Plain-Feel Seizure: A Single Lawful Pat Can Establish Probable Cause Without Certainty

1. Introduction

In United States v. Christopher Brian Grant, the Eleventh Circuit considered when an officer conducting a protective patdown may remove suspected drugs from a person’s pocket. The central questions were whether the officer impermissibly manipulated the pocket’s contents and whether a brief touch supplied probable cause to identify the object as contraband.

Christopher Brian Grant, the defendant-appellant, challenged the denial of his motion to suppress narcotics, a firearm, and related statements. The United States defended the district court’s ruling that the officer discovered marijuana through a lawful frisk and could seize it under the Fourth Amendment’s “plain feel” exception.

The court upheld the seizure. Crediting the district court’s factual findings, it concluded that a single open-hand pat did not become an unlawful exploratory search merely because the officer’s fingers curved around the bulge under pressure. The officer’s experience and immediate recognition of the substance also supported probable cause without requiring absolute certainty.

Precedential qualification: The opinion is marked “NOT FOR PUBLICATION.” It applies established Fourth Amendment doctrine rather than announcing a new binding circuit rule. Its importance lies in its fact-specific treatment of permissible tactile contact, immediate recognition, and appellate deference to credibility findings.

2. Background and Procedural History

The traffic stop and frisk

At approximately 3:20 a.m. in January 2024, Lee County Sheriff’s Deputy Michael Knapp observed a car leaving a hotel that he associated with drug trafficking and other criminal activity. He stopped the vehicle because its license plate was not visible and its driver had failed to stop when entering the road from the hotel.

After identifying Grant as the driver, Knapp observed pronounced nervousness, shaking, shifting in the seat, and movements placing Grant’s hands between the seats. Grant did not immediately comply with repeated commands to leave the vehicle. Once Grant exited, Knapp saw several bulges in his pockets, including a fist-sized bulge in his back-left pants pocket. Believing Grant might be armed, Knapp conducted a protective frisk.

Knapp testified that he touched the back-left pocket once, with an open hand, for approximately one second. He felt a spongy texture associated with marijuana and heard the crunch of plastic packaging. Although his lower fingers moved around the underside of the bulge because of the pressure of the pat, he denied squeezing or manipulating it. He also testified that he stopped examining the bulge once he determined it was not a weapon.

Knapp removed a bag of marijuana and arrested Grant. The bag and its contents weighed 5.86 grams in total. A further search of Grant revealed oxycodone, cocaine, and a rock-like substance believed to be MDMA. A subsequent vehicle search uncovered a firearm and ammunition.

The suppression proceedings and conviction

A federal grand jury charged Grant with possessing a firearm and ammunition as a convicted felon under 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(1) and 924(a)(8). Grant sought suppression on the theory that the officer could not lawfully open his pocket after merely feeling something “consistent with a bag of marijuana.” He also argued that the firearm was the product of the unlawful pocket search.

Following a hearing, the district court found Knapp “highly credible.” It determined that the frisk was supported by reasonable suspicion that Grant was armed, involved no extensive squeezing or manipulation, and produced probable cause based on the item’s feel and Knapp’s nine years of law-enforcement experience.

After the motion was denied, Grant stipulated to a bench trial. The court found him guilty and imposed an 18-month prison sentence. His appeal challenged the suppression ruling.

3. Summary of the Opinion

The Eleventh Circuit rejected both of Grant’s principal arguments:

1. The frisk did not exceed its permissible scope. The district court could reasonably reconcile Knapp’s description of his fingers moving around the bulge with a single open-hand pat, rather than deliberate squeezing or investigative manipulation.
2. The officer had probable cause to seize the marijuana. Knapp’s credited testimony about the object’s texture, together with his experience identifying drugs through clothing, supported immediate recognition of contraband. Probable cause required more than suspicion, but not conclusive proof.

The court therefore affirmed Grant’s conviction and sentence. It did not separately analyze the vehicle search under another warrant exception or decide a distinct sentencing issue.

4. Analysis of the Cited Precedents

A. The controlling boundary: protective contact versus investigative manipulation

Minnesota v. Dickerson, 508 U.S. 366 (1993)

Minnesota v. Dickerson supplies the opinion’s central framework. It recognizes that an officer conducting a lawful protective frisk may seize an object when its contour or mass makes its identity as contraband immediately apparent. The authority to seize contraband, however, does not authorize additional tactile investigation beyond the protective search.

In Dickerson, the officer determined that a lump was not a weapon but continued “squeezing, sliding and otherwise manipulating” the pocket’s contents until he identified crack cocaine. That continued examination exceeded the bounds of a protective frisk.

Grant’s case turned on the factual distinction. Knapp was found to have recognized the suspected marijuana during the initial lawful pat, without continuing to investigate after ruling out a weapon. Thus, the same precedent that invalidated the search in Dickerson supported the seizure here once the district court’s account of the contact was accepted.

United States v. Johnson, 921 F.3d 991 (11th Cir. 2019) (en banc)

United States v. Johnson reinforces the limited purpose of a protective frisk: an examination of outer clothing to discover weapons that could threaten the officer or others nearby. Its role is to prevent a safety search from becoming a general search for evidence.

The Grant court applied that limitation by asking how Knapp touched the pocket and whether he continued probing after the safety justification ended. The decision does not treat a lawful stop as permission to search pockets for drugs; the seizure depended on recognition occurring within an otherwise permissible frisk.

B. Appellate review and credibility

United States v. Perez, 661 F.3d 568 (11th Cir. 2011)

United States v. Perez establishes that suppression rulings present mixed questions of law and fact. That distinction matters because the physical manner of Knapp’s contact was a factual issue, while the constitutional consequences of the established facts required legal analysis.

United States v. Vergara, 884 F.3d 1309 (11th Cir. 2018)

United States v. Vergara provides the governing allocation of review: factual findings are reviewed for clear error, legal conclusions are reviewed de novo, and the facts are construed in the light most favorable to the party that prevailed below.

Because the government prevailed in the district court, the appellate court assessed the record through that favorable factual lens. It nevertheless remained responsible for independently determining the applicable Fourth Amendment rules.

United States v. Maddox, 803 F.3d 1215 (11th Cir. 2015)

United States v. Maddox supplies the demanding standard for overturning a credibility determination. Credited testimony is accepted unless it conflicts with the laws of nature or is so inconsistent or improbable that no reasonable factfinder could accept it.

This principle was particularly influential. Grant characterized Knapp’s description of his fingers moving beneath the bulge as an admission of squeezing. The appellate court found that description compatible with an ordinary open-hand pat. Because Knapp’s account was neither physically impossible nor facially incredible, the district court’s credibility finding stood.

C. Immediate recognition and probable cause

United States v. Folk, 754 F.3d 905 (11th Cir. 2014)

United States v. Folk explains “immediately apparent” in the plain-view context: the available facts must warrant a reasonably cautious person’s belief that the item may be contraband. The Grant court used that formulation to illuminate the analogous plain-feel inquiry.

Its significance is that immediate recognition does not require certainty. Nevertheless, the standard remains probable cause, not a bare possibility that an ordinary object could be illegal.

United States v. Braddy, 11 F.4th 1298 (11th Cir. 2021)

United States v. Braddy supplies an objective, totality-of-the-circumstances test: whether a reasonable officer possessing the same knowledge would believe evidence of a crime was present in the location to be searched. Applied here, the relevant location was Grant’s back-left pocket, and the relevant knowledge included the sensory observations and the officer’s experience.

Rankin v. Evans, 133 F.3d 1425 (11th Cir. 1998)

Rankin v. Evans identifies probable cause’s intermediate threshold. More than mere suspicion is necessary, but conclusive proof is not. This answered Grant’s suggestion that recognizing an object as “consistent with” marijuana could not justify its removal. The court evaluated the substance of the credited observations rather than treating that phrase as automatically insufficient.

United States v. Lindsey, 482 F.3d 1285 (2007)

United States v. Lindsey establishes that an officer’s subjective view about whether probable cause exists does not control. Accordingly, Knapp’s confidence could not, by itself, validate the seizure. His observations had to provide an objectively reasonable basis for identifying contraband.

United States v. Gonzalez, 969 F.2d 999 (11th Cir. 1992)

United States v. Gonzalez explains why an officer’s experience nevertheless matters: observations and experience are part of the totality of the circumstances. The distinction is between a personal declaration that probable cause exists and specialized experience that helps explain the significance of observable facts.

Read together, Lindsey and Gonzalez permit experience-informed judgment without substituting an officer’s unsupported belief for an objective constitutional standard.

5. Legal Reasoning

A. The lawful frisk was the necessary starting point

The plain-feel doctrine presupposes lawful tactile contact. An officer cannot justify an otherwise unlawful frisk simply because it reveals contraband. Here, the district court found reasonable suspicion that Grant was armed, relying on the encounter’s circumstances, including his movements, delayed compliance, and visible pocket bulges.

The appellate analysis focused on the frisk’s execution and the justification for entering the pocket, rather than developing a separate holding about the initial stop or the threshold authority to frisk. The decision therefore should not be read to establish that presence near a high-crime hotel, nervousness, or a pocket bulge alone automatically authorizes a patdown.

B. Incidental pressure was not equivalent to exploratory manipulation

The court rejected the proposition that any movement of the fingers around a bulge necessarily constitutes an unlawful squeeze. A pat naturally presses clothing and its contents toward the body; incidental finger movement can accompany that contact.

The decisive findings were that Knapp used an open hand, touched the pocket once for approximately one second, and did not continue examining the item after determining it was not a weapon. Those findings distinguished permissible protective contact from the deliberate investigation condemned in Dickerson.

The decision creates no one-second safe harbor. Duration was evidence of what occurred, not an independent constitutional rule. A brief touch could still be impermissible manipulation, while the relevant inquiry remains whether the officer exceeded the lawful protective examination.

C. “Immediately apparent” concerns both timing and evidentiary sufficiency

Two requirements operated together. First, the information supporting seizure had to arise during the lawful frisk, rather than through additional probing. Second, that information had to establish probable cause that the object was contraband.

The court accepted that Knapp immediately recognized marijuana from its spongy feel, considered alongside the packaging sound and his experience identifying drugs through clothing. It did not require laboratory-level certainty before seizure.

Conversely, the opinion does not establish that every soft object in a plastic bag supplies probable cause. Its reasoning depends on the credited ability to recognize the particular substance, not packaging alone.

D. Credibility findings drove the application of the rule

The dispute was largely about what Knapp actually did and perceived. The district court observed his testimony, found him highly credible, and noted the absence of contradictory evidence. On appeal, Grant’s competing interpretation of the same testimony did not demonstrate clear error.

The absence of contrary testimony strengthened the practical importance of the credibility finding; it did not itself supply constitutional authority for the search. The ruling still depended on affirmative findings establishing permissible contact and probable cause.

E. The later discoveries did not retroactively justify the pocket search

The additional drugs, firearm, and ammunition were discovered after the challenged seizure. Their discovery could not retrospectively supply probable cause for the initial entry into Grant’s pocket.

Because the court found no illegality in that entry, Grant’s derivative-evidence argument lacked its asserted foundation. However, the opinion did not separately explain the legal basis for every subsequent search. It should not be cited as holding that finding marijuana on a driver invariably authorizes a vehicle search.

6. Potential Impact and Limits

Guidance for future suppression litigation

The opinion illustrates how fact-intensive plain-feel disputes can be. Relevant evidence includes the officer’s hand position, pressure, number of contacts, duration of contact, sensory observations, and whether touching continued after a weapon was ruled out. Specific testimony about those matters is more useful than a general assertion that an object “felt like drugs.”

It also demonstrates the importance of the suppression hearing. Once a trial court credits a physically plausible account, an appellate challenge based only on a competing interpretation of that account faces a substantial obstacle.

Guidance for police practices

The practical boundary remains narrow: conduct the protective frisk for weapons, do not prolong tactile examination to identify drugs, and seize nonweapon contraband only when probable cause arises through lawful contact. Experience can help explain recognition, but cannot justify otherwise prohibited manipulation.

Limits on the decision’s reach

• The unpublished opinion is persuasive rather than binding circuit precedent.
• It does not lower probable cause to mere suspicion.
• It does not make every plastic-wrapped or spongy object immediately identifiable as contraband.
• It does not authorize further squeezing after an officer determines an object is not a weapon.
• It does not independently resolve the requirements governing the later vehicle search.
• It does not establish that marijuana-related encounters always present identical legal or factual circumstances.

7. Complex Concepts Simplified

Terry frisk

A limited patdown of outer clothing for weapons when an officer has a justified belief that the person is armed and presently dangerous. It is not a general evidence search.

Plain-feel exception

Permission to seize contraband recognized through lawful touch during a frisk, without additional investigative manipulation.

Immediately apparent

The officer has probable cause to recognize contraband during authorized contact. Complete certainty is unnecessary, but further probing cannot be used to manufacture the required recognition.

Reasonable suspicion and probable cause

Reasonable suspicion is a lower, particularized justification that can support a protective frisk under appropriate circumstances. Probable cause is the stronger evidentiary basis required here to seize suspected contraband.

Clear-error review

Deferential appellate review of factual findings. An appellate court does not overturn a supported finding merely because another interpretation is possible.

De novo review

Independent appellate review of legal questions, without deference to the district court’s legal conclusions.

Fruit of the poisonous tree

Evidence obtained through an earlier constitutional violation may be excluded as its derivative product. Grant’s argument failed because the court rejected the alleged initial violation.

Per curiam

An opinion issued in the court’s name rather than attributed to an individual judge.

8. Conclusion

United States v. Christopher Brian Grant illustrates the distinction between recognizing contraband during a lawful protective pat and investigating an object through additional manipulation. The credited evidence supported the former: a single open-hand contact produced immediate, experience-informed probable cause.

Its central lesson is that certainty is unnecessary, but lawful contact and objective justification remain essential. As an unpublished application of established precedent, the decision offers practical guidance without expanding a protective frisk into a general search for evidence.