Oboh v. State
| Decision Date | 07 June 1995 |
| Docket Number | No. A95A0026,A95A0026 |
| Citation | 217 Ga.App. 553,458 S.E.2d 177 |
| Parties | OBOH v. The STATE. |
| Court | Georgia Court of Appeals |
Gerard J. Lupa, Decatur, for appellant.
J. David McDade, Dist. Atty., Bradley R. Malkin, Asst. Dist. Atty., for appellee.
Defendant was charged with the offense of theft by receiving a stolen rental car. Defendant filed a motion to suppress, contending he was illegally stopped and searched by a law enforcement officer before his arrest. The evidence adduced at a hearing on this motion to suppress reveals the following:
At about 9:12 in the morning on February 19, 1993, Deputy Joseph Lee Garland of the Douglas County Sheriff's Department was parked across the street from Southern Federal Bank in Lithia Springs, Georgia, when he observed a black male drive a "white panel van [with a] rental sticker from a rental company, bumper stickers ..." into the bank's parking lot. A rash of recent bank robberies in the area had raised Deputy Garland's suspicions so he pulled his patrol car into the bank's parking lot and waved to the tellers in the drive-in windows. The deputy just wanted to "let them know [he was] there."
As Deputy Garland drove around the bank building, he [. The bank teller did not have time to tell Deputy Garland why she thought the man in the van was "acting very suspicious" because the suspect "was in the process of pulling out." The deputy "went ahead and proceeded to pull in behind the van and follow him."
Although Deputy Garland followed the van for quite some distance, he did not observe any traffic violations. Nonetheless, the deputy decided to stop the van to "[f]ind out if this person was a licensed driver, was possibly wanted, find out what his reason for being there was." The suspect turned out to be defendant. Defendant did not have a driver's license, and the van he was operating had been acquired (apparently by a third party) by use of a stolen credit card. Defendant was arrested and taken into custody.
The trial court denied defendant's motion to suppress, and defendant filed an application for interlocutory appeal. Defendant filed a notice of appeal after we granted defendant's request to appeal. Held:
In four enumerations of error, defendant challenges the denial of his motion to suppress.
" ' Coley v. State, 177 Ga.App. 669(1), 670, 341 S.E.2d 9. In the case sub judice, Deputy Garland explained his reasons for stopping the van as follows: "The fact of being a rental van, that fact we've had several bank robberies in that time period, the fact that the tellers ran to the front door as if they were appearing to get better description or tag number or whatever they were doing, the fact that the other teller said that he was suspicious." Deputy Garland further explained that "rental cars are used in a lot of crimes." However, the deputy admitted on cross-examination that he had no idea whether any of the recent bank robberies in the Lithia Springs area involved rental cars and that he "didn't know if [the driver of the rental van had] committed a crime in the past or if he was going to commit a crime...." The following discourse more fully discloses the deputy's basis for stopping the suspect who was operating the van: ...
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Morris v. State
...State, 228 Ga.App. 44, 45, 491 S.E.2d 116 (1997); State v. Goodman, 220 Ga.App. 169, 172(2), 469 S.E.2d 327 (1996); Oboh v. State, 217 Ga.App. 553, 555, 458 S.E.2d 177 (1995). Here, the only basis the officers provided for their decision to stop Morris is that they believed Morris was the i......
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Hinson v. State
...talked about it, and nothing in Bell's reported statement indicated Hinson was carrying a weapon that night. See Oboh v. State, 217 Ga.App. 553, 555-56, 458 S.E.2d 177 (1995) (stop not justified by bank tellers' statements that defendant was "acting very suspicious"). The credibility of Bel......
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Worsham v. State, A01A2327.
...indisputably observed no traffic violations); State v. Goodman, 220 Ga.App. 169, 170(2), 469 S.E.2d 327 (1996)(same); Oboh v. State, 217 Ga.App. 553, 458 S.E.2d 177 (1995). 5. (Citations and punctuation omitted.) State v. Webb, supra, at 3-4(1), 386 S.E.2d 6. See Davis v. State, 236 Ga.App.......
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Howden v. State, A99A2157.
...U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, supra. And in so holding, we affirm the sort of totality of the circumstances analysis found in Oboh v. State, 217 Ga.App. 553, 458 S.E.2d 177, and thus find the case sub judice distinguishable from this Court's holding in Anderson v. State, 123 Ga.App. 57, 60(2), 179......