State v. Haworth, 13989

• Decision Date: 19 March 1984
• Docket Number: No. 13989,13989
• Citation: 106 Idaho 405,679 P.2d 1123
• Parties: STATE of Idaho, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Victor A. HAWORTH and Wayland Cowan, Defendants-Respondents.
• Court: Idaho Supreme Court

Page 1123

679 P.2d 1123

106 Idaho 405

STATE of Idaho, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Victor A. HAWORTH and Wayland Cowan, Defendants-Respondents.

No. 13989.

Supreme Court of Idaho.

March 19, 1984.

Jim Jones, Atty. Gen., Lynn E. Thomas, Sol. Gen., Myrna A.I. Stahman, Deputy Atty. Gen., Boise, for plaintiff-appellant.

Rolf M. Kehne, Ada County Deputy Public Defender, Boise, for defendants-respondents.

HUNTLEY, Justice.

An Idaho State Police officer observed an automobile traveling slowly, at 10:00 o'clock at night, coming from Eagle, Idaho, a small town unprotected by law enforcement. The trunk lid was up, and the officer observed a large object in the trunk which weighted the rear end down. The officer stopped the vehicle, in which both defendants were occupants. ¹ As a result of the stop, evidence was obtained upon which basis the defendants were charged with six robberies in Ada County. The district court ruled that the stop of the automobile was an "improper investigative stop," and therefore granted defendants' motion to suppress the evidence. The state has appealed.

At issue is whether the stop of the automobile violates the fourth amendment to the United States Constitution.

A threshold issue is whether defendants have standing to challenge the investigatory stop of the vehicle. The officer testified that the defendants were not free to leave, and it seems obvious that a stop of a vehicle on an open highway at night is necessarily a stop of the occupants inside the vehicle. "[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 is quite brief." Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 654, 99 S.Ct. 1391, 1396, 59 L.Ed.2d 660 (1979) (emphasis added). The personal rights of both Cowan as passenger and Haworth as driver "to the possession and control of his own person, free from all restraint or interference from others," Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 9, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1873, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), were infringed upon by the investigatory stop. Therefore, both have standing to contest the reasonableness of the stop.

The district court correctly noted that this was a "seizure" within the meaning of the fourth amendment, and the state has the burden of proving the proper justification for such a seizure. See Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143, 92 S.Ct. 1921, 32 L.Ed.2d 612 (1972); Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968); State v. Allgood, 98 Idaho 525, 567 P.2d 1276 (1977). The standard which the state must satisfy in order to justify an investigatory stop was recently reviewed and clarified in United States v. Cortez, 449 U.S. 411, 101 S.Ct. 690, 66 L.Ed.2d 621 (1981). See also State v. DeMasi, 419 A.2d 285 (R.I.1980) (illegal stop of vehicle with heavily laden trunk), 452 U.S. 934, 101 S.Ct. 3072, 69 L.Ed.2d 948 (1981) (reversed and remanded for reconsideration in light of Cortez ), 448 A.2d 1210 (R.I.1982) (decision after remand). The Supreme Court in Cortez conceded that the standard is an "elusive concept" and went on to state that "the essence of all that has been written is that the totality of the circumstances--the whole picture--must be taken into account." Supra 449 U.S. at 418, 101 S.Ct. at 695. The court clarified the "totality of the circumstances" or the "whole picture" standard as follows:

"The idea that an assessment of the whole picture must yield a particularized suspicion contains two elements, each of which must be present before a stop is permissible. First, the assessment must be based upon all the circumstances. The analysis proceeds with various objective observations, information from police reports, if such are available, and consideration of the modes or patterns of operation of certain kinds of lawbreakers. From these data, a trained officer draws inferences and makes deductions--inferences and deductions that might well elude an untrained person.

"The process does not deal with hard certainties, but with probabilities. Long before the law of probabilities was articulated as such, practical people formulated certain common sense conclusions about human behavior, jurors as factfinders are permitted to do the same--and so are law enforcement officers. Finally, the evidence thus collected must be seen and weighed not in terms of library analysis by scholars, but as understood by those versed in the field of law enforcement.

"The second element contained in the idea that an assessment of the whole picture must yield a particularized suspicion is the concept that the process just described must raise a suspicion that the particular individual being stopped is engaged in wrongdoing." United States v. Cortez, 449 U.S. at 418, 101 S.Ct. at 695.

Since the district court in the present case did not have the benefit of the decision in Cortez, and since we are uncertain whether the district court would consider its one-paragraph memorandum decision to be its evaluation of the "totality of the circumstances--the whole picture," we reverse and remand this case to the district court for reconsideration under the standards set out in Cortez. The facts as stated in this opinion are merely narrative and are in no way intended as binding upon the district court as the ultimate factfinder on the issue presented. If the district court should find the vehicle stop to be non-violative of the fourth amendment, it would then be required to make additional findings of fact relevant to whether defendants have standing ² to contest the subsequent searches of the vehicle and relevant to the proper justification for such searches.

Reversed and remanded.

DONALDSON, C.J., and BAKES, J., concur.

SHEPARD, J., concurs in the result.

BISTLINE, Justice, dissenting.

I.

What may have gone on unnoticed in my Lang opinion ¹ was a disappointment in this Court's immediate jump from the Aguilar-Spinelli rule to the "totality of circumstances" rule of Gates. ² Other than that this Court wholly ignored that there was no evidence whatever of Orlando, Florida, being a hot-bed of drug activity, whereas in truth and in fact it was Miami, Florida, which was so branded in United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U.S. 544, 100 S.Ct. 1870, 64 L.Ed.2d 497 (1980), I would have been able to concur in affirming in Lang. But, I was unable to do so where this Court's opinion was solely based upon Gates--in which case the High Court itself carelessly, or perhaps intentionally, misread its own Mendenhall case in declaring the entire state of Florida as a main source of drugs.

In Lang I hoped to persuade the other members of the Court to some degree of caution before precipitately embracing as our own the decisions of the High Court. My main premise in Lang was that prior to Aguilar, prior to Spinelli, and prior to Gates, we had our own Supreme Court case law interpreting and applying our own Constitution and our own legislative enactments embodying the search and seizure provisions of that Constitution. I pointed out that long before the High Court became active, this Court in 1927 ruled that the affidavit offered in support of a requested warrant "must set forth and disclose some personal knowledge of the underlying facts; the conclusions to be drawn therefrom are for the magistrate .... State v. Arregui, 4 Idaho 43, 254 P. 788 (1927)." Lang, 105 Idaho at ---, 672 P.2d at 565. It may be noted that in Lang, 105 Idaho at ---, 672 P.2d at 569, I also intimated that the totality of circumstances, as the High Court so called its Gates principle, probably had been the rule in Idaho, and a just concern was that this Court was remiss in not "giving any due consideration to continuing with a rule which prior to Aguilar-Spinelli well implemented our Idaho Constitution, ... and ... would better serve the magistrates of Idaho and better serve its people."

II.

Putting aside Lang and Gates, and having revisited those cases only prefatorily to discussing today's case, I repeat only that it was the Supreme Court of Idaho, not the police officer's affidavit, which averred that all of Florida, presumably including Orlando, is a source of narcotics. Today, as a natural and not unexpected sequel to the Court's Lang opinion adopting the Gates view, this Court, again dancing to the federal fiddle, now brings down on the people of Idaho the "totality" principle of the High Court's Cortez.

While the Court's unnecessary change of direction in Lang was disturbing, I continue to see no substantial problem with the magistrates of Idaho being informed that that which they have previously done under our statutes and our Arregui case is henceforth denominated as a "totality of circumstance" determination. It is enough that the magistrates continue to insist on being supplied with the underlying facts, and that the conclusions to be drawn from those facts are for the magistrate to draw--not the officer. In that regard I am fortified by the well-considered views of Charles H. Whitebread: ³

"The Court also noted that a strict application of the Spinelli 'two-pronged test' would virtually destroy the usefulness of anonymous tips, which frequently contribute to the solution of otherwise 'perfect crimes.' For these reasons the Court held that it would be wiser to abandon the 'two-pronged test' established by Aquilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108 [84 S.Ct. 1509, 12 L.Ed.2d 723] (1964) and Spinelli. In its place the Court reaffirmed the totality of the circumstances analysis that traditionally has governed informed probable cause determinations. The task of the issuing magistrate is simply to make a practical, common-sense decision whether, given all the circumstances set forth in the affidavit before him, including the 'veracity' and 'basis of knowledge' of persons supplying hearsay information, there is a fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime will be found in a particular place. And the duty of a...