People v. Champion

• Decision Date: 02 July 1996
• Docket Number: Docket No. 100138,No. 5,5
• Citation: 549 N.W.2d 849,452 Mich. 92
• Parties: , 65 USLW 2102, 50 A.L.R.5th 875 PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Kenneth Ray CHAMPION, Defendant-Appellee. Calender
• Court: Michigan Supreme Court

Page 849

549 N.W.2d 849

452 Mich. 92, 65 USLW 2102, 50 A.L.R.5th 875

PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Kenneth Ray CHAMPION, Defendant-Appellee.

Docket No. 100138.

Calender No. 5.

Supreme Court of Michigan.

Argued Oct. 11, 1995.

Decided July 2, 1996.

[452 Mich. 93] Frank J. Kelley, Attorney General, Michael D. Thomas, Prosecuting Attorney, and Janet M. Boes, Edwin R. Brown, and Catherine Semel, Assistant Attorneys General, Saginaw, for People.

[452 Mich. 94] Daniel D. Bremer, Burton, for defendant.

Donald Martin, President, John D. O'Hair, Prosecuting Attorney, and Timothy A. Baughman, Chief, Research, Training and Appeals, Detroit, for amicus curiae Prosecuting Attorneys Association of Michigan.

OPINION

MALLETT, Justice.

In this case, we consider for the first time the "plain feel" exception to the warrant requirement as adopted by the United States Supreme Court in Minnesota v. Dickerson, 508 U.S. 366, 113 S.Ct. 2130, 124 L.Ed.2d 334 (1993). In particular, this case requires us to articulate the degree of certainty required that an object felt during a patdown search is contraband before a police officer may remove that object from the person being searched. We disagree with the Court of Appeals holding that Dickerson requires a level of suspicion approaching near certainty. Therefore, we reverse that Court's holding that cocaine found in a pill bottle on the defendant's person during a patdown search was inadmissible.

I Facts

On the evening of April 9, 1990, two uniformed Saginaw police officers were patrolling near North Fourth and Kirk Streets, an area known to them as a high drug crime area, when they saw a man begin to run upon seeing their marked patrol car, and disappear around a corner. As the officers turned their patrol car around the same corner, the man veered off behind a store. The officers then observed two other men who, appearing to sight the patrol car, got out of their car that was parked midblock. The passenger ran from the scene, while the driver began walking away from the car with his hands tucked inside the front of his sweatpants.

The officers parked diagonally in front of the vehicle. Officer John Todd, a twenty-year veteran of the Saginaw police force, recognized the driver as defendant Kenneth Ray Champion from previous drug and weapons arrests. Officer Todd knew that Mr. Champion had a prison record.

The officers briefly chased after Mr. Champion while ordering him to stop and to remove his hands from his sweatpants. They gave these orders at least two and possibly three or four times. Mr. Champion did not comply until the officers had caught up to him. Officer Todd then conducted a patdown search for weapons. He felt what he immediately identified as a pill bottle tucked inside Mr. Champion's sweatpants, between his legs in the groin region. From his law enforcement experience with drugs, Officer Todd testified that he knew that controlled substances were often carried in such pill bottles. Believing that the pill bottle contained contraband, specifically controlled substances, Officer Todd removed it, opened it, and found that it contained cocaine. ¹

The officers placed Mr. Champion under arrest and further searched him. They seized $584.23 from his right pants pocket, and $14 and a pager from his left pants pocket. When the officers conducted an inventorysearch of the car, they found three packets of cocaine in the false bottom of a can of Fix-a-Flat. ²

Defendant moved to suppress the physical evidence before trial and again midway through trial, arguing that the cocaine found in the pill bottle and in the can of Fix-a-Flat had been improperly seized. Both times the trial court ruled that, on the basis of the totality of the circumstances, the challenged evidence was admissible.

A jury convicted defendant of possession of less than twenty-five grams of cocaine. M.C.L.A. § 333.7403(2)(a)(v); M.S.A. § 14.15(7403)(2)(a)(v). He then pleaded guilty of being an habitual offender, fourth offense. M.C.L.A. § 769.12; M.S.A. § 28.1084. The trial court sentenced him to five to fifteen years in prison.

The Court of Appeals reversed on the basis that the trial court erred in failing to suppress the cocaine found in the pill bottle in the defendant's sweatpants. While finding the investigatory stop reasonable under Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), the Court found that the officers did not have probable cause to arrest when they felt the pill bottle during the patdown search. Thus, removing and opening the pill bottle was not authorized as a search incident to arrest. Further, the Court found that because it could not have been "immediately apparent" to Officer Todd that the pill bottle found in defendant's groin region was contraband, removing and opening the pill bottle was not permissible under the "plain feel" doctrine as articulated by the United States Supreme Court in Minnesota v. Dickerson, supra. The Court further held that the cocaine found in the can of Fix-a-Flat was improperly seized because, lacking probable cause to arrest, the inventory search of the automobile was improper. 205 Mich.App. 623, 631, 518 N.W.2d 518 (1994).

II Discussion

The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and the analogous provision in Michigan's Constitution guarantee the right of the people to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. ³ Searches and seizures conducted without a warrant are unreasonable per se, subject to several specifically established and well-delineated exceptions. Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 357, 88 S.Ct. 507, 514, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967). The United States Supreme Court has carved out these exceptions by balancing an individual's privacy interests against the government's interests in the given circumstances. Three exceptions to the warrant requirement are relevant to our review in the present case. Each will be discussed in turn.

A Stop and Frisk

Police officers may make a valid investigatory stop if they possess "reasonable suspicion" that crime is afoot. Terry v. Ohio, supra. Reasonable suspicion entails something more than an inchoate or unparticularized suspicion or "hunch," but less than the level of suspicion required for probable cause. United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 109 S.Ct. 1581, 104 L.Ed.2d 1 (1989).

A valid investigatory stop must be justified at its inception and must be reasonably related in scope to the circumstances that justified interference by the police with a person's security. Justification must be based on an objective manifestation that the person stopped was or was about to be engaged in criminal activity as judged by those versed in the field of law enforcement when viewed under the totality of the circumstances. The detaining officer must have had a particularized and objective basis for the suspicion of criminal activity. People v. Shabaz, 424 Mich. 42, 378 N.W.2d 451 (1985).

An officer who makes a valid investigatory stop may perform a limited patdown search for weapons if the officer has reasonable suspicion that the individual stopped for questioning is armed and thus poses a danger to the officer. Terry, supra. Terry strictly limits the permissible scope of a patdown search to that reasonably designed to discover guns, knives, clubs, or other hidden instruments that could be used to assault an officer. Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143, 146, 92 S.Ct. 1921, 1923, 32 L.Ed.2d 612 (1972).

Defendant Champion does not challenge his initial detention or patdown search. Without belaboring the issue, we agree with the Court of Appeals ruling that an investigative stop and patdown search for weapons was reasonable under the totality of the circumstances. ⁴

Particularized suspicion arose as a result of the following factors: (1) the area was a known drug crime area, (2) a man, seeing a marked police car, ran from sight around a corner, (3) as officers turned the corner, two men got out of a car parked midblock, (4) the passenger and the man at the corner ran away, (5) the driver made some movement away from the car, (6) he was known by the police to have previous drug and weapons convictions, (7) he held his hands inside the front of his sweatpants, and (8) he refused several police orders to remove his hands from his sweatpants.

Defendant's behavior created a reasonable, articulable suspicion to permit a police officer to stop and investigate. Consequently, a patdown search for weapons was also permitted. See also Minnesota v. Dickerson, 508 U.S. 366, 113 S.Ct. 2130, 124 L.Ed.2d 334 (1993); People v. Nelson, 443 Mich. 626, 639, 505 N.W.2d 266 (1993). [205 Mich.App. at 628, 518 N.W.2d 518.]

Having concluded that the stop and frisk were reasonable, we are compelled by the dissent to point out that this is not the controlling issue. We did not grant leave in this case to hear again the relative merits of the Terry doctrine. As we have already noted, defendant conceded that the initial stop and frisk were reasonable. The only relevance Terry has to the outcome of this case is to whether the frisk of defendant exceeded that necessary to discover the existence of a weapon. We explain later that it did not. The dissent's focus on Terry and its progeny, however, goes far beyond this narrow issue. ⁵

B Plain Feel

The plain feel exception to the warrant requirement adopted by the United States Supreme Court in Minnesota v. Dickerson, supra, allows the seizure without a warrant of an object felt during a legitimate patdown search for weapons when the identity of the object is immediately apparent and the officer has probable cause to believe that the object is contraband. In adopting the plain feel exception, the Court in Dickerson analogized to the plain view doctrine. To understand the plain feel exception to the warrant requirement, it is necessary to first understand the plain view doctrine.

Plain View

The plain view doctrine allows police...