Bays v. Com.
| Decision Date | 20 October 1972 |
| Citation | 486 S.W.2d 706 |
| Parties | Steven Allen BAYS, Appellant, v. COMMONWEALTH of Kentucky, Appellee. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court — District of Kentucky |
James L. Ford, Ashland, for appellant.
Ed W. Hancock, Atty. Gen., Jackson D. Guerrant, Asst. Atty. Gen., Frankfort, William B. Arthur, John Simpson, Ashland, for appellee.
Steven Allen Bays was convicted of possession of Demerol, a dangerous drug, in violation of KRS 218.020. The Demerol was taken from him in a search of his person by a police officer. The only error asserted by Bays in his appeal from the conviction is that the drug found by the officer on his person was procured by a warrantless search and was improperly admitted in evidence. Bays claims that the search violated the requirements of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States and Section 10 of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Bays asserts that his arrest was illegal because it was not based on probable cause and that a warrantless search incident to an illegal arrest cannot be validated in face of the state and federal constitutional provisions securing to all citizens freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.
In the early morning hours of September 22, 1971, officers William Sutphin and Robert L. Nunley of the Ashland, Kentucky, police force, were called to the C & O Railway passenger station where it was reported a man was drunk and causing problems. On their arrival at the railway station the two officers found Larry Pelfrey who appeared to be very intoxicated. The officers arrested Pelfrey for being drunk in a public place. He was immediately searched and found to be carrying a loaded Beretta automatic pistol, with the safety off, in his pocket.
After placing Pelfrey in their cruiser, the policemen were informed by C & O officials that there had been a U-Haul rental van parked in the train station's lot for some time, that Pelfrey had arrived with two other men in this van and that the van had been moved in an odd manner several times about the lot, but that the two other men had driven off in the van a short time before the arrival of the police.
Several blocks away the two policemen observed a vehicle which fitted the van's description. Pelfrey, still under detention in the cruiser, volunteered a comment that 'there were his buddies.' When the police pulled up behind the parked van, they alighted from their cruiser and looked into the open rear end of the van and observed several mud-splattered television and stereo sets with price tags on them. The employees at the railway station had related the suspicious actions of Pelfrey and the occupants of the van and had related that since it was payday, when pay checks were supposed to come in, they were apprehensive concerning the activities of these men.
In order that they might further investigate the suspicious circumstances presented, the two policemen drew their pistols and ordered the two men in the van to get out. The two suspects, one of whom turned out to be Steven Bays, appeared to be under the influence of alcohol and were initially so charged. In the course of frisking the two suspects, Bays was found in possession of a bottle containing upward of 40 pills later analyzed as Demerol.
Bays argues that the untranscribed evidence at a...
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Williams v. Com., 86-CA-1270-MR
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