State v. Gomez
| Decision Date | 05 April 2012 |
| Docket Number | No. 20100486–CA.,20100486–CA. |
| Parties | STATE of Utah, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. Luis Parra GOMEZ, Defendant and Appellant. |
| Court | Utah Court of Appeals |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Margaret P. Lindsay and Matthew R. Morrise, Provo, for Appellant.
Mark L. Shurtleff and Kris C. Leonard, Salt Lake City, for Appellee.
Before Judges McHUGH, VOROS, and DAVIS.
¶ 1 The encounter at issue in this appeal began with a traffic stop and ended with the search of a hotel room. Defendant Luis Parra Gomez consented to the search, but challenges the voluntariness of that consent. We affirm.
¶ 2 Around midnight on August 3, 2008, on University Parkway in Orem, Officer Scott Speeth stopped a car for a taillight violation. The car, a rental, held three occupants. Gomez was in the back seat. When the officer approached the car and requested the driver's identification, he noticed that Gomez was not wearing a seat belt. In addition, a routine records check revealed that the driver had a suspended license and a criminal history related to drug trafficking. Three or four minutes into the stop, as he began to issue the citation, the officer requested a canine unit. Within five minutes, the unit arrived. The drug dog indicated the possible presence of narcotics.
¶ 3 The officer ordered all three occupants out of the car and separately questioned them. Each, including Gomez, denied having visited any hotels in the area. In fact, Gomez indicated that his mother lived in Provo. Officers searched the car and all three occupants but found no drugs. However, they did find two items of interest: on the car's dashboard they found a parking permit for a hotel located 100 feet away, and in the driver's shoe they found $4,000 in cash. Officer Speeth called the hotel and learned that the parking pass had been issued to a room registered to Gomez. By this time, thirty to forty minutes had elapsed since the initial stop. The officer asked Gomez why he had lied about the hotel room. Gomez stammered a bit and gave inconsistent explanations. At that point, the driver's criminal history, the fact that Gomez had rented a hotel room notwithstanding his mother lived in Provo, the rental car, the dog alert, the $4,000 in the driver's shoe, the inconsistent explanations, and the initial lie about the hotel led the officer to believe “that there was a likelihood there were narcotics inside the hotel room.”
¶ 4 The officer asked Gomez for consent to search the hotel room. Gomez replied that he “did not want to be put in that kind of a position.” The officer interpreted this response to mean that “possibly some of the other occupants [of the car] had something incriminating inside the hotel room” and that Gomez did not want to expose them. The officer again requested consent to search the hotel room. The gist of Gomez's reply was that if the other two passengers would agree to allow officers into the room, then Gomez was “okay with it.” The officer spoke to the other two suspects. Both denied having been in the hotel room or having any claim to anything in the room. When the officer informed Gomez of their responses, Gomez “pretty much shrugged his shoulders and agreed to let [the officers] in.” Officer Speeth walked to the hotel room with Gomez, who was not handcuffed or physically restrained. Gomez used his key card to open the door. In the room, Officer Speeth found cocaine, marijuana, a digital scale, and a measuring spoon. Gomez admitted the drugs were his. Officers arrested Gomez and released his companions.
¶ 5 Gomez was charged with two counts of possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute in a drug-free zone, first and third degree felonies, see Utah Code Ann. §§ 58–37–8(1)(a)(iii), (b), 58–37–8(4) (2008), and one count of possession of drug paraphernalia in a drug-free zone, a class A misdemeanor, see id. §§ 58–37–8(4), 58–37a–5(1). Gomez moved to suppress the hotel room evidence. The trial court denied the motion, ruling that the police legally detained Gomez and that his consent to search the hotel room was voluntary. Gomez entered conditional pleas of guilty to all three counts, reserving the right to appeal the court's denial of his suppression motion.
¶ 6 Gomez contends that the search of his hotel room violated the Fourth Amendment because his consent to the search was the product of a prior police illegality, specifically, an illegal detention. See Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 600–04, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 45 L.Ed.2d 416 (1975) (); accord State v. Arroyo, 796 P.2d 684, 687–91 (Utah 1990). Whether consent was given presents a question of fact reviewed for clear error; whether consent was voluntary presents a question of law reviewed for correctness. See State v. Brake, 2004 UT 95, ¶ 15, 103 P.3d 699 (citing State v. Hansen, 2002 UT 125, ¶ 51, 63 P.3d 650). Moreover, in search cases the application of law to the underlying facts is reviewed without deference to the trial court. See id.
¶ 7 The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects people from “unreasonable searches and seizures” of “their persons, houses, papers, and effects” by the government. U.S. Const. amend. IV. “[S]topping an automobile and detaining its occupants constitute a ‘seizure’ within the meaning of [the Fourth] Amendment[ ], even though the purpose of the stop is limited and the resulting detention quite brief.” Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 653, 99 S.Ct. 1391, 59 L.Ed.2d 660 (1979). A traffic stop must therefore be reasonable in scope to be upheld. See State v. Morris, 2011 UT 40, ¶ 15, 259 P.3d 116.
¶ 8 To determine whether a traffic stop is reasonable, we apply a two-step test derived from Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 19–20, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). Step one asks whether the police officer's action was justified at its inception; step two asks whether the ensuing detention was reasonably related in scope to the circumstances that justified the stop in the first place. See id.; State v. Applegate, 2008 UT 63, ¶¶ 8–9, 194 P.3d 925. A traffic stop is justified at its inception when the officer “has reasonable articulable suspicion that the driver is committing a traffic offense.” See State v. Lopez, 873 P.2d 1127, 1132 (Utah 1994) (internal quotation marks omitted). In assessing whether officers had reasonable suspicion to detain, “[w]e ‘look to the totality of the circumstances ... to determine if there was an objective basis for suspecting criminal activity.’ ” State v. Baker, 2008 UT App 115, ¶ 11, 182 P.3d 935 (omission in original) (quoting State v. Beach, 2002 UT App 160, ¶ 8, 47 P.3d 932), aff'd, 2010 UT 18, 229 P.3d 650.
¶ 9 During a lawful traffic stop, “[t]he temporary seizure of driver and passengers ordinarily continues, and remains reasonable, for the duration of the stop.” Arizona v. Johnson, 555 U.S. 323, 333, 129 S.Ct. 781, 172 L.Ed.2d 694 (2009). “[I]f, during the scope of the traffic stop, the officer forms new reasonable articulable suspicion of criminal activity, the officer may also expediently investigate his new suspicion.” Morris, 2011 UT 40, ¶ 15, 259 P.3d 116 (internal quotation marks omitted). But without additional reasonable suspicion, the officer must allow the seized person to depart once the purpose of the stop has concluded. See Hansen, 2002 UT 125, ¶ 31, 63 P.3d 650. Even where additional reasonable suspicion exists, officers must “diligently pursue[ ] a means of investigation that [is] likely to confirm or dispel their suspicions quickly.” United States v. Sharpe, 470 U.S. 675, 686, 105 S.Ct. 1568, 84 L.Ed.2d 605 (1985).
¶ 10 Here, Gomez does not challenge the initial traffic stop, the dog sniff, the search of the car, or the search of the occupants. Indeed, he concedes that Officer Speeth harbored reasonable suspicion that Gomez was involved in drug trafficking up to the moment when the officer first sought and was denied consent to search Gomez's hotel room.2 However, Gomez contends that after his “initial refusal to give consent, Officer Speeth could not lawfully detain Gomez any longer in order to question the driver and the other passenger or to continue to seek Gomez's consent.” Gomez's claim of unlawful detention thus does not rely on the duration of the post-refusal detention or on the shift of the locus of the investigation from the roadside to the hotel room. See State v. Worwood, 2007 UT 47, ¶ 30, 164 P.3d 397 (). Rather, once Gomez refused consent, he asserts, the officer “had done all that he could to quickly confirm or dispel his suspicion that Gomez was involved [in] drug trafficking.” Accordingly, after that point, he maintains, the detention was illegal, and his later consent to the hotel room search was the product of that illegality.3
¶ 11 To the extent that Gomez is asserting that his refusal to consent to the search ended the investigation as a matter of law, we do not agree. Courts generally hold that refusal to consent cannot establish or—according to some courts—even support reasonable suspicion. See, e.g., United States v. Leal, 235 Fed.Appx. 937, 940 (3d Cir.2007) (); United States v. Santos, 403 F.3d 1120, 1125 (10th Cir.2005) (); State v. Sweeney, 224 Ariz. 107, 227 P.3d 868,...
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...a question of fact reviewed for clear error; whether consent was voluntary presents a question of law reviewed for correctness.” State v. Gomez, 2012 UT App 102, ¶ 6, 275 P.3d 1073. ¶ 11 Hoffmann next contends that the officers would not have sought a warrant—and the magistrate would not ha......
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