State v. Gant

• Decision Date: 20 September 2006
• Docket Number: No. 2 CA-CR 2000-0430.,2 CA-CR 2000-0430.
• Citation: 143 P.3d 379,213 Ariz. 446
• Parties: The STATE of Arizona, Appellee, v. Rodney Joseph GANT, Appellant.
• Court: Arizona Court of Appeals

Page 379

143 P.3d 379

213 Ariz. 446

The STATE of Arizona, Appellee, v. Rodney Joseph GANT, Appellant.

No. 2 CA-CR 2000-0430.

Court of Appeals of Arizona, Division 2, Department B.

September 20, 2006.

Terry Goddard, Arizona Attorney General, By Randall M. Howe and Eric J. Olsson, Tucson, Attorneys for Appellee.

Law Offices of Thomas Jacobs, By Thomas Jacobs, Tucson, Attorney for Appellant.

OPINION

BRAMMER, Judge.

¶ 1 After the United States Supreme Court vacated our decision in State v. Gant, 202 Ariz. 240, 43 P.3d 188 (App.2002),¹ we remanded this matter to the superior court, directing it to hold an evidentiary hearing and make factual findings on whether the officers' warrantless search of Gant's vehicle, incident to his arrest, violated the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.² State v. Gant, No. 2 CA-CR 2000-0430 (memorandum decision filed April 28, 2004). The trial court found no violation. Gant now appeals from that ruling.³ We reverse.

Standard of Review and Background

¶ 2 Gant argues the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress evidence seized from his vehicle. We review a trial court's ruling on a motion to suppress evidence for an abuse of discretion, considering the evidence in the light most favorable to upholding the court's decision. State v. Paredes, 167 Ariz. 609, 612, 810 P.2d 607, 610 (App.1991). We look only to the evidence presented at the hearing on the motion. State v. Spears, 184 Ariz. 277, 284, 908 P.2d 1062, 1069 (1996). We defer to the trial court's findings of fact if reasonable evidence supports them but review the court's legal determination de novo. State v. Wyman, 197 Ariz. 10, ¶ 5, 3 P.3d 392, 395 (App.2000).

¶ 3 Law enforcement officers arrested Gant on an outstanding warrant after he stepped out of an automobile they had seen him driving. After placing Gant in handcuffs and locking him in the back of a patrol car, and without obtaining a search warrant, the officers searched his vehicle and found cocaine in the pocket of a jacket they found in the vehicle. As we stated in our previous memorandum decision:

Before trial, Gant moved to suppress the cocaine, arguing that the officers had searched his vehicle illegally because no exception to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement applied. The trial court denied the motion, and Gant was convicted following trial of unlawful possession of cocaine for sale and unlawful possession of drug paraphernalia. He was sentenced to concurrent, mitigated prison terms, the longest of which was three years.

In our initial review of Gant's appeal, we concluded that the trial court had improperly denied his motion to suppress the evidence [because the police officer had initiated contact with Gant after Gant had left the vehicle]. The state petitioned our supreme court for review. The court denied the petition, and our mandate issued on October 23, 2002. The state then petitioned the United States Supreme Court for certiorari. . . .

The United States Supreme Court granted the state's petition for certiorari on April 21, 2003, Arizona v. Gant, 538 U.S. 976, 123 S.Ct. 1784, 155 L.Ed.2d 664 (2003), and set the case for oral argument the following November. While the case was awaiting argument, the Arizona Supreme Court decided [State v.] Dean, [206 Ariz. 158, 76 P.3d 429 (2003),] which criticized our decision in Gant and rejected its analysis. The United States Supreme Court subsequently vacated both the scheduled argument and our resolution of Gant's appeal and remanded the case to us for reconsideration in light of Dean. Arizona v. Gant, , 124 S.Ct. 461, 157 L.Ed.2d 308 (2003).

State v. Gant, No. 2 CA-CR 2000-0430, ¶¶ 3-5 (memorandum decision filed April 28, 2004). After our opinion had been vacated, and because the facts regarding the search had only been "stipulated to by the parties . . . without the benefit of testimony by witnesses," we remanded the case to the trial court for an evidentiary hearing on the legality of the warrantless search. Id. ¶¶ 1, 2.

¶ 4 At the evidentiary hearing, Tucson police officers testified that they had first contacted Gant at a residence after responding to a tip about narcotics activity there. Gant told them that the owner of the residence was not present, so the officers departed after obtaining Gant's name. The officers then conducted a routine record check and found Gant had a suspended driver's license and an outstanding warrant for driving with a suspended license. The officers returned later in the evening, arrested one person at the residence for possession of drug paraphernalia and another for giving false information, and then saw Gant drive up to the residence. As Gant stepped out of the vehicle, an officer called to him and Gant walked toward the officer. The officer placed Gant under arrest about eight to ten feet from Gant's car. Gant was handcuffed and locked into the back of a nearby patrol car.

¶ 5 Within one to three minutes of the arrest, two officers searched Gant's car. Therein, the police found contraband and a weapon. At the time of the search, the other arrestees had also been secured: both had been placed into handcuffs and locked into the back of patrol cars. The residence's owner was not present at this time and, although officers "were anticipating [her] arrival," nothing in the record suggests she returned to the home that night.

¶ 6 Based on the officers' uncontradicted testimony, the trial court found that Gant's vehicle had been "searched almost immediately after he was placed in a patrol car" and that Gant "was apparently at most 8-10 feet from the car" when he was arrested. The court therefore denied the motion to suppress after concluding that, under the "recent occupancy" test of State v. Dean, 206 Ariz. 158, ¶ 30, 76 P.3d 429, 437 (2003), the "search was conducted immediately after arrest," and Gant was arrested in "close proximity" to his vehicle. This appeal followed.

Discussion

¶ 7 The Fourth Amendment proscribes all "unreasonable searches and seizures," which, under most conditions, requires the state to obtain a warrant before conducting a search. U.S. Const. amend. IV; see Dean, 206 Ariz. 158, ¶ 8, 76 P.3d at 432. A trial court presumes warrantless searches are unreasonable, and the state bears the burden of establishing that evidence has been lawfully seized. See State v. Ault, 150 Ariz. 459, 464, 724 P.2d 545, 550 (1986). A warrantless search is presumptively unreasonable and, therefore, unconstitutional unless it "falls within one of the few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions to the constitutional warrant requirement." State v. Kempton, 166 Ariz. 392, 395-96, 803 P.2d 113, 116-17 (App.1990). One exception courts have recognized allows officers to conduct a warrantless search of an arrestee's person and, contemporaneous to the arrest, the area within the arrestee's immediate control. Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 762-63, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 2040, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969); Dean, 206 Ariz. 158, ¶¶ 11-12, 76 P.3d at 432-33.

¶ 8 In Chimel, the Supreme Court explained the rationale justifying the exception:

When an arrest is made, it is reasonable for the arresting officer to search the person arrested in order to remove any weapons that the latter might seek to use in order to resist arrest or effect his escape. Otherwise, the officer's safety might well be endangered, and the arrest itself frustrated. In addition, it is entirely reasonable for the arresting officer to search for and seize any evidence on the arrestee's person in order to prevent its concealment or destruction. And the area into which an arrestee might reach in order to grab a weapon or evidentiary items must, of course, be governed by a like rule.

395 U.S. at 762-63, 89 S.Ct. at 2040. Thus, the exception to the warrant requirement for such searches is premised on the "twin aims" of officer safety and preservation of evidence. Dean, 206 Ariz. 158, ¶ 13, 76 P.3d at 433.

¶ 9 Gant argues that, because he and the other suspects were handcuffed and either locked in the police vehicles or otherwise secured, neither rationale for departing from the warrant requirement existed at the time the search was conducted. In essence, Gant contends that, by the time the search occurred, no officer could have reasonably believed that the arrestees presented any risk of reaching a weapon or destroying evidence located in his car. We agree with Gant that our analysis must be guided by the rationales underlying the search incident to arrest exception to the warrant requirement and that these rationales are absent under the circumstances here.

¶ 10 In Dean, our supreme court addressed the search of a vehicle incident to a defendant's arrest when the arrest was remote in time and location from the defendant's occupancy of the vehicle. 206 Ariz. 158, ¶¶ 3-4, 76 P.3d at 431. A unanimous court noted that Chimel, the seminal United States Supreme Court case authorizing warrantless searches incident to arrest, had emphasized that the scope of such a search "`must be "strictly tied to and justified by" the circumstances which rendered its initiation permissible.'" Dean, 206 Ariz. 158, ¶ 12, 76 P.3d at 433, quoting Chimel, 395 U.S. at 762, 89 S.Ct. at 2039, quoting Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 19, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1878, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). Thus, the Arizona Supreme Court has reminded us that a warrantless search incident to arrest is not only justified, but is also limited, by the need to promote officer safety and prevent destruction of evidence. In that context, the supreme court has instructed us to examine "whether the totality of the facts . . . presents the kind of situation that justifies dispensing with the warrant requirement." Dean, 206 Ariz. 158, ¶ 34, 76 P.3d at 437. Indeed, the Dean court invalidated the search in the case before it precisely because "neither of the justifications for a warrantless search of the vehicle—protection of the arresting...