State v. Anderson

• Citation: 362 P.3d 1232
• Decision Date: 28 October 2015
• Docket Number: No. 20130511.,20130511.
• Parties: STATE of Utah, Appellee. v. Cameron ANDERSON, Appellant
• Court: Supreme Court of Utah

362 P.3d 1232

STATE of Utah, Appellee.

v.Cameron ANDERSON, Appellant,

No. 20130511.

Supreme Court of Utah.

Oct. 28, 2015.

Dale W. Sessions, Cedar City, UT, for appellant.

Sean D. Reyes, Att'y Gen., Marian Decker, Asst. Att'y Gen., Barry L. Huntington, Panguitch, UT, for appellee.

Justice DURHAM authored the opinion of the Court, in which Chief Justice DURRANT, Associate Chief Justice LEE, and Justice HIMONAS joined. Justice PARRISH sat for oral argument. Due to her resignation from this court, she did not participate herein.

Justice DURHAM, opinion of the Court:

INTRODUCTION

¶ 1 Two sheriff's deputies stopped late on a winter evening to check on the welfare of Cameron Anderson, who was parked on the side of a highway with his hazard lights flashing. It turned out that Mr. Anderson was fine before the deputies decided to check on him, but he was less so afterward. As a result of Mr. Anderson's encounter with the deputies, they discovered a small amount of marijuana in his vehicle, and the State subsequently charged him with criminal possession. The question in this appeal is whether this evidence was obtained in violation of Mr. Anderson's Fourth Amendment rights.

¶ 2 To answer this question we must resolve two issues. First, we must decide whether the deputies seized Mr. Anderson within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment when they pulled behind his parked vehicle with their police cruiser's red and blue lights flashing. Because we answer in the affirmative, we must then decide whether this seizure was justified as a community caretaking stop. We conclude that the community caretaking doctrine justified the stop under the facts of this case and thus hold that the seizure did not violate the Fourth Amendment.

BACKGROUND

¶ 3 Around 10:00 p.m. on a cold late-December evening, Mr. Anderson pulled his car over to the side of a rural highway and turned on his hazard lights. Two Garfield County sheriff's deputies noticed Mr. Anderson's hazard lights while they were driving down the highway. Because of the hazard lights, the cold weather, and the late hour, the deputies decided to stop and check on the welfare of any occupants of the vehicle. As the deputies pulled over to the side of the road behind Mr. Anderson's vehicle, they engaged the red and blue lights on their police vehicle.

¶ 4 The deputies left their vehicle and approached Mr. Anderson. When the deputies made contact with Mr. Anderson to ask whether he needed assistance, they noticed that his eyes appeared to be bloodshot. Also, Mr. Anderson, who lived in another state, was not sure what direction he was travelling in at the time. The deputies asked Mr. Anderson to exit his car, and he complied. He did not sway or move in a suspicious manner. The deputies asked Mr. Anderson to empty his pockets and he produced a pill bottle with a valid prescription.

Mr. Anderson declined the deputies' request to complete a field sobriety test, but he agreed to a blood draw to test for illegal substances.

¶ 5 The deputies obtained a warrant authorizing them to arrest Mr. Anderson, obtain blood or urine from him, and search his vehicle. Testing of blood obtained from Mr. Anderson revealed no illegal substances in his system. A search of his vehicle, however, yielded marijuana and drug paraphernalia.

¶ 6 The State charged Mr. Anderson with possession of less than an ounce of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia. In a pretrial motion, Mr. Anderson moved to suppress the evidence obtained from his vehicle. The district court concluded that Mr. Anderson had been seized by the deputies when they pulled behind his parked vehicle with blue and red flashing lights. But the court ruled that the stop was justified by the community caretaking doctrine and denied the motion to suppress.

¶ 7 A jury subsequently found Mr. Anderson guilty of possessing marijuana and drug paraphernalia. He filed this appeal and argued in his briefing to this court that the district court erred when it denied his motion to suppress the evidence obtained from his vehicle. We review the district court's Fourth Amendment ruling de novo. See State v. Brake, 2004 UT 95, ¶ 15, 103 P.3d 699 (adopting a nondeferential standard of review for search and seizure cases); Salt Lake City Corp. v. Labor Comm'n, 2007 UT 4, ¶ 15 n. 1, 153 P.3d 179.

ANALYSIS

¶ 8 Absent an exception to the exclusionary rule, evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches and seizures should be excluded. Davis v. United States, 564 U.S. 229, 131 S.Ct. 2419, 2426–28, 180 L.Ed.2d 285 (2011) ; Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 655, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961) ; State v. Strieff, 2015 UT 2, ¶¶ 15–19, 357 P.3d 532. Mr. Anderson argues that the sheriff's deputies violated his Fourth Amendment rights when they seized his vehicle without sufficient justification. He further contends that the warrant and subsequent search of his vehicle that yielded the marijuana and drug paraphernalia evidence were a direct result of this unconstitutional seizure. Mr. Anderson therefore asserts that the district court should have excluded the evidence as a fruit of a police seizure that violated his Fourth Amendment rights.

¶ 9 In examining Mr. Anderson's claims, we must first determine whether the deputies effected a seizure by pulling behind his parked vehicle with their cruiser's red and blue lights flashing. Because we determine that Mr. Anderson was seized, we next decide whether this seizure was justified by the community caretaking doctrine.

I. POLICE SEIZURE OF MR. ANDERSON'S VEHICLE

¶ 10 There can be no violation of the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable seizures in the absence of an actual seizure executed by a state actor. United States v. Drayton, 536 U.S. 194, 200–01, 122 S.Ct. 2105, 153 L.Ed.2d 242 (2002). "A person is seized by the police and thus entitled to challenge the government's action under the Fourth Amendment when the officer, " ‘by means of physical force or show of authority,’ " terminates or restrains his freedom of movement...." Brendlin v. California, 551 U.S. 249, 254, 127 S.Ct. 2400, 168 L.Ed.2d 132 (2007) (citation omitted). A show of authority is sufficient to constitute a seizure if "in view of all of the circumstances surrounding the incident, a reasonable person would have believed that he was not free to leave." Id. at 255, 127 S.Ct. 2400 (citation omitted). Thus it is a hypothetical reasonable person's interpretation of an officer's actions—not the officer's intent—that determines whether an individual has been seized by an officer through a show of authority.

¶ 11 The question presented here is whether a reasonable person parked on the side of an empty highway at night would believe that she was free to leave if a police vehicle with its red and blue overhead lights engaged pulled over directly behind her car. The State argues that a reasonable person in this situation would feel free simply to drive away. In support of this contention, the State correctly notes that a police vehicle's overhead lights are not always used as a show of authority. They may be used for officer or public safety and to convey to the occupants of a vehicle that the approaching officer does not present a threat. The State contends that a reasonable motorist in the circumstances of this case would know that a police officer was using the overhead lights for safety purposes and not as a show of authority meant to detain the motorist.

¶ 12 The State supports this argument by citing a terse Minnesota Supreme Court opinion, State v. Hanson, 504 N.W.2d 219 (Minn.1993). In that case, the court held that a police officer did not seize a car parked on the shoulder of a highway at night when the officer pulled behind the vehicle with the police car's flashing red lights engaged, reasoning that a reasonable person would know that the officer's lights were being used for safety purposes. Id. at 219–20.

¶ 13 But most courts that have examined whether police have seized a parked vehicle under similar circumstances have agreed with the Kansas Supreme Court that "[f]ew, if any, reasonable citizens, while parked, would simply drive away and assume that the police, in turning on the emergency flashers, would be communicating something other than for them to remain." State v. Morris, 276 Kan. 11, 72 P.3d 570, 577 (2003) (citation omitted); see also id. at 578 (noting that "most appellate courts considering the issue have concluded a seizure occurs when the officer activates emergency lights" behind a parked car and collecting cases from Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, Maryland, Oregon, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington); People v. Cash, 396 Ill.App.3d 931, 337 Ill.Dec. 526, 922 N.E.2d 1103, 1114 (2009) ("[W]e note that the cases are legion in other jurisdictions in which the activation of lights or siren or both has been deemed a sufficient show of authority to result in the seizure of a parked car."). The Utah Court of Appeals has similarly held that an officer parked behind a vehicle on the side of a road "detained [the motorist] by a display of authority when he activated the overhead lights on his vehicle." State v. Davis, 821 P.2d 9, 12 (Utah Ct.App.1991).

¶ 14 We agree with the court of appeals and the majority of courts that have held that an officer's use of overhead lights behind a vehicle parked on the side of the road may constitute a seizure. Even though we may presume that a reasonable person knows that police officers may use their overhead lights for reasons other than as a command to stop, that does not mean that the average motorist under the facts of this case would assume that the officers had no interest in detaining the vehicle and would feel free to drive away. At best, the use of a police vehicle's overhead lights while pulling behind a car parked on the side of the road is ambiguous. The lights may signal the presence of a police vehicle for safety reasons, or th...