Glass v. State

• Decision Date: 04 June 1993
• Docket Number: No. 92-165,92-165
• Parties: Danny Lee GLASS, Appellant (Defendant), v. The STATE of Wyoming, Appellee (Plaintiff).
• Court: Wyoming Supreme Court

Page 972

853 P.2d 972

Danny Lee GLASS, Appellant (Defendant), v. The STATE of Wyoming, Appellee (Plaintiff).

No. 92-165.

Supreme Court of Wyoming.

June 4, 1993.

Leonard D. Munker, State Public Defender, Dave Gosar, Asst. Public Defender, Gerald M. Gallivan, Defender Aid Program, and Dion Custis, Student Intern, for appellant.

Joseph B. Meyer, Atty. Gen., Sylvia Lee Hackl, Deputy Atty. Gen., Barbara L. Boyer, Sr. Asst. Atty. Gen., Theodore E. Lauer, Director of the Prosecution Assistance Program, and Carmen L. Patterson and Chuck Solomon, Student Interns, for appellee.

Before MACY, C.J., and THOMAS, CARDINE, GOLDEN and TAYLOR, JJ.

MACY, Chief Justice.

Appellant Danny Lee Glass appeals from his conviction for misdemeanor larceny in violation of Wyo.Stat. § 6-3-402(a) and (c)(iii) (1988).

We affirm.

Appellant predicates his appeal upon this abstract of the issues:

I. Did the trial court err in not suppressing statements, actions, and evidence which were the product of an illegal arrest.

A. Are nighttime, nonconsensual, nonexigent, warrantless arrests per se unconstitutional under the 4th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and Article 1, Section 4 of the Wyoming State Constitution?

1. Does a ward of the state have an expectation of privacy while residing in a halfway house?

2. Was the officers' entry nonconsensual?

3. Was there a lack of exigent circumstances to justify a nighttime, nonconsensual, and warrantless entry into the defendant's home?

4. Was the defendant placed under "custodial arrest"?

B. Did the trial court err in admitting statements and evidence resulting from an illegal arrest?

II. Did the trial court err in allowing defendant's statement and actions, which were the result of an involuntary waiver of Miranda warnings in violation of the 5th and 14th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution and Article 1, Section[s] 6 and 11 of the Wyoming State Constitution?

The facts relevant to the resolution of this appeal were developed at a hearing held upon Appellant's motion to suppress statements he made before, during, and after his arrest, as well as evidence gathered by the State as a product of those statements. During the afternoon of December 4, 1991, a Campbell County sheriff's officer observed a winch in the back of a pickup parked near Community Alternatives of Gillette. Community Alternatives is a community-based corrections facility, and Appellant was serving part of a four- to six-year penitentiary sentence at the center. The officer was aware that, within the past several days, such a winch had been reported as being stolen. At about ten o'clock that evening, this information was passed on to the officers who were to work the night shift of December 4-5, 1991, and they were asked to check further into the matter. Those officers were not able to do so until about three o'clock in the morning on December 5, 1991. At that time, they determined that the winch matched the description of the stolen winch and that the pickup in which it was discovered belonged to Appellant. Surmising that Appellant resided at Community Alternatives, the officers went into the building to locate him and to inquire about the winch. They established which was Appellant's room from a sign-up sheet for a wake-up call.

At about 3:20 a.m., the officers went to the room, and, after at least two knocks, Appellant answered the door. Appellant was clad in his underwear and apparently had been asleep. He left the door open and retired to his bed, covering himself with a sheet. The officers followed him into the room and, in quick succession, asked him if he was Dan Glass and if he owned the pickup containing the winch. Appellant answered both questions, confirming his identity and ownership of the pickup and "most" of its contents. The officers proceeded to ask additional questions, and Appellant admitted that he had stolen the winch, using tools which were located in his pickup. The officers placed Appellant under arrest at 3:37 a.m. and gave the warnings required by Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966). They testified that they had not considered Appellant as being under arrest until that moment in the encounter and that, if Appellant had asked them to leave at any time earlier, they would have done so. After giving the Miranda warnings, the officers asked Appellant to get dressed. They asked Appellant what shoes he was wearing on the night he stole the winch. Appellant pointed to a pair of western-style boots which could have produced the boot prints which were found in fresh snow at the crime scene. The officers instructed Appellant to wear those boots, and eventually the boots were seized and admitted into evidence. Because Appellant indicated in his confessional statement that he stole the winch for someone from Newcastle, the officers asked him to cooperate in making a telephone call to that individual for the purpose of implicating him in the crime. Appellant said that he would need to speak to a lawyer before assisting the officers. Once he was outside the Community Alternatives building, and after being specifically instructed that he was under arrest and that he did not have to answer any additional questions, Appellant pointed out the wire cutters and wrench he had used in stealing the winch. The next day, a warrant was obtained for the seizure of the winch and the tools.

At the conclusion of the suppression hearing, the district court rendered its decision:

The problem I have with this case is the problem of custodial interrogation within the meaning of Miranda, and the officer merely saying someone was not under arrest is not sufficient if the facts and circumstances then present suggest that contrary is true.

In this instance I'm sure the testimony is accurate that the defendant was not under arrest when the officers went into his room. And I notice that Deputy Seeman in response to the question, "Would you have left if he'd asked you to leave?" said, "I would have left the room." I think the implication from that is pretty clear that he may have left the room, but Mr. Glass was not going to go anywhere.

At some point in time that interrogation in the room, I think, turned into custodial interrogation. When the officer went to the room he had, I think, good cause to believe that Mr. Glass was the one who had stolen the winch. It had been recently stolen. It was in the back of a pickup which was registered to him. I think as a matter of caution it was prudent for the officer upon going into the room to make sure that, in fact, the vehicle did belong to Mr. Glass and that there wasn't some kind of a clerical mix up and that Mr. Glass had the property in it.

So all those questions that went to Mr. Glass--about whether he owned the pickup, or whether that was his pickup, whether he owned the property in the pickup--I believe were merely--were questions that just merely meant to confirm some of the things which appeared from the record to be true.

Once that was done, however, I think the officer knew that--or certainly had good cause to know that Mr. Glass is the one who had stolen the winch. To go further with the questioning without Miranda warnings is improper.

While Mr. Glass may not have been under arrest at that moment, it seems to me quite evident that had Mr. Glass tried to leave he would have been placed under arrest. So the statements made by Mr. Glass after his statement that he owned the pickup and that the property in the pickup belonged to him are suppressed up until the time of any statements made after he was advised of his rights per Miranda.

And I specifically find that he was advised per Miranda, that he requested to talk to a lawyer, and that request was honored by the officer, and that after having made that request, upon his own initiative that the defendant offered keys to the car or the keys to the pickup and showed the officer where the pliers w[ere]. So that evidence is not suppressed, because it was volunteered by the defendant without any pressure at all from the officers and while he was under arrest legally and after having been advised per Miranda and having elected to have a lawyer.

The testimony of one of the officers in this regard is helpful to a resolution of these issues:

A At that point I handcuffed him, escorted him out the building to the area of the truck where Deputy Prell was there watching the truck. At that point Glass was handcuffed. He was wearing his jacket. He told me to take the truck keys out of his pocket and then he'd show me where the wire cutters were.

Q Let me stop you right there. Did you ask him to do that?

A No, we had discussed this previously when--before he was arrested when I asked him if the wire cutters were still in the truck, and he said he wasn't sure, but he'd show me. And so while we were walking out he said, yeah, the keys--the way he did it, he indicated with his head down to his right-hand pocket. He said keys are in the pocket here, and at that point I stopped him. I told him, you know, that you don't have to show me where these wire cutters are. You're under arrest. You don't have to show me where they are. He said that's okay.

I took the keys out of his pocket. He indicated that the wire cutters would be inside a toolbox located in the bed of the truck right behind the cab. I got up inside the bed of the truck. I took the keys. The toolbox is a wooden--made out of plywood, had a clasp and a padlock.

I placed the key for the padlock in it, lifted the top up. Right on the top was a pair of blue-handled wire cutters. I shined the flashlight on those and asked are those the ones. He said, yeah, those are them. I asked him which wrench would have been the one he used. There was one of those plastic organizers for open box end wrenches in there. He said he thought it was one of those. He couldn't be sure which one it was.

At trial, the events which took place at Community Alternatives...