State v. Evans

• Decision Date: 21 November 2018
• Docket Number: No. 119,458,119,458
• Citation: 430 P.3d 1
• Parties: STATE of Kansas, Appellant, v. Julia Colleen EVANS, Appellee.
• Court: Kansas Supreme Court

430 P.3d 1

STATE of Kansas, Appellant,

v.Julia Colleen EVANS, Appellee.

No. 119,458

Supreme Court of Kansas.

Opinion filed November 21, 2018.

Daryl E. Hawkins, assistant county attorney, argued the cause, and Andrea Purvis, county attorney, and Derek Schmidt, attorney general, Topeka, were with him on the brief for appellant.

Whitney T. Kauffeld, assistant public defender, argued the cause and was on the brief for appellee.

The opinion of the court was delivered by Luckert, J.:

Julia Colleen Evans argues law enforcement officers violated her rights under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution when they conducted a warrantless search of her purse and wallet after an ambulance took her from the scene of an automobile accident. To justify the constitutionality of the search, the State must establish the law enforcement officers conducted a search under authority of a warrant or one of the specifically established and well-delineated exceptions to the warrant requirement. Here, the State relies on the plain-view exception and the officer's administrative caretaking function of locating a driver's license to complete an accident report. The district court held the State had not met its burden of establishing the application of an established exception to the warrant requirement, and we affirm.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

The State charged Evans with two counts: (1) unlawful possession of methamphetamine and (2) possession of drug paraphernalia after officers performing a warrantless search of her purse and wallet found evidence of those crimes. Evans moved to suppress evidence, and the district court held an evidentiary hearing on Evans' motion. The State presented testimony from Dickinson County Sheriff's Deputy Mark Longbine and Abilene Police Department Sergeant Mark Haaga.

Deputy Longbine testified he responded to a call of a car accident on I-70. At the scene, Longbine observed it appeared the driver "went off the side of the road, and went up the incline, and flipped one time, and landed with the door against" a pole. Longbine approached the car and found Evans was in pain and distraught. Longbine talked to her, and learned her first name.

Sergeant Haaga arrived to assist Deputy Longbine. Shortly after Haaga arrived, Longbine left the scene to respond to another call. Haaga spoke with the driver, who said her name was Julia Evans. She also told him she did not want to have an ambulance. She informed him she had called her ex-boyfriend. Haaga knew the ambulance was almost at the scene and knew emergency personnel would have to extract Evans from the car. Haaga noticed no signs Evans was impaired, nor did he detect any smell of alcohol, marijuana, or anything else emanating from the car.

Once emergency personnel arrived, Sergeant Haaga directed traffic while the emergency personnel removed Evans from the car. As the emergency personnel were placing Evans in the ambulance, Haaga "asked them to ask her where her driver's license was, so [he] could obtain that, for the accident report." They said they would get back to him but did not. After the ambulance pulled away, Haaga observed a purse in the car. He also saw a woman's wallet next to—not in—the purse. It is his practice under these circumstances to collect anything of possible value from the car for safekeeping so it is not lost or stolen when, as in this case, the car will be towed to a "wrecker yard."

After entering the car to take custody of the purse and wallet, Sergeant Haaga looked through Evans' purse. When he did not find Evans' driver's license, he turned to the wallet. He opened a zippered compartment on the outside—what Haaga described as the "backside"—of the wallet. In the compartment he found "a small plastic baggie with the white crystal substance in it." He believed the substance was methamphetamine. He then opened the main part of the wallet and found Evans' driver's license. Haaga testified he was not investigating a crime at the time, he was just looking for the license.

Sergeant Haaga later took the purse and wallet to the sheriff's department and gave them to Deputy Longbine. Longbine explained the reason for taking Evans' purse was to obtain her driver's license number so the sheriff could determine "if she's suspended, or not suspended. It gives us her name. Her photo, also, gives us the information of knowing that is the person that was in the car." In addition, the sheriff's office uses the license number to determine whether the driver has a record or is required to have an interlock device on the car. Longbine said that at that time he was only investigating the accident, and it is necessary to obtain the driver's license to do paperwork for the accident. Longbine testified to testing the white crystals; they tested positive for methamphetamine.

Longbine explained he could not take the purse to Evans because there was not enough manpower for him to go to the hospital. But he no longer had the wallet. He explained:

"I gave it back to her—matter of fact, her boyfriend kept on calling and calling for it. And she—he—she wanted it. And I said I'm only going to take it and give it to her. And then when she got out of the hospital—she was still in her gown, and she was—it looked like she had her arm propped up. And that's when I went outside and handed it to her."

After hearing Deputy Longbine's and Sergeant Haaga's testimony, the district court judge ruled from the bench. The judge first noted Haaga conducted a search without a warrant. The judge then noted none of the exceptions to the warrant requirement applied. The judge acknowledged the "officer's situation ... of investigating an accident, and—and wanting to take the shortcut." The judge observed that alternatives were available, such as impounding the automobile or getting a warrant if a search was justified. But "the opening of the wallet, and the opening of the zipper violate the defendant's constitutional rights." The judge granted Evans' motion to suppress.

The State moved to reconsider. The district court judge again ruled from the bench. The judge first distinguished the cases cited by the State. In doing so, the judge noted that the officers had the name of Julia Evans. And the court acknowledged that the purpose of the car search was for safekeeping of property. "He should be commended for that. He—that was what he should have done. He should have taken that into his custody, took for good and safe keeping." But the judge criticized the steps taken from that point. He noted "there's got to be a heightened sense of privacy in regards to a woman's purse." But the officer opened the purse and then the wallet. And "[i]nstead of popping open the wallet and looking in the middle where we would normally, where he found the driver's license, he opened a zip-locked side on the wallet and there he found the drugs." The judge concluded: "There was no reason for this officer to search that purse, and then eventually search the wallet." The judge reaffirmed the previous ruling to suppress the evidence.

The State filed an interlocutory appeal. See K.S.A. 2017 Supp. 22-3603. We transferred the case from the Court of Appeals on our own motion under K.S.A. 20-3018(c).

ANALYSIS

Evans based her motion to suppress on the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Fourth Amendment protects "[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." This right extends to an individual's automobile and items in it, although "the interior of an automobile is not subject to the same expectations of privacy that exist with respect to one's home." New York v. Class , 475 U.S. 106, 114-15, 106 S.Ct. 960, 89 L.Ed.2d 81 (1986).

Applying the Fourth Amendment, the United States Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the touchstone of any analysis is reasonableness. See Cady v. Dombrowski , 413 U.S. 433, 439, 93 S.Ct. 2523, 37 L.Ed.2d 706 (1973). And in construing the command for reasonableness, the Supreme Court has held "that ‘except in certain carefully defined classes of cases, a search of private property without proper consent is "unreasonable" unless it has been authorized by a valid search warrant.’ " 413 U.S. at 439, 93 S.Ct. 2523 (quoting Camara v. Municipal Court , 387 U.S. 523, 528-29, 87 S.Ct. 1727, 18 L.Ed.2d 930 [1967] ). As we have noted: " ‘This "warrant requirement" espouses a marked preference for searches authorized by detached and neutral magistrates to ensure that searches "are not the random or arbitrary acts of government agents," but rather intrusions "authorized by law" and "narrowly limited" in object and scope.’ " State v. Boggess , 308 Kan. 821, 826, 425 P.3d 324 (2018).

If a warrant is not obtained, the government may seize property or conduct a search only if one of the " ‘specifically established and well-delineated exceptions’ " to the warrant requirement applies. Arizona v. Gant , 556 U.S. 332, 338, 129 S.Ct. 1710, 173 L.Ed.2d 485 (2009) ; see Maryland v. Dyson , 527 U.S. 465, 466, 119 S.Ct. 2013, 144 L.Ed.2d 442 (1999). The most commonly recognized exceptions to the warrant requirement include consent, search incident to lawful arrest, stop and frisk, probable cause to search accompanied by exigent circumstances, the emergency doctrine, inventory searches, plain view, and administrative searches of closely regulated businesses. State v. Ramirez , 278 Kan. 402, 404-05, 100 P.3d 94 (2004). Of these common exceptions, the State, in its brief on appeal, has cited cases applying the plain-view and inventory exceptions, although it never clearly invokes the inventory exception. "If the State fails to meet its burden [of establishing these exceptions], the evidence seized is excluded." State v. Canaan , 265 Kan. 835, 840, 964 P.2d 681 (1998).

Sergeant Haaga's actions raise Fourth Amendment concerns at two steps, each of which must comply with the Fourth Amendment. First, he entered the...