State v. Lesley, 2676
| Decision Date | 06 May 1997 |
| Docket Number | No. 2676,2676 |
| Citation | 486 S.E.2d 276,326 S.C. 641 |
| Parties | The STATE, Appellant, v. Charles A. LESLEY, Respondent. . Heard |
| Court | South Carolina Court of Appeals |
Attorney General Charles Molony Condon, Deputy Attorney General John W. McIntosh, Assistant Deputy Attorney General Salley Elliott, and Senior Assistant Attorney General Norman Mark Rapoport, Columbia, Solicitor George M. Ducworth, Anderson for appellant.
Donald Chuck Allen and William E. Phillips, Anderson, for respondent.
This is a criminal case. The grand jury indicted the defendant Charles A. Lesley, charging him with unlawful possession of a firearm, trafficking in crack cocaine, and trafficking within proximity of a school. On Lesley's motion, the trial court suppressed evidence seized from him after a traffic stop. The State appeals. We reverse.
While on patrol, Officer Oscar Clamp of the Anderson Police Department heard a communication made to another officer by the dispatcher. The dispatcher told the other officer to go to the Westview Heights Apartments. The dispatcher related a woman said she had called the police department a couple of days earlier to report a shooting incident and now was reporting two cars driven by black males had just driven by her home and the drivers had "pointed" at her. According to the dispatcher, their actions made the caller "afraid for her life" because they made her fear retaliation. The dispatcher reported the woman described one of the vehicles as a brown-colored Honda with paper tags of a local automobile dealer, "Breakaway Motor[s]." The dispatcher warned about the possibility of the drivers having weapons on their persons or in their cars.
Based on the dispatch, Officer Clamp headed for the area while another officer went to talk with the complainant. When Officer Clamp arrived, he spotted a brown Honda with Breakaway tags. He stopped the car and asked the driver, a black male who he later learned was Lesley, for his driver's license. At Officer Clamp's request, Lesley stepped from the car. Officer Clamp then patted Lesley down and, in doing so, found a loaded .380 revolver concealed in Lesley's pants. He immediately arrested Lesley, charging him with unlawful possession of a weapon.
Later, when officers searched Lesley at the jail, they discovered a plastic bag hidden in Lesley's underwear. The bag contained crack cocaine.
The trial court suppressed the evidence, finding no reasonable basis supported the initial stop. We, however, hold the trial court's ruling was erroneous as a matter of law.
Police may stop a motor vehicle and briefly detain and question an occupant if they have a reasonable suspicion that the occupant is involved in criminal activity. Michigan v. Long, 463 U.S. 1032, 103 S.Ct. 3469, 77 L.Ed.2d 1201 (1983); State v. Robinson, 306 S.C. 399, 412 S.E.2d 411 (1991). This suspicion must be based on "specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion." Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1880, 20 L.Ed.2d 889, 906 (1968). The police may also order an occupant out of the vehicle and, if the exercise of reasonable caution so warrants, frisk the occupant for weapons. Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U.S. 106, 98 S.Ct. 330, 54 L.Ed.2d 331 (1977).
The term "reasonable suspicion" requires "a particularized and objective basis" that would lead one to suspect another of criminal activity. United States v. Cortez, 449 U.S. 411, 417, 101 S.Ct. 690, 695, 66 L.Ed.2d 621, 629 (1981). In determining whether reasonable suspicion exists, "the whole...
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