessive about . . . the incident that occurred back in 2013," according to Prather. He continued to insist that Sheriff Woods and the Sheriff's Office respond to the scene and that he had business or a score to settle. He denied threatening Sheriff Woods in the 911 call, and he was "adamant" that the officers listen to the recording. Hollingsworth also denied wanting to harm anyone, stating that he wanted only to meet Sheriff Woods.

Based on Hollingsworth's behavior at the scene, neither Crossman nor Prather believed Hollingsworth met the criteria for the Baker Act (or any criminal offense). Crossman told Prather that Hollingsworth had called 911 "to vent," that he did not want to hurt himself or anyone else and knew where he was, and that RaceTrac "love[d] him." Likewise, Prather told her supervisor, Sergeant Kyle Howie, who had arrived on the scene but did not interact with Hollingsworth, that the circumstances were "not 329"- 329 being code for the Baker Act-and that she would close the case with an incident report "just because it's kind of weird."

When they made these observations, though, the officers had not yet listened to Hollingsworth's 911 call, which Prather believed was relevant to the investigation. As a result, Hollingsworth was detained outside the RaceTrac for approximately 45 minutes while Howie obtained a recording of the call. After listening to the recording, Prather notified Hollingsworth that Hollingsworth would be detained and transported for examination under the Baker Act.

Hollingsworth was handcuffed and searched. While being checked for and questioned about weapons, Hollingsworth told the officers he was homeless and did not own any weapons, and he asked the officers to collect his backpack by the RaceTrac. Crossman retrieved the backpack and searched it, finding a single 9mm bullet, which Hollingsworth later described as his "lucky bullet." Because Hollingsworth was a convicted felon, he was taken to jail for unlawful possession of ammunition, rather than to a mentalhealth facility for evaluation.

II.

After his indictment on one count of unlawful possession of ammunition by a convicted felon, see 18 U.S.C. § 922(g), Hollingsworth moved to suppress the evidence, arguing that the officers lacked probable cause to seize him under the Baker Act or to search his backpack.

At an evidentiary hearing, the government presented the testimony of the four police officers involved: Crossman, Howie, McCoy, and Prather. In addition to the witness testimony, both the government and Hollingsworth introduced body-worn camera footage from Crossman, McCoy, and Prather; the audio and transcript of a 911 call placed by Hollingsworth on April 5, 2021; and the rear-seat in-car camera video from Prather's patrol vehicle.

After the hearing, the magistrate judge issued a report recommending the denial of the motion to suppress. In the magistrate judge's view, the officers had probable cause to detain Hollingsworth under the Baker Act based on the totality of the circumstances. The magistrate judge noted that Hollingsworth, after threatening in a 911 emergency call to shoot Sheriff Woods in the head, "continued to obsess over the opportunity to meet with Sheriff Woods" and demanded that he and the Sheriff's Office respond to the scene with their guns drawn. Based on these comments, the magistrate judge concluded that the officers had probable cause to conclude that "there was a substantial likelihood that Hollingsworth would inflict serious bodily harm to Sheriff Woods or others in the near future."

Hollingsworth filed objections, arguing that his behavior at the RaceTrac established he was not a threat and instead simply wanted to air his grievances. He also asserted that the 911 call was not an "actual threat," but was, "at worst, a conditional threat that gives no indication [he] 'will' cause serious bodily harm in the near future," as required by the Baker Act. The district court overruled the objections and adopted the magistrate judge's report and recommendation.

Thereafter, the district court found Hollingsworth guilty at a bench trial based on stipulated facts, and it sentenced him to 36 months of imprisonment, followed by three years of supervised release. Among other "Standard Conditions" of supervised release, the court imposed the following risk-notification condition:

If the probation officer determines that you pose a risk to another person (including an organization), the probation officer may require you to notify the person about the risk and you must comply with that instruction. The probation officer may contact the person and confirm that you have notified the person about the risk.

Hollingsworth did not object to any condition of supervised release. This appeal followed.

III.

We start with the district court's denial of the motion to suppress. We review the court's factual findings for clear error and its application of the law to the facts de novo. United States v. Pierre, 825 F.3d 1183, 1191 (11th Cir. 2016). In doing so, we view the evidence in the light most favorable to the prevailing party in the district court, affording substantial deference to the factfinder's credibility judgments. United States v. Lewis, 674 F.3d 1298, 1303 (11th Cir. 2012).

Under the Fourth Amendment, an individual has a right to be free from "unreasonable searches and seizures," Skop v. City of Atlanta, Ga., 485 F.3d 1130, 1137 (11th Cir. 2007), including seizures "to ascertain that person's mental state (rather than to investigate suspected criminal activity)," Roberts v. Spielman, 643 F.3d 899, 905 (11th Cir. 2011).

To be reasonable, a custodial seizure must be supported by probable cause. Skop, 485 F.3d at 1137; see Ingram v. Kubik, 30 F.4th 1241, 1250 (11th Cir. 2022) ("Mentalhealth seizures are reasonable under the Fourth Amendment when the officer has probable cause to believe that the seized person is a danger to himself or to others.").

The question here is whether there was probable cause...