Smith v. State
| Decision Date | 10 April 2019 |
| Docket Number | Court of Appeals Case No. 18A-CR-1633 |
| Citation | 121 N.E.3d 669 |
| Parties | Tre Ron SMITH, Appellant-Defendant, v. STATE of Indiana, Appellee-Plaintiff. |
| Court | Indiana Appellate Court |
restated issue: whether the trial court erroneously admitted evidence obtained following an investigatory stop.
[2] We affirm.
Facts and Procedural History2
[3] On November 26, 2017, at approximately 1:15 a.m., Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department Officer Kevin Moore ("Officer Moore") received a "shots-fired" radio run from dispatch indicating that gunshots were fired from a vehicle "in the area" of Market Street in downtown Indianapolis. Tr. at 6, 14.3 Dispatch had received a report4 from an anonymous caller that gunshots were fired from a silver or gray Trailblazer in that area. Id. The caller further noted that the vehicle had damage "all over" it. Id. at 11. When Officer Moore arrived at the corner of Delaware and Market Streets soon thereafter,5 he observed a vehicle matching the description he had received from dispatch. Officer Moore and other officers on the scene stopped the vehicle. Smith was in the driver's seat of the vehicle and there were two passengers.
[4] Based on the information from the "shots-fired" report, Officer Moore believed there was a firearm in Smith's vehicle. Id. at 12. Therefore, Officer Moore and other officers on the scene approached the vehicle with their guns drawn, instructed Smith and the passengers to exit the vehicle, and placed them in handcuffs while they searched the vehicle. Officer Moore saw a handgun on the driver's side floor of the vehicle in plain view. After they completed the search of the vehicle, the police read Smith a Miranda6 warning and asked him if the gun belonged to him. Smith admitted that the gun was his; however, he did not have a license for it. The police arrested Smith.
[5] That same day the State charged Smith with carrying a handgun without a license, as a Class A misdemeanor. At his June 14, 2018, bench trial, Smith made an oral motion to suppress the handgun found in his vehicle on the grounds that the search violated his rights under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article 1, Section 11 of the Indiana Constitution. The trial court denied that motion and overruled Smith's subsequent objection to Officer Moore's testimony about the search. The trial court found Smith guilty as charged and sentenced him to 361 days of probation. This appeal ensued.
Discussion and Decision
Standard of Review
[6] Smith objected to the admission of the evidence in an oral motion to suppress at the beginning of his bench trial and renewed his objection when the State offered Officer Moore's testimony and the handgun evidence. Because Smith appeals following his conviction and is not appealing the trial court's order denying his motion to suppress, the question before us is properly framed as whether the trial court erred in admitting the evidence. Clark v. State , 994 N.E.2d 252, 259 (Ind. 2013).
In ruling on admissibility following the denial of a motion to suppress, the trial court considers the foundational evidence presented at trial. [ Guilmette v. State , 14 N.E.3d 38,] 40 n.1 (Ind. 2014) ]. It also considers the evidence from the suppression hearing that is favorable to the defendant only to the extent it is uncontradicted at trial. Id. Because the trial court is best able to weigh the evidence and assess witness credibility, we review its rulings on admissibility for abuse of discretion and reverse only if a ruling is "clearly against the logic and effect of the facts and circumstances and the error affects a party's substantial rights." Clark , 994 N.E.2d at 260. But the ultimate determination of the constitutionality of a search or seizure is a question of law that we consider de novo. McIlquham v. State , 10 N.E.3d 506, 511 (Ind. 2014).
Carpenter v. State , 18 N.E.3d 998, 1001 (Ind. 2014).
[7] Smith raises claims under both the federal and state constitutions. Although the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article 1, Section 11 of the Indiana Constitution contain textually similar language, each must be separately analyzed. Marshall v. State , 117 N.E.3d 1254, 1259 (Ind. 2019).
[8] Smith maintains that the police violated his Fourth Amendment rights when they stopped his vehicle and, therefore, evidence found in the subsequent search of his vehicle should have been excluded at trial.7 The Fourth Amendment prohibits warrantless searches and seizures unless the State can prove that an exception to the warrant requirement existed at the time of the search. See, e.g. , Marshall , 117 N.E.3d at 1259. However, police may, "without a warrant or probable cause, briefly detain an individual for investigatory purposes if, based on specific and articulable facts, the officer has a reasonable suspicion that criminal activity ‘may be afoot.’ " Edmond v. State , 951 N.E.2d 585, 588 (Ind. Ct. App. 2011) (quoting Terry v. Ohio , 392 U.S. 1, 27, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968) ). "We often call these encounters Terry [s]tops," Marshall , 117 N.E.3d at 1259, and such a stop must be both justified at its inception and reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified it at its inception, Terry , 392 U.S. at 18-19, 88 S.Ct. 1868.
Justified at Inception
[9] An anonymous tip alone is seldom sufficient to provide the reasonable suspicion required to initiate an investigatory Terry stop absent evidence of the reliability of the tip, such as an accurate prediction of future behavior of the suspect. Alabama v. White , 496 U.S. 325, 329, 332, 110 S.Ct. 2412, 110 L.Ed.2d 301 (1990). However, the United States Supreme Court has held that, even where an anonymous tip contained no prediction of future behavior, there was nevertheless sufficient indicia of reliability to support a Terry stop where an anonymous caller to an emergency police number gave eyewitness knowledge of alleged dangerous activity and accurate information identifying the suspect.
Navarette v. California , 572 U.S. 393, 399-400, 134 S.Ct. 1683, 188 L.Ed.2d 680 (2014). In Navarette , the Supreme Court clarified that an anonymous tip that substantially describes publicly knowable information about a suspect but does so through a 9-1-1 emergency system—which often "allow[s] for identifying and tracing callers"—and alleges that the suspect is "contemporaneous[ly]" engaged in "a specific and dangerous" activity, provides a sufficient basis for a Terry stop. See also U.S. v. Jeanes , No. 3:16-CR-070 JD, 2016 WL 11281168, *6 (N.D. Ind. Nov. 29, 2016) (citing U.S. v. Drake , 456 F.3d 771, 775 (7th Cir. 2006) ) ( that there was reasonable suspicion to conduct a Terry stop where an anonymous caller reported witnessing an immediate threat to public safety—i.e., a person waving a gun around on the downtown streets—and the caller provided sufficient details to allow the police to identify the suspect); Grayson v. State , 52 N.E.3d 24, 29-30 (Ind. Ct. App. 2016) (), trans. denied .8
[10] In Navarette , the Court noted that the facts in that case were in contrast to situations in which an anonymous caller accurately describes a person and merely alleges criminal activity, without more. 572 U.S. at 399, 134 S.Ct. 1683. For example, in Florida v. J.L. , 529 U.S. 266, 120 S.Ct. 1375, 146 L.Ed.2d 254 (2000), an anonymous caller described a person standing at a bus stop and simply alleged that the person was carrying a gun without any explanation of how he or she knew the suspect had a gun or any expression of special familiarity with the suspect's affairs. In that situation, the police had no basis for believing "that the tipster ha[d] knowledge of concealed criminal activity." Id. at 272, 120 S.Ct. 1375 ; see also Beal v. Beller , 847 F.3d 897, 904 (7th Cir. 2017) (). Sellmer v. State , 842 N.E.2d 358 (Ind. 2006), upon which the dissent relies, similarly involved a tip with accurate identifying information but only a bare allegation of criminal activity and no "information that would allow the police to corroborate the caller's claim that criminal activity was afoot." 842 N.E.2d at 362.
[11] The instant case is more like Navarette than J.L. or Sellmer . While the anonymous caller gave no predictions of Smith's future behavior to indicate the reliability of the tip, he or she did provide the following other indicia of reliability: the call was placed to an emergency number; the caller gave a specific description of the vehicle's color and model (a gray Trailblazer); the caller gave even more specific information that the vehicle had damage "all over" it, Tr. at 11, thus distinguishing it from other gray Trailblazers that might have been in the specified location; the caller gave a statement that "gunshots were coming from that vehicle," Tr. at 9, thus indicating the caller actually witnessed the criminal activity; and the caller gave a specific location (the area of Market Street in downtown Indianapolis) where the vehicle was actually found (at the corner of Market and Delaware Streets downtown) soon after the tip was received (1:15 a.m.). The anonymous tip had sufficient indicia of reliability to provide reasonable suspicion of criminal activity justifying the Terry stop of Smith's vehicle at its...
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