State v. Cofield

• Decision Date: 06 August 1991
• Docket Number: No. 13994,13994
• Citation: 220 Conn. 38,595 A.2d 1349
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE of Connecticut v. Sherman COFIELD.

Page 1349

595 A.2d 1349

220 Conn. 38

STATE of Connecticut v. Sherman COFIELD.

No. 13994.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued May 30, 1991.

Decided Aug. 6, 1991.

Mitchell S. Brody, Asst. State's Atty., with whom, on the brief, was John T. Redway, State's Atty., for appellant (State).

Temmy Ann Pieszak, Asst. Public Defender, with whom, on the brief, was G. Douglas Nash, Public Defender, for appellee (defendant).

Before PETERS, C.J., and SHEA, CALLAHAN, GLASS, COVELLO, BORDEN and SANTANIELLO, JJ.

SHEA, Associate Justice.

After the trial court, Stengel, J., had denied his motion to suppress evidence, the defendant, Sherman Cofield, entered a conditional plea of nolo contendere pursuant to General Statutes (Rev. to 1987) § 54-94a ¹ to the charges of possession of narcotics with intent to sell, possession of marihuana and interfering with an officer, in violation of General Statutes (Rev. to 1987) §§ 21a-277(a), 21a-279(c) and 53a-167a respectively. ² Thereafter, the trial court, R. O'Connell, J., found the defendant guilty as charged and sentenced him to the custody of the commissioner of correction for a term of three years and nine months. The defendant appealed from the judgment of conviction to the Appellate Court, claiming that the evidence was the fruit of an unlawful seizure by the police, and that the trial court, therefore, should have granted his motion to suppress. ³ The Appellate Court concluded that the police did not have a reasonable and articulable suspicion that would justify the stop and therefore reversed the judgment of the trial court. State v. Cofield, 22 Conn.App. 10, 576 A.2d 156 (1990). Upon the granting of certification on three issues, ⁴ the state appealed to this court.

The state claims that the Appellate Court should have concluded that the trial court properly denied the defendant's motion to suppress. The state urges us to follow the United States Supreme Court's recent decision in California v. Hodari D., --- U.S. ----, 111 S.Ct. 1547, 113 L.Ed.2d 690 (1991), and conclude that at the time the pertinent evidence was obtained, the defendant had not been seized and that, therefore, the evidence was not the fruit of an unlawful seizure. ⁵ In the alternative, the state asserts that, even if the defendant had been seized, the seizure was justified by the investigating police officer's reasonable and articulable suspicion that the defendant had engaged in criminal activity. We conclude that the police had a reasonable and articulable suspicion that justified a brief detention of the defendant, and that, therefore, the evidence seized was the product of a lawful seizure. Accordingly, without addressing the issue of whether there was a seizure, we reverse the judgment of the Appellate Court.

At the hearing on the defendant's motion to suppress, the trial court could reasonably have found the following facts. On the evening of November 21, 1987, the defendant drove a friend to the Maplewood Terrace housing project in Middletown. The defendant parked his car, a 1988 white Pontiac Le Mans, in the rear of a partially lit and nearly full parking lot designated as parking lot three. The defendant's car was facing the road. After his friend left the car, the defendant met two other males with whom he was acquainted and they entered his car.

On the same evening, Sergeant Frank Violissi, a seventeen year veteran of the Middletown police department and the police officer in charge of the department's street crime unit, received a telephone call from a confidential informant who had provided him with useful information in the past that had led to narcotics arrests. The informant told Violissi that a black male was selling drugs at Maplewood Terrace. Violissi and two members of the street crime unit drove in an unmarked car and met with the informant a short distance from Maplewood Terrace. Violissi arranged for the informant to make a controlled buy of narcotics from the alleged seller.

About fifteen minutes later, the informant returned with what appeared to Violissi to be cocaine. The informant told the officers that he had purchased the drugs from a black male named Sonny who was wearing a red hat and was seated in the driver's seat of a 1987 blue Chevrolet Beretta with two other male passengers. The informant did not indicate the car's shade of blue. The informant told Violissi that the car was parked in the rear of parking lot three and was facing the road.

Violissi and the other officers drove to parking lot three. The officers watched the defendant's car for about thirty seconds from a distance of fifteen to twenty feet and saw no suspicious activity. Violissi did not notice any blue cars or other occupied cars in the parking lot. He believed the defendant's car was the car described to him by the informant. The officers then backed up their car and parked about thirty-five feet behind the defendant's car. Violissi and one of the officers, both dressed in plain clothes with badges on chains around their necks, decided to approach the defendant's car to corroborate further the information supplied by the informant. On the basis of his experience in the Maplewood Terrace area, Violissi believed himself to be entering a life threatening situation. He therefore drew his gun and carried it by his side as he approached the defendant's car.

When Violissi reached the rear of the car on the driver's side, the defendant looked into his outside rearview mirror and saw a man with a gun rapidly approaching his door. He turned around and looked at Violissi through the car window. The defendant then exited his car, pushed Violissi, and began throwing things from his clothing. Violissi testified that he recognized the items as money and contraband. He identified himself as a police officer and grabbed the defendant with his left hand. A struggle ensued. Additional police officers arrived to assist Violissi and the defendant was arrested along with the other occupants of the car.

I

In reviewing the Appellate Court's reversal of the trial court's finding that a brief detention of the defendant was justified by the police officer's reasonable and articulable suspicion of criminal activity, we undertake a two-part analysis. First, we ascertain whether the trial court's underlying factual findings were clearly erroneous. State v. Torres, 197 Conn. 620, 625, 500 A.2d 1299 (1985); Pandolphe's Auto Parts, Inc. v. Manchester, 181 Conn. 217, 221, 435 A.2d 24 (1980); see Practice Book § 4061. Second, in light of the facts found by the trial court, we determine whether the Appellate Court was correct in concluding that the police officer lacked a reasonable and articulable suspicion of criminal activity on which to base his initial investigative approach to the defendant's car. "The trial court's conclusions must stand unless they are legally and logically inconsistent with the facts." State v. Torres, supra; State v. Lasher, 190 Conn. 259, 267, 460 A.2d 970 (1983). We conclude that the trial court's determination that Violissi had a reasonable and articulable suspicion that the defendant was the person described by the informant is supported by the facts found by the court from the evidence. Accordingly, we reverse the Appellate Court.

It is well established that the fourth amendment to the United States constitution allows a police officer to detain an individual briefly for investigative purposes if the officer has a "reasonable and articulable suspicion" that the individual is engaged in criminal activity. Alabama v. White, 496 U.S. ----, 110 S.Ct. 2412, 110 L.Ed.2d 301 (1990); Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968); State v. Mitchell, 204 Conn. 187, 527 A.2d 1168, cert. denied, 484 U.S. 927, 108 S.Ct. 293, 98 L.Ed.2d 252 (1987). ⁶ The police officer's decision to do so must be based on more than hunch or speculation. "In justifying the particular intrusion 'the police officer must be able to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion.' Terry v. Ohio, supra, [392 U.S. at] 21 ." State v. Januszewski, 182 Conn. 142, 148-49, 438 A.2d 679 (1980), cert. denied, 453 U.S. 922, 101 S.Ct. 3159, 69 L.Ed.2d 1005 (1981). A recognized function of a constitutionally permissible Terry stop is to maintain the status quo for a brief period of time to enable the police to investigate a suspected crime. State v. Braxton, 196 Conn. 685, 689, 495 A.2d 273 (1985).

In evaluating the validity of such a stop, courts consider whether, in light of "the totality of the circumstances--the whole picture," the police officer had "a particularized and objective basis for suspecting the particular person stopped of criminal activity." United States v. Cortez, 449 U.S. 411, 417-18, 101 S.Ct. 690, 66 L.Ed.2d 621 (1981); State v. Mitchell, supra, 204 Conn. at 195, 527 A.2d 1168. When, as in this case, an officer's decision to detain a suspect briefly is based on information received from an informant, the task of the reviewing court is akin to a probable cause determination. In the probable cause context, we have recently departed from the "two-pronged test" of Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 84 S.Ct. 1509, 12 L.Ed.2d 723 (1964), and Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 89 S.Ct. 584, 21 L.Ed.2d 637 (1969), in favor of the "totality of the circumstances" approach of Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 76 L.Ed.2d 527, reh. denied, 463 U.S. 1237, 104 S.Ct. 33, 77 L.Ed.2d 1453 (1983). State v. Barton, 219 Conn. 529, 594 A.2d 917 (1991). Just as we made clear in Barton that the informant's "veracity," "reliability," and "basis of knowledge" remain "highly relevant"; State v. Barton, supra, at 539-40, 594 A.2d 917; "[t]hese factors are also relevant in the reasonable suspicion context, although allowance must be made in applying them for the lesser showing required to meet that standard." ...