Griffin v. State
| Decision Date | 23 October 2013 |
| Docket Number | No. 49A02–1212–CR–964.,49A02–1212–CR–964. |
| Citation | 997 N.E.2d 375 |
| Parties | Phillip GRIFFIN, Appellant–Defendant, v. STATE of Indiana, Appellee–Plaintiff. |
| Court | Indiana Appellate Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Barbara J. Simmons, Oldenburg, IN, Attorney for Appellant.
Gregory F. Zoeller, Attorney General of Indiana, Richard C. Webster, Deputy Attorney General, Indianapolis, IN, Attorneys for Appellee.
Citizens are obliged to obey a police officer's order to stop when the officer has probable cause or reasonable suspicion to believe that criminal activity may be afoot. When there is no indication of possible criminal activity, does a citizen who walks away commit the crime of resisting arrest by departing? We think it cannot be so, consistent with the Fourth Amendment, and reverse appellant Phillip Griffin's conviction for resisting law enforcement.
On the other hand, whether Griffin's conviction for battering an officer while being placed under arrest stands on different grounds. We affirm it.
On June 27, 2012, Officer Matthew Miller of the Lawrence Police Department was on patrol, in uniform and in a marked police car. He passed Phillip Griffin, who was walking down the street. When Millerlooked in his rearview mirror, Griffin appeared to be gesturing at him. It appeared to Officer Miller that Griffin was “maybe unstable,” Tr. p. 6, so Miller called for backup as he turned around and drove back to Griffin.
Miller got out of his car and asked Griffin what was happening. Griffin, shouting in a “kind of incoherent” manner, id., accused Miller of trying to run him over. Next, although the two men were standing fifteen feet apart, Griffin threw “two kind of shadow punches” at Miller and ran away from him. Id.
Miller pursued Griffin, shouting at him to stop and warning that he would use his Taser if necessary. When Griffin did not stop, Miller deployed his Taser, which struck Griffin and caused him to fall to the ground. Griffin stood up and struck Miller with his hands and feet as Miller attempted to handcuff him. At this point, several other officers arrived. They tackled Griffin, tased him four times, and eventually handcuffed him. Tr. pp. 18–20.
The State charged Griffin with two counts of resisting law enforcement, both class A misdemeanors. Ind.Code § 35–44–3–3 (2011).1 It also charged him with two counts of battery upon a law enforcement officer, both class A misdemeanors. Ind.Code § 35–42–2–1 (2009). One of these counts alleged battery on Miller during the initial encounter; the other count alleged battery on the officers who subdued Griffin a moment later.
After a bench trial, the court found Griffin guilty of battering Miller and of resisting law enforcement in relation to disregarding Miller's command to stop. The court found Griffin not guilty of the other two charges.
The court sentenced Griffin to two concurrent terms of 365 days, to be suspended and served on probation. Furthermore, the court ordered him “to do 24 hours of community service work in lieu of his court costs” and found him indigent as to all other fees. Tr. p. 39.
Griffin raises two issues:
I. Whether the evidence is sufficient to sustain his convictions.
II. Whether the trial court abused its discretion by ordering him to perform community service in lieu of paying court costs.
When an appellant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence, we do not reweigh the evidence or judge the credibility of the witnesses. Joslyn v. State, 942 N.E.2d 809 (Ind.2011). We consider only the probative evidence and reasonable inferences supporting the judgment, and we will affirm if the evidence and reasonable inferences could have allowed a reasonable trier of fact to find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Id.
Griffin does not argue that Indiana's statute on resisting law enforcement is unconstitutional. What he does contend is that when the evidence does not reflect any suggestion of criminal activity afoot, a citizen is free to terminate an encounter with an officer by walking away. There being no indication of any criminal activity in this case, Griffin says that the officer's command to stop was an “unreasonable seizure” in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
To convict Griffin of resisting law enforcement as charged, the State was required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that: (1) Griffin (2) fled (3) from Miller, a law enforcement officer, (4) after Miller, by visible or audible means, identified himself and ordered Griffin to stop. Ind.Code § 35–44–3–3.
The State cites to a number of cases in this Court which hold that the resisting statute does not require that the order to stop be lawful. In Cole v. State, 878 N.E.2d 882, 884 (Ind.Ct.App.2007), for example, an officer drove up to a vehicle around which he saw several people gathered. He did not see any actual sign of criminal activity, though the comings and goings were loosely suggestive of drug dealing. When the officer exited his car and asked the driver and the passenger, Cole, for identification, Cole got out of the car and began walking away. Cole disregarded several orders to get back in the car and then ran away, ignoring the officer's commands to halt. Another officer tasered Cole, who was subsequently subdued and placed in handcuffs.
The Cole panel was led to “doubt the propriety of the investigatory stop,” id. at 886, but held it unnecessary to address Cole's claim of a Fourth Amendment violation, stating, “It is well settled that ‘[i]n Indiana, an individual may not flee from a police officer who has ordered the person to stop, regardless of the apparent or ultimate lawfulness of the officer's order.’ ” Id. at 886 ().2
While this may adequately describe the structure of the statute, we think it but states the obvious that the government's seizure of a citizen is subject to limitation under the Fourth Amendment. As the Indiana Supreme Court has observed: “The Fourth Amendment requires that an arrest or detention for more than a short period be justified by probable cause.” Woods v. State, 547 N.E.2d 772, 778 (Ind.1989), overruled in part on other grounds by Richardson v. State, 717 N.E.2d 32, 49 (Ind.1999). Even brief detentions for investigatory purposes must rest on articulable facts that lead an officer to reasonable suspicion that criminal activity “may be afoot.” Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 30, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968).
Of course, there are many altogether lawful contacts between officers and citizens in which neither probable cause nor articulable suspicion are present. These include conversations seeking information, in what the cases call “consensual encounters,” where “the person to whom questions are put remains free to disregard the questions and walk away.” United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U.S. 544, 554, 100 S.Ct. 1870, 64 L.Ed.2d 497 (1980). Such interactions also occur in which a modest consensual encounter during a “community caretaking” run produces immediate indication of criminal activity warranting a seizure. See, e.g., Woodson v. State, 966 N.E.2d 135 (Ind.Ct.App.2012), trans. denied; R.H. v. State, 916 N.E.2d 260 (Ind.Ct.App.2009), trans. denied. The State has not responded in this case on these grounds or, for example, by citing cases in which detention is appropriate on mental health grounds. It stands instead on the Cole line of cases, saying that the crime of resisting is committed when a directive to halt is disobeyed, whether the directive was lawful or unlawful.
Most persons choose to stay when officers ask them to do so, but citizens who choose to depart cannot be regarded as committing a crime. As Justice Stewart wrote in Mendenhall, “The purpose of the Fourth Amendment is not to eliminate all contact between the police and the citizenry, but to prevent arbitrary and oppressive interference by enforcement officials with the privacy and personal security of individuals.” Id. at 553–54 (quotation and citation omitted).3
As a recent decision of this Court declared, “We hold that as long as a seizure has not taken place within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, a person is free to disregard a police officer's order to stop and cannot be convicted of resisting law enforcement for fleeing.” Gaddie v. State, 991 N.E.2d 137, 141 (Ind.Ct.App.2013), trans. pending.
In the present case, the State explicitly argues that it need not establish any facts giving rise to probable cause or articulable suspicion that would have warranted detaining Griffin in order to sustain the conviction. This position fits with the record, which does not reveal any facts warranting a detention. Griffin appeared to Miller to be unstable, and he threw “shadow punches” from a considerable distance before running away, but none of Griffin's actions suggested any criminal offense. Without evidence demonstrating grounds for detention, Griffin's conviction for resisting law enforcement must be reversed.
Griffin's contention that there is insufficient evidence to sustain his conviction for battering Officer Miller focuses solely on his argument that he was defending himself from Miller's use of excessive force. This claim is subject to a very different analysis.
The common law rule, still widely recognized, has been that a citizen is permitted to use reasonable force to resist an illegal arrest. 5 Am.Jur.2d Arrest § 89 (2007). Indiana's criminal code recognizes this principle through a section upon which Griffin relies:
A person is justified in using reasonable force against a public servant if the person reasonably believes the force is necessary to:
(1) protect the person or a third person from what the person reasonably believes to be the imminent use of unlawful force;
(2) prevent or terminate the public...
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