State Of La. v. Snelling

• Decision Date: 05 May 2010
• Docket Number: No. 09-1313.,09-1313.
• Parties: STATE of Louisianav.Robert Allen SNELLING.
• Court: Court of Appeal of Louisiana — District of US

36 So.3d 1060

STATE of Louisianav.Robert Allen SNELLING.

No. 09-1313.

Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Third Circuit.

May 5, 2010.

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Bennett R. LaPoint, Assistant District Attorney, Jennings, LA, for Appellee: State of Louisiana.

G. Paul Marx, Attorney at Law, Lafayette, LA, for Defendant/Appellant: Robert Allen Snelling.

Michael Cade Cassidy, District Attorney-31st Judicial District Court, Jennings, LA, for Plaintiff/Appellee: State of Louisiana.

Court composed of OSWALD A. DECUIR, JAMES T. GENOVESE, and SHANNON J. GREMILLION, Judges.

GREMILLION, Judge.

Defendant, Robert Allen Snelling, was driving east on Interstate 10, towing a boat between Houston, Texas, and Chattanooga, Tennessee. He was stopped for a traffic violation in Jefferson Davis Parish by Steven Vincent, a trooper with the Louisiana State Police, Troop D. After receiving consent to search Defendant's vehicle, the trooper located several pounds of marijuana hidden in the engine compartment of the boat.

Defendant was charged by bill of information with one count of possession of a controlled dangerous substance with intent to distribute, a violation of La. R.S. 40:966(A)(1). Defendant filed a motion to suppress evidence which was denied by the trial court. Defendant pled guilty as charged, while reserving his right to appeal the trial court's denial of his motion to suppress the evidence. Defendant was sentenced to five years at hard labor, with all but two years suspended, and three years supervised probation upon release from custody.

Defendant now alleges that the trial court's denial of his motion to suppress the evidence was in error. We find that Trooper Vincent articulated sufficiently objective facts to support his suspicions that Defendant was involved in continuing criminal activity and the detention was of a reasonable duration in which to resolve his suspicions. Moreover, Defendant consented to a search and his consent resolves any issue of whether there was an illegal detention.

As a condition of probation, the trial court ordered Defendant to pay a $2,000 fine, $50 to the Drug Education and Treatment Fund, $250 to the “Southwest Crime Lab,” and court costs. However, the trial court failed to establish a payment plan for the payment of the fine, fees, and costs. When the fine, fees, and court costs are imposed as conditions of probation, but the trial court is silent as to the mode of payment, this court requires a specific payment plan be established. See State v. Wagner, 07-127 (La.App. 3 Cir. 11/5/08), 996 So.2d 1203 and 07-128 (La.App. 3 Cir. 11/5/08), 996 So.2d 1208. Therefore, we remand this case to the trial court for establishment of a payment plan for the fine, fees, and court costs. We note that the plan may either be determined by the trial court or by Probation and Parole, with approval by the trial court. See State v. Stevens, 06-818 (La.App. 3 Cir. 1/31/07), 949 So.2d 597.

ASSIGNMENT OF ERROR

Defendant asserts in his lone assignment of error that the trial court erred when it denied his motion to suppress the evidence. Defendant argues that the trooper's traffic stop was a pretext to search for drugs, that once the traffic stop was resolved the trooper did not have additional reasonable suspicion of continuing criminal activity such that allowed further detention, and that there was no valid consent to search the boat. Therefore, for these reasons, the search of the boat was illegal, and the evidence should have been suppressed.

The state bears the burden of proof when a defendant files a motion to suppress evidence obtained without a warrant. La. C. Cr. P. art. 703(D). The entire record is reviewable for determining the correctness of a ruling on a motion to suppress. A trial court's denial of a motion to suppress is afforded great weight and will not be set aside unless a preponderance of the evidence clearly favors suppression. State v. Pena, 43,321 (La.App.2d Cir.7/30/08), 988 So.2d 841.

The authority and limits of the Fourth Amendment apply to investigative stops of vehicles. The stopping of a vehicle and the detention of its occupants is a seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. State v. Pena, supra. The standard for evaluating a challenge to a routine warrantless stop for violating traffic laws is the two-step formula articulated in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968); State v. Pena, supra. The court must determine whether the officer's action was justified at its inception, and whether

it was reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place. Terry v. Ohio, supra; State v. Pena, supra.

For a traffic stop to be justified at its inception, an officer must have an objectively reasonable suspicion that some sort of illegal activity, such as a traffic violation, occurred or is about to occur, before stopping the vehicle. State v. Pena, supra. When determining whether an investigatory stop was justified by reasonable suspicion, a reviewing court must consider the totality of the circumstances, giving deference to the inferences and deductions of a trained police officer. The determination of reasonable suspicion for an investigatory stop, or probable cause for an arrest, does not rest on the officers' subjective beliefs or attitudes, but turns on a completely objective evaluation of all the circumstances known to the officer at the time of the challenged action. State v. Pena, supra.

State v. Sera, 43,704, pp. 5-6 (La.App. 2 Cir. 10/29/08), 997 So.2d 707, 710-11.

At the suppression hearing, Trooper Vincent testified as follows: On the night of May 11, 2008, a few minutes before midnight, he was patrolling Interstate 10 in Jefferson Davis Parish, traveling east, when he observed a Chevrolet Tahoe pulling a trailer and boat also traveling east. He noticed that the trailer did not have a license plate. As he watched the vehicle, he saw the vehicle drift right of the fog line for about ten feet.

Trooper Vincent activated his lights and the vehicle immediately pulled over. Trooper Vincent testified that as soon as he activated the signal, the on-board camera turned on automatically. He said Defendant provided him with a valid Tennessee driver's license. Trooper Vincent advised Defendant he was being stopped because he had no license plate on his trailer and because of the “lane usage violation.” Defendant told Trooper Vincent the trailer was registered in Tennessee and that a plate was not required there, which, according to Trooper Vincent, was correct. Defendant told Trooper Vincent that he was on his way to Tennessee to visit his mother for Mother's Day. He said that he owned a trucking business in Houston. When Trooper Vincent asked him for his Houston address, “he got nervous, and he said, ‘huh, I don't know, off some interstate highway. I paid cash for it.’ ” Trooper Vincent said Defendant told him that he owned two houses, one in Houston and one in Tennessee, and his driver's license had his Tennessee address.

Trooper Vincent testified that Defendant was acting very nervous. “His carotid artery was pulsating. His-he kept grooming his hair, rubbing his hair, scratching his head, moving around.” Moreover, according to Trooper Vincent, Defendant would not maintain eye contact. Trooper Vincent said he ran a quick check on Defendant's driver's license and found that he had a domestic abuse charge several years ago, but there was no drug activity on his record. However, he decided he was going to ask for consent to search and while he was sitting in his vehicle he filled out a consent form for Defendant to sign. Trooper Vincent stated he made this decision based on the fact Defendant was so nervous that “[h]is hands were shaking.” Trooper Vincent further thought it was suspicious that Defendant was traveling from Houston to Chattanooga, towing a boat, to see his mother when he would arrive the day after Mother's Day.

Trooper Vincent stated that, as he was filling out the consent form, two troopers arrived as back-up. When Trooper Vincent presented the consent form to Defendant, “[h]e waived his hands in the air and said ‘I have no problem with that,’ ” and signed the form. Trooper Vincent and another trooper searched the vehicle first, then moved to the boat. Once inside the boat, they could smell a strong odor of marijuana from two vents in the engine compartment. Subsequently, they located several pounds of marijuana.

After hearing the trooper's testimony and reviewing the video, the trial court rendered its decision. Denying the motion to suppress the evidence, the trial court stated:

All right. The Court, as I stated previously, has looked at the video in-in detail. The Court finds that the video was not of very good quality. I tried to turn it up as loud as I could and I was not able to hear much of the audio on that video.

Now, let's talk about was there probable cause for the stop. There's probable cause for the stop. He had the-no license tag, so the officer had the right to stop him. The Court finds that-I'm not going to follow Vaughn in this matter. I'm going to follow the Third Circuit that affirmed the case here and find that there is probable cause for the improper lane usage. The motion to suppress is not to decide whether or not he's guilty of improper lane usage. It's only whether or not there's probable cause.

The next thing that we had to do is was he unreasonably detained? The officer was doing his job asking the right questions over the length of time. Now, it all gets back to the officer's testimony. I'm going to state for the record that I found Officer Vincent to be very credible. There was a lot of conversations with the defendant that were not on the videotape that the officer referred to, and I'm going to rely on the officer's impression and find that there was reasonable suspicion for him to detain the defendant as he did. The defendant was presented a

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