State v. Frazier, 82-214.

• Citation: 318 NW 2d 42
• Decision Date: 09 April 1982
• Docket Number: No. 82-214.,82-214.
• Parties: STATE of Minnesota, Appellant, v. Eartha Mae FRAZIER, Respondent.
• Court: Supreme Court of Minnesota (US)

318 N.W.2d 42 (1982)

STATE of Minnesota, Appellant, v. Eartha Mae FRAZIER, Respondent.

No. 82-214.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

April 9, 1982.

Warren Spannaus, Atty. Gen., St. Paul, Thomas Foley, County Atty., and Steven C. DeCoster, Asst. County Atty., St. Paul, for appellant.

William Falvey, County Public Defender and Joanne M. Smith, Asst. Public Defender, St. Paul, for respondent.

Considered and decided by the court en banc without oral argument.

KELLEY, Justice.

This is a pretrial appeal by the state, pursuant to Minn.R.Crim.P. 29.03, from an order of the district court suppressing evidence on Fourth Amendment grounds in a prosecution of defendant for the gross misdemeanor offense of unlawfully possessing a pistol without a permit, Minn.Stat. § 624.714, subd. 1 (1980). We affirm the suppression order.

At 9:15 p. m. on the evening of October 28, 1981, two plain-clothes Ramsey County Sheriff's Deputies, who were driving around St. Paul in an unmarked squad car trying to serve warrants, including a warrant for the arrest of one Terri Norman on check charges, spotted defendant standing outside a St. Paul restaurant and bar. Although the deputies had never seen Terri Norman, they had a front and side view police identification photograph of her, may have been aware of her description, and had information that another officer may have seen her outside the establishment in question within the previous 3 days. Although the area where defendant was standing was dimly lit and although the officers first observed defendant from a distance estimated by one of them at 500 feet, the officers hastily concluded that defendant, Eartha Frazier, was Ms. Norman. Acting on that belief, they pulled up, jumped out, verbally identified themselves, grabbed defendant's purse and a box of take-out food she was holding, and escorted her by her arm back to the squad car. When defendant denied that she was Ms. Norman, the officers asked her if she had any identification. She responded that she had an identification card but could not show it to them because they had her purse. The officers asked her where the card was in the purse, and defendant said it was in her wallet. Without seeking or obtaining consent, one of the officers reached in and pulled out not the wallet but a brown plastic case, which she opened. Inside, this officer found the gun, a derringer. Defendant then said, "Not in there. It's in the wallet." Inside defendant's wallet the officer found identification papers revealing that defendant was who she said she was, not Terri Norman. Defendant was thereafter booked on the weapons charge.

The trial court suppressed the gun, reasoning that the arrest was lawful but that the search was an illegal, nonconsensual search.

New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 101 S.Ct. 2860, 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981), which was not cited by the attorneys in their arguments to the trial court or in their briefs on appeal, establishes that if the arrest was legal, then the search was permissible, at least under the Federal Constitution, as a lawful search incident to the arrest. See full discussion at 2 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure §§ 5.5, 7.1 (1978, 1982 Supp.).

However, this does not mean that the trial court erred in suppressing the evidence, because we disagree with the trial court's conclusion that the arrest was legal. Whether the arrest was legal depends on whether the record sufficiently establishes that the deputies reasonably believed that defendant was Terri...