State v. Peterson

• Decision Date: 22 March 2005
• Docket Number: No. 20030802.,20030802.
• Citation: 2005 UT 17,110 P.3d 699
• Parties: STATE of Utah, Plaintiff and Petitioner, v. Daniel J. PETERSON, Defendant and Respondent.
• Court: Utah Supreme Court

110 P.3d 699

2005 UT 17

STATE of Utah, Plaintiff and Petitioner, v. Daniel J. PETERSON, Defendant and Respondent.

No. 20030802.

Supreme Court of Utah.

March 22, 2005.

Mark L. Shurtleff, Att'y Gen., Marian Decker, Asst. Att'y Gen., Salt Lake City, for plaintiff.

Margaret P. Lindsay, Provo, for defendant.

WILKINS, Associate Chief Justice:

¶ 1 In 2002, Daniel Peterson was charged with illegal use or possession of a controlled substance, a third degree felony, and use or possession of drug paraphernalia, a class A misdemeanor. During the pretrial evidentiary hearing, Peterson moved to suppress evidence obtained in the course of a police search of his discarded clothing, arguing that the search violated his constitutional rights under the Fourth Amendment. The trial judge denied his motion, finding that the search was properly conducted pursuant to a protective weapons-search frisk. At trial, Peterson was convicted of both charges. He appealed his convictions to the Utah Court of Appeals, contending that the search that uncovered the incriminating materials was illegal because it fell outside the scope of the permissible protective frisk of his person. The court of appeals agreed and reversed his convictions. We grant the State's Petition for Certiorari and now affirm.

BACKGROUND

¶ 2 On the afternoon of December 28, 2001, the Provo City police received an anonymous tip that illegal drugs were being used in the presence of children inside a Provo residence. Officer Russell Billings, accompanied by four other officers, was dispatched to the address the anonymous caller had given. At the residence, the officers explained to the occupant, Dawn Webster, that they had received a report that drugs were being abused in the presence of children, and that they wanted to conduct a welfare check on the children in the home. Ms. Webster agreed to permit the officers to conduct this check and led them inside. The officers followed Ms. Webster upstairs and down a short hallway into a bedroom in which a baby was sleeping. The blinds in the room were closed and the bedroom light was off, but the room was not completely dark, as it was approximately one o'clock in the afternoon and the hallway light was on.

¶ 3 A few seconds after the officers entered the bedroom, Peterson emerged suddenly from an open closet, startling the officers and Ms. Webster. The precise order of the next events is unclear from the record, but they seem to coincide. Ms. Webster called out to her mother for an explanation as to why her mother's boyfriend, whom she had thought was in the kitchen, was in Ms. Webster's bedroom. The officers meanwhile had ordered Peterson to turn around and put his hands in the air. He complied. The officers then cuffed Peterson's hands behind his back and frisked him, after which Officer Billings requested that another officer remove Peterson from the apartment.

¶ 4 Within approximately sixty seconds thereafter, the following occurred: Officer Billings noticed a man's jacket and shoes near the closet where Peterson had been standing. Children inside the home and Ms. Webster confirmed that the articles belonged to Peterson. Concerned that Peterson, lightly clad and shoeless, would need his jacket and shoes to protect him against the twenty-degree weather outside, Officer Billings decided to take the jacket and shoes to the defendant. To ensure that he would not unknowingly transport a weapon to Peterson, Officer Billings first conducted a "protective frisk" of the jacket. In doing so, he felt the contours of a syringe, later lab tests of which confirmed that the brown liquid observed inside was, as the officer suspected upon visual examination, methamphetamine. Another officer picked up the shoes and discovered a small plastic bag containing clean syringes "stuffed inside" one of the shoes.

¶ 5 The officers then arrested Peterson for drug offenses. At the pretrial evidentiary hearing, the trial judge denied Peterson's motions to suppress the evidence discovered in the jacket and shoes. The judge determined that the search of Peterson's clothing fell within the parameters of a lawful protective frisk and that the evidence was therefore admissible. A jury convicted Peterson of the drug charges.

¶ 6 The court of appeals reversed the convictions, concluding that the search was unconstitutional and that the evidence should have been suppressed. State v. Peterson, 2003 UT App 300, ¶ 14, 77 P.3d 646. The court of appeals "limit[ed][its] analysis to the scope of the search," since the defendant conceded that the initial frisk of his person was lawful. Id. at ¶ 10. Focusing on this single issue, the court determined that after Peterson had been frisked, cuffed, and removed from the room, the "circumstances that justified the pat-down, namely the search for weapons, were no longer present." Id. at ¶ 13. ¶ 7 According to the court of appeals, "[t]here then remained no reasonable expectation or apprehension that Peterson could access a weapon or would otherwise interfere with the welfare check." Id. The court of appeals therefore held that the frisk of the jacket exceeded the permitted scope of the initial frisk and violated Peterson's Fourth Amendment rights. Id. The court of appeals accordingly ruled that the evidence seized thereby was improperly admitted and reversed Peterson's conviction. Id. at ¶¶ 13-14.

ANALYSIS

¶ 8 "When exercising our certiorari jurisdiction, we review the decision of the court of appeals and not that of the trial court ... for correctness." State v. Warren, 2003 UT 36, ¶ 12, 78 P.3d 590 (internal quotations omitted). "When a case involves the reasonableness of a search and seizure, [appellate courts] afford little discretion to the [trial] court because there must be state-wide standards that guide law enforcement and prosecutorial officials." Id. at ¶ 12 (internal quotation and citation omitted); see also State v. Brake, 2004 UT 95, ¶ 15, 103 P.3d 699

(clarifying that we apply correctness review to Fourth Amendment determinations).

¶ 9 In Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), the United States Supreme Court established the standard under which police may conduct warrantless protective searches to ensure officer safety during encounters in which a person is detained but not arrested. Recognizing that "it would be unreasonable to require that police officers take unnecessary risks in the performance of their duties," the Court sought to create a rule that would allow police officers to "take necessary measures" to protect themselves against harms presented by individuals whom the officers reasonably suspect are "armed and presently dangerous." Id. at 23-24, 88 S.Ct. 1868. Under this rule, officers may perform a protective frisk of such an individual's person for the sole purpose of "discover[ing] ... weapons which might be used to harm the officer or others nearby." Id. at 26, 88 S.Ct. 1868. This procedure has come to be called a "Terry frisk."

¶ 10 In Terry, the Court emphasized that police may conduct a protective frisk only when they have reasonable suspicion that the detained individual is armed and dangerous. Id. at 27, 88 S.Ct. 1868. In defining the reasonable suspicion requisite in these cases, the Court explained that "[t]he officer need not be absolutely certain that the individual is armed; the issue is whether a reasonably prudent man in the circumstances would be warranted in the belief that his safety or that of others was in danger." Id. at 26, 88 S.Ct. 1868.

¶ 11 Thus, reviewing courts are to evaluate whether an officer acted reasonably in conducting a protective frisk by looking "not to [the officer's] inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or `hunch,' but to the specific reasonable inferences which he is entitled to draw from the facts in light of his experience." Id. "[T]he police officer must be able to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion." Id. at 21, 88 S.Ct. 1868. Whether an officer has reasonable suspicion to subject an individual to a Terry stop and frisk is "evaluated objectively according to the totality of the circumstances." State v. Warren, 2003 UT 36, ¶ 14, 78 P.3d 590 (citing Terry, 392 U.S. at 21, 88 S.Ct. 1868).

¶ 12 Courts must apply a two-pronged analysis to evaluate whether a warrantless protective search was permissible under Terry. The court must first determine "whether the officer's action was justified at its inception." Terry, 392 U.S. at 19-20,88 S.Ct. 1868. Next, the court must assess "whether [the action] was reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place." Id. at 20, 88 S.Ct. 1868. Because the only permissible objective of the Terry frisk is the discovery of weapons that may be used against the officer or others, "`a protective search [that] goes beyond what is necessary to determine if the suspect is armed ... is no longer valid under Terry and its fruits will be suppressed.'" Warren, 2003 UT 36 at ¶ 13, 78 P.3d 590 (quoting Minnesota v. Dickerson, 508 U.S. 366, 373, 113 S.Ct. 2130, 124 L.Ed.2d 334 (1993)).

¶ 13 Peterson concedes that the initial stop and frisk of his person was proper under the Terry doctrine. The only question on appeal, then, concerns the second prong of the analysis: whether the subsequent frisk of his discarded jacket and shoes fell within the scope of the lawful initial Terry frisk of Peterson himself. Peterson argues that Officer Billings exceeded the scope of the original Terry frisk when he frisked the unworn jacket and shoes because, at the time he did so, Peterson could not have accessed a weapon hidden inside. Thus, the search did not advance any officer safety objective.

¶ 14 Further, he argues, police officers cannot create the exigent circumstances that make a protective search necessary. It was the officers' decision to detain...