State v. Griffin

• Decision Date: 27 April 1983
• Citation: 459 A.2d 1086
• Court: Maine Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE of Maine v. Charles GRIFFIN III.

Page 1086

459 A.2d 1086

STATE of Maine v. Charles GRIFFIN III.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Argued March 7, 1983.

Decided April 27, 1983.

Michael E. Povich, Dist. Atty., Ellsworth, Wayne S. Moss, Asst. Atty. Gen. (orally), Augusta, for plaintiff.

Sophie Spurr (orally), Blue Hill, for defendant.

Before McKUSICK, C.J., GODFREY, NICHOLS, CARTER and WATHEN, JJ., and DUFRESNE, A.R.J.

DUFRESNE, Active Retired Justice.

The defendant, Charles Griffin III, was convicted of operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicating liquor, 29 M.R.S.A. § 1312(10) (1979), operating after being adjudicated an habitual offender, 29 M.R.S.A. § 2298 (Supp.1982-83), assault, 17-A M.R.S.A. § 207 (1983), and escape, 17-A M.R.S.A. § 755 (1983), all in a consolidated jury trial in the Superior Court (Hancock County). The charges grew out of an incident in the Town of Hancock during the early morning hours of June 7, 1981. On appeal, the defendant claims (1) that the arresting officer's initial "investigatory stop" of the defendant was unlawful; (2) that there was insufficient evidence before the jury to support its guilty findings on any of the four charges; and (3) that the trial court erred in instructing the jury on the elements of escape. We find no merit in any of these claims, and accordingly we affirm the judgments of conviction.

The State at trial presented two witnesses, George Robinson II, the arresting officer, and another member of the Sheriff's Department in the County of Hancock, while the defendant himself took the stand and testified in his own behalf, supported in his testimony by his female companion at the time that it was his brother, Peter Griffin, who was driving his car.

Our review of the record indicates that the jury would have been warranted in finding the following facts. Charles Griffin III attended two wedding receptions on June 6, 1981, and from 3:00 o'clock that afternoon to the time he left the last party in the Town of Franklin he had consumed, by his own estimate, a "fifth" of hard liquor, two six-packs of beer, and some champagne. The defendant admitted that he was "very intoxicated" by the end of the festivities. At 2:00 o'clock on the morning of June 7, Deputy George Robinson II noticed a small blue car pull over to the side of route 182 in the Town of Hancock and come to a stop behind a van already parked there. The deputy observed nothing unusual about the manner in which the car itself was being operated. When he brought his marked patrol car even with the stopped small automobile, prior to making a left turn to leave route 182, he glanced across at the blue car and saw two people in it, both in front. The officer then noticed the male person in the driver's seat, upon looking back at him, slide between the two front seats and into the car's rear seat. On leaving the police cruiser and approaching the blue car to investigate, Deputy Robinson saw a female occupant exit from the passenger side of the vehicle. He identified the male occupant, then in the back seat, as Charles Griffin III. Griffin was asked for his license and registration but produced only the latter, saying that he didn't need a driver's license, because he wasn't driving. Asked to get out of the car and accompany the officer to the cruiser, Griffin readily complied, but Robinson noticed that the defendant's speech was slurred, he was staggering as he walked, and his breath smelled of alcohol. The deputy radioed the Sheriff's Office and learned that Griffin was an habitual offender. ¹ At that point, Griffin was asked to come out of the cruiser, and he did. The officer then told Griffin that he was being placed under arrest for operating under the influence and for operating after being adjudicated an habitual offender. Griffin concedes that the officer then caused him to turn toward the police car and place his hands on the roof while the deputy frisked him. He further got the defendant to put his hands behind his back and it is at that moment when the officer attempted to put handcuffs on him that a scuffle ensued. "He was applying pressure, really twisting my arm in back of me," Griffin said of the officer, "and at that point I pulled myself through." Robinson stated that the defendant struck him with both arms and knocked him sideways, that in response thereto, he swung his flashlight striking the defendant in the shoulder and head. The scuffle was brief and the defendant broke away and ran out of the officer's sight. Some minutes later, Griffin returned to the vicinity of the blue car, and Deputy Robinson, with the help of another Sheriff's deputy, eventually managed to place the defendant in handcuffs and transport him to a local hospital and then to the Sheriff's Office.

I. The Investigatory Stop.

In order to initiate an investigation involving brief detention short of a formal arrest, a law enforcement officer must act on the basis of "specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion," Terry v. State of Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1880, 20 L.Ed.2d 889, 906 (1968). The basis for the investigatory stop need not amount to probable cause for an arrest. State v. Babcock, 361 A.2d 911, 914 (Me.1976); State v. Rand, 430 A.2d 808, 819 (Me.1981). In fact, the observed conduct giving rise to the officer's suspicion of criminal activity may be wholly lawful in itself. Reid v. Georgia, 448 U.S. 438, 441, 100 S.Ct. 2752, 2754, 65 L.Ed.2d 890 (1980).

But, as in the case of probable cause for arrest, the standard to be used to assess the constitutional sufficiency of the factual basis underlying a Terry-type temporary stop or detention of an individual must be an objective one: would the facts available to the officer at the time of the stop or detention, when viewed in their totality, "warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief" that the existing specific and articulable facts do give rise to a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity and that an investigatory temporary stop or detention of the individual is appropriate to clear up the suspicion? See Terry v. State of Ohio, 392 U.S. at 21-22, 88 S.Ct. at 1880. And, in the application of this objective standard to the particularized facts of the situation at hand, one must necessarily anticipate and accept that reasonable mistakes will creep in at times. See State v. York, 324 A.2d 758, 763 (1974).

The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article I, Section 5 of our Maine Constitution do require that the officer's objective observations, coupled with any relevant information he may have, together with the rational inferences and deductions he may draw and make from the totality of the circumstances, be sufficient to "reasonably warrant suspicion of criminal conduct" on the part of the party or parties subjected to the investigatory stop or detention, criminal conduct which has taken place, is occurring, or imminently will occur. See State v. Rowe, 453 A.2d 134, 136-37 (Me.1982).

The central thrust of the constitutional guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures is to protect the privacy interest of individuals against intrusive incursions of agents of government, including the police. The place where the intrusion occurs is not the controlling determinant of the constitutional prohibition (State v. Philbrick, 436 A.2d 844 (Me.1981); State v. Rand, 430 A.2d 808 (Me.1981)) and Griffin had a legitimate expectation of privacy, whether he was traveling on foot on a public street or, as in the instant case, was seated in his automobile parked on the street at the time. The constitutional limitations embodied in the Terry-type temporary investigatory stop or detention of person or property apply, whether the motor vehicle is in motion or at rest. See United States v. Walling, 486 F.2d 229 (9th Cir.1973).

Furthermore, it is within the reasonable scope of an investigatory stop or detention for the officer to ask as he did in this case the defendant Griffin, the suspect person, to come out of his car and join him in the police cruiser to answer questions. Such police request and submission thereto are not to be equated to an arrest. See State v. Kelly, 376 A.2d 840, 847 (Me.1977). This is proper detective strategy, which not only enables law enforcement officers to better judge the suspect's demeanor and better appraise his answers given in the course of the investigation, but also fosters the self-evident protection interest of the officer in the suspect's removal from any readily available weapon that might be in the car. United States v. Harflinger, 436 F.2d 928, 933 (8th Cir.1970). Cf. Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491, 103 S.Ct. 1319, 75 L.Ed.2d 229 (1983).

Deputy Robinson initiated his "investigatory stop" by walking over to the defendant's automobile and asking him to produce his license and registration. The officer's sole basis for this temporary invasion of the defendant's privacy rights, the State concedes, was Griffin's furtive behavior consisting of his sliding from the driver's seat to the rear seat of the recently-stopped automobile immediately on realizing that he was being observed by a law enforcement officer in uniform in a marked patrol car. In rural Maine, where there is no history of institutionalized fear of the police on the part of the civilian population, furtive behavior or actions suggesting that the subject does not want to be seen by the police at a particular time or place may furnish a rational foundational basis for an officer's reasonable suspicion that the subject is involved in unlawful conduct. Officer Robinson who had just seen the driver of the parked car slide into the back seat on the officer's observation of him had reasonable grounds to suspect a violation of the motor vehicle laws of the State and, as we said in State v. Fitzherbert, 361 A.2d 916, 920 (Me.1976), it was reasonable for him to...