634 S.E.2d 842 (Ga.App. 2006), A06A1417, Reynolds v. State

• Citation: 634 S.E.2d 842, 280 Ga.App. 712
• Party Name: REYNOLDS v. The STATE.
• Attorney: Jonathan A. Kesler, Bray & Johnson, Canton, for appellant. Joe W. Hendricks, Jr., District Attorney, for appellee.
• Case Date: July 26, 2006
• Court: Georgia Court of Appeals

Page 842

634 S.E.2d 842 (Ga.App. 2006)

280 Ga.App. 712

REYNOLDS

v.

The STATE.

No. A06A1417.

Court of Appeals of Georgia.

July 26, 2006

Page 843

Jonathan A. Kesler, Bray & Johnson, Canton, for appellant.

Joe W. Hendricks, Jr., District Attorney, for appellee.

BLACKBURN, Presiding Judge.

In this interlocutory appeal, Dusty Reynolds contends that the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress drugs seized by the police at the time of his arrest. He argues that the police had no reasonable articulable suspicion to justify his detention and thus his flight was lawful, and the subsequent seizure was illegal. For the reasons set forth below, we affirm.

In reviewing the denial of a motion to suppress, "the evidence is construed most favorably to uphold the court's findings and judgment. If there is any evidence to support the trial court's findings on disputed facts and credibility, they will not be disturbed unless clearly erroneous." (Punctuation omitted.) Fitz v. State.¹"However, where the evidence is uncontroverted and no question regarding the credibility of witnesses is presented, the trial court's application of the law to undisputed facts is subject to de novo appellate review." (Punctuation omitted.) State v. Harris.²

So viewed, the record shows that on the night of January 24, 2003, police officers

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were executing a search warrant at the rural residence of David Silvers, located at 174 Circle S Drive in Jasper. While the officers were in the process of executing the warrant, Dusty Reynolds was traveling on Circle S Drive in his truck toward the residence of Danny Silvers, David Silvers's brother. The two Silvers brothers lived near each other near the end of Circle S Drive, but the residences were several hundred yards apart and both possessed separate unpaved driveways. Neither Danny Silvers nor his residence was a subject of the warrant.

As Reynolds's truck neared Danny's driveway, his progress was impeded by the officers' vehicles that had formed a perimeter around David's residence. At the same time, several officers approached Reynolds's truck, identified themselves as law enforcement officers, and ordered him to exit the vehicle. Reynolds complied and shortly thereafter, one of the officers noticed a rifle lying on the floor of Reynolds's truck. The officer yelled "gun" to alert the other officers as to the weapon's presence, at which point Reynolds started running away from the truck toward a wooded area. After a short chase, he was apprehended and arrested for obstruction of justice. In addition, the officers found a quantity of methamphetamine within a few feet of where Reynolds was apprehended.

Reynolds was indicted for possession of methamphetamine,³ obstruction of a law enforcement officer,⁴ and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime.⁵ He filed a motion to suppress the methamphetamine as evidence on the grounds that it was obtained as the result of an illegal stop. Following a hearing, the trial court issued a written order denying Reynolds's motion. In its order, the trial court found that Reynolds's vehicle was stopped outside of the curtilage of David Silvers's residence and thus outside of the area covered by the search warrant. The trial court's order also found that prior to Reynolds's flight, the officers had no reasonable articulable suspicion warranting a search or further detention of Reynolds, but [280 Ga.App. 714] that Reynolds's subsequent flight provided the suspicion justifying his arrest and the search of his person and vehicle. This interlocutory appeal followed.

1. Reynolds contends that the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress the methamphetamine found at the scene of his arrest, arguing that his initial detention was unlawful and therefore all of the actions of the officers following that detention were also unlawful. We disagree.

According to Terry v. Ohio,⁶police-citizen encounters are generally categorized into three tiers: consensual encounters; brief investigatory stops, which require reasonable articulable suspicion; and arrests that must be supported by probable cause. Harris, supra, 261 GaApp. at 121, 581 S.E.2d 736. An investigative stop of a vehicle is included within the scope of second-tier encounters and therefore "must be justified by specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion." (Punctuation omitted.) Hughes v. State.⁷"The officer must have a particularized and objective basis for suspecting the particular person stopped of criminal activity. While the officer's suspicion need not meet the standard of probable cause, it must be more than mere caprice or a hunch or an inclination." (Punctuation and footnote omitted.) Smith v. State⁸

It is undisputed that the police subjected Reynolds to a Terry stop second-tier encounter: they stopped him and ordered him to exit his vehicle. At that time, the police had no specific articulable facts sufficient to give rise to a reasonable suspicion that he was engaged in criminal conduct. He was not a subject of the search warrant

Page 845

and had not committed any traffic violations as his vehicle approached the Silverses' residences. Furthermore, as the trial court acknowledged, Reynolds's vehicle was not within the curtilage of the residence subject to the search warrant when it was stopped and therefore could not be lawfully detained or searched pursuant to that warrant. See State v. Mallard⁹(officer had no articulable suspicion that law had been violated justifying investigative stop of defendants' vehicle after it left a residence where police were...