State v. Roberts

• Decision Date: 25 March 1999
• Docket Number: No. 98-372,98-372
• Citation: 977 P.2d 974,293 Mont. 476
• Parties: STATE of Montana, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. Leonard Leroy ROBERTS, Defendant and Respondent.
• Court: Montana Supreme Court

Page 974

977 P.2d 974

1999 MT 59

STATE of Montana, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. Leonard Leroy ROBERTS, Defendant and Respondent.

No. 98-372.

Supreme Court of Montana.

Submitted on Briefs Nov. 12, 1998.

Decided March 25, 1999.

Hon. Joseph P. Mazurek, Attorney General, Helena, Montana, Jennifer Anders, Assistant Attorney General, Helena, Montana, George H. Corn, Ravalli County Attorney, Hamilton, Montana, Geoffrey Mahar, Deputy County Attorney, Hamilton, Montana, for Appellant.

Randall E. Lint; Birdsong & Lint, Hamilton, Montana, for Respondent.

Justice W. WILLIAM LEAPHART delivered the Opinion of the Court.

¶1 Leonard Leroy Roberts (Roberts) was charged by information on July 22, 1997, with the offenses of (1) Driving or Being in Actual Physical Control of a Vehicle While Under the Influence of Alcohol (Sixth Offense), a felony, and (2) Driving Without a Valid Driver's License, a misdemeanor. Roberts filed a motion to suppress all evidence obtained incident and subsequent to the investigatory stop that gave rise to his arrest. The State of Montana(the State) appeals from the order of the Twenty-First Judicial District Court, Ravalli County, granting Roberts' motion to suppress. We reverse and remand.

¶2 We restate the issue on appeal: Did the District Court err in suppressing the State's evidence on the ground that the arresting officer lacked a particularized suspicion of wrongdoing to stop Roberts' motor vehicle?

Factual and Procedural Background

¶3 Hearing loud and angry voices outside her house at 105 Daly Ave. in Hamilton on the evening of July 4, 1997, Davie Joan Neville (Neville) peeked out her window to investigate. In the front yard of the house next door at 107 Daly Ave., Neville observed that two men, whose movements were unsteady and whose speech was slurred, were engaged in a heated exchange. This conflict culminated with one man attempting to hit the other man with a piece of rebar. The sloppy speech and mannerisms of the two men led Neville to believe that they were extremely intoxicated. Neville then observed the two men climb into a white pickup truck and leave the house next door, heading towards downtown Hamilton. Just before 9:00 p.m. on the evening of July 4, 1997, Neville called the 911 dispatcher in Hamilton "to report a guy that is drunk, [who] just left the driveway" of 107 Daly Ave. in a pickup truck.

¶4 The information given by Neville to the 911 dispatcher included: Neville's description of the truck as a white Ford pickup, license plate number 13T-76V; Neville's observation that the truck, which contained two male occupants who had been engaged in a "big fight" at 107 Daly Ave., appeared to be traveling towards downtown Hamilton; Neville's belief that the man driving the pickup, whom she could not identify by name or description, was "drunk" and "shouldn't be driving" because he "can barely walk"; and Neville's name, address, and phone number.

¶5 Shortly after Neville's call, at 8:57 p.m., the 911 dispatcher sent out an "attempt to locate" bulletin to all police on patrol that evening. Overhearing this dispatch, on-duty Hamilton police officer, Ryan Oster(Officer Oster), responded. Officer Oster positively identified the white Ford truck approximately three minutes later, around 9:00 p.m., parked in downtown Hamilton. Although the pickup was unoccupied, Officer Oster noted that the truck was parked across the street from the Rainbow Bar. At that time, Officer Oster did not investigate the complaint further, but continued on his routine patrol.

¶6 Approximately 38 minutes later, at about 9:38 p.m., Officer Oster again passed by the Rainbow Bar and observed that the white pickup truck was no longer parked across the street. As he continued on his routine patrol, however, Officer Oster spotted the truck about a block-and-a-half away traveling back towards Daly Ave. ¹ Because Officer Oster could not identify who was driving the pickup from that distance, he decided to "catch up with the vehicle" and watch for signs of drunk driving. Officer Oster, a veteran of over 100 investigatory traffic stops, did not turn on his lights or sirens as he followed the pickup truck. During this time, Officer Oster did not observe any erratic driving or infractions of traffic laws.

¶7 Officer Oster followed the white pickup truck and watched it turn into the one-lane driveway at 107 Daly Ave. Officer Oster pulled into the driveway behind the pickup truck, blocking its exit. ² Upon blocking Roberts' exit, both Officer Oster and Roberts got out of their vehicles simultaneously. Without any verbal invitation, Officer Oster then walked up the driveway and began to speak with Roberts. Officer Oster immediately noted that Roberts was "extremely unsteady on his feet" and "had to hang on to the side of the vehicle" to steady himself. In response to questioning, Roberts informed Officer Oster that he had injured his knee earlier in the day. ³ However, Officer Oster observed a "very strong odor" of alcohol on Roberts' breath, and also noted that his speech was "slow and slurred."

¶8 Due to Roberts' difficulty standing and the smell of alcohol on his breath, Officer Oster administered several field sobriety tests on Roberts and subsequently arrested him for driving under the influence of alcohol and driving without a valid Montana driver's license. Later, at the Ravalli County Sheriff's Office, Roberts provided a breath sample and his blood alcohol concentration was found to be .221.

¶9 Although police attempted, after Roberts' arrest, to obtain an official statement from Neville, she steadfastly refused to cooperate. Only when the State subpoenaed Neville, did she appear at the suppression hearing and testify. ⁴ Following the suppression hearing, the District Court held that "Officer Oster did not have sufficient objective facts to support the conclusion that [Roberts] was engaged in wrongdoing and therefore when he blocked [Roberts'] car in the driveway, he effected an unconstitutional seizure of [Roberts] under the Fourth Amendment." The State appeals from this determination.

Discussion

¶10 Did the District Court err in suppressing the State's evidence on the ground that the arresting officer lacked a particularized suspicion of wrongdoing to stop Roberts' motor vehicle?

¶11 The standard of review for a district court's grant of a motion to suppress is whether the court's findings of fact are clearly erroneous and whether those findings were correctly applied as a matter of law. State v. Henderson, 1998 MT 233, p 9, --- Mont. ----, p 9, 966 P.2d 137, p 9, 55 St.Rep. 980, p 9. A trial court's findings are clearly erroneous if not supported by substantial evidence, if the court has misapprehended the effect of the evidence, or if this Court's review of the record leaves us with the firm conviction that a mistake has been made. Henderson, p 9 (citing Interstate Production Credit v. DeSaye (1991), 250 Mont. 320, 323, 820 P.2d 1285, 1287).

¶12 When a police officer seizes a person, such as in a brief investigatory stop of a vehicle, the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures applies. Bauer v. State (1996), 275 Mont. 119, 125, 910 P.2d 886, 889; see also Reid v. Georgia (1980), 448 U.S. 438, 440, 100 S.Ct. 2752, 2753, 65 L.Ed.2d 890, 893. However, this Court has recognized an exception to the general warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment, which permits a limited and reasonable investigatory stop of a vehicle without probable cause where the State can establish: (1) objective data from which an experienced law enforcement officer can make certain inferences; and (2)a resulting particularized suspicion that the occupant of the vehicle is or has been engaged in wrongdoing or was a witness to criminal activity. State v. Gopher (1981), 193 Mont. 189, 194, 631 P.2d 293, 296 (borrowing the test from United States v. Cortez (1981), 449 U.S. 411, 101 S.Ct. 690, 66 L.Ed.2d 621); see also Terry v. Ohio (1968), 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889.

¶13 This legal standard of "particularized suspicion" of wrongdoing is now codified at § 46-5-401, MCA, which provides:

Investigative Stop. In order to obtain or verify an account of the person's presence or conduct or to determine whether to arrest the person, a peace officer may stop any person or vehicle that is observed in circumstances that create a particularized suspicion that the person or occupant of the vehicle has committed, is committing, or is about to commit an offense.

Section 46-5-401, MCA. The question of whether particularized suspicion of wrongdoing exists is a factually driven inquiry dependent upon the totality of circumstances giving rise to the investigative stop. State v. Reynolds(1995), 272 Mont. 46, 50, 899 P.2d 540, 542-43.

¶14 At the outset, we must determine whether an investigative stop occurred in this case. Even though, as the State points out, Roberts voluntarily pulled into the driveway and could have simply ignored Officer Oster's presence and walked into the house at 107 Daly Ave., we have no problem concluding, as the District Court did, that Officer Oster's actions constitute an investigative stop within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. This case is factually similar to United States v. Kerr (9th Cir.1987), 817 F.2d 1384, wherein the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals faced "the unusual problem of characterizing an automobile stop as either a voluntary encounter or an investigative stop." Kerr, 817 F.2d at 1386. ⁵ In Kerr, an officer was on routine patrol in a rural neighborhood when he observed a parked car, with its trunk open, near a barn located on a residential property. In order to reach this residence, it was necessary to drive approximately seventy to one-hundred feet down a one-lane dirt driveway. Instead of waiting in his patrol car at the roadside, the officer pulled into and blocked the one-lane driveway just as the defendant was backing his car out. When the officer's...