State v. Sanders, CO-82-1637.
| Decision Date | 08 December 1983 |
| Docket Number | No. CO-82-1637.,CO-82-1637. |
| Citation | 339 NW 2d 557 |
| Parties | STATE of Minnesota, Respondent, v. Wilson SANDERS, Appellant. |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
Kenneth Meshbesher, Minneapolis, for appellant.
Hubert H. Humphrey, III, Atty. Gen., and Thomas J. Foley, Ramsey County Atty., Steven C. DeCoster, Asst. County Atty., St. Paul, for respondent.
Considered and decided by the court en banc without oral argument.
Defendant is being prosecuted in district court for possession of cocaine, which the police seized when defendant threw it away as he was alighting from his car after the police stopped him. Police stopped the car in the mistaken belief that defendant was one Ronald French, who they had probable cause to believe was guilty of selling stolen property. Defendant contended at the omnibus hearing that the police did not have a sufficient basis for thinking that he was French and that therefore the cocaine should be suppressed and his prosecution terminated. The district court, while acknowledging that the issue was close, held the police did not violate defendant's Fourth Amendment rights and refused to suppress the evidence. Defendant then waived his right to a jury trial and stipulated to the state's case. However, instead of deciding the issue of defendant's guilt, the court, over the objection of the state, granted a defense motion to certify the suppression issue to this court for pre-trial decision pursuant to Minn.R.Crim.P. 29.02, subd. 4. We affirm the order denying the motion to suppress and we remand for trial.
On June 22, 1982, Sergeant Robert Paskett of the St. Paul Police Department reissued a "pickup order" — i.e., an arrest order — which he originally had issued on May 27 for one Ronald French on a charge of selling stolen property. The earlier order indicated that French was known to drive a white Mustang, but the reissued order indicated that he also had been driving a red Ford with Minnesota license plate number FFK 785. A few minutes after the order was broadcast over police radio, another officer, who gave his identification number, stated over the radio that he was familiar with Mr. French and that he had a grey streak in his hair. We now know that his information was wrong. The officer who made this statement apparently was thinking of another black man whose last name is French who did have a grey streak in his hair.
At 2:00 p.m. on June 22 Officers Neil Nelson and Robert Ashton stopped a red Ford with the described license plates near Selby and Dale in St. Paul. The driver of the car identified himself as John Pettiford, Jr., and explained that he had let a man named "Frenchie" use the car. He said that he had seen "Frenchie" driving a black and white Cadillac Seville with Wisconsin plates. The officers let Pettiford go.
The following morning at roll call Sergeant Paskett asked Officers Nelson and Ashton to continue looking for French and he showed them a police identification photograph of French. French did not have a grey streak in his hair in the picture but the picture was approximately 10 months old.
Later that day Officer Nelson was working as an off-duty plain-clothes officer riding buses for the MTC. At 6:00 p.m., when the bus he was riding stopped at Selby and Dale, Nelson looked out and, from a distance of about 35 feet, saw defendant standing in front of a bar. Thinking that defendant looked like French, Nelson got off the bus. However, by the time he did so, defendant had begun walking to a yellow Cadillac nearby. As defendant drove off, Nelson copied the car's Minnesota license plate number. Nelson then telephoned the information to the police communication center.
At 3:00 p.m. the next day Nelson received a call from a fellow officer, who had just seen the car parked at Selby and Dale. While driving past the same bar on his way to Laurel and Dale to meet the other officer, Nelson, from a distance of about 20 feet, saw defendant standing in front of the bar. From Laurel and Dale, which was about 200 feet from the car, the officers watched the car until defendant got in it and began driving. The officers then requested an officer in a marked squad car to stop the car and identify the driver, who they believed was French.
After stopping, defendant slid over to the passenger side of the front seat, opened the door and got out. As he did so he threw some objects. While one officer patted defendant down, two officers recovered the abandoned items, a number of bindles of cocaine. The officer who patted defendant down put him in the squad car, gave him a Miranda warning and asked for identification. It was then that he learned that defendant was not French.
In Hill v. California, 401 U.S. 797, 91 S.Ct. 1106, 28 L.Ed.2d 484 (1971), the police, having probable cause to arrest Hill on robbery charges, went to Hill's apartment, where they met Miller, who matched Hill's description. Believing that Miller was Hill, the police arrested him and searched the apartment as an incident of the arrest. The Court upheld the arrest because the mistake by the police was a reasonable one made in good faith.
Last year in State v. Frazier, 318 N.W.2d 42 (Minn.1982), we held that a similar mistake by police was unreasonable under the facts of that case. There the police mistakenly concluded that the defendant, who was standing outside a St. Paul restaurant and bar waiting for a bus, was a woman named Terri Norman, whom they had probable cause to arrest. The officers stopped their car, jumped out, identified themselves, grabbed the defendant's purse and a box of take-out food she was holding, and escorted her back to the squad car. When the defendant denied that she was Ms. Norman, the officers asked her if she had any identification. She said that she did but that it was in a wallet in her purse and that they had the...
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