State v. Baker

• Decision Date: 13 June 1986
• Docket Number: 58474,Nos. 58415,s. 58415
• Citation: 720 P.2d 1112,239 Kan. 403
• Parties: STATE of Kansas, Appellee, v. Arnold L. BAKER, Appellant, and STATE of Kansas, Appellee, v. Arthur L. COLEMAN, Appellant.
• Court: Kansas Supreme Court

Page 1112

720 P.2d 1112

239 Kan. 403

STATE of Kansas, Appellee, v. Arnold L. BAKER, Appellant, and STATE of Kansas, Appellee, v. Arthur L. COLEMAN, Appellant.

Nos. 58415, 58474.

Supreme Court of Kansas.

June 13, 1986.

Syllabus by the Court

1. The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures...." The amendment protects people, not places, and is aimed at the preservation of the individual's reasonable expectation of privacy. This expectation of privacy includes automobiles under appropriate circumstances. The Fourth Amendment applies to all seizures of the person, including seizures that involve only a brief detention short of traditional arrest. Whenever a police officer accosts an individual and restrains his freedom to walk away, he has seized that person.

2. For a stop and frisk search, absent probable cause or a warrant for arrest, to meet the requirements of the Fourth Amendment and K.S.A. 22-2402(1) the police officer must have a reasonable and articulable suspicion, based upon facts known prior to the stop, that the individual stopped has committed, is committing or is about to commit a crime.

3. In determining whether a police officer possessed sufficient facts to justify a stop and frisk search, the court must consider the totality of the circumstances; that is, the whole picture as it existed at the time.

4. In a criminal action, when the defendant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence to support a conviction, the standard of review on appeal is whether the evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to the prosecution, convinces the appellate court that a rational factfinder could have found the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The appellate court looks only to the evidence in favor of the verdict to determine if the essential elements of a charge are sustained.

5. The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution secures the right of a criminal defendant on trial to confront the witnesses against him. The protection of the Sixth Amendment is applied to the states by way of the Fourteenth Amendment. The denial of a criminal defendant's right to confront witnesses against him is a denial of due process of law.

6. In Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 20 L.Ed.2d 476 (1968), the court held that an accused's right of confrontation was violated when the confession of a codefendant, who did not testify, and which implicated the defendant, was admitted into evidence at their joint trial, even though a limiting instruction was given. Bruton rights are violated only by admission of extrajudicial statements implicating the accused codefendant.

7. When an extrajudicial statement of a codefendant which is admitted in evidence does not directly allude to the other codefendant, and a limiting instruction is given, no rights are abridged.

Eric Stahl, Asst. Public Defender, argued, and Linda C. McMaster, Asst. Public Defender, was on brief, for appellant Arnold L. Baker.

Kim D. Steele, Wichita, was on brief, for appellant Arthur L. Coleman.

Geary N. Gorup, Asst. Dist. Atty., argued, and Clark V. Owens, Dist. Atty., and Robert T. Stephan, Atty. Gen., were with him on briefs, for appellee.

HOLMES, Justice.

Arthur L. Coleman and Arnold L. Baker appeal their convictions in a joint trial of one count of aggravated robbery (K.S.A. 21-3427). Although separate appeals were perfected by each appellant, the cases have been consolidated for argument and opinion in this court. The appellants raise several common issues and, in addition, Baker raises issues relating to the admission in evidence of statements made by his codefendant Coleman and the instructions given the jury.

Each appellant had originally been charged with two counts of aggravated robbery. Count I of the original complaint charged Tyrone J. Long, Arnold L. Baker, and Arthur L. Coleman with one count of aggravated robbery of a liquor store in Wichita on December 11, 1984. Count II charged the same three individuals with a second count of aggravated robbery which was alleged to have occurred on the same date at the Ken-Mar Amoco gas station located at 13th and Oliver Streets in Wichita. Long was granted a separate trial. Appellants Baker and Coleman, in a joint trial, were acquitted of Count I; therefore, only the facts surrounding the robbery of the gas station need be set forth.

On the evening of December 11, 1984, Paula Wendler was working at the Ken-Mar Amoco station. Around 11:30 p.m. she was approached by two black males and robbed at gunpoint. As the robbers fled, Wendler telephoned the police and reported the robbery. At the time of the robbery, Wichita Police Officers Bradley S. Agnew and Max Tenbrook were parked in separate patrol cars, several blocks from the gas station, discussing a call to which they had just responded. When the two officers heard the gas station robbery dispatch they responded, each traveling different side streets en route to the robbery location. While proceeding to the Amoco station, Officer Agnew encountered a white two-door Chevrolet Cavalier approaching from the opposite direction. As the vehicles passed one another, Agnew shined the alley light from his patrol car on the white Chevrolet and observed the car to be occupied by three black males, each dressed in dark clothing. Based on the dispatcher's description that the robbers were two black males dressed in black jackets and wearing blue jeans, Officer Agnew turned his patrol car around intending to stop the Chevrolet and check its occupants. Meanwhile, after passing the squad car, the Chevrolet turned at the next intersection, proceeded a short distance, and parked at the curb with its lights out. Officer Agnew pulled his squad car up behind the white Chevrolet, turned on his emergency equipment, and instructed the occupants to get out of the car. At trial Agnew identified the appellants as two of the men who had exited the Chevrolet. As the three men vacated their vehicle, leaving both front doors standing open, Officer Tenbrook arrived and proceeded to pat them down and then handcuffed them. As the three men were being handcuffed, Officer Agnew looked inside the Chevrolet from the driver's side and saw one $10.00 bill laying between the seat and the door. He walked around to the passenger's side of the vehicle and observed a large wad of money stuffed under the passenger seat and the barrel of a firearm protruding from underneath the seat. All of these items were in plain view of the officer who was outside the automobile. The men were then arrested, advised of their Miranda rights and briefly interrogated at the scene. All three of the men were transported, in separate vehicles, to the Amoco station, where the attendant could positively identify only Tyrone Long as a perpetrator of the robbery. (Long was tried and convicted in a separate proceeding and is not a party to this appeal.) At trial, however, she was also able to identify Arnold L. Baker as the other robber who entered the Amoco station. Baker and Coleman were convicted of robbing the Amoco station and this appeal followed.

Appellants filed a motion in the trial court to quash their arrests and to suppress all evidence obtained incident thereto. Following a hearing the motion was overruled by the trial court. The principal arguments raised by the appellants constitute a cluster of issues in which they claim the initial stop, their arrest, the search of the vehicle and the admission of testimony and physical evidence were all improper under the Fourth Amendment protections from "unreasonable searches and seizures."

The Fourth Amendment protects the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures...." The amendment protects people, not places, and is aimed at the preservation of the individual's reasonable expectation of privacy. Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351-53, 88 S.Ct. 507, 511-12, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967). This expectation of privacy includes automobiles under appropriate circumstances. United States v. Hensley, 469 U.S. 221, 105 S.Ct. 675, 83 L.Ed.2d 604 (1985). The Fourth Amendment applies to all seizures of the person, including seizures that involve only a brief detention short of traditional arrest. United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 878, 95 S.Ct. 2574, 2578, 45 L.Ed.2d 607 (1975). "[W]henever a police officer accosts an individual and restrains his freedom to walk away, he has 'seized' that person." Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 16, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1877, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968).

In the landmark case Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, the Supreme Court recognized a limited exception to the probable cause and warrant requirements of the Fourth Amendment. In Terry a police officer had observed suspicious or unusual conduct by the defendant and two other men. Concluding that the suspects were contemplating a robbery, the officer stopped and frisked them and found they were carrying weapons. On appeal the defendant claimed the stop and frisk conducted by the police officer violated the Fourth Amendment. After thoroughly discussing the factors to be considered in resolving the issue, Chief Justice Warren, writing for the court, acknowledged that a "narrowly drawn" exception to the Fourth Amendment probable cause requirement existed under the circumstances. The court held that the search was reasonable in view of Fourth Amendment prerequisites, and that the guns which had been seized were properly admitted at trial. The court stated that prior to stopping the defendant, the officer had a reasonable belief that criminal activity was afoot and that the persons might be armed and dangerous. The court went on to propound a two-faceted approach for assessing the reasonableness of an investigative stop which...