State v. Samuels
| Citation | 31 Neb.App. 918 |
| Decision Date | 23 May 2023 |
| Docket Number | A-22-077 |
| Parties | State of Nebraska, Appellee, v. Jarell C. Samuels Appellant. |
| Court | Court of Appeals of Nebraska |
1. Constitutional Law: Search and Seizure: Motions to Suppress: Appeal and Error. In reviewing a trial court's ruling on a motion to suppress based on a claimed violation of the Fourth Amendment, an appellate court applies a two-part standard of review. Regarding historical facts, an appellate court reviews the trial court's findings for clear error, but whether those facts trigger or violate the Fourth Amendment protections is a question of law that an appellate court reviews independently of the trial court's determination.
2. Constitutional Law: Search and Seizure: Appeal and Error. When reviewing whether a consent to search was voluntary, as to the historical facts or circumstances leading up to a consent to search, an appellate court reviews the trial court's findings for clear error. However whether those facts or circumstances constituted a voluntary consent to search, satisfying the Fourth Amendment, is a question of law, which an appellate court reviews independently of the trial court.
3. Trial: Investigative Stops: Warrantless Searches Appeal and Error. The ultimate determinations of reasonable suspicion to conduct an investigatory stop and probable cause to perform a warrantless search are reviewed de novo, and findings of fact are reviewed for clear error giving due weight to the inferences drawn from those facts by the trial judge.
4. Rules of Evidence. In proceedings where the Nebraska Evidence Rules apply, the admissibility of evidence is controlled by the Nebraska Evidence Rules and judicial discretion is involved only when the rules make discretion a factor in determining admissibility.
5. Rules of Evidence: Appeal and Error. Where the Nebraska Evidence Rules commit the evidentiary question at issue to the discretion of the trial court, an appellate court reviews the admissibility of evidence for an abuse of discretion.
6. Convictions: Evidence: Appeal and Error. Regardless of whether the evidence is direct, circumstantial or a combination thereof, and regardless of whether the issue is labeled as a failure to direct a verdict, insufficiency of the evidence, or failure to prove a prima facie case, the standard is the same: In reviewing a criminal conviction, an appellate court does not resolve conflicts in the evidence, pass on the credibility of witnesses, or reweigh the evidence; such matters are for the finder of fact, and a conviction will be affirmed, in the absence of prejudicial error, if the evidence admitted at trial, viewed and construed most favorably to the State, is sufficient to support the conviction.
7. Motions for Mistrial: Appeal and Error. An appellate court will not disturb a trial court's decision whether to grant a motion for mistrial unless the court has abused its discretion.
8. Sentences: Appeal and Error. A sentence imposed within the statutory limits will not be disturbed on appeal in the absence of an abuse of discretion by the trial court.
9. Constitutional Law: Search and Seizure. Both the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and article I, § 7, of the Nebraska Constitution guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures.
10. Search and Seizure: Evidence: Trial. Evidence obtained as the fruit of an illegal search or seizure is inadmissible in a state prosecution and must be excluded.
11. Constitutional Law: Police Officers and Sheriffs: Search and Seizure: Appeal and Error. To determine whether an encounter between an officer and a citizen reaches the level of a seizure under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, an appellate court employs the analysis set forth in State v. Van Ackeren, 242 Neb. 479, 495 N.W.2d 630 (1993), which describes the three levels, or tiers, of policecitizen encounters.
12. Constitutional Law: Police Officers and Sheriffs: Search and Seizure: Arrests. A tier-one police-citizen encounter involves the voluntary cooperation of the citizen elicited through noncoercive questioning and does not involve any restraint of liberty of the citizen. Because tier-one encounters do not rise to the level of a seizure, they are outside the realm of Fourth Amendment protection. A tier-two policecitizen encounter involves a brief, nonintrusive detention during a frisk for weapons or preliminary questioning. A tier-three police-citizen encounter constitutes an arrest, which involves a highly intrusive or lengthy search or detention. Tier-two and tier-three police-citizen encounters are seizures sufficient to invoke the protections of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
13. Constitutional Law: Search and Seizure. A seizure in the Fourth Amendment context occurs only if, in view of all the circumstances surrounding the incident, a reasonable person would have believed that he or she was not free to leave.
14. ___: ___. In addition to situations where an officer directly tells a sus pect that he or she is not free to go, circumstances indicative of a seizure may include the threatening presence of several officers, the display of a weapon by an officer, some physical touching of the citizen's person, or the use of language or tone of voice indicating the compliance with the officer's request might be compelled.
15. Police Officers and Sheriffs: Search and Seizure. A seizure does not occur simply because a law enforcement officer approaches an individual and asks a few questions or requests permission to search an area, provided the officer does not indicate that compliance with his or her request is required.
16. Investigative Stops: Motor Vehicles: Police Officers and Sheriffs. Although a police officer can inquire into matters unrelated to the justification for a traffic stop if it does not measurably extend the duration of the stop, it is unlawful to prolong a stop beyond the time reasonably required to complete the mission of the stop.
17. Investigative Stops: Motor Vehicles: Police Officers and Sheriffs: Probable Cause. A traffic stop can be extended if the officer has a reasonable, articulable suspicion that the motorist is involved in criminal activity unrelated to the traffic violation.
18. Probable Cause: Words and Phrases. Reasonable suspicion entails some minimal level of objective justification for detention, something more than an inchoate and unparticularized hunch, but less than the level of suspicion required for probable cause.
19. Police Officers and Sheriffs: Probable Cause. Whether a police officer has a reasonable suspicion based on sufficient articulable facts depends on the totality of the circumstances.
20. Probable Cause. Factors that would independently be consistent with innocent activities may nonetheless amount to reasonable suspicion when considered collectively.
21. Investigative Stops: Motor Vehicles: Police Officers and Sheriffs: Probable Cause. An officer's suspicion of criminal activity may reasonably grow over the course of a traffic stop as the circumstances unfold and more suspicious facts are uncovered.
22. Constitutional Law: Search and Seizure. The determination of whether the facts and circumstances constitute a voluntary consent to a search, satisfying the Fourth Amendment, is a question of law.
23. Search and Seizure: Duress. For consent to be voluntarily given, it must be a free and unconstrained choice, not the product of a will overborne, and it cannot be given as the result of duress or coercion, whether express, implied, physical, or psychological.
24. ___: ___. In determining whether consent was coerced, account must be taken of subtly coercive police questions, as well as the possibly vulnerable subjective state of the person who consents.
25. Search and Seizure. Mere submission to authority is insufficient to establish consent to a search.
26. ___. Although the fact that an individual is in police custody is an important consideration in determining the voluntariness of the consent to search, such factor, standing alone, does not invalidate the consent to search as long as the consent was otherwise voluntarily given.
27. ___. The determination of whether consent to a search was freely and voluntarily given is based on the totality of the circumstances.
28. Police Officers and Sheriffs: Search and Seizure. A determination of whether consent to a search was sufficiently attenuated is necessary only when the consent was obtained as a result of additional inquiries made during a seizure after the authority for a seizure has expired.
29. Trial: Pretrial Procedure: Pleadings: Evidence: Juries: Appeal and Error. A motion in limine is a procedural step to prevent prejudicial evidence from reaching the jury. It is not the office of a motion in limine to obtain a final ruling upon the ultimate admissibility of the evidence. Therefore, when a court overrules a motion in limine to exclude evidence, the movant must object when the particular evidence is offered at trial in order to predicate error before an appellate court.
30. Pretrial Procedure: Pleadings: Appeal and Error. An appellant who has assigned only that the trial court erred in denying a motion in limine has not triggered appellate review of the evidentiary ruling at trial.
31. Evidence: Pleas. Whether a codefendant's guilty plea is admissible evidence turns upon whether it was properly offered to help the jury assess the codefendant's credibility or was improperly offered as substantive evidence of the defendant's guilt.
32. Criminal Law: Convictions: Evidence. Evidence that another person has been convicted of the same crime for which the defendant is on trial is not admissible as proof of the guilt of the defendant. The same evidence however, may be admissible for...
To continue reading
Request your trial