United States v. Robert Rydell Williams

After a trooper stopped a car for speeding and found cocaine inside, the Government charged the car’s owner and passenger, Robert Rydell Williams, with conspiracy to distribute cocaine and attempted distribution of cocaine. Williams filed a motion to suppress the drugs asserting the traffic stop was the product of racial profiling and violated his Fourteenth Amendment rights. Following three evidentiary hearings, a magistrate judge recommended that Williams’s motion to suppress be granted. The district court * disagreed, holding that even if the trooper engaged in racial profiling as the…