Officer saying "Let me see it" held to be request, not command

Over a dissent, the Sixth Circuit in United States v. Tellez upheld on clear error review a district court’s finding that a motorist consented to a search of his wallet when an officer told him to “let me see” the wallet.

During a traffic stop, Officer George Camacho asked for, and received, Yanier Tellez’s consent to search his vehicle. The officer then asked Tellez if he had his wallet. In response, Tellez initially appeared to reach for the wallet, and the officer reached for it as well. At the same time, the officer said “let me see it for a moment.” Tellez complied, and the search uncovered evidence of credit-card fraud.

A simple interaction, but a difficult legal question. Did Tellez “voluntarily consent” to a search of his wallet?

The panel decided that it could not reverse the district court’s finding of voluntary consent. It emphasized that Tellez agreed to the search of his vehicle and that the wallet request came right after. The court also pointed out that Tellez reached for the wallet while the officer made the “let me see it” comment, and that Tellez handed it over—actions the court called “telltale signs of a consent-to search.”

The panel cautioned that Officer Camacho’s wording “could, in some contexts, perhaps be viewed as a command”—which would have made the search illegal. But the panel leaned on the standard of review, deciding that it could not find “clear error” in the district court’s finding.

In dissent, Judge Moore highlighted the stark difference between Officer Camacho’s request to search the car and his directive for Tellez to hand over the wallet. And she explained that the court has “consistently held that mere acquiescence to a show of authority, like Camacho’s imperative command here, falls short of our demanding standard for establishing voluntary consent.” She would have found clear error because “Tellez was simply responding to a command issued by Camacho, rather than providing specific, unequivocal, and affirmative consent for Camacho to look through the wallet.”