Darden v. State, 6 Div. 126
| Decision Date | 24 August 1990 |
| Docket Number | 6 Div. 126 |
| Citation | 571 So.2d 1272 |
| Parties | Ryan DARDEN v. STATE. |
| Court | Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals |
Roger C. Appell, Birmingham, for appellant.
Don Siegelman, Atty. Gen., and Gilda B. Williams, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee.
Ryan Darden was convicted of three counts of first degree burglary, three counts of first degree robbery, and two counts of first degree rape. He was sentenced, on the burglary convictions, to terms of imprisonment for 25, 25, and 30 years; on the robbery convictions, to 30, 30, and 50 years; and on the rape convictions, to two 99-year terms. On this appeal from those convictions, he raises one issue.
The defendant claims that he was arrested without probable cause. Thus, he argues that the trial court erred by denying his motion to suppress his fingerprints, photographs, and confession as the fruits of an unlawful arrest.
In 1988, Birmingham Police Sgt. Carl M. Quinn was investigating a series of burglaries, robberies, and rapes which had occurred from the spring of 1986 to the summer of 1988 in the Woodlawn-Crestwood area of the city. Since latent fingerprints lifted at the scene in seven of the cases matched each other, Quinn suspected that the same person committed all the offenses. In addition, the victims were all elderly, lived in close proximity to each other, and gave similar descriptions of their assailants.
The defendant was arrested for these offenses on July 13, 1988. At the hearing on the motion to suppress, Sgt. Quinn testified to the information that he had had, prior to that date, regarding the defendant's involvement in the offenses. The defendant did not testify at the hearing.
Sgt. Quinn asked Birmingham patrolman Harold Benson to locate the defendant so that he, Quinn, could talk to him. Quinn gave Benson a photocopy of the defendant's driver's license.
On July 13, 1988, Benson saw a young black male, who appeared to be the same person depicted on the driver's license, sitting near the curb in front of a vacant house. Benson motioned to the youth, requested that he come over to the patrol car, and asked his name. The defendant replied that he was Ryan Darden and acknowledged that he was the person pictured on the photocopied driver's license. Benson told the defendant that Sgt. Quinn wanted to speak to him, and the defendant asked whether it was "about the attacks on the old women." Benson said that he "wasn't really positive" and asked the defendant if he would come down to the precinct. The defendant agreed.
Benson radioed for another police car "with a shield." When that car arrived, the defendant "got in" the car and Benson handcuffed him. Benson told the defendant that he was "required to handcuff him to take him to the precinct." On cross-examination of Officer Benson, the following occurred:
When the defendant arrived at the East Lake precinct, he was taken to Sgt. Quinn's office. The record does not indicate exactly when the handcuffs were removed, but by the time Sgt. Quinn entered the office the defendant was not handcuffed. Quinn told the defendant he wanted to talk to him about the Crestwood burglary cases. He stated that the only way he could eliminate the defendant as a suspect was to take his fingerprints and compare them to prints found at the crime scenes. Quinn asked the defendant if he would agree to be fingerprinted, and the defendant said "yes." Quinn also inquired whether the defendant "minded" being photographed. The defendant stated that he did not mind. The defendant was then photographed and fingerprinted.
Sgt. Quinn told the defendant that he would have the fingerprints checked. Then he offered to take the defendant home or to work or wherever he wanted to go. The defendant asked to be taken to work. The two got into Quinn's car, with the defendant uncuffed and seated in the right passenger seat of the vehicle, and they left the precinct. The defendant asked Quinn to take him to NBC Bank downtown to talk to his mother. Quinn drove to the bank. He testified that he, Quinn, "wanted to stay in the car, but [the defendant] asked [Quinn to] ... go in and talk to her [the defendant's mother]." Quinn told the defendant that he "didn't think it was necessary," but the defendant insisted and Quinn accompanied the defendant into the bank.
Sgt. Quinn talked to the defendant's mother, who seemed "anxious" and "upset" that her son had been questioned and fingerprinted. Sgt. Quinn assured her that if the fingerprints "came back negative," he would return them to her so there would be no record of her son's prints "in any official capacity." The defendant's mother told Quinn that she wanted the prints before she left work at 5:00 p.m. that day. Quinn agreed and he told her that he would take the defendant home.
As they left the bank, Quinn informed the defendant that he was going to drop off the prints at the identification section downtown so that he would be able to meet the 5:00 deadline set by the defendant's mother. While Quinn went into the I.D. section building, he left the defendant, uncuffed and alone, in the unlocked car. Quinn gave the defendant's prints to examiner Sandy Triplett. Triplett looked at the prints and asked Quinn to wait a few minutes. Then Quinn went back to the car and told the defendant they were going to wait there for a while. The defendant was reading a magazine and he said "okay." In a few minutes, Sandy Triplett came out, waved Sgt. Quinn over, and told him that she had matched the defendant's prints to some of the latent prints left at the Crestwood burglary crime scenes.
Quinn returned to the car and told the defendant that they were "going to have to talk about this further ... at [Quinn's] office at city hall." The defendant replied, "all right." They drove to City Hall, where Quinn escorted the defendant to a large conference room and left him there alone. Shortly thereafter, Sgt. Quinn returned to the conference room with two other officers, told the defendant he was under arrest, and read him the Miranda rights. The defendant signed a waiver form; he later gave a full confession and accompanied the officers to each of the crime scenes.
As pointed out above, the State conceded that when the defendant was first handcuffed and taken to the East Lake precinct by patrolman Benson he was "in custody." The prosecutor argued that if there was an arrest, it was founded on probable cause based on the information known by Sgt. Quinn prior to the defendant's being picked up. The trial court ruled that the defendant's trip to the East Lake precinct "was a voluntary situation even though it was a custodial matter."
Although we acknowledge that the arrest issue is extremely close, we find that under the totality of the circumstances, the defendant was not under arrest when he was handcuffed and transported to the East Lake precinct. We also find, however, that even if an arrest took place when patrolman Benson handcuffed the defendant and took him to the precinct, there was probable cause at that time and the arrest was lawful.
In Bradley v. State, 494 So.2d 750 (Ala.Cr.App.1985), affirmed, Ex parte Bradley, 494 So.2d 772 (Ala.1986), cert. denied, 480 U.S. 923, 107 S.Ct. 1385, 94 L.Ed.2d 699 (1987), the accused was picked up for questioning by four law enforcement officers who arrived at his residence. The accused was frisked, "pushed down against the trunk of the car and handcuffed," placed in a patrol car, and transported to the police station. 494 So.2d at 755. He was not told why he was being picked up. Like patrolman Benson in the present case, the officers in Bradley testified that the accused was handcuffed "because it was the usual policy of the ... Department to handcuff 'suspects being transported.' " 494 So.2d at 755. There is no indication that the officers told Bradley that, however.
This court observed:
"The significance of what the officers actually told Bradley when they picked him up for questioning cannot be underestimated in determining whether or not an arrest actually occurred or whether Bradley consented and voluntarily agreed to accompany the officers."
Bradley v. State, 494 So.2d at 758. We noted that the State's evidence in Bradley was Id. at 755. Accordingly, we found the trial court's ruling that the accused "consented to being 'picked up for questioning' " erroneous in view of the "absence of any testimony from the police about what they told or asked Bradley during [the] confrontation and the nature of his response." 494 So.2d at 759-60.
In contrast, the defendant here was approached by a single officer on patrol who, without any strong-arm tactics, asked him to approach...
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