State of Minnesota, Respondent,

This opinion is nonprecedential except as provided by
Minn. R. Civ. App. P. 136.01, subd. 1(c).

STATE OF MINNESOTA
IN COURT OF APPEALS
A20-0401

State of Minnesota,
Respondent,

vs.

Jordan Germaine McCray,
Appellant.

Filed March 15, 2021
Affirmed; motion denied
Worke, Judge

Ramsey County District Court
File No. 62-CR-18-3745

Keith Ellison, Attorney General, St. Paul, Minnesota; and

John Choi, Ramsey County At torney, Thomas R. Ragatz, Assistant County Attorney,
St. Paul, Minnesota (for respondent)

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota; and

Joshua T. Peterson, Faegre Drinker Bidd le & Reath LLP, Special Assistant Public
Defender, Minneapolis, Minnesota (for appellant)

Considered and decided by Worke, Pres iding Judge; Reyes, Judge; and Jesson,
Judge.
NONPRECEDENTIAL OPINION
WORKE, Judge
Appellant argues that the district court wrongly denied his motion to suppress
evidence because poli ce officers conducted an unlawful search and seizure and

2
unreasonably expanded the stop. Appellant also argues that the district court clearly erred
in concluding that he consented to the search. We affirm. Respondent also moved to strike
arguments from appellant’s reply brief. We deny respondent’s motion as moot.
FACTS
Appellant Jordan Germaine McCray was ch arged with three counts of ineligible
possession of firearms and ammunition. McCr ay moved to suppress the evidence as a
result of an unlawful search and seizure and an unreasonable expansion of the stop. The
district court held a suppression hearing the morning of trial.
The only witness to testify at the suppression hearing wa s a patrol officer of the
Saint Paul Police Department. The officer testified that he knew McCray from law-
enforcement interactions when he was a de puty sheriff in a Wisc onsin county. While
working there, he pulled McCray over in traffic stops and responded to fights that McCray
was involved in at local establishments. At least one of these fights involved firearms. He
also arrested McCray multiple times on warrants.
On May 25, 2018, the officer was patrolling east St. Paul with his partner. While
patrolling, he saw McCray standing outside a blue Volvo at a gas station. The officer knew
that there had previously been a “be-on-the-lookout” alert or a “pick-up-and-hold” alert for
McCray for a domestic inci dent in Goodhue County. 1 The warrant advised that he had
access to weapons. He stopped McCray becaus e he thought the warra nt was still active.
He did not check to see if it was active before approaching.

1 The parties agreed at oral argument that this alert was functionally the same as an arrest
warrant. We refer to this alert as a warrant in this opinion.

3
The officer drove into the gas station and stopped his squad car nose-to-nose with
McCray’s Volvo to get in its way. The officer approached McCray and asked if he got his
“stuff taken care of.” McCray said that he did. The officer then conducted a weapon pat-
search for safety. The testifying officer’s partner walked past McCray, shined a flashlight
inside the car, and stood behi nd McCray while McCray spoke to the testifying officer.
There was one man in the back of McCray’s car and another who exited the store after the
police officers arrived. The state published the officer’s body-camera video of the incident.
During the pat-search, McCray denied having any warrants or firearms. When the
officer felt McCray’s pockets, McCray said, “H ere you go. I’ll show you all my money,
everything out of here.” As he was emptying the contents of his pocket into his hat that
the officer was holding, the officer asked, “What about that weed that’s in your pocket that
I just saw?” McCray placed the bag of marijuana into his hat. The officer asked McCray
for his date of birth and radioed the information in for a warrant check.2
Two officers then searched the inside of the car and only found marijuana shake3 on
the ground. The officer then asked McCray if his ID was in his wallet, opened the wallet,
and found a “.22-caliber, long ri fle bullet.” He then placed McCray under arrest because
he knew he was a felon. The officers searched the trunk and found two guns: a .22 caliber

2 The district court found that the officer made the warrant check over the radio
simultaneous to the pat-search. The officer did testify that he conducted the warrant check
over the radio, but the first time that he communicates over the radio in the body-camera
video is about one minute after discovering the marijuana.
3 The officer testified, “Shake is what is created from the grinding of marijuana.”

4
pistol and a .38 caliber pistol. They also found two bags of live ammunition, one for each
gun.
The district court denied McCray’s motion to suppress the evidence. It determined
that the officer’s knowledge of the warrant was not stale because “there is no magic formula
or no specific time when staleness occurs” and the district court “is directed to . . . examine
the totality of the circumstances to make a determination” on whether there was reasonable
suspicion. The district court concluded that “there is an objectively, reasonable articulable
suspicion that seeing . . . McCray out on the street that, that warrant remains active.” The
district court also concluded that there is no caselaw imposing a duty on officers to stop
“ordinary law enforcement activities and to check to determine whether the warrant is still
active.”
Following the district court’s order, McCr ay stipulated to a court trial on the
evidence admitted during the suppression hear ing to protect the ev identiary issue for
appeal. The district court found McCray guilty of possessing the .22 caliber gun and
ammunition. The district court acquitted McCr ay on count two for possession of the .38
caliber gun because DNA evid ence excluded McCray and included a different passenger
of the car. The district court sentenced McCr ay to two 60-month sentences to be served
concurrently. This appeal followed.
DECISION
Motion to strike
The state moved to strike certain arguments from McCray’s reply brief because they
were not in his principal brief. Generally, is sues not raised or argued in an appellant’s

5
principal brief cannot be raised in a reply brief. Moorhead Econ. Dev. Auth. v. Anda, 789
N.W.2d 860, 887 (Minn. 2010); see also Minn. R. Civ. App. P. 128.02, subd. 3. But
appellate courts “have considered issues or th eories a party failed to raise in its principal
brief, especially when those theories were argued at the district court level and both parties
addressed the theory in their briefs.” Anda, 789 N.W.2d at 887 . Because we affirm the
district court’s order, we deny the state’s motion as moot and address McCray’s arguments
on the merits.
Reasonable suspicion
McCray first argues that the officer did not have reasonable, articulable suspicion
to conduct the investigatory stop. Unde r both the Minnesota and United States
Constitutions, officers may “conduct a brief, i nvestigatory stop when the officer has a
reasonable, articulable suspicion that criminal activity is afoot.” State v. Timberlake, 744
N.W.2d 390, 393 (Minn. 2008) (quotation omitted). The standard for reasonable suspicion
is not high. Id. Police officers must articulate “a particularized and objective basis for
suspecting the particular person stopped of criminal activity” that is “more than an inchoate
and unparticularized suspicion or hunch of criminal activity.” Id. (quotations omitted).
Appellate courts review whether an investigatory stop is supported by reasonable suspicion
de novo. See State v. Burbach, 706 N.W.2d 484, 487 (Minn. 2005).
McCray argues that the officer did not have reasonable suspicion because of the
collective-knowledge doctrine. The collec tive-knowledge doctrine pools the knowledge
of the police force in establishi ng the grounds to seize someone. See State v. Conaway ,
319 N.W.2d 35, 40 (Minn. 1982). It is ty pically used to impute the knowledge of all

6
investigating officers to the officer seizing or arresting the individual. See In re Matter of
Welfare of G.M. , 542 N.W.2d 54, 57 (Minn. App. 1996), aff’d, 560 N.W.2d 687 (Minn.
1997). But the doctrine also applies to o fficers acting on behalf of a different law
enforcement agency to make an arrest. See Conaway, 319 N.W.2d at 40.
McCray asks us to extend the doctrine to work in favor of the arrestee by imputing
the knowledge of any officer that might disp el the reasonable suspicion of the officer
conducting the stop. Essentially, he is asking us to impute the knowledge of an unknown
law enforcement agent that McCray’s warrant was no longer active on the arresting officer.
McCray has not provided, and we cannot find, any caselaw applying the collective-
knowledge doctrine in this way. We therefore decline to do so.
The district court concluded that the o fficer had reasonable, articulable suspicion
because caselaw does not prescribe a magic formula to calculate staleness, and that “there
is an objectively, reasonable articulable suspicion that seeing . . . McCray out on the street
that, that warrant remains ac tive.” The officer knew about McCray’s prior incidents and
that at least one incident involved firearms. He also knew that th e warrant warned that
McCray may have access to firearms. McCray has not shown how the district court erred
in concluding that the officer had reasonable suspicion to conduct the investigatory stop.4

4 While we affirm, we note that when there are no concerns ab out flight or public safety,
the better practice for law enforcement officers is to check a suspect’s current warrant status
before acting on memory alone. This practice eliminates the perception that an officer is
investigating a suspect with an eye toward subsequent arrest, rather than properly
effectuating legal process.

7
Unlawfully expanded scope
McCray next argues that the officer unlaw fully expanded the scope of the stop by
going “on a fishing expedition for contraband.” McCray argues this because the officer
testified that he asked McCray “if there was anything on him” before McCray emptied his
pockets. But the body-camera video that was admitted as evidence and played at the
suppression hearing shows that the officer did not ask this before McCray offered to show
everything in his pockets. McCray’s entir e argument depends on th e officer’s incorrect
recollection of what he said. Thus, the officer did not unlawfully expand the scope of the
investigatory stop because he only conducted a weapons pat-search.
Consent to search
McCray next argues that the district court clearly erred by finding that he voluntarily
consented to a search by emptying his pockets after the stop. McCray’s argument is that
he did not freely consent because the enco unter was coercive. Whether consent is
voluntary or coerced is a question of fact that appellate courts review under the clearly
erroneous standard. State v. Diede, 795 N.W.2d 836, 846 (Minn. 2011). “Findings of fact
are clearly erroneous if, on the entire evidence , we are left with the definite and firm
conviction that a mistake occurred.” Id. at 846-47.
Consent to search is an exception to the warrant requi rement when the consent is
freely and voluntarily given. Id. at 846. “Whether consent was voluntary is determined by
examining the totality of the circumstances, including the nature of the encounter, the kind
of person the defendant is, and what was said and how it was said.” Id. (quotation omitted).
Consent is not involuntary just because the person being questioned is uncomfortable. Id.

8
Instead, consent becomes involuntary when the right to say no is compromised by an
official show of authority. Id.
McCray argues that his consent was involuntary because the officer asked him if he
had anything on him after (1) the officers blocked his car with their squad car and (2) one
officer stood on each side of him and pat-searched him. But as mentioned in the previous
section, the officer did not ask McCray any questions about evidence on his person before
McCray revealed the contents of his pockets. The officer parked his squad car in front of
McCray’s car to stop him, and one officer stood on each side of him during the pat-search.
But right before the pat-search, the second officer said, “Hey listen, if you got everything
squared away then we’ll get yo u out of here, alright?” Duri ng the pat-search, the first
officer told McCray that he is just making sure McCray does not have an outstanding
warrant. Neither officer said anything rela ted to what was on Mc Cray’s person before
McCray emptied his pockets. When the first officer felt at McCray ’s pockets, McCray
said, “I guarantee you I ain’t do nothing. Here you go, I’ll show you all my money,
everything out of here.” McCray then handed the officer his hat and emptied the contents
of his pockets into the hat. McCray’s pockets are not visible in the body-camera video, but
the officer testified that he saw a small bag of marijuana that McCray tucked back in his
pocket. The officer asked McCray, “What about that weed that’s in your pocket that I just
saw?” McCray answered, “Man, that’s just a bag of weed. I’m sorry.” He then put the
marijuana in the hat.
Considering these circumstances, we cannot conclude that the district court clearly
erred by finding that McCray freely and voluntarily consented to revealing the contents of

9
his pockets. A squad car parked in front of his car and two officers flanked him. But they
told him they were only checking his warrant status and sending hi m on his way. One
officer conducted a pat-search for weapons and felt his pockets. McCray then volunteered
to empty his pockets.
McCray argues that he “was subject to a much more intense show of force” than
what the supreme court found to be coercive in Diede. But the supreme court held that
Diede was coerced into consen ting to open her cigarette pa ckage because “she had been
seized, was subject to a show of police force, had received repeated requests to open the
package, and had already refused consent to search the package.” Id. at 847. McCray was
never asked to reveal the contents of his pockets, but did so of his own initiative out of an
apparent desire to prove to the officers that he was not in possession of anything unlawful.
Diede is distinguishable. McCray has not show n how the district court clearly erred in
finding that McCray voluntarily consented to revealing the contents of his pockets.
Affirmed; motion denied.