People v. Weaver

• Decision Date: 24 August 1971
• Docket Number: No. 1,Docket No. 9226,1
• Parties: PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Dennis L. WEAVER, Defendant-Appellant
• Court: Court of Appeal of Michigan — District of US

Page 572

192 N.W.2d 572

35 Mich.App. 504

PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Dennis L. WEAVER, Defendant-Appellant.

Docket No. 9226.

Court of Appeals of Michigan, Division No. 1.

Aug. 24, 1971.

Leave to Appeal Denied Nov. 16, 1971.

Released for Publication Dec. 30, 1971.

Albert Summer, Detroit, for defendant-appellant.

Frank J. Kelley, Atty. Gen., Robert A. Derengoski, Sol. Gen., William L. Cahalan, Pros. Atty., Dominick R. Carnovale, Chief, Appellate Div., Thomas R. Lewis, Asst. Pros. Atty., for plaintiff-appellee.

Before FITZGERALD, P.J., and LEVIN and O'HARA, ^* JJ.

LEVIN, Judge.

The defendant, Dennis L. Weaver, appeals his conviction by a jury of the offense of armed robbery. ¹

The people's evidence tended to show that Weaver stole a 1967 Cadillac automobile and money from the owner of the automobile and a friend of the owner at gunpoint in Detroit.

Two weeks after the robbery Weaver was stopped by police officers in Cleveland, Ohio while he was driving the stolen Cadillac automobile. He was stopped because the automobile was bearing license plates which had been reported stolen. Weaver disclaimed ownership of the automobile and informed the officers that he had borrowed it from a friend. Weaver was arrested, the automobile was searched at the scene, and a gun was found in the glove compartment. The automobile was removed to the police garage.

Two days after Weaver's arrest, police detectives, unable to locate the man who allegedly had lent the automobile to Weaver, made a search without a warrant of the impounded automobile. In the glove compartment they found a service book with the serial number of the automobile and the name of the owner and his Detroit, Michigan address. In response to a teletype sent to Detroit, the Cleveland authorities learned that the automobile had been stolen during a robbery.

A week later, a Detroit police detective met with Weaver in the county jail in Cleveland and advised him of his constitutional rights. Weaver signed a Miranda ² warning form, and refused to make a statement. At the time he had an attorney in Cleveland, but had not as yet obtained counsel in Detroit.

The Detroit police detective and Weaver left for Detroit arriving that afternoon. The following morning the police detective summarized for Weaver the evidence which had been assembled tending to establish his guilt and asked him whether he now wished to make a statement. Weaver then gave a confessional statement after having been again advised of his constitutional rights. The trial court ruled that the confession was admissible.

I.

Mr. Justice Stewart recently observed for a plurality (himself and three other justices) of the United States Supreme Court:

'As in every case, our single duty is to determine the issues presented in accord with the Constitution and the law.' Coolidge v. New Hampshire (1971), 403 U.S. 443, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 2027, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (per Mr. Justices Stewart, Douglas, Brennan, and Marshall).

A core meaning of the Fourth Amendment right of the people to be secure in their persons against unreasonable searches and seizures is that a citizen's privacy shall be respected by the state. 'The principal object of the Fourth Amendment is the protection of privacy rather than property, (and the United States Supreme Court has) increasingly discarded fictional and procedural barriers rested on property concepts.' Warden, Maryland Penitentiary v. Hayden (1967), 387 U.S. 294, 304, 87 S.Ct. 1642, 1648, 18 L.Ed.2d 782, 790.

It is, therefore, clear that no distinction can properly be made based on whether the defendant was lawfully in possession of the automobile that was searched. See Williams v. United States (C.A. 5, 1969), 412 F.2d 729, and Glisson v. United States (C.A. 5, 1969), 406 F.2d 423, holding that a defendant in a criminal case from whose possession a stolen automobile was taken by the police has standing to complain of a later search of the impounded vehicle. See, also, Warden, Maryland Penitentiary v. Hayden, Supra, 387 U.S. p. 307, 87 S.Ct. 1642.

In the recent Collidge case, at the same time that Collidge was arrested his automobile was seized pursuant to an Invalid search warrant. The vehicle was subsequently toward to the police station where, two days later and on two occasions the following year, it was searched. Vacuum sweepings from the automobile were held to be inadmissible and his conviction was reversed:

'The most basic constitutional rule in this area is that 'searches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by judge or magistrate, are Per unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment--subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions.' The exceptions are 'jealously and carefully drawn,' and there must be 'a showing by those who seek exemption * * * that the exigencies of the situation made that course imperative.' '(T)he burden is on those seeking the exemption to show the need for it.' In times of unrest, whether caused by crime or racial conflict or fear of internal subversion, this basic law and the values that it represents may appear unrealistic or 'extravagant' to some. But the values were those of the authors of our fundamental constitutional concepts. In times not altogether unlike our own they won--by legal and constitutional means in England, and by revolution on this continent--a right of personal security against arbitrary intrusions by official power. If times have changed, reducing every man's scope to do as he pleas in an urban and industrial world, the changes have made the values served by the Fourth Amendment more, not less, important. * * * 'The word 'automobile' is not a talisman in whose presence the Fourth Amendment fades away and disappears.' Coolidge v. New Hampshire (1971), 403 U.S. 443, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 2032, 2035, 29 L.Ed.2d 564, 576, 580 (per Mr. Justices Stewart, Douglas, Brennan and Marshall).

In Carroll v. United States (1925), 267 U.S. 132, 156, 45 S.Ct. 280, 286, 69 L.Ed. 543, 552, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the police may search a vehicle without a warrant if 'the seizing officer shall have reasonable or probable cause for believing that the automobile which he stops and seizes has contraband liquor therein which is being illegally transported.'

In Chambers v. Maroney (1970), 399 U.S. 42, 90 S.Ct. 1975, 26 L.Ed.2d 419, the Court ruled, as explicated in Coolidge, that 'where the police may stop and search an automobile under Carroll, they may also seize it and search it later at the police station.' ³ It was also observed in Coolidge that in Preston v. United States (1964), 376 U.S. 364, 84 S.Ct. 881, 11 L.Ed.2d 777, the Court had made plain that the police 'could not legally seize the car, remove it, and search it At their leisure without a warrant.' ⁴ (Emphasis supplied.) This was also made plain in Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. p. 52, 90 S.Ct. 1975, 26 L.Ed.2d 419; the Court there emphasized that a search of an automobile at the station house without a warrant must be 'immediate.' (In two separate places the Court used the phrase 'immediate search without a warrant.') The word 'immediate' must, therefore, be given meaning. 'Immediate' could mean immediately upon arrival of the automobile at the station house. If that is what it means--and that is how we read it--then the second search here conducted, two days after the automobile was seized, was not an immediate search and, therefore, was not a search validated or approved in Chambers.

The defendant Weaver told the police that the apparently stolen automobile had been lent to him by a named individual. The police attempted to locate that individual, but were unable to do so. When Weaver's proffered exculpatory statement could not be verified, the police had more reason to believe that the automobile was, indeed, stolen; the evidence of the stolen plates and their inability to verify the defendant's exculpatory statement again gave them probable cause to search the automobile. It is arguable that since the police, 'immediately' upon concluding that the exculpatory statement could not be verified, searched the automobile for the second time, the second search was, within the meaning of Chambers, an immediate search.

The issue before us is not, however, whether there was probable cause to make the second search--there was. See Warden, Maryland Penitentiary v. Hayden, Supra, 387 U.S. p. 307, 87 S.Ct. 1642, 18 L.Ed.2d 782. The issue is whether the second search could be conducted without a warrant.

In Chambers the Court dispensed with the warrant requirement in a situation where the alternatives facing the police were to search on the street at the scene without a warrant or to search at the station house with or without a warrant. If a warrant were required for station house searches, which could be conducted without a warrant at the scene of an arrest, a premium would be placed on conducting the search at the scene. Rather than compel the police to search at the scene, in many cases at considerable physical risk, the Court gave them a blank check for an 'immediate' search at the station house. That blank check can, however, only be filled in 'immediately' upon arrival at the station house.

After the expiration of the 'immediate' segment of time, the blank check expires. Thereafter, a warrant must be obtained Even though there is probable cause, and even though there may be little difference between searching without a warrant and continuing to hold the automobile until a search warrant can be applied for and obtained. The Court did not validate delayed searches without a warrant.

The primacy of the warrant requirement has been consistently emphasized by the United States Supreme Court. Many times it has said that warrants are the rule, warrantless searches the exception. Vale v. Louisiana (1970), 399 U.S. 30, 34, 90 S.Ct. 1969, 1972, 26 L.Ed.2d 409, 413; see quotation from Coolidge...