State v. Ritchey
| Citation | 432 P.3d 99,56 Kan.App.2d 530 |
| Decision Date | 02 November 2018 |
| Docket Number | No. 118,905,118,905 |
| Parties | STATE of Kansas, Appellant, v. Linda Faye RITCHEY, Appellee. |
| Court | Kansas Court of Appeals |
Rachel L. Pickering, assistant solicitor general, and Derek Schmidt, attorney general, for appellant.
Sonya L. Strickland, of Kansas Appellate Defender Office, for appellee.
Before Leben, P.J., Green and Malone, JJ.
Topeka police officers arrested Linda Ritchey for an outstanding warrant while she was sitting in the front passenger seat of a parked van. After Ritchey was arrested, a police officer searched Ritchey's purse, which Ritchey had left in the van, and found a baggie with methamphetamine residue. Ritchey moved to suppress the evidence from her purse, arguing that it had been found during an illegal search. The district court granted the motion.
The State appeals, arguing that the district court shouldn't have suppressed the evidence because: (1) officers legally searched Ritchey's purse during a valid search incident to arrest, one of the recognized exceptions to the requirement that officers have a search warrant; and (2) even if the search were illegal, officers would have found the evidence when they processed Ritchey's purse at the police station to hold it in safekeeping for her. But the officers' search of Ritchey's purse wasn't a valid search incident to arrest because the purse wasn't on her person, there was no threat that Ritchey could use any weapons in her purse against the officers, and there was no possibility that her purse contained evidence of her crime of arrest—having an outstanding warrant. Likewise, there was no evidence that the police had a policy to take items like her purse into possession for safekeeping and no evidence that this purse was sent along with her to the jail, so the State failed to show that items within the closed purse would have inevitably been discovered. Because the officer searched Ritchey's purse without a warrant and the search didn't meet any of the exceptions for a warrantless search, the district court properly suppressed the evidence from the purse. We therefore affirm the district court's order granting the motion to suppress evidence.
In July 2017, Topeka police officers responded to a report that a group of women, including defendant Linda Ritchey, might be burglarizing a van in the Academy Sports parking lot. When officers arrived and found the van, they approached Ritchey, who was sitting in the front passenger seat of the van smoking a cigarette.
Officer Jake Cobler asked Ritchey if the van belonged to her. Ritchey said that it belonged to her friends, who were inside the store. Ritchey gave Cobler her identification, which was in the purse Ritchey was holding while sitting in the van. About six minutes later, a female officer, Officer Ramirez (whose first name is not in our record), asked Ritchey to step out of the van. When Ritchey stepped out, Ramirez put Ritchey in handcuffs, explaining that there was a warrant out for her arrest.
Once Ritchey was under arrest, Ramirez led Ritchey to the back of the van. Soon after, but while she was still standing at the back of the van, Cobler began searching through Ritchey's purse, which was still where she had left it on the front passenger seat. The baggie was in a pocket inside Ritchey's closed, fold-over wallet, which itself was inside the purse.
After Ritchey's arrest, the owner of the van showed up and officers determined there had been no burglary.
The State charged Ritchey with one count of possession of methamphetamine and one count of unlawful use of drug paraphernalia (the baggie). Ritchey pleaded not guilty to each count. Ritchey moved to suppress the evidence taken from her purse, claiming the State obtained its evidence through an illegal search because the officer's "search of [her] purse ... d[id] not meet any of the exceptions to the search warrant requirement."
At an evidentiary hearing held to resolve Ritchey's motion, Cobler testified that he searched Ritchey's purse because he assumed officers would transport the purse to jail along with Ritchey. The State argued that Cobler legally searched Ritchey's purse as a search incident to a lawful arrest, a recognized exception to the search-warrant requirement. The State also argued that even if the search of Ritchey's purse were illegal, the baggie in it "would have been inevitably found" when officers searched Ritchey's purse at the jail.
Ritchey's attorney argued that the search of Ritchey's purse was illegal because "that purse was not within Ms. Ritchey's immediate control at the time of her arrest ...." Ritchey's attorney also argued that a
The district court held that the search of Ritchey's purse was neither a search incident to arrest nor an inventory search:
The State then appealed to our court.
The State challenges the district court's order granting Ritchey's motion to suppress any evidence taken from her purse. Even though that order is not a final judgment concluding the criminal case against Ritchey, the State is allowed to file an interlocutory appeal when the district court grants a defense motion to suppress evidence that's significant to the State's case. See K.S.A. 2017 Supp. 22-3603 ; State v. Mburu , 51 Kan. App. 2d 266, 270, 346 P.3d 1086 (2015).
We use a two-part standard when reviewing a district court's ruling on a motion to suppress evidence. First, we ask whether the district court's factual findings are supported by substantial evidence—that is, evidence that a reasonable person would find adequate to support a conclusion. Second, we review the district court's ultimate legal conclusions independently, without owing any required deference to the district court. State v. Patterson , 304 Kan. 272, 274, 371 P.3d 893 (2016).
There really aren't any factual disputes that have been set out in the parties' appellate briefs, so we can skip over the first part of that test. To the extent that any factual questions aren't fully answered by the district court's stated factual findings, we presume that the district court found all the facts required to support its ruling because the State (which lost in the district court) did not ask the district court to make additional findings. See State v. Dern , 303 Kan. 384, 394, 362 P.3d 566 (2015).
The State first argues that the district court erred in granting Ritchey's motion to suppress because the officer's search of Ritchey's purse was reasonable as a search incident to arrest.
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution "protects everyone's right to be secure in his or her person and not subject to unreasonable searches by the government." State v. James , 301 Kan. 898, 908, 349 P.3d 457 (2015). Any warrantless search is per se unreasonable unless it falls within one of the recognized exceptions to the search-warrant requirement. State v. Neighbors , 299 Kan. 234, 239, 328 P.3d 1081 (2014). Those exceptions include consent, search incident to lawful arrest, stop and frisk, probable cause to search accompanied by exigent circumstances, emergency aid, inventory searches, plain view, and administrative searches of closely regulated businesses. 299 Kan. at 239, 328 P.3d 1081.
The State carries the burden of proving one of the exceptions applies. State v. Overman , 301 Kan. 704, 710, 348 P.3d 516 (2015). If no exception applies, a judicially created remedy called the exclusionary rule usually prevents the State from using evidence obtained in an illegal search against the victim of the search. State v. Pettay , 299 Kan. 763, 768-69, 326 P.3d 1039 (2014) (citing Illinois v. Krull, 480 U.S. 340, 347, 107 S.Ct. 1160, 94 L.Ed.2d 364 [1987] ).
The State first suggests that, because Ritchey's purse was in her immediate possession at the time of her arrest, officers could search Ritchey's purse as a search incident to arrest. Under that exception, when an officer makes a lawful...
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State v. Thornton
...circumstances, the search incident-to-lawful-arrest exception to the warrant requirement does not apply. See State v. Ritchey , 56 Kan. App. 2d 530, 536, 432 P.3d 99 (2018) (finding the search incident-to-lawful-arrest exception did not apply when officers were not searching Ritchley's purs......
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