People v. Trapp
| Decision Date | 17 December 2020 |
| Docket Number | No. 345293,345293 |
| Citation | 966 N.W.2d 420,335 Mich.App. 141 |
| Parties | PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Neil Andrew TRAPP, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | Court of Appeal of Michigan — District of US |
Dana Nessel, Attorney General, Fadwa A. Hammoud, Solicitor General, Eric J. Smith, Prosecuting Attorney, Joshua D. Abbott, Chief Appellate Attorney, and Emil Semaan, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, for the people.
Excolo Law, PLLC, Southfield (by Solomon M. Radner ) for defendant.
William J. Vailliencourt, Jr., Kym L. Worthy, Jason W. Williams, and Timothy A. Baughman for the Prosecuting Attorneys Association of Michigan, amicus curiae.
Before: Swartzle, P.J., and Beckering and Gleicher, JJ.
Gleicher, J. Four uniformed police officers responded to a call from a trailer park reporting "[a] man with a gun" on the premises. When the police arrived, the night scene was quiet with no gunman in sight. The trailer park manager told the officers that the man was inside a nearby trailer.
The police ordered the males in the trailer to come outside with their hands visible. Defendant Neil Trapp complied, and within minutes, he was spun around and handcuffed. Trapp resisted; his efforts resulted in a felony charge. We are tasked with deciding whether Trapp's seizure resulted from a constructive entry conducted in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution. If it did, the common law permitted Trapp to physically oppose and obstruct his arrest.
The police were entitled to investigate whether Trapp presented a danger to the trailer park. But absent a warrant, they could not invade the trailer to seize or search him. The Fourth Amendment likewise prohibited the police from evading the warrant requirement by deliberately coercing Trapp to exit the trailer. Trapp was not subject to arrest before he resisted, and exigent circumstances did not exist to excuse the police officers’ conduct. We reverse Trapp's conviction of attempted resisting or obstructing a police officer and remand for further proceedings.
The facts surrounding the events at issue are confined to the brief preliminary examination testimony of one of the involved police officers and a grainy, dark dashcam video.
Warren police officer Christopher Wells testified that four uniformed officers were dispatched to a trailer park for "[a] man with a gun complaint." The officers arrived at the scene at 10:36 p.m. No people were in sight as the police drove into the trailer park. The manager approached the officers and told them that there were several intoxicated people in "trailer number six" and that one person had a firearm. Gesturing to a different trailer, the manager stated, "I've got this family over here with kids."
The manager described the man with the firearm as "drunker than hell, pulling his gun out" from the back of his pants, shirtless, and "full of tattoos." He stated that there was "a whole group of kids in there," gesturing toward Trailer No. 6, and declared, "I want ‘em all out of my park." The manager and the officers discussed whether the people in Trailer No. 6 actually lived in the trailer or were "trespassers"; some of the conversation is inaudible or garbled. The manager claimed that only a woman lived in the trailer.1
The video shows what happened next. The dashcam was aimed in the direction of the police car's travel into the park. The manager had emerged from the left side of the road. Trailer No. 6 was across the road, on the right. The shorter dimension of Trailer No. 6 (the width end) faced the road. This portion of the trailer had a lit window, but no door.
After being briefed by the trailer park manager, four officers approached Trailer No. 6. Their object was the trailer door located on the long side of the trailer, which ran perpendicular to the road. Because the camera remained in the parked police car and pointed straight down the road, it did not capture the trailer door or its threshold. Several features of the trailer are nonetheless apparent.
Two or three small steps led to a landing, which appears to wrap around the trailer from the side facing the road. The steps and part of the landing are partially visible in the video, but the door and the threshold are not. The straight-ahead camera angle makes it impossible to see the occupants of the trailer before they exit the residence and, in Trapp's case, descend the steps.
One of the four officers mounted the steps and knocked on the trailer door. When a woman answered, the officer shined a flashlight in her direction. The officer asked her who was in the trailer with her, and she identified the occupants as her brother, her stepbrother, and her two "best friends." The officer stated, "Step out here." The woman complied. The officer then asked, "How many kids are in there?" The woman responded that there were no children present other than her 16-year-old son. The woman is never visible in the video.
The officer then declared, "Have the two males step ... out one at a time with their hands where we can see ‘em." Regarding this command, Officer Wells testified as follows:
Trapp exited the trailer, and an officer pointed a second light in Trapp's direction. Two or more additional uniformed officers positioned themselves near the trailer door.2 Immediately after Trapp exited the trailer, one of the officers took Trapp's arm and pulled him toward a parked car, instructing Trapp to "go to that officer over there." Trapp obeyed, commenting "holy shit there's a lot of you" as he moved away from the trailer. He stood facing the trailer with his back to the parked car as he answered the officer's questions. The interrogating officer stood between Trapp and the door to the trailer.
Trapp's answers to the officer's questions exposed Trapp's obvious inebriation. When asked, "What's going on?," Trapp referred to his "company" (presumably houseguests) and began to pivot back toward the trailer. An officer blocked Trapp's path and, in the video evidence, appeared to slightly propel Trapp back toward the patrol car. The officer asked Trapp whether he had "come out here with a gun," and Trapp emphatically replied, "No, hell no!" The officer inquired whether Trapp had his identification on him; Trapp replied affirmatively, and the officer asked to see it. Although it is difficult to discern, Trapp either produced his identification by reaching into a pants pocket or attempted to do so.
Trapp volunteered that his handgun was registered "to myself." He asked, "What is it with the handgun?," and an officer told him that there had been "a complaint." Trapp expressed that he was "lost" about "the whole handgun thing," and an officer sardonically inquired whether he was "lost" about having "run out here" waving the handgun, with no shirt on. Did someone just "make up" that information, the officer queried. Trapp launched into a monologue about "guys" who had been there that evening. He volunteered, "I'd never pull anything on anyone period." An officer asked if he had "a gun here tonight," and Trapp answered, "Do I have a handgun?" He told the officers that his gun was "legal" and that it was in his car. The officer again inquired where the gun was, and Trapp responded by asking the officer whether he had "a warrant." The officer replied, "I'm asking you where it is." Trapp asked for a second time whether the police had a warrant. When the officer repeated the same question a third time, Trapp responded, "All I asked you is there a warrant?"
The officer forcefully pushed Trapp against the parked car and ordered him to "turn around." Trapp resisted, and a struggle ensued. The officers quickly subdued Trapp. They forced him to the ground, handcuffed him, threatened to "spray" him, and placed him in a police cruiser. The prosecutor charged Trapp with one count of resisting or obstructing a police officer, MCL 750.81d(1), one count of attempted resisting or obstructing a police officer, MCL 750.81d(1), one count of brandishing a firearm, MCL 750.234e, and one count of disturbing the peace, MCL 750.170.
At the preliminary exam, Officer Wells explained that the questioning regarding the handgun was directed to Trapp because Trapp wore blue jeans and a white shirt and had tattoos; the other male wore black jeans and a black shirt. The testimony continued as follows:
Defense counsel moved to quash the felony information, contending that Trapp had rightfully resisted an unlawful arrest. The arrest was unlawful, counsel reasoned, because Officer Wells claimed to have arrested Trapp for brandishing a firearm, but under MCL 764.15, the police did not have authority to arrest him for that offense. The district court denied the motion and bound Trapp over for trial, finding that under Terry v. Ohio , 392 U.S. 1, 88 S. Ct. 1868, 20 L. Ed. 2d 889 (1968), the officers had reasonable suspicion to believe that Trapp was armed and dangerous.
Trapp renewed his motion in the circuit court, asserting that the district court improperly relied upon Terry when it determined that his interaction with the police officers had resulted in a lawful arrest. Trapp urged that Terry only applies to public interactions and that he was not in a public place when the police officers told him to exit the trailer. Trapp was unlawfully arrested, counsel urged, because he left the trailer only when the police ordered him to do so.
The circuit court denied Trapp's motion, finding...
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