State v. Stone

• Decision Date: 22 August 1972
• Citation: 294 A.2d 683
• Parties: STATE of Maine v. Samuel C. STONE et al.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

Page 683

294 A.2d 683

STATE of Maine v. Samuel C. STONE et al.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Aug. 22, 1972.

Michael J. O'Donnell, Asst. County Atty., Bethel, for plaintiff.

Basil A. Latty, Portland, for defendants.

Before DUFRESNE, C. J., and WEBBER, WEATHERBEE, POMEROY, WERNICK and ARCHIBALD, JJ.

WERNICK, Justice.

At the October 1969 Term of the Superior Court held on Oxford County a two count indictment, alleging violations of 17 M.R.S.A. § 201, was returned against all the defendants. One count charged that on or about the 8th day of October, 1969, defendant had committed the crime of assault, felonious in degree because high and aggravated, upon Gerald Smith, and the second count specified another victim, Richard Roberts.

In another indictment defendants, Samuel C. Stone and Seaton Frank Stone, were accused in two counts of having, on or about October 8, 1969, committed a felony (assault of a high and aggravated nature) 'while carrying a firearm'-in one count Gerald Smith and in the other Richard Roberts being named as the persons assaulted (P.L.1969, Chapter 418, now 17 M.R.S.A. § 1461).

In a consolidated proceeding, ¹ with jury waived, three of the defendants, Samuel C. Stone, Seaton Frank Stone, and Dustin R. Olson, were tried. ²

Each defendant, Stone, was found guilty of the counts of the indictment charging felonious assaults. Samuel C. Stone was convicted, and Seaton Frank Stone acquitted of the counts of the indictment charging the carrying of a firearm while engaged in the commission of a felony. ³

The 'Stones' (hereinafter 'defendants') have appealed from the judgments of conviction entered, respectively, against each of them.

I

On one comprehensive basis (variously phrased) defendants contend that the convictions must fall because the trial Court explicitly rested them upon a foundation that defendants had been engaged in frustrating a lawful arrest by Gerald Smith, a State police officer, of one, Edward C. Dowland, for the offense of carrying a loaded firearm in a motor vehicle-a misdemeanor in violation of 12 M.R.S.A. § 2456. ⁴ Defendants assert that this foundation is, on the evidence and with the correct law applied, unsound.

Defendants claim unlawfulness in the purported arrest by Trooper Smith on three alternative grounds; either (1) the legality of the arrest must be held vitiated because it was bottomed, from the very outset, upon an unlawful intrusion into the private interior of an automobile occupied by the defendants (and Dowland); or (2) in any event, a subsequent warrantless seizure by the Trooper of property from within the interior of the automobile, and a search of it, upon which the purported arrest was based, were illegal because made without valid probable cause to justify the seizure and search; or (3) in the final analysis, probable cause, even if conjoined with exigent circumstances, is inadequate under Maine law to support a warrantless arrest of the person for a misdemeanor; and, therefore, consistently with the federal Constitution and the law of Maine, it must be likewise insufficient to justify a warrantless search and seizure of property asserted to be legally subject to police search and seizure solely because of probable cause to believe that a person has committed a misdemeanor-i. e., that the property is thought to be the fruits, instrumentality or evidence of such misdemeanor.

We find each of these contentions without merit. We decide that the trial Court correctly convicted the defendants on the basis that the arrest undertaken by Trooper Smith was lawful.

In support of the specific rationale utilized by the trial Court the evidence permits findings, beyond a reasonable doubt, of the following facts. ⁵

On October 8, 1969, Trooper Smith, accompanied by a nonpoliceman cousin and friend, Richard Roberts, was on routine police duty in the Town of Upton, Maine. In the discharge of his duties Trooper Smith, at approximately 9:00 p. m., was at a house located on the Mill Hill Road, so-called, to serve a subpoena. While leaving, he observed an automobile, carrying New Hampshire registration plates, go past the house; several persons were in the car.

The vehicle was proceeding on the Mill Hill Road, a backroad, towards a dead-end approximately three-tenths of a mile distant. The surrounding area was generally wooded but at the dead-end there was a large field of high grass, bushes and goldenrod with the terrain rolling gently toward a lake. Nearby was a boat house used for access to and from a hunting lodge situated on an island.

Thinking, initally, that the occupants of the automobile 'might be teenagers with liquor', Trooper Smith followed the car. At the dead-end, the automobile stopped without any signal from the Trooper. It was facing so as to make an angle with the road.

Trooper Smith stepped from the police cruiser (which he had brought to a stop behind and very close to the other motor vehicle), leaving his headlights shining on high beam in the general direction of the stopped automobile. He approached the vehicle from the driver's side. While slightly distant from the car, he directed his five cell battery flashlight so that it shone upon and illuminated the back seat of the automobile. On the back seat Trooper Smith saw a 30 calibre carbine rifle with the clip inserted.

While he stood beside the driver's window, Trooper Smith observed three adult men, two sitting in the front seat and one in the rear. He asked the person in the driver's seat (whom Trooper Smith recognized as someone previously known to him as 'a Stone') for his license and registration. The man identified himself as Seaton Frank Stone and stated that his operator's license was at home. The man in the back seat told Trooper Smith that the automobile was 'his.' He gave his name as 'Eddie Dowling' (as the Trooper then heard it) and added that the automobile was actually registered in the name of his brother-in-law, Robert LeClaire, of Holbrook, New Hampshire.

Thereupon, Trooper Smith opened the rear door of the automobile (on the driver's side) and removed from the rifle lying on the rear seat the clip which was inserted in the rifle. He saw that 'the top of this clip was full.' Trooper Smith then informed Edward C. Dowland, who was sitting alone in the immediate vicinity of the rifle, and who was claiming to be the owner of the automobile, that he was 'placed . . . under arrest for carrying a loaded firearm in a vehicle',-a misdemeanor crime.

The evidence as to what subsequently occurred is sharply in dispute. The trial Court made no specific findings of fact except to arrive at the general factual conclusions that, the arrest being treated as a lawful arrest, (1) the subsequent conduct of defendants constituted assaults against the officer and Richard Roberts, high and aggravated in nature, and (2) defendant, Samuel C. Stone, participated in the commission of such felonious assaults 'while carrying a firearm.'

These general factual conclusions of the trial Court are amply supported in the record. There is adequate evidence that the defendants, with Samuel C. Stone ulilizing a rifle at close range, frustrated the arrest by rendering the Trooper physically helpless under the intimidation of being shot, disarming him and causing him, and his companion, to prostrate themselves face down on the ground and to remain in that position for a substantial period of time while efforts were made to disable the police cruiser and allow defendants to depart without immediate danger of pursuit by the Trooper. ⁶

I-A

When Trooper Shith caused artificial light rays from his flashlight to pass into the interior of the 'Dowland' automobile and illuminate the rifle on the back seat, he acted without unlawful intrusion into a constitutionally protected area since the property is correctly held to have been knowingly exposed to public view, United States v. Lee, 274 U.S. 559, 47 S.Ct. 746, 71 L.Ed.2d 1202 (1927)-recently cited in Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967), Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971) and Harris v. United States, 390 U.S. 234, 88 S.Ct. 992, 19 L.Ed.2d 1067 (1968) as illustrative of the principle that an owner can be held to have exposed property to public view notwithstanding that artificial illumination, specifically directed, might be required to render the property visible. Other cases considering the point have agreed with virtual unanimity. ⁷

I-B

Hence, without any unlawful initial intrusion into the interior of the automobile, Trooper Smith saw, as knowingly exposed to public view (even though inside the automobile), a 30 calibre carbine rifle in which the clip had been inserted, immediately adjacent to a man, sitting alone, who claimed to be the owner of the automobile.

Under all of the circumstances-including, in particular, that the clip was already in place in the rifle, the time of year was, or was close to, the hunting season, the time of day was at night, the automobile containing three adult men was parked at the dead-end of a road, and the general terrain of the area to which the automobile had been driven embraced a large field surrounded by more or less woods,-there was probable cause for Trooper Smith to believe that the clip in the rifle contained a cartridge or shell, thereby to be immediately ready for on the spot hunting (if nothing else). See: State v. Fletcher, Me., 288 A.2d 92 (1972) and Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143, 92 S.Ct. 1921, 32 L.Ed.2d 612 (1972) for further elucidation of the meaning of 'probable cause' in this context. ⁸

These was thus probable cause to support a belief that Mr. Dowland, as the sole occupant of the rear seat and the asserted owner of the automobile, was committing a violation of 12 M.R.S.A. § 2456 which makes it a msidemeanor crime

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