State v. Simpson

Citation622 P.2d 1199,95 Wn.2d 170
Decision Date31 December 1980
Docket NumberNo. 45931,45931
PartiesSTATE of Washington, Appellant, v. Jerry George SIMPSON, Respondent.
CourtUnited States State Supreme Court of Washington

Curtis M. Janhunen, Pros. Atty., Michael G. Spencer, Deputy Pros. Atty., Montesano, for appellant.

John A. Strait, Tacoma, for respondent.

WILLIAMS, Justice.

This case comes before us on certification from the Court of Appeals. The State has appealed from a Superior Court order granting respondent's motion to suppress evidence. We affirm.

Patrolman Larry McCluskey and Steve Loyer of the Aberdeen Police Department went to the residence of respondent Jerry Simpson and waited there to arrest him on a warrant charging first-degree forgery. After a time, respondent drove up in a Chevrolet pickup truck with big tires, mag wheels, and two beer decals in the back window. He parked in front of the residence, got out, and locked the truck. The officers then approached him, and after respondent identified himself, they placed him under arrest.

Before returning to the station, McCluskey noted the number on the rear license plate and radioed for a registration check on the truck. He testified he felt that the "vehicle did not match" respondent who was, in McCluskey's opinion, somewhat older than one likely to own such a truck.

The officers transported respondent to jail, where his personal possessions including the truck key were inventoried and placed in a property box. At the station, McCluskey received the following return on his registration request: "Not a current record, license has been cancelled, see a different license number." A driver's check on the respondent revealed that his driver's license had been suspended. After conferring with his captain, McCluskey concluded that either the license plate had expired or been stolen, or the vehicle was stolen. He did not discuss the matter with respondent.

The two officers then returned to impound the truck because it was improperly licensed. At that point Loyer noticed for the first time that the front license plate was missing. McCluskey testified that he next unlocked the truck with the key he had taken from the police property box and checked the vehicle identification number (VIN) "to ascertain who the vehicle was registered to. I didn't know the vehicle was stolen." Upon learning the VIN did not match the VIN assigned to the license plate, he ran another check and found the truck was stolen. Following a search of the truck's interior, McCluskey impounded the vehicle, testifying later that he was compelled to retain the invalid license plate and the vehicle "until we could find out what actually occurred."

Following all these events, the officers advised respondent of his constitutional rights under Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966). He waived his rights, was then questioned about the truck, and ultimately admitted he had purchased it with knowledge it was stolen.

At a pretrial hearing, respondent moved to suppress both the evidence produced by the seizure of the VIN and his incriminating statements to the police. The trial court held that the inspection of the VIN violated the Fourth Amendment and suppressed the evidence and the statements as the fruits of an unconstitutional search. The State appealed.

I.

The State first contends that respondent Simpson may not raise any Fourth Amendment objections to the search in this case because an individual has no Fourth Amendment privacy rights in a stolen vehicle. 1 Respondent argues that he is entitled to raise his Fourth Amendment claims under the "automatic standing" doctrine of Jones v. United States, 362 U.S. 257, 80 S.Ct. 725, 4 L.Ed.2d 697, 78 A.L.R.2d 233 (1960).

As a general rule, the " 'rights assured by the Fourth Amendment are personal rights, (which) ... may be enforced by exclusion of evidence only at the instance of one whose own protection was infringed by the search and seizure.' " Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 138, 99 S.Ct. 421, 427, 58 L.Ed.2d 387 (1978); United States v. Salvucci, --- U.S. ----, 100 S.Ct. 2547, 65 L.Ed.2d 619 (1980). Thus, a defendant generally may challenge a search or seizure only if he or she has a personal Fourth Amendment privacy interest in the area searched or the property seized. Salvucci at ----, 100 S.Ct. at 2550, 65 L.Ed. at 625; Rakas, 439 U.S. at 140, 99 S.Ct. at 428. The defendant must personally claim a " 'justifiable,' ... 'reasonable,' or ... 'legitimate expectation of privacy' that has been invaded by governmental action." Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 740, 99 S.Ct. 2577, 2580, 61 L.Ed.2d 220 (1979); Rakas, 439 U.S. at 143, 99 S.Ct. at 430.

Until recently, a special exception to these general Fourth Amendment rules applied in cases in which a criminal defendant had been charged with an offense that has possession of property as an element. In such cases, the defendant could claim "automatic standing" to challenge the search or seizure of contraband or stolen goods even though he or she could not technically have a privacy interest in such property. Jones, 362 U.S. at 263-65, 80 S.Ct. at 732-33; Rakas, 439 U.S. at 135 n.4, 99 S.Ct. at 426. This automatic standing principle has also been recognized as a constitutional rule under our state constitution. State v. Michaels, 60 Wash.2d 638, 646-47, 374 P.2d 989 (1962); Const. art. 1, § 7.

The United States Supreme court has recently overruled Jones and thereby abolished the Fourth Amendment automatic standing rule. United States v. Salvucci, supra. In order to explain our disposition of this case, it is necessary to explore briefly the original grounds for the automatic standing rule and the Supreme Court's reasons for deciding it should no longer operate.

As explained in Jones, the automatic standing rule was originally created to effectuate two separate policy judgments: (1) The doctrine was said to ensure that the State will not assume contradictory positions by arguing in the suppression hearing that the defendant did not have possession of the property and therefore lacked any Fourth Amendment privacy interests, and then arguing at trial that the defendant was guilty of unlawful possession of the property. The Court concluded that "(i)t is not consonant with the amenities, to put it mildly, of the administration of criminal justice to sanction such squarely contradictory assertions of power by the Government." Jones, 362 U.S. at 263-64, 80 S.Ct. at 732; see also Brown v. United States, 411 U.S. 223, 229, 93 S.Ct. 1565, 1569, 36 L.Ed.2d 208 (1973). (2) The principle was established to ensure in addition that a defendant claiming possession in order to acquire standing in the suppression hearing would not have this evidence used against him at trial on the issue of possession. Jones, 362 U.S. at 261-64, 80 S.Ct. at 731-32.

This second policy basis for the rule was partially eliminated when the Court in Simmons v. United States, 390 U.S. 377, 88 S.Ct. 967, 19 L.Ed.2d 1247 (1968), held that a defendant's testimony in a suppression hearing cannot be admitted against him or her at trial. Moreover, the recent decision in Salvucci has likewise abandoned the first policy basis, the "vice of prosecutorial self-contradiction," Brown, 411 U.S. at 229, 93 S.Ct. at 1569. The majority opinion in Salvucci states:

To conclude that a prosecutor engaged in self-contradiction in Jones, the Court necessarily relied on the unexamined assumption that a defendant's possession of a seized good sufficient to establish criminal culpability was also sufficient to establish Fourth Amendment "standing." This assumption, however, even if correct at the time, is no longer so.

The person in legal possession of a good seized during an illegal search has not necessarily been subject to a Fourth Amendment deprivation.

(Footnotes omitted.) Salvucci, --- U.S. at ----, 100 S.Ct. at 2552-53, 65 L.Ed.2d at 627-28. Citing Rakas and Rawlings v. Kentucky, --- U.S. ----, 100 S.Ct. 2556, 65 L.Ed.2d 633 (1980), the Court explained that possession of a seized good was not a substitute for a "factual finding that the owner of the good had a legitimate expectation of privacy in the area searched." Salvucci, --- U.S. at. ----, 100 S.Ct. at 2552, 65 L.Ed.2d at 628. Thus, the Court concluded, henceforth the question under the Fourth Amendment is not whether a defendant has a possessory interest in seized items, but whether he has an expectation of privacy in the area searched. If not, mere possession of the item will not confer a right under the Fourth Amendment to contest the legality of a search and seizure. Salvucci, at ----, 100 S.Ct. at 2554, 65 L.Ed.2d at 629.

The foregoing summary establishes without dispute that the automatic standing doctrine no longer retains any vitality under the United States Constitution. But our inquiry is not complete until we ascertain whether the state constitutional rule of automatic standing has also been abridged.

It is by now well established that state courts have the power to interpret their state constitutional provisions as more protective of individual rights than the parallel provisions of the United States Constitution. See Oregon v. Hass, 420 U.S. 714, 719, 95 S.Ct. 1215, 1219, 43 L.Ed.2d 570 (1975); Alderman v. United States, 394 U.S. 165, 175, 89 S.Ct. 961, 967, 22 L.Ed.2d 176 (1969); Brennan, State Constitutions and the Protection of Individual Rights, 90 Harv.L.Rev. 489 (1977); Note, Rights of Criminal Defendants: The Emerging Independence of State Courts, 1979 Hamline L.Rev. 83. Such independent interpretation of state constitutional provisions is particularly appropriate when the language of the state provision differs from the federal, and the legislative history of the state constitution reveals that this difference was intended by the framers. See, e.g., People v. Anderson, 6 Cal.3d 628, 493 P.2d 880, 100 Cal.Rptr. 152 (1972); State v. Brackman, 582 P.2d 1216 (Mont.1978); see...

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