State v. Baca
| Decision Date | 07 January 2020 |
| Docket Number | No. A-1-CA-36722,A-1-CA-36722 |
| Parties | STATE OF NEW MEXICO, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. ANTHONY BACA, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | Court of Appeals of New Mexico |
This decision of the New Mexico Court of Appeals was not selected for publication in the New Mexico Appellate Reports. Refer to Rule 12-405 NMRA for restrictions on the citation of unpublished decisions. Electronic decisions may contain computer-generated errors or other deviations from the official version filed by the Court of Appeals.
APPEAL FROM THE DISTRICT COURT OF CURRY COUNTY
Hector H. Balderas, Attorney General
Santa Fe, NM
Lauren J. Wolongevicz, Assistant Attorney General
for Appellee
Bennett J. Baur, Chief Public Defender
Caitlin C.M. Smith, Assistant Appellate Defender
Santa Fe, NM
for Appellant
{1} Defendant Anthony Baca was convicted of possessing methamphetamine, NMSA 1978, Section 30-31-23(E) (2011, amended 2019);1 possessing drug paraphernalia, NMSA 1978, Section 30-31-25.1(A) (2001, amended 2019);2 resisting orevading an officer, NMSA 1978, Section 30-22-1(B) (1981); and assault on a peace officer, NMSA 1978, Section 30-22-21 (1971). He appeals only his drug and paraphernalia possession convictions, arguing that (1) the district court erroneously denied his motion to suppress and (2) principles of double jeopardy prohibit him from being convicted for possessing both drugs and paraphernalia under the facts of this case. Because we disagree with Defendant's first point but agree with his second, we affirm his conviction for possessing methamphetamine and remand his case to the district court to vacate his conviction and sentence for possessing paraphernalia.
{2} Our "review of a district court's decision regarding a motion to suppress evidence involves mixed questions of fact and law." State v. Funderburg, 2008-NMSC-026, ¶ 10, 144 N.M. 37, 183 P.3d 922 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Because neither party challenges the district court's findings of fact, we review only the legal conclusions the district court drew in denying Defendant's motion to suppress. State v. Morales, 2005-NMCA-027, ¶ 8, 137 N.M. 73, 107 P.3d 513. We "review the entire record to determine whether there was sufficient evidence to support the [district] court's denial of the motion to suppress." State v. Monafo, 2016-NMCA-092, ¶ 10, 384 P.3d 134 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Our task is to review the application of the law to the unchallenged facts, "making a de novo determination of the constitutional reasonableness of a search or seizure." State v. Olson, 2012-NMSC-035, ¶ 9, 285 P.3d 1066 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
{3} Defendant argues that the district court erroneously denied his motion to suppress the methamphetamine and other evidence seized incident to his arrest because the officer detained him without reasonable suspicion to believe he had committed a crime. The State contends that the officer had reasonable suspicion. In the alternative, the State argues even if there was not reasonable suspicion, the exclusionary rule does not apply because the seizure of evidence was attenuated from Defendant's detention. Assuming without deciding that the officer lacked reasonable suspicion to detain Defendant, we agree with the State's alternative argument regarding attenuation. Specifically, we conclude that (1) the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution does not require suppression because, under United States Supreme Court precedent, the pre-existing warrant for Defendant's arrest broke the chain of causation between the detention and the search that revealed the evidence and (2) Article II, Section 10 of the New Mexico Constitution does not require suppression because, under New Mexico Supreme Court precedent, Defendant'scommission of crimes after he was detained but before the drugs and paraphernalia were seized broke the chain of causation. We explain the reasons for each conclusion in turn.
{4} We see no meaningful distinction between Defendant's case and Utah v. Strieff, ___ U.S. ___, 136 S. Ct. 2056, 2061 (2016), in which the United States Supreme Court declined to apply the exclusionary rule based on the attenuation doctrine when the officer discovered a pre-existing warrant for the defendant's arrest after detaining him but before searching him. The Court concluded that, under the Fourth Amendment, the attenuation doctrine applies when the intervening circumstance is "a valid, pre-existing, and untainted arrest warrant." Id. 2061-62, see also State v. Edwards, 2019-NMCA-070, ¶ 1, 452 P.3d 413 (applying Strieff). Strieff does not stand for the proposition that such warrants always break the chain of causation between an unconstitutional detention and the seizure of evidence pursuant to a search incident to arrest, rendering the exclusionary rule categorically inapplicable. However, Strieff's holding and reasoning support the conclusion that, under the Fourth Amendment, the exclusionary rule does not apply to the evidence seized from Defendant. The Strieff analysis of the three factors pertinent to the attenuation determination, 136 S. Ct. at 2062-63, dictates our analysis here.
{5} Here, as in Strieff, the first factor—the time between the detention and the search—weighs in favor of suppression. See id. at 2062. Defendant asserts that these events occurred "in a matter of minutes," which the State does not dispute. The sequence of events appears consistent with Defendant's assertion, and we have no basis to conclude that "substantial time elapse[d] between [the detention] and when the evidence [was] obtained." Id. Accordingly, without additional information pertinent to this factor, we treat it as favoring suppression. See Edwards, 2019-NMCA-070, ¶ 11 ().
{6} However, in both cases "the second factor, the presence of intervening circumstances, strongly favors the State." Strieff, 136 S. Ct. at 2062. This is because the officer in each case discovered a valid warrant that "predated [the officer's] investigation[]" and "was entirely unconnected with the stop[,]" and upon discovering the warrant, the officer "had an obligation to arrest [the defendant]." Id. at 2062; accord Edwards, 2019-NMCA-070, ¶ 12. The officer in each case was then permitted to conduct a search incident to arrest. Strieff, 136 S. Ct. at 2063.
{7} Strieff also compels us to conclude that the third factor weighs in favor of applying the attenuation doctrine and against suppression. Defendant has not persuaded us that the officer who searched him engaged in "police misconduct" that was "purposeful or flagrant." Id. "For the violation to be flagrant, more severe police misconduct is required than the mere absence of proper cause for the seizure." Id. at 2064. Defendant argues that the officer "should have known that he did not havereasonable suspicion to stop [Defendant]." Even if Defendant is correct, whether the officer should have known—i.e., whether the officer was negligent—is not the Fourth Amendment standard. The United States Supreme Court has concluded that conduct that "was at most negligent" and based on "errors in judgment" does not suffice. Id. at 2063. In Defendant's case, having assumed the detention was unjustified, we conclude that the officer detained Defendant based on errors in judgment about whether the facts amounted to reasonable suspicion. If the officer lacked reasonable suspicion, it was because he misjudged (1) the value of the information he had about the prevalence of burglaries in the location where he encountered Defendant and at the time of day when the encounter occurred and (2) the appropriate level of suspicion associated with his observations of Defendant, including his walking on the lawn of a residence and then in between two residences in the wee hours of the morning wearing a backpack and dark clothing. The United States Supreme Court has held that such errors "hardly rise to a purposeful or flagrant violation of [a defendant's] Fourth Amendment rights." Id.
{8} When we consider all three factors together, we conclude, as the United States Supreme Court did in Strieff and as we did in Edwards, that the exclusionary rule does not apply. Only one of the factors weighs in favor of suppression, and the other two weigh against suppression, one of them heavily. We therefore hold that the pre-existing arrest warrant broke the chain of causation, attenuating the connection between Defendant's detention and the discovery of the evidence. Accordingly, the Fourth Amendment did not require the district court to suppress the evidence.
{9} Defendant contends that we should reach a different conclusion under Article II, Section 10 of the New Mexico Constitution. Defendant's argument in support of this contention and the State's response raise questions that neither the New Mexico Supreme Court nor this Court has decided regarding arrest warrants and the attenuation doctrine: (1) whether a valid, pre-existing, untainted arrest warrant may ever constitute an intervening cause that breaks the chain of causation under Article II, Section 10 and (2) if so, whether our state constitutional analysis on this particular attenuation issue should track the Fourth Amendment analysis. However, we need not reach those questions to decide Defendant's appeal because, bound by New Mexico Supreme Court precedent, we conclude that the crimes Defendant committed after the officer detained him broke the chain of causation.
{10} In State v. Tapia, 2018-NMSC-017, ¶¶ 43-49, 414 P.3d 332, our Supreme Court adopted...
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