PITTSBURGH (LN) — A federal judge in Pittsburgh granted a suppression motion and excluded the gun and statements at the heart of a federal felon-in-possession charge against Michael Stoffer, ruling that Pittsburgh officers who spotted a firearm in his waistband while he was doing laundry lacked reasonable suspicion for a Terry stop because Pennsylvania's concealed-carry law makes mere possession of a gun legally insufficient to justify one. The order is dated April 22, 2026.
Stoffer was in a common laundry room of an Allegheny County apartment complex on January 29, 2025, when officers on patrol entered, saw the gun in his waistband, immediately seized it, handcuffed him, and began asking questions. He told them he had no license for the firearm. The Allegheny County District Attorney's Office charged him with felony possession and carrying without a license, but a state court suppressed the evidence under Commonwealth v. Hicks, and the DA dropped the charges. Federal prosecutors then indicted Stoffer on September 16, 2025, under 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1) based on the same encounter.
U.S. District Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan granted suppression for essentially the same reasons the state court did, writing that all parties agreed on the controlling principle: carrying a firearm alone, in a state that authorizes concealed carry, cannot give rise to reasonable suspicion. The ruling rests on Third Circuit precedent stretching back to United States v. Ubiles, a 2000 decision reversing a denial of suppression after police stopped a defendant based only on an anonymous tip and his possession of a firearm in the Virgin Islands, where there is no presumption of illegality.
The government argued the stop was justified by a cluster of additional factors — it was nearly midnight, Stoffer was not actually doing laundry, the gun was visibly protruding from his sweatpants, the complex was high-crime, and officers had been told that laundry rooms were locked and off-limits after a certain hour. Ranjan rejected each of those factual claims after reviewing body camera footage and weighing witness credibility.
On the laundry question, Ranjan found that one of the machines visibly had time remaining on its cycle when officers entered, and that it was more likely than not Stoffer was doing his laundry. On the locked-room theory, the court found the officers' testimony about a manager's instructions to be vague and not entirely credible, noting that residents of the complex testified the laundry rooms — including the specific room where Stoffer was arrested — were not locked. On the high-crime-area argument, Ranjan was blunt: the complex's crime history was immaterial.
"Downtown Pittsburgh also has a lot of crime, and experienced officers can't simply go around downtown stopping and frisking anyone who might have a gun, absent something more suspicious," Ranjan wrote. In a footnote, he added that an equally plausible inference is that individuals in high-crime areas are more likely to carry firearms lawfully for protection.
The court also found that Stoffer made no threatening or furtive moves, that the officers were not at risk of harm, and that the officers did not subjectively or objectively believe they were at risk — all supported by the bodycam footage showing a well-lit room and a calm encounter.
Ranjan summarized the factual record in a single sentence: "Mr. Stoffer possessed a gun in his waistband, while doing laundry alone, in an apartment complex in a poor urban environment that has crime." That, the court held, is not enough.
The gun and Stoffer's statements to police are now excluded from the federal prosecution.