Carter v. State
| Decision Date | 14 July 1977 |
| Docket Number | No. 1,No. 54169,54169,1 |
| Parties | Troy W. CARTER et al. v. The STATE |
| Court | Georgia Court of Appeals |
Gerald Davidson, Jr., Lawrenceville, for appellants.
W. Bryant Huff, Dist. Atty., K. Dawson Jackson, Asst. Dist. Atty., Lawrenceville, for appellee.
An immediate appeal from the denial of a motion to suppress evidence was allowed by this court.
A county police officer working in an extra job status for the Board of Education, while watching a high school where a number of burglaries had occurred, received a police radio report regarding a light colored van occupied by two men who were acting "in a suspicious nature." This light colored van was, at the time of the report, in a subdivision about a mile or mile and one-half from the high school where the officer was staked out. The officer waited a few minutes and then went over to check the elementary school which was "next door" to the high school. When he arrived at the elementary school, which he would also check occasionally while watching the high school, the officer saw a light colored van with two men in it, headlights on, moving slowly in the school parking lot. The area through which the van was moving was open for vehicular traffic, there were no signs prohibiting anyone from going into that area, and there was no evidence that defendants' presence in that area was illegal.
Using the blue lights on his patrol car the officer stopped the van, drew his gun and ordered the defendants from the van. The officer searched the defendants and then had them get down in a kneeling position so he could keep an eye on them and proceeded to shine his flashlight inside the van. There the officer saw a set of scales of a type commonly used for weighing and selling drugs and around those scales were brown pods which looked to him to be marijuana seed. The officer then searched the entire van and found three ounces of marijuana and other drugs. Held :
Defendants contend that the initial conduct of the police officer in stopping the van, ordering them from the van at gunpoint and to place their hands behind their head, and searching them constituted an illegal arrest. The state argues that the officer's conduct was a limited investigative detention. It is not necessary to resolve this difference of opinion. This court has held in Holder v. State, 141 Ga.App. 426, 233 S.E.2d 501, that under facts substantially similar...
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Jones v. State
...juveniles, a male and a female. Under the recent case of State v. Carter, 240 Ga. 518, 242 S.E.2d 28, supra, reversing Carter v. State, 143 Ga.App. 166, 237 S.E.2d 656, the evidence was ample for the police officer to stop the vehicle to ascertain the purpose of the occupants being in the u......
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Brooks v. State
...Smith v. State, 140 Ga.App. 94(1), 230 S.E.2d 101 (1976); Holder v. State, 141 Ga.App. 426, 233 S.E.2d 501 (1977); Carter v. State, 143 Ga.App. 166, 237 S.E.2d 656 (1977). See generally Brisbane v. State, 233 Ga. 339, 211 S.E.2d 294 (1974); Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.......
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State v. Carter
...Lawrenceville, for appellees. PER CURIAM. We granted certiorari to review the opinion of the Court of Appeals in Carter v. State, 143 Ga.App. 166, 237 S.E.2d 656 (1977), in which that court reversed a finding of the trial court denying a motion to suppress. In its opinion, the Court of Appe......
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Evans v. State, 63776
...motion to suppress. Jones v. State, 156 Ga.App. 730, 275 S.E.2d 778; State v. Carter, 240 Ga. 518, 242 S.E.2d 28 revg.; Carter v. State, 143 Ga.App. 166, 237 S.E.2d 656; McConnell v. State, 156 Ga.App. 612, 275 S.E.2d Judgment affirmed. BANKE and BIRDSONG, JJ., concur. ...