State v. Pfleiderer

• Court: Court of Appeal of Missouri (US)
• Citation: 8 S.W.3d 249
• Parties: (Mo.App. W.D. 1999) State of Missouri, Appellant, v. Danny L. Pfleiderer, Respondent. WD57254
• Decision Date: 28 December 1999

8 S.W.3d 249 (Mo.App. W.D. 1999) State of Missouri, Appellant,
v.
Danny L. Pfleiderer, Respondent. WD57254 Missouri Court of Appeals Western District 12/28/99

Appeal From: Circuit Court of Buchanan County, Hon. Patrick K. Robb, Judge

Counsel for Appellant: Pamela Kay Vestal

Counsel for Respondent: Anthony Charles Cardarella

Opinion Summary: The trial court granted Danny Pfleiderer's motion to suppress drugs found in searching him as fruit of an illegal detention. The state appeals.

Division One holds: Based on police suspicions of drug trafficking, which were supported by a confidential informant, and the driver's erratic and evasive driving, stopping the car in which Pfleiderer was a passenger and briefly handcuffing Pfleiderer and the driver while checking for weapons, was not seriously contested as a valid Terry investigative stop. However, it was within the trial court's discretion to find that at this point, the police converted the stop into a de facto arrest without probable cause by detaining Pfleiderer in handcuffs after finding no weapons on him, with no fear for their safety, and no reason to believe that he was involved in any criminal activity,

Additionally, the state admitted that he was kept under an investigative detention. Such detention was proper only if there were specific, articulable facts which gave the police reasonable grounds to suspect Pfleiderer was involved in criminal activity. Pfleiderer was not mentioned by the informant; he did not match the informant's description of those involved in drug activity; he did not drive the car, own it, or commit any traffic violations; and the police had no reason to fear him and no basis to believe he was involved in drug activity. The drugs found on Pfleiderer were thus properly excluded under the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine.

Laura Denvir Stith, Presiding Judge

The State appeals the trial court's order granting Mr. Pfleiderer's motion to suppress drugs found in a search of his person, arguing the court erred in finding that police officers found the drugs only after illegally arresting and searching Mr. Pfleiderer without probable cause. Because we find that the trial court did not abuse his discretion in finding that Mr. Pfleiderer was put under de facto arrest without probable cause, and that the drugs were the fruit of this illegal detention, and because we find that, even were Mr. Pfleiderer not under arrest, the police acted unreasonably in detaining him in handcuffs without reasonable suspicion of criminal activity based on articulable facts, we affirm.

I. STATEMENT OF FACTS

John McLaughlin is an investigator for the Housing and Urban Development agency. He received a tip from a confidential informant that a woman named Cora Clark and a large black male would be traveling to St Joseph, Missouri in a 1980's silver Cadillac on November 28, 1998, and that they would have with them crack cocaine they had acquired in Kansas City, Missouri. Investigator McLaughlin passed on this information to Officer Jill Voltmer of the Buchanan County Drug Strike Force (hereinafter, "BCDSF"), an organization with which he had worked on a regular basis. Officer Voltmer recognized the informant as a person who had provided reliable information in the past. She and other BCDSF officers therefore set up surveillance at a rest stop on northbound Interstate 29 to watch for the 1980's model silver Cadillac. At approximately 7:00 p.m. that evening, they spotted a car matching that description traveling north on Interstate 29, and began following it. They noticed that one of the occupants matched the informant's description in that the driver was a large black male. They could see that the passenger was white with blondish hair, but could not determine the passenger's gender, and did not know enough about Cora Clark's description to know whether she looked like the passenger.

As they followed the Cadillac, the officers ran the license plate number and found that the plate number was registered to Michael Clark, and that Michael Clark was married to Cora Clark. They also discovered that the license plate was supposed to be on a Dodge Daytona automobile, not on the Cadillac they were following. They radioed ahead to the St. Joseph police to set up a roadblock, and continued following the Cadillac. The driver of the Cadillac apparently spotted the officers, began to drive erratically, and made a swerving exit off the highway at 28th Street in St. Joseph. The St. Joseph police were waiting there. The driver drove through a stop sign and continued on, despite now being pursued by a squad car and a BCDSF vehicle, both with their lights and sirens running. The Cadillac finally pulled over four blocks later at the intersection of 28th Street and Monterey.

Once the Cadillac pulled over, at least two officers from the St. Joseph Police Department pulled the driver and passenger out of the car and handcuffed them. They asked the driver his name, and learned he was Mike Clark. They asked the passenger his name, and learned he was Danny L. Pfleiderer (Defendant herein). The police patted down both Mr. Clark and Defendant Pfleiderer for weapons but found neither weapons nor drugs. The police nonetheless left them in handcuffs while they called for a drug dog to come and sniff for drugs. Shortly thereafter, Officer Voltmer, who was also in pursuit of the Cadillac, and BCDSF Officers Zack Ezzell and Shawn Collie, arrived at the scene. At this point there were therefore at least four officers watching the two handcuffed suspects. Mr. Clark was asked for and gave his verbal consent to search the Cadillac. The officers searched the car but found neither drugs, weapons, nor other evidence of criminal activity. Both Officer Voltmer and Ezzell later testified that neither had reason to believe at this point that Mr. Pfleiderer was involved in criminal activity. They nonetheless continued to detain both him and the driver in handcuffs while waiting for a drug dog to arrive¹.

The dog arrived about 15 minutes after the police called for it. There is some disagreement in the record as to whether the dog sniffed the car immediately, but in any event the dog never alerted to the car. However, the dog repeatedly alerted to Mr. Pfleiderer. Officer Ezzell testified that until this point he did not believe Mr. Pfleiderer had been under arrest, and learned that Mr. Pfleiderer had already been patted down for weapons. Nonetheless, in response to the dog's indications, he conducted a more thorough pat down of Mr. Pfleiderer and found two plastic bags filled with crack cocaine in his crotch area.

The following day, Mr. Pfleiderer was charged with the Class A felony of drug trafficking in the first degree in the Associate Circuit Court of Buchanan County. On January 12, 1999, the information was amended, now charging him with only the Class B felony of drug trafficking in the second degree.

On January 25, 1999, Mr. Pfleiderer moved to suppress evidence in the case, including the drugs found on him and his oral statements to police, on the basis that they were the fruit of his illegal arrest and detention without probable cause or reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. After a hearing on the motion at which the above evidence was adduced, Judge Patrick K. Robb issued detailed findings of fact in which he found that Mr. Pfleiderer had been placed under de facto arrest when he was handcuffed and restrained of his liberty for 15 minutes without probable cause to believe he was involved in criminal activity and after the police had checked him for weapons. We quote the judge's findings in detail below:

The Court finds that the stop of the car containing the defendant which was driven by another individual, Michael Clark, was lawful based on the officer's observation that the car ran the stop sign while the officers were following it, and, evidently, preparing to stop the car despite whether or not he would have ran the stop sign. However, the stop sign certainly in this Court's mind justified the stop of the vehicle that the defendant was a passenger in, and, based on that, justified a detention.

The Court, however, finds that the conduct after the stop amounted to a Fourth Amendment violation of the defendant's rights. The Court finds that, based on the officer's own admissions during the hearing, that they had no reason to believe that the defendant was involved in any criminal activity at all. He was not mentioned in the tip that was the basis for them following the vehicle. The tip was that there would be a woman in the car, Cora Clark, with a large black male. The car that they observed and followed had a large black male driving the vehicle and the defendant as the passenger. Once the car was pulled over, justifiably so for the traffic violation, and it was observed that the passenger was not Cora Clark, certainly there was no basis then to arrest him, which in fact is exactly what happened.

The police placed the defendant in custody, handcuffed him. They did not detain him for a brief time, and certainly they could have, I think, detained him and maybe searched him to make sure he had no weapons. But, instead, they placed the defendant in custody by handcuffing him and then held him for over 15 minutes with no articulable facts presented to support the placing of the defendant under arrest, handcuffing him for 15 minutes, and then calling a drug dog to be called to the scene while he was sitting in custody or standing in custody handcuffed.

. . . The hitting of the dog on the defendant was the result of his being handcuffed, in effect, being under arrest with no...