Pittman v. State

• Court: Arkansas Court of Appeals
• Writing for the Court: David M. Glover
• Citation: Pittman v. State, 258 S.W.3d 408, 99 Ark. App. 177 (Ark. App. 2007)
• Decision Date: 06 June 2007
• Docket Number: No. CA CR 06-1120.,CA CR 06-1120.
• Parties: William Ray PITTMAN, Appellant, v. STATE of Arkansas, Appellee.

258 S.W.3d 408

99 Ark. App. 177

William Ray PITTMAN, Appellant, v. STATE of Arkansas, Appellee.

No. CA CR 06-1120.

Court of Appeals of Arkansas.

June 6, 2007.

Appeal from the Union County Circuit Court, [CR-05-99-1]; Hamilton H. Singleton, Judge.

Leah Lanford, Christian Legal Service, Conway, AR, for appellant.

Dustin McDaniel, Att'y Gen., by: Karen Virginia Wallace, Ass't Att'y Gen., Little Rock, AR, for appellee.

DAVID M. GLOVER, Judge.

Appellant, William Pittman, was tried by a jury and found guilty of the offenses of first-degree terroristic threatening, third-degree domestic battery, possession of a controlled substance, and possession of drug paraphernalia. For his sole point of appeal, appellant contends that the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress the evidence that was obtained from his truck. We affirm.

Appellant was arrested on February 27, 2005, inside the apartment of his ex-wife, who had reported to police that she had been raped and held at knife-point in the apartment by appellant, that he had finally fallen asleep in her apartment, and that she wanted them to come get him. The police arrived, arrested appellant, and removed him from the premises. The criminal information that was filed against appellant charged him with: 1) first-degree terroristic threatening in that he allegedly threatened to kill his victim while pressing the blade of a knife into her right side; 2) first-degree false imprisonment in that he allegedly forcibly restrained her in her apartment and would not allow her to leave; 3) rape in that he allegedly engaged in sexual intercourse with her against her will by holding a knife at her throat and threatening to kill her; 4) third-degree domestic battery in that he allegedly repeatedly hit and kicked her, causing minor injuries; 5) possession of a controlled substance; and 6) possession of drug paraphernalia.

Appellant's vehicle was parked in front of the victim's apartment. His name was not on the lease of any apartment in the complex. The officers decided to impound appellant's vehicle because, as Sergeant Randall Gilbert testified at the suppression hearing, the nature of appellant's offenses against his ex-wife were violent, appellant did not reside at the apartment complex, and Sergeant Gilbert did not want appellant to have any excuse to return to the apartment complex. During the inventory of the truck, the officers discovered what was later confirmed to be a rock of crack cocaine and a crack pipe.

Rule 12.6 (b) of the Arkansas Rules of Criminal Procedure provides:

(b) A vehicle impounded in consequence of an arrest, or retained in official custody for other good cause, may be searched at such times and to such extent as is reasonably necessary for safekeeping of the vehicle and its contents.

Appellant contends that there was no evidence in the instant case to support a finding that his vehicle needed safeguarding, that it posed a public-safety hazard, or that it contained any evidence related to the crimes with which he was charged. Consequently, he argues that it was not reasonably necessary for the officers to impound the vehicle and to conduct an inventory search for safekeeping of the contents, and that, therefore, the motion to suppress the evidence recovered from the vehicle should have been granted.

We do not find appellant's argument convincing. Rather, we find the rationale of Folly v. State, 28 Ark.App. 98, 771 S.W.2d 306 (1989) persuasive. In Folly, the appellant argued that the inventory search, which was conducted on a motel parking lot, was not justified because his vehicle was not abandoned in a place where it created a traffic hazard. We explained that the fact that a vehicle is legally parked does not necessarily negate the need to take the vehicle into protective custody. We quoted with approval from a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals case, United States v. Staller, 616 F.2d 1284 (5th Cir.1980), which explained that even though a vehicle was lawfully parked and presented no apparent hazard to public safety, cars parked overnight in a mall parking lot run an appreciable risk of vandalism or theft—a fact known to the officers in that case. Accordingly, the court determined that under those circumstances, taking custody of the car was a legitimate exercise of what the court termed the officer's "community caretaking function."

Here, the trial court determined that Sergeant Gilbert's explanation for his decision to impound appellant's vehicle was reasonable, and we agree. The violent nature of appellant's attack on his ex-wife justified Gilbert's desire to eliminate any justifiable reason for appellant to return to his ex-wife's apartment complex. There was no indication that Gilbert's action was taken in bad faith. The unrefuted testimony of Sergeant Gilbert was that it was taken in accordance with standard police procedures. Consequently, we hold that Gilbert's explanation represented "other good cause" under Rule 12.6(b) of the Arkansas Rules of Criminal Procedure, that his action constituted an exercise of the officer's community caretaking function, and therefore that the trial court did not err in refusing to suppress the evidence obtained from appellant's truck.

MARSHALL, VAUGHT, and HEFFLEY, JJ., agree.

BAKER and MILLER, JJ., dissent.

KAREN R. BAKER, dissenting.

I disagree with the majority's conclusion that the "other good cause" provision included in Rule 12.6(b) of the Arkansas Rules of Criminal Procedure creates a constitutionally permissible good-faith exception to the requirement that a warrant be obtained prior to a government seizure of a citizen's property. The police officer in this case stated that he seized appellant's vehicle because he thought that it was best for the victim to remove any excuse for appellant to return to the apartment complex where the victim resided. Specifically, the officer testified:

Due to the violence of the crime that he was arrested for, I felt that to remove his vehicle would be best for the victim, left him no reason to go back to that complex, and his name is on no lease of any apartment at that complex.

I do not doubt the officer's sincerity; however, whether the officer acted in good faith in seizing the vehicle is not the issue in this case. The issue is whether the officer's seizure of the vehicle because he "felt ... [it] would be best for the victim" was a legitimate exercise of the officer's authority under Rule 12.6(b) of the Arkansas Rules of Criminal Procedure.

The problem lies in the government's seizure of appellant's truck rather than the subsequent inventory search. The majority's reliance upon the Rule 12.6(b) for affirmance fails for two reasons. First, as the majority acknowledges, the vehicle was not impounded in consequence of an arrest. Second, the alternative to impoundment upon arrest provides that a vehicle "retained in official custody for other good cause" may be searched. It is clear under these facts that appellant's truck was not in official custody until it was seized and the seizure did not occur as a consequence of appellant's arrest. Appellant had driven his truck to the complex and left it in the parking lot the previous day. Appellant was arrested in the victim's apartment and transported in police custody from the premises. Accordingly, no action on behalf of law enforcement placed the truck in the apartment's parking lot, and the police incurred no corresponding obligation to safeguard the vehicle. The majority is mistaken when it reasons that the seizure of the truck "to eliminate any justifiable reason for appellant to return to his ex-wife's apartment complex ... represented `other good cause' under Rule 12.6(b)" and "that his action constituted an exercise of the officer's community caretaking function." Until the department seized the vehicle, after appellant's removal from the premises, the truck was not in police custody; therefore, it could not be retained in official custody for other good cause. The majority substitutes the word "taken" for "retained." That substitution changes the meaning of the rule.

Furthermore, the majority's error in substituting the concept of retention with a taking is compounded by the majority's misapplication of the "other good cause" provision. The majority accepts that the reason for the officer's impounding the vehicle was because he "did not want appellant to have any excuse to return to the apartment complex." It may be admirable, if naive, for a law enforcement officer to believe that removing a conceivable excuse for an accused to return to the vicinity of the victim's residence will thwart future harm. However, to excuse the seizure of a vehicle by finding that law enforcement may seize property without a warrant for some imagined contingent is contrary to fundamental due process. The majority condones the seizure of a vehicle where the owner of the vehicle was arrested in an apartment after leaving the vehicle legally parked the day before, where appellant was nowhere near the vehicle when arrested, where he gave no consent to have the vehicle searched, where there was no nexus between the vehicle and the criminal conduct upon which the arrest was based or any other crime, where there was no objective basis to believe that the vehicle posed a threat to the public or to the officers, and where there was no reason to believe that the search was necessary to safeguard the vehicle or its contents. See Knowles v. Iowa, 525 U.S. 113, 119 S.Ct. 484, 142 L.Ed.2d 492 (1998); Ark. R.Crim. P. 12.1; Ark. R.Crim. P. 12.4; Ark. R.Crim. P. 12.6.

The majority's attempted analogy to Folly v. State, 28 Ark.App. 98, 771 S.W.2d 306 (1989) is misplaced because the vehicle in Folly was impounded from a motel parking lot after officers lawfully stopped and arrested the driver. The action of the law enforcement officers caused the vehicle to be parked in the motel parking lot; therefore, it was reasonable...