State v. Pleas
| Decision Date | 28 January 1983 |
| Docket Number | No. CX-81-839.,CX-81-839. |
| Citation | 329 NW 2d 329 |
| Parties | STATE of Minnesota, Respondent, v. Keith W. PLEAS, Appellant. |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
C. Paul Jones, Public Defender, and Elizabeth B. Davies, Asst. Public Defender, Minneapolis, for appellant.
Hubert H. Humphrey III, Atty. Gen., St. Paul, Thomas L. Johnson, County Atty., Vernon E. Bergstrom, Chief, Appellate Section, Rick Osborne, J. Michael Richardson, Beverly J. Wolfe and Jerry Strauss, Asst. County Attys., Minneapolis, for respondent.
Considered and decided by the court en banc without oral argument.
Defendant was charged in district court with aggravated forgery-uttering, Minn. Stat. § 609.625, subd. 1(1), (3) (1982). The omnibus court suppressed a statement defendant made to police at the scene of his arrest on the ground that the statement was obtained in violation of the Miranda rule, but the court denied a defense motion to suppress evidence on fourth amendment grounds. Thereafter, defendant waived his right to trial by jury and allowed the trial court to try him on the basis of a stipulation concerning the state's evidence against him.1 The trial court found defendant guilty as charged. After receiving a presentence investigation report, the trial court sentenced defendant to 1 year and 1 day in prison, with execution stayed for 5 years and probation conditioned on defendant serving a 1-year term in the workhouse. The trial court stayed the workhouse term pending this appeal.
Around 3 p.m. on October 17, 1980, defendant and Craig Brown, who are black, entered the Q Petroleum Store at 14816 Highway 7 in Minnetonka, which is on the northwest corner of Williston Road and Highway 7 just east of 494. Defendant bought a case of transmission fluid and a carton of cigarettes, paying for the items with a Mastercard issued in the name of Robert Atmore. The total bill was $37.44. Defendant signed the slip with Atmore's name and wrote down an address and telephone number not his own. The card was a card which Mr. Atmore had lost 6 or 7 weeks earlier. Mr. Atmore never authorized defendant to use the card.
Defendant and Brown got in Brown's car, with defendant driving. As they were leaving the lot, Officer Richard Dvorak of the Minnetonka Police Department was driving south on Williston Road coming to the intersection with Highway 7. Looking to his right, he saw the car and noticed that the windshield was cracked and that the car had no front license plate. Dvorak turned right on Highway 7, then turned into the Q lot, and drove up behind the car. As he did this, he noticed that the car's rear license plate was upside down.
Dvorak followed the car east on Highway 7 a short distance, then stopped it. Defendant provided Dvorak with a Minneapolis-issued taxi driver's identification card bearing his name, and Brown showed him a check that had his name on it. After explaining the reason for the stop and asking both to remain in the car, Dvorak returned to his squad car and made a number of calls on his police radio. He had the Department of Public Safety run a check on defendant to see if he had a driver's license and asked the base station to check if there were any outstanding warrants for defendant's arrest. He also ran a registration check on the car. He also described defendant and Brown and asked another patrol officer to go immediately to the Q Store to see what sort of business, if any, defendant and Brown had conducted there.
The information Dvorak requested came back within 5 or 10 minutes. First, he learned that defendant had a valid driver's license but that it had expired. He also learned that the vehicle in question was registered to Brown and that Brown's license had been suspended. Finally, he learned from the officer who went to the Q Store that a man fitting defendant's description (medium height, heavyset, black) had just purchased some items with a charge card issued to Robert Atmore.
Meanwhile, Dvorak's superior, Corporal Terry Belfanz, arrived on the scene at this time and Dvorak briefed him on the facts. They were aware that sometimes people give other people permission to use their credit cards, so they were not sure at this point that defendant had committed a crime. However, they strongly suspected it.
Dvorak then asked defendant to get out and step to the rear of his car, saying that he wanted to talk with defendant. Dvorak asked defendant if he had conducted business at the station, and defendant said yes. He then asked defendant what type of transaction, and defendant said cash. He then asked defendant if he had used a credit card with the name Robert Atmore on it, and defendant said no. He then asked defendant for the sales receipt, and defendant said that he probably had thrown it away.
After Dvorak finished talking with defendant, Belfanz directed the assisting officer, who was still at the Q Store, to bring the person who waited on defendant to the scene. That man, the manager of the store, was on the scene within a very short time and he positively identified defendant as the customer who had used the Atmore credit card.
At this point defendant was told that he was under arrest and he was placed in a squad car. A search of his person before putting him in the car failed to result in the discovery of the card or his copy of the sales slip.
Brown, defendant's companion, was not under arrest at this point and could have left, although not in his car. There were two reasons that Brown could not have left in his car. First, his license had been suspended. Second, the officers decided to search the car both as an incident of defendant's arrest and because they had probable cause to believe that there was evidence in the car.
The search began in the passenger compartment. The officer did not find the card, the slip, or the items purchased but did find amphetamines in the glove compartment. Brown was then placed under arrest for possession of the drugs and was searched incident to his arrest. Neither the card nor the slip was found in that search either.
After placing Brown under arrest, Dvorak and Belfanz decided to halt the search of the car briefly and tow the car to the police garage, where they could continue the search. They based this decision on the fact that the rush hour traffic was beginning and there had already been instances of gawking motorists almost having accidents.
Once at the police garage, they opened the trunk with a key given them by Brown and they found the items purchased at the store. They also found an illegal shotgun and license plates not belonging to the vehicle. They never found the credit card or the buyer's copy of the sales slip.
Defendant was subsequently charged with the offense of aggravated forgery-uttering. Defendant raised a number of fourth amendment issues at the omnibus hearing. On appeal, however, he raises only three issues.
First, he contends that the stop was illegal because the real reason that the officer made the stop was that defendant is black. Second, he argues that even if the stop was legal, the scope of the police inquiry and the length of the detention were not reasonable in view of the grounds given for the stop. Finally, he argues that the identification of defendant, the case of transmission fluid, and the carton of cigarettes were all the suppressible fruit of any police illegality.
We conclude that the police did not violate defendant's fourth amendment rights.
Under the "objective theory" of probable cause which the United States Supreme Court has adopted, a search must be upheld, at least as a matter of federal constitutional law, if there was a valid ground for the search, even if the officers conducting the search based the search on the wrong ground or had an improper motive. See Scott v. United States, 436 U.S. 128, 98 S.Ct. 1717, 56 L.Ed.2d 168 (1978), discussed in 1 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure, § 1.2(g) (Supp.1982), and relied upon by this court in a number of cases, including State v. Ludtke, 306 N.W.2d 111 (Minn.1981), and State v. Veigel, 304 N.W.2d 900 (Minn. 1981). The same rule applies to police investigatory practices short of arrest or search. Underlying the rule is the motion that "sending state and federal courts on an expedition into the minds of police officers would produce a grave and fruitless misallocation of judicial resources." Massachusetts v. Painten, 389 U.S. 560, 565, 88 S.Ct. 660, 663, 19 L.Ed.2d 770 (1968) (White, J., dissenting), quoted in 1 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure, § 1.2(g) (Supp.1982).
In State v. Barber, 308 Minn. 204, 241 N.W.2d 476 (1976), we upheld a stop of a motor vehicle based on the officer's suspicions about the reason that the license plates were wired on instead of bolted on. In doing so, we quoted from State v. McKinley, 305 Minn. 297, 232 N.W.2d 906 (1975), which is the leading Minnesota case on stopping motor vehicles, and then we stated:
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