People v. Cobbin

• Decision Date: 17 December 1984
• Docket Number: No. 84SA251,84SA251
• Citation: 692 P.2d 1069
• Parties: The PEOPLE of the State of Colorado, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Kenneth R. COBBIN, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: Colorado Supreme Court

Page 1069

692 P.2d 1069

The PEOPLE of the State of Colorado, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Kenneth R. COBBIN, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 84SA251.

Supreme Court of Colorado En Banc.

Dec. 17, 1984.

Norman S. Early, Jr., Dist. Atty., O. Otto Moore, Asst. Dist. Atty., Brooke Wunnicke, Chief Appellate Deputy Dist. Atty., Denver, for plaintiff-appellant.

Terri L. Brake, Law Offices of Larry S. Pozner, P.C., Denver, for defendant-appellee.

DUBOFSKY, Justice.

In this interlocutory appeal under C.A.R. 4.1, the People challenge a Denver District Court ruling suppressing evidence seized from the defendant and identification of the defendant on the ground that both were obtained as part of an investigatory stop, the character of which was unreasonable. We affirm the order of the district court.

About 2:50 p.m. on September 2, 1983, police officers Relf and Ginsberg, on foot patrol at the corner of 21st and Larimer Streets in Denver, observed an elderly Hispanic man, recognized by one of the officers as a neighborhood businessman, chasing a young black man. Officer Relf pursued the young man on foot while Officer Ginsberg broadcast a description of the young man over a handheld police radio. Officer Ginsberg related that the person being chased possibly was involved in a robbery. A third officer, Officer Gutierrez, heard the description and call for assistance on his patrol car radio. He sighted a man answering the description broadcast by Officer Ginsberg near 23rd and Larimer Streets. Officer Gutierrez stopped the suspect, the defendant Kenneth R. Cobbin. Because Gutierrez was under the misimpression that Officer Ginsberg knew this man had been involved in an armed robbery, he drew his service revolver and handcuffed and patted down the defendant. In the patdown search, Officer Gutierrez discovered a wad of money in one of the defendant's pockets. He returned the money to the pocket after determining that the suspect did not have a weapon.

After Officer Gutierrez completed his patdown search, another patrol car and Officers Relf and Ginsberg on foot arrived at the scene. Officer Relf identified the defendant as the man he had been chasing. Officer Gutierrez removed his handcuffs from the defendant and another officer handcuffed the defendant with another set of handcuffs. Officer Relf placed him leaning over the hood of one of the patrol cars. Either Officer Relf or Ginsberg conducted another patdown search and confiscated the contents of the defendant's pockets. ^{1 1} Officer Relf asked the defendant his name, but none of the officers asked the defendant why he had been running at 21st and Larimer. The defendant was placed in the patrol car of another policeman, Officer Duncan, and returned to the area of 21st and Larimer. David Salas, the owner of a barbershop at 2105 Larimer, identified the defendant as the man he had been chasing down the street a few minutes earlier. He told the officers that he had caught the suspect stealing money from the barbershop's cash register and chased him out the door and down the street. The officers then told the defendant he was under arrest and gave him his Miranda warnings.

The defendant was charged with robbery of the elderly under section 18-4-304, 8 C.R.S. (1984 Supp.), a class three felony, and third degree burglary under section 18-4-204, 8 C.R.S. (1984 Supp.), a class five felony. The defendant pled not guilty, and, acting pro se, moved to suppress evidence obtained as a result of the stop. After a suppression hearing, the district court found that, at the time they chased and stopped the defendant, the officers had no knowledge that any crime had been committed. Therefore, the court held that there was no probable cause to arrest the defendant at 23rd and Larimer, but that the information available to the officers justified an investigatory stop. Further, the court determined that the officers properly searched the defendant for weapons, but that because the defendant was found to be unarmed and was in the presence of five or six police officers, it was unreasonable to handcuff the defendant, place him over the hood of the car, and return him, handcuffed, for an identification by Salas before anyone discovered why Salas was chasing the defendant. The district court concluded that the character of this detention was not reasonable in light of its purpose and suppressed the money seized from the defendant and the officers' and Salas' identification of the defendant.

The People have not appealed the district court ruling that the officers lacked probable cause to arrest the defendant when he was chased and stopped near 23rd and Larimer. Instead, the People assert on appeal that the search, handcuffing and transportation of the defendant to 21st and Larimer Streets were reasonable actions taken for the police officers' safety and to investigate the incident.

I.

We conclude that the character and scope of the detention of the defendant in this case was not reasonable when considered in light of the knowledge then held by the police officers and the purpose of the stop. The constitutional basis for an investigatory stop upon less than probable cause for arrest was first established in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). The Supreme Court held in that case that constitutional rights under the fourth and fourteenth amendments are implicated when the police conduct even very limited searches and detention of suspects. Holding that limited stops and searches could be conducted without probable cause, the Court cautioned that the scope of such intrusions must be strictly limited by their purpose. 392 U.S. at 19, 25-26, 88 S.Ct. at 1878, 1882-1883. Here the scope of the intrusion was not so limited.

The requirements of a valid investigatory stop (a Stone stop) were set out by this court in People v. Thomas, 660 P.2d 1272 (Colo.1983):

Three conditions must exist before a person may be subjected to an investigatory stop: (1) there must be a specific and articulable basis in fact for suspecting that criminal activity has occurred, is taking place, or is about to take place; (2) the purpose of the stop must be reasonable; and (3) the scope and character of the stop must be reasonably related to its purpose.

Id. at 1274 (citing Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968); People v. Tate, 657 P.2d 955 (Colo.1983); Stone v. People, 174 Colo. 504, 485 P.2d 495 (1971)). See also People v. Perez, 690 P.2d 853 (Colo.1984); People v. Cagle, 688 P.2d 718 (Colo.1984); People v. Villiard, 679 P.2d 593 (Colo.1984); People v. Wells, 676 P.2d 698 (Colo.1984); People v. Lewis, 659 P.2d 676 (Colo.1983); People v. Tooker, 198 Colo. 496, 601 P.2d 1388 (1979).

In this case, the mere fact that the suspect was running away from an older man did not furnish the officers with probable cause to arrest the defendant. This was the only knowledge possessed by any of the officers until the defendant was returned to the barbershop at 21st and Larimer. In a high crime area like 21st and Larimer, however, such knowledge may furnish a reasonable suspicion that criminal activity has occurred, sufficient to justify a limited investigatory detention. ² Therefore, as the district court held, the stop met the first requirement of Stone.

In People v. Cagle we discussed, under the second requirement of Stone, the inquiry that a court must make about the officer's actual purpose at the time of the stop and search. Although the officers' testimony at the suppression hearing did not extend to their purpose in stopping the defendant, they did state that they had no intent to arrest him until after the identification by Salas. Officers Relf and Ginsberg testified that the purpose of the patdown search and handcuffing the defendant was to protect the police officers. ³ The purpose of the stop and detention implicitly appearing throughout the record is the reasonable one of discovering whether the defendant was involved in a crime.

This brings us to the third inquiry under Stone: whether the scope and character of the stop were reasonably related to its purpose. When a suspect is stopped for the limited purpose of discovering whether he was involved in criminal activity, intrusion by police officers on the suspect's rights must be similarly limited. "Any temporary police detention made for the purpose of questioning a suspect who might otherwise escape is limited to determining an individual's identity or obtaining an explanation of his behavior." People v. Schreyer, 640 P.2d 1147, 1150 (Colo.1982); People v. Hazelhurst, 662 P.2d 1081, 1086 (Colo.1983). The limited weapons search here was justified by the reasoning of Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968) and People v. Tate, 657 P.2d 955. However, once it was ascertained that the defendant was not armed, the officers exceeded the proper scope of their search by again searching the defendant's pockets and confiscating the contents. ⁴ In addition, the police officers testified at the suppression hearing that they made no attempt to elicit an explanation of the defendant's activities from him, ⁵ see Schreyer, 640 P.2d at 1150, or from anyone else. Instead, they confiscated his possessions, handcuffed him and placed him in a police vehicle, returning him to the place where the chase started. These actions were a greater intrusion on the defendant's person than necessary to detain him and inquire about his activities. See People v. Schreyer, 640 P.2d at 1150. ⁶

We therefore affirm the district court's ruling suppressing the evidence seized during the investigatory stop.

II.

The People's brief also addresses the district court's holding suppressing the eyewitness identification made by Salas at the showup in front of his barbershop. This ruling cannot be the subject of an interlocutory appeal under C.A.R. 4.1. Rule 4.1 may be used only to appeal from pre-trial suppression hearings required by Crim.P. 41...