Meadows v. State, CR
| Decision Date | 30 June 1980 |
| Docket Number | No. CR,CR |
| Citation | 269 Ark. 380,602 S.W.2d 636 |
| Parties | Lonnie Augusta MEADOWS, Appellant, v. STATE of Arkansas, Appellee. 80-77. |
| Court | Arkansas Supreme Court |
E. Alvin Schay, App. Public Defender by Ray Hartenstein, Chief Deputy Defender, Little Rock, for appellant.
Steve Clark, Atty. Gen. by Jack W. Dickerson, Asst. Atty. Gen., Little Rock, for appellee.
In this prosecution for possession of heroin with intent to deliver, the issue on appeal is the validity of a police search by which Meadows was found to be carrying drugs on his person. At a non-jury trial Meadows was found guilty and sentenced to ten years' imprisonment. We agree with his insistence that the trial court should have suppressed the evidence produced by the search.
On the evening of February 8, 1978, Meadows and a companion, Rosco Duncan, both black, arrived by plane at the Little Rock airport. Three state policemen, Don Sanders, Bill Bounds, and Dave Johnston, dressed in plain clothes, were watching the alighting passengers in the hope of spotting several white males who were reported to be transporting heroin. When Meadows and Duncan walked past the officers they started looking back, which aroused the officers' suspicion. Bounds motioned to Sanders to follow the two men. Sanders fell in behind them and followed them through the building at some distance. Both men kept looking back occasionally. Their pace quickened as they went through the terminal, where there were perhaps 150 people. After going down an escalator the two men went to a pay telephone booth.
At that point Sanders approached Meadows and identified himself as a policeman. Meadows said, "I knew you were a police officer." Sanders said he wondered if anything was wrong, and Meadows answered, "No." Sanders then asked for identification, and Meadows produced his driver's license. Sanders handed the license to Officer Bounds, who with Officer Johnston had arrived by then. Bounds telephoned the police communications center to check on the two men, but the computer terminal was "down." Bounds returned the driver's license to Meadows and told him he could go.
Within moments Bounds was called to the telephone and was told by the communications center that there was a felony warrant out for Meadows, for defrauding a secured creditor. The officers caught up with Meadows and Duncan as they were leaving the airport, arrested Meadows, and searched him, finding the heroin which gave rise to this prosecution.
Officer Sanders testified that he did not follow Meadows because he suspected him of any specific crime, but simply because Meadows and Duncan were looking back in a suspicious manner. Officer Bounds testified that the police call such conduct "rubber-necking," which indicates that the suspect has spotted a police officer and is nervous. The trial judge found that there was nothing at all illegal about what Meadows and Duncan were doing; "it's obvious to the court that we've got some paranoid cops." Nevertheless, the judge refused to suppress the evidence, on the ground that a police officer is permitted to stop anyone and ask him for identification. On that premise the judge held that the information obtained through Meadows's driver's license was not tainted under the poisonous tree doctrine, and the seized drugs were therefore admissible.
We disagree. The main issue is controlled by our Criminal Procedure Rule 3.1, which provides:
A law enforcement officer lawfully present in any place may, in the performance of his duties, stop and detain any person who he reasonably suspects is...
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...Stewart was simply that she was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time." Id. at 146, 964 S.W.2d at 797. In Meadows v. State, 269 Ark. 380, 602 S.W.2d 636 (1980), the court held that Rule 3.1 did not permit officers to stop and detain airline passengers who quickened their pace and co......
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