People v. Mungo

• Decision Date: 06 March 2012
• Docket Number: Docket No. 269250.
• Citation: 813 N.W.2d 796,295 Mich.App. 537
• Parties: PEOPLE v. MUNGO (On Second Remand).
• Court: Court of Appeal of Michigan — District of US

295 Mich.App. 537

813 N.W.2d 796

PEOPLE

v.MUNGO (On Second Remand).

Docket No. 269250.

Court of Appeals of Michigan.

Submitted Oct. 21, 2011, at Lansing.

Decided March 6, 2012, at 9:00 a.m.

Bill Schuette, Attorney General, John J. Bursch, Solicitor General, Brian L. Mackie, Prosecuting Attorney, and Mark Kneisel, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, for the people.

State Appellate Defender (by Brandy Y. Robinson) for defendant.

Before: WHITBECK, P.J., and TALBOT and OWENS, JJ.

ON SECOND REMAND

PER CURIAM.

I. OVERVIEW

This case is before this Court for the third time for reconsideration in light of Davis v. United States.¹ This case has a torturous and monstrously complex procedural history stretching out behind it. We believe that it helps, in framing the issue, to summarize that history in something approaching plain English. For ease of reference, we have delineated each of the three stages of this case sequentially and numerically; that is, Mungo I,²Mungo II,³ and Mungo III.⁴

Initially, the circuit court suppressed the evidence: a gun for which defendant Michael Mungo did not hold a concealed weapons permit, which the police found when they searched Mungo's car, incident to the arrest of Mungo's passenger in that car.⁵ The prosecution appealed that decision, and in Mungo I, we applied New York v. Belton,⁶ a United States Supreme Court case, and held that the search was constitutionally permissible. We reached this conclusion even though the search was incident to the passenger's arrest and even “where before the search there was no probable cause to believe that the car contained contraband or that the driver and owner of the car had engaged in any unlawful activity.” ⁷

But in Mungo II, we were required by the Michigan Supreme Court ⁸ to reconsider our decision in light of Arizona v. Gant.⁹Gant was a United States Supreme Court case that postdated and significantly limited the application of Belton. We determined that Gant had retroactive effect and then applied it to the facts of this case.¹⁰ We affirmed the circuit court's suppression of the evidence. We concluded that, on the basis of Gant, the search of Mungo's car without a warrant was unreasonable and in violation of the Fourth Amendment.¹¹ Quite obviously, absent the United States Supreme Court's holding in Gant, we would have reached the opposite conclusion and reversed the circuit court's suppression of the evidence.

Mungo II, however, was not to be the end of the story. The Michigan Supreme Court granted ¹² the prosecution'sapplication for leave to appeal our ruling in Mungo II. The Michigan Supreme Court then held that appeal in abeyance pending a decision in Davis.¹³Davis postdated Gant, and held that searches conducted in objectively reasonable reliance on binding appellate precedent are not subject to the exclusionary rule and therefore the fruit of such searches is not to be suppressed.¹⁴ After the United States Supreme Court decided Davis, the Michigan Supreme Court vacated its previous order that granted leave to appeal, vacated our judgment in Mungo II, and again remanded this case to us for reconsideration “in light of Davis.” ¹⁵

So, the question before us, in the simplest possible terms, is this: in light of Davis, did the police search Mungo's car in objectively reasonable reliance on binding appellate precedent, namely the precedent that Belton established? We hold that the police did conduct the search in objectively reasonable reliance on binding appellate precedent. We therefore reverse the circuit court's exclusion of the gun evidence and remand for further proceedings.

II. FACTS

A. MUNGO I

This Court set forth the facts of Mungo's June 23, 2005 arrest in our first opinion, Mungo I, as follows:

Washtenaw County Sheriff's Deputy Ryan Stuck lawfully initiated a traffic stop of a car driven by defendant. Mark Dixon was the sole passenger in the car. Upon request, defendant produced the vehicle registration and proof of insurance. Deputy Stuck also requested the occupants' driver'slicenses and ran Law Enforcement Information Network (LEIN) checks on both Dixon and defendant. Deputy Stuck found that Dixon had two outstanding warrants issued for failing to appear in court to answer traffic-violation charges. Deputy Stuck arrested Dixon, asked his dispatcher to send another officer to assist him, and secured Dixon in the backseat of his squad car. Deputy Stuck directed defendant to step out of his car and conducted a pat-down search. Thereafter, Deputy Stuck searched defendant's car and found an unloaded gun in a case underneath the driver's seat and ammunition in the glove compartment. Deputy Stuck asked defendant to produce a permit to carry a concealed weapon. However, defendant produced only a permit to purchase a firearm. Defendant's LEIN check did not reveal that he had been issued a concealed-weapons permit. Deputy Stuck arrested defendant for unlawfully carrying a concealed weapon.

In the circuit court, defendant moved to quash the information and suppress evidence of the gun. The prosecutor relied on New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 101 S.Ct. 2860, 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981), to argue that the arrest of any person in a car justifies a search of the passenger compartment of that car. The prosecutors argued that the search that led to the discovery of the gun was constitutionally permissible because Dixon, a passenger in defendant's car, was lawfully arrested. Defendant relied on State v. Bradshaw, 99 S.W.3d 73 (Mo.App., 2003), a case in which a divided panel of the Missouri Court of Appeals distinguished Belton and held that police officers cannot lawfully search a driver's vehicle following the arrest of a passenger where the passenger was safely arrested and there was no reasonable suspicion that the driver possessed unlawful items.

The circuit court distinguished Belton and followed Bradshaw. The circuit court concluded that defendant was not under arrest at the time Deputy Stuck searched his car. The circuit court further concluded that defendant had a protected privacy interest in his car. The circuit court held that there was no probable cause to arrest defendant and, therefore, the search of his car was not constitutionally permissible.¹⁶

The prosecution appealed the circuit court's decision. In an opinion authored by then Judge Zahra, this Court reversed and remanded. We applied Belton, in which the United States Supreme Court held “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.” ¹⁷ We concluded that the facts fit within Belton and that “a police officer may search a car incident to a passenger's arrest where before the search there was no probable cause to believe that the car contained contraband or that the driver and owner of the car had engaged in any unlawful activity.” ¹⁸

B. MUNGO II

Mungo then sought leave to appeal in the Michigan Supreme Court. After holding the application in abeyance, the Michigan Supreme Court, in lieu of granting leave to appeal, vacated this Court's decision in Mungo I and remanded for this Court's reconsideration in light of Gant. In Gant, the vehicle's occupant was handcuffed and locked in a patrol car when the police searched the vehicle.¹⁹ The United States Supreme Court distinguished Belton, in which four unsecured occupants were arrested and posed both a risk to the officer's safety and a risk of loss of evidence.²⁰Gant held that the police may not search a vehicle “incident to a recent occupant's arrest after the arrestee has been secured and cannot access the interior of the vehicle.” ²¹

On remand, in light of Gant, this Court affirmed the trial court's suppression of the gun evidence.²² In Mungo II, we held that Gant applies retroactively and required the suppression of the evidence obtained from the unconstitutional search of defendant's vehicle.²³ In applying Gant to the facts of this case, we stated:

Deputy Stuck placed Dixon under arrest after discovering that Dixon had two outstanding warrants for traffic violations. The officer secured Dixon in the backseat of the police vehicle. The officer searched the vehicle only after an additional police unit had arrived and defendant had been secured in the backseat of that police vehicle. Defendant was not under arrest at the time the search occurred, and Deputy Stuck searched defendant's vehicle incident to Dixon's arrest. Neither defendant nor Dixon would have been able to reach into the passenger compartment of defendant's vehicle when the search occurred; thus, concern for officer safety was not at issue. See Gant, 556 U.S. at [337–338], 129 S.Ct. at 1716. Further, because Dixon was placed under arrest for traffic violations, there would have been no reasonable basis for the officer to conclude that evidence of those offenses could be found in a search of defendant's vehicle. See id. at [343–344], 129 S.Ct. at 1719;Thornton [ v. United States, 541 U.S. 615, 632, 124 S.Ct. 2127, 158 L.Ed.2d 905 (2004)] (Scalia, J., concurring in the judgment). Thus, we conclude that Deputy Stuck's warrantless search of defendant's car was unreasonable and in violation of the Fourth Amendment. See Gant, 556 U.S. at [350–351], 129 S.Ct. at 1723–1724.²⁴

C. MUNGO III

The prosecution sought leave to appeal in the Michigan Supreme Court. After granting leave and then holding the case in abeyance, the Court vacated its previous order that granted leave to appeal, vacated this Court's opinion in Mungo II, and remanded the case to this Court for reconsideration,²⁵ this time in light of Davis.Davis considered the application of the exclusionary rule and its good-faith exception to vehicle searches incident to arrests of recent occupants that were conducted before the new rule was announced in Gant.²⁶ The United States Supreme Court held in Davis “that searches conducted in objectively reasonable reliance...