State v. Lothenbach, 50666.
| Decision Date | 03 October 1980 |
| Docket Number | No. 50666.,50666. |
| Citation | 296 NW 2d 854 |
| Parties | STATE of Minnesota, Respondent, v. Robert John LOTHENBACH, Appellant. |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
Phillip S. Resnick, Minneapolis, for appellant.
Warren Spannaus, Atty. Gen., Thomas J. Foley, County Atty., and Steven C. DeCoster, Asst. County Atty., St. Paul, for respondent.
Heard before OTIS, PETERSON, and SCOTT, JJ., and considered and decided by the court en banc.
Defendant, originally charged with four counts of illegal possession of controlled substances, negotiated, through his counsel, a plea agreement whereby he entered a plea to the count charging him with possession of cocaine, and the trial court sentenced him to a prison term of 2 years with execution stayed and defendant placed on probation, the first 9 months to be served in the workhouse. Defendant's sentence has been stayed pending appeal. Two issues are raised by the appeal: first, whether defendant's guilty plea constitutes a forfeiture of his right to appeal the district court's denial of his motion to suppress evidence on Fourth Amendment grounds; second, whether the district court erred in denying the motion to suppress. We conclude that while technically defendant's plea was a conditional guilty plea, which our rules do not permit, and that normally the proper procedure would be to remand for withdrawal of plea, in substance the procedure used by defendant to obtain appellate review of the Fourth Amendment issue is no different from the procedure of pleading not guilty and then stipulating to the state's evidence, a procedure which the trial court indicated that it would be willing to follow. Under the circumstances and in the interests of judicial economy, we therefore address the Fourth Amendment issue raised by defendant. Doing this, we conclude that defendant's Fourth Amendment rights were violated by the search of his automobile and that defendant's conviction must be reversed.
At 11 a. m. on April 20, 1979, the St. Paul Police Department received an anonymous telephone report that someone was selling drugs from a multicolored car parked in the Dairy Queen parking lot at the intersection of Rice and Sycamore. When police officers arrived at the scene they observed a black Camaro with rainbow striping, which apparently was the car referred to by the anonymous informant. The officers approached the car and looked in the window but saw nothing unusual. Defendant, the driver, and his passenger were calm until the police explained that they were investigating a report of someone selling drugs from a car similar to defendant's. Apparently at this point both defendant and the passenger showed signs of nervousness. One officer then took the driver's licenses of defendant and the passenger and returned to the squad car to run a license check; this check did not turn up anything unusual. The other officer, left standing alone at the passenger's side of the vehicle, ordered the passenger out of the automobile and frisked him. This frisk did not result in the discovery of any weapons or any other evidence. This officer then escorted the passenger to the squad car, after which he returned to defendant's car. Defendant was still sitting at the wheel. The officer then opened the door on the passenger side of the vehicle and felt under the passenger seat. He found nothing. He then opened the glove box located between the two front seats and saw a switchblade, a plastic bag of pills, two containers of white powder, a plastic bag containing a substance that looked to him like marijuana, and several hand-rolled cigarettes. Another officer arrived about this time and ordered defendant out of the car and after giving defendant a Miranda warning obtained defendant's cooperation in opening the trunk. In the trunk the officers found a large amount of marijuana. Chemical analysis subsequently established that the evidence taken from the vehicle included approximately 10 grams of cocaine and 4 pounds of marijuana.
It was only after completing the search that the police learned the identity of the telephone informant. This person apparently approached one of the officers and told him that what he had seen was the driver (defendant) take a cigarette from the ashtray, show it to the passenger, then light the cigarette and pass it to the passenger. He stated that he called the police because he "wasn't sure what he saw."
The district court denied the motion to suppress.
Thereafter, defendant entered the negotiated guilty plea to one of the four offenses with which he was charged. Before defendant entered his guilty plea, defendant's counsel made clear that defendant desired to appeal the denial of his motion to suppress:
1. The first issue involves the propriety of a conditional guilty plea, that is, a plea by which the defendant pleads guilty but expressly reserves the right to appeal the denial of his motion to suppress evidence on constitutional grounds.
Rule 14.01, Minn.R.Crim.P., provides:
A defendant may plead as follows:
The traditional viewpoint in Minnesota, as well as elsewhere, has been that a guilty plea by a counseled defendant operates as a waiver of all nonjurisdictional defects, including Fourth Amendment claims. McLaughlin v. State, 291 Minn. 277, 190 N.W.2d 867 (1971). As stated in Tollett v. Henderson, 411 U.S. 258, 267, 93 S.Ct. 1602, 1608, 34 L.Ed.2d 172 (1973):
A guilty plea represents a break in the chain of events which has preceded it in the criminal process. When a criminal defendant had solemnly admitted in open court that he is in fact guilty of the offense with which he is charged, he may not thereafter raise independent claims relating to the deprivation of constitutional rights that occurred prior to the entry of the guilty plea.
As a result, defendants wishing to obtain appellate review of pretrial decisions to suppress evidence have not had the option of pleading guilty but have been forced to enter not guilty pleas and go to trial. The only alternative, one used in a number of cases to obtain...
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