State v. Pannell, 20995

• Decision Date: 10 July 1995
• Docket Number: No. 20995,20995
• Citation: 901 P.2d 1321,127 Idaho 420
• Parties: STATE of Idaho, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Bob PANNELL, Defendant-Appellant. Boise, January 1995 Term
• Court: Idaho Supreme Court

Page 1321

901 P.2d 1321

127 Idaho 420

STATE of Idaho, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Bob PANNELL, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 20995.

Supreme Court of Idaho,

Boise, January 1995 Term.

July 10, 1995.

[127 Idaho 421] Charles D. Coulter, Boise, for appellant.

Alan G. Lance, Atty. Gen., Myrna A.I. Stahman, Deputy Atty. Gen., argued, Boise, for respondent.

McDEVITT, Chief Justice.

I. BACKGROUND AND PRIOR PROCEEDINGS

This is a criminal case in which Bob Pannell (Pannell) plead guilty to possession of more than three ounces of marijuana and reserved his right to appeal the denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained in a search of his vehicle during an investigatory stop.

The district court found the following facts:

Around 9:00 or 10:00 o'clock on the evening of June 23, 1993, Valley County Deputy Sheriff Moses was ordered by the sheriff's dispatcher to a reported domestic disturbance at 97 Coy Lane near McCall. As he was en route, the dispatcher advised him that there were weapons in the house. A short time later he received an additional message that a gray Ford pickup truck operated by a drunken male had just left the scene. As he was approaching Coy Lane, Deputy Moses saw a gray Ford pickup moving at a speed of forty miles per hour in a thirty-five miles per hour speed zone. He asked his backup, McCall City Police Officer Hill, to stop the pickup while he continued to the scene of the disturbance. He also advised Officer Hill to be careful because weapons were involved. Officer Hill pulled the pickup over at the intersection of Boydstun and Rio Vista, about one and one-quarter miles from 97 Coy Lane. Officer Hill took no further action other than to observe the scene of the stop.

Deputy Moses continued to the address of the disturbance. When he arrived there, he was told that the person involved in the disturbance had just left and was drunk. Deputy Moses immediately returned to Boydstun and Rio Vista. At that time he saw the defendant seated by himself in the pickup. Officer Hill told Deputy Moses he had seen the defendant reach behind the seat.

Deputy Moses explained to the defendant that he was investigating a disturbance. The defendant said he was involved and that he and his wife had a problem. Deputy Moses could smell the odor of alcohol coming from the pickup. In response to the deputy's question, the defendant said he had been drinking. Deputy Moses asked him to step to the back of the pickup to do some field sobriety tests. As a result of the tests, Deputy Moses concluded that the defendant was on the borderline of being under the influence for driving purposes. He felt that it would be unsafe for the defendant to continue to drive. He also needed to complete his investigation of the disturbance, because the report of weapons, and because of the defendant's alcohol-impaired condition, Deputy Moses reasonably concluded that the defendant posed a risk of danger to law enforcement personnel and to other people if the deputy did not take action to insure that the defendant did not have ready access to a weapon at that time or immediately after the investigation was completed.

Deputy Moses told the defendant that he was going to drive the defendant to Coy Lane to complete his investigation and that he did not want the defendant to drive. Deputy Moses then patted down the defendant, cuffed him, and placed him in the patrol car. The deputy also decided to search the pickup for weapons, because Deputy Moses then searched the passenger compartment of the pickup for weapons. During the course of his search he observed a backpack on the seat. The backpack was large enough to contain many types of weapons. The deputy opened it to see if there were weapons inside and found large plastic bags that smelled of marijuana and contained green leafy material, which he readily identified from his training and experience as marijuana. He seized the backpack and its contents and arrested the defendant for possession of marijuana.

[127 Idaho 422] according to his testimony, "if I go up there [to Coy Lane] and I let him go and he comes back to the vehicle and there's a weapon, for my safety and the people at the residence, if he went back there and done something and I didn't perform my job and check for weapons, then I could be held liable--or I felt I could be held liable for it." (Preliminary hearing transcript, Page 9, lines 7-12). He told the defendant he was going to search the pickup for weapons and asked if he had any problem. The defendant replied "No."

In addition to the facts determined by the district court, several other undisputed facts are important to clarify the issues raised on appeal. At all relevant times, Deputy Moses was accompanied by Deputy Conrad. When Deputies Moses and Conrad first responded to Pannell's residence they confirmed that "[e]verything was all right at the residence." Pannell was stopped driving his vehicle at 9:57 p.m. It was ten to fifteen minutes later that he was placed in the patrol car. Pannell's vehicle was not moved until Pannell was in the patrol car, which then followed the other officer who was moving Pannell's vehicle; Pannell's vehicle was not searched until after it had been moved.

The district court held that the search of Pannell's vehicle was constitutional relying on Michigan v. Long, 463 U.S. 1032, 103 S.Ct. 3469, 77 L.Ed.2d 1201 (1983). The district court reasoned that the search was justified under Long because the officers had a reasonable concern for their safety based on the fact that Pannell might have had access to the interior compartment of the vehicle at the end of the investigative stop were he not placed under arrest.

Because we conclude that Pannell was in fact placed under arrest, and that the officers did not have probable cause to justify that arrest and the attendant search, we reverse the district court's ruling denying Pannell's motion to suppress.

II. ANALYSIS

This Court's standard of review for constitutional suppression issues is well-established:

When reviewing "seizure" issues, we defer to the trial court's factual findings unless they are clearly erroneous. We freely review, de novo, the trial court's legal determination of whether or not an illegal seizure occurred. United States Constitution, Amendment IV.

State v. Bainbridge, 117 Idaho 245, 247, 787 P.2d 231, 233 (1990) citing U.S. Const. amend. IV.

A. MICHIGAN v. LONG ONLY APPLIES TO INVESTIGATORY DETENTIONS.

In denying Pannell's motion to suppress, the district court relied on Michigan v. Long, 463 U.S. 1032, 103 S.Ct. 3469, 77 L.Ed.2d 1201 (1983), the leading case on the issue of searching a vehicle pursuant to an investigatory Terry stop. In Long, the United States Supreme Court focused on the high risk to officer safety present in "roadside encounters between police and suspects" and ruled that:

[T]he search of the passenger compartment of an automobile, limited to those areas in which a weapon may be placed or hidden, is permissible if the police officer possesses a reasonable belief based on Id. at 1049, 103 S.Ct. at 3481 (quoting Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1880, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968)). The Court explained that "a Terry suspect in Long's position [might] break away from police control and retrieve a weapon from his automobile.... In addition, if the suspect is not placed under arrest, he will be permitted to reenter his automobile, and he will then have access to any weapons inside." Id. at 1052-53, 103 S.Ct. at 3482 (citations omitted). It is clear that both rationales underlying the Long Court's conclusion were founded on the vulnerability of a police officer during the course of a close-range investigation in which the defendant has not yet been placed under custodial arrest. Therefore, if Pannell was under arrest at the time of the search, Long is inapplicable.

"specific and articulable facts which, taken together with the rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant" the officer in believing that the suspect is dangerous and the suspect may gain immediate control of weapons.

B. PANNELL WAS ARRESTED.

At the time that his vehicle was searched, Pannell was handcuffed and sitting in a patrol car. The determination of whether handcuffing Pannell and placing him in the patrol car transformed the investigative detention into an arrest demands that we examine all the surrounding circumstances:

Admittedly, Terry, Dunaway [v. N.Y., 442 U.S. 200, 99 S.Ct. 2248, 60 L.Ed.2d 824 (1979) ], [Florida v.] Royer [460 U.S. 491, 103 S.Ct. 1319, 75 L.Ed.2d 229 (1983) ], and [U.S. v.] Place [462 U.S. 696, 103 S.Ct. 2637, 77 L.Ed.2d 110 (1983) ], considered together, may in some instances create difficult line-drawing problems in distinguishing an investigative stop from a de facto arrest. Obviously, if an investigative stop continues indefinitely, at some point it can no longer be justified as an investigative stop. But our cases impose no rigid time limitation on Terry stops. While it is clear that "the brevity of the invasion of the individual's Fourth Amendment interests is an important factor in determining whether the seizure is so minimally intrusive as to be justifiable on reasonable suspicion," United States v. Place, supra, 462 U.S., at 709, 103 S.Ct., at 2645, we have emphasized the need to consider the law enforcement purposes to be served by the stop as well as the time reasonably needed to effectuate those purposes. United States v. Hensley, 469 U.S. , at 228-229, 234-235, 105 S.Ct. , at 680-681, 683-684 [83 L.Ed.2d 604 (1985) ]; Place, supra, 462 U.S., at 703-704, 709, 103 S.Ct., at 2642-2643, 2645-2646; Michigan v. Summers, 452 U.S. 692, 700, and n. 12, 101 S.Ct. 2587, 2593 and n. 12, 69 L.Ed.2d 340 (1981) (quoting 3 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 9.2, pp. 36-37 (1978)). Much as a "bright line" rule would be desirable, in evaluating whether an investigative detention is unreasonable, common sense and ordinary human experience...