People v. Jackson

• Decision Date: 06 May 1983
• Docket Number: Docket No. 63223
• Citation: 123 Mich.App. 423,332 N.W.2d 564
• Parties: PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Karl JACKSON, Defendant-Appellee. 123 Mich.App. 423, 332 N.W.2d 564
• Court: Court of Appeal of Michigan — District of US

Page 564

332 N.W.2d 564

PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Karl JACKSON, Defendant-Appellee.

Docket No. 63223.

123 Mich.App. 423, 332 N.W.2d 564

Court of Appeals of Michigan.

Submitted Dec. 13, 1982.

Decided Feb. 24, 1983.

Released for Publication May 6, 1983.

[123 MICHAPP 425] Frank J. Kelley, Atty. Gen., Louis J. Caruso, Sol. Gen., William L. Cahalan, Pros. Atty., Edward Reilly Wilson, Deputy Chief Appellate Asst. Pros. Atty., Civil and Appeals, and Andrea L. Solak, Asst. Pros. Atty., for the People.

Mark R. Hall, Detroit, for defendant-appellee.

Before CYNAR, P.J., and KAUFMAN and MacKENZIE, JJ.

MacKENZIE, Judge.

Defendant was charged with carrying a concealed pistol, M.C.L. Sec. 750.227; M.S.A. Sec. 28.424. A pretrial motion by defendant to suppress the pistol as obtained through an illegal search and seizure was granted, and the case was dismissed. This Court granted the prosecution's application for delayed appeal.

This Court will reverse a trial court ruling on a motion to suppress evidence only if the ruling was clearly erroneous. See, for example, People v. Bandy, 105 Mich.App. 240, 244, 306 N.W.2d 465 (1981). Here it was not disputed that defendant was lawfully arrested by police officers for the misdemeanor of offering to engage the services of a female person for the purposes of prostitution, M.C.L. Sec. 750.449a; M.S.A. Sec. 28.704(1). At the time of his arrest, defendant was carrying a canvas handbag. The arresting officer testified that he took the handbag from defendant, noted that it was unusually heavy, felt the shape of a gun inside, and then opened the bag and discovered the gun. The officer then handcuffed defendant and frisked him.

When a person is arrested, it is reasonable for the arresting officer to search the person arrested [123 MICHAPP 426] or the area within his immediate control to secure weapons or other things which might be used to assault the officer or effect an escape and to secure evidence of the crime which the person arrested might otherwise destroy. Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 763-764, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 2040-41, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969). In this context, the area within the arrestee's immediate control is the area from which the arrestee might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence. 395 U.S. 763, 89 S.Ct. at 2040. In United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 235, 94 S.Ct. 467, 477, 38 L.Ed.2d 427 (1973), the Court explained:

"A police officer's determination as to how and where to search the person of a suspect whom he has arrested is necessarily a quick ad hoc judgment which the Fourth Amendment does not require to be broken down in each instance into an analysis of each step in the search. The authority to search the person incident to a lawful custodial arrest, while based upon the need to disarm and to discover evidence, does not depend on what a court may later decide was the probability in a particular arrest situation that weapons or evidence would in fact be found upon the person of the suspect. A custodial arrest of a suspect based on probable cause is a reasonable intrusion under the Fourth Amendment; that intrusion being lawful, a search incident to the arrest requires no additional justification. It is the fact of the lawful arrest which establishes the authority to search, and we hold that in the case of a lawful custodial arrest a full search of the person is not only an exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment, but is also a 'reasonable' search under that Amendment."

Defendant and the trial court relied upon United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1, 97 S.Ct. 2476, 53 L.Ed.2d 538 (1977), and Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U.S. 753, 99 S.Ct. 2586, 61 L.Ed.2d 235 (1979). In Chadwick, defendants were arrested when a [123 MICHAPP 427] trained police dog indicated that a footlocker which defendants had transported across the country on a train and then reclaimed contained controlled substances. The Court declined to create an exception for luggage searches which was analogous to the esception for automobile searches. The Court noted that, while luggage, like an automobile, is highly mobile, a greater expectation of privacy exists for the contents of luggage than for the contents of an automobile. The Court emphasized that the search in Chadwick could not be justified as incidental to the arrest, because it took place more than an hour after federal agents gained exclusive control of the footlocker and long after defendants were securely in custody. In Sanders, the Court reiterated its previous holding in Chadwick. The Court noted that the state had not attempted to justify the search as being incidental to a lawful arrest and pointed out that the searched luggage had been in the trunk of the automobile in which defendant was riding and so was not within defendant's immediate control. Sanders, p. 763, fn. 11, 99 S.Ct. at p. 2593, fn. 11.

In New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 459-460, 101 S.Ct. 2860, 2864, 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981), the Court held:

"When a person cannot know how a court will apply a settled principle to a recurring factual situation, that person cannot know the scope of his constitutional protection, nor can a policeman know the scope of his authority. While the Chimel case established that a search incident to an arrest may not stray beyond the area within the immediate control of the arrestee, courts have found no workable definition of 'the area within the immediate control of the arrestee' when that area arguably includes the interior of an automobile and the arrestee is its recent occupant. Our reading of the cases suggests the generalization that articles inside the relatively narrow compass of the passenger compartment[123 MICHAPP 428] of an automobile are in fact generally, even if not inevitably, within 'the area into which an arrestee might reach in order to grab a weapon or evidentiary ite[m].' Chimel, 395 U.S., at 763 . In order to establish the workable rule this category of cases requires, we read Chimel's definition of the limits of the area that may be searched in light of that generalization. Accordingly, we hold that when a policeman has made a lawful custodial arrest of the occupant of an automobile, he may, as a contemporaneous incident of that arrest, search the passenger compartment of that automobile.

"It follows from this conclusion that the police may also examine the contents of any containers found within the passenger compartment, for if the passenger compartment is within reach of the arrestee, so also will containers in it be within his reach." (Footnotes omitted.)

The Belton Court emphasized that neither Chadwick nor Sanders involved a search incidental to a lawful arrest. In view of Belton, reliance on Chadwick and Sanders by defendant and the trial court was misplaced. Defendant contends that his handbag passed beyond his immediate control when the arresting officers took it from him. Defendant emphasizes that he was outnumbered by the officers present and was handcuffed shortly after the handbag was taken. However, in Belton, defendant had been removed from the automobile, yet controlled substances found zipped into a pocket of a jacket which defendant had left in the passenger compartment of the automobile were properly seized. See 453 U.S. 461, fn. 5, 101 S.Ct. 2865, fn. 5. The handbag here was as much within defendant's immediate control as the jacket in Belton was within the immediate control of the defendant in that...