State v. Thompson
| Decision Date | 27 February 1985 |
| Docket Number | No. 240A84,240A84 |
| Citation | 326 S.E.2d 19,313 N.C. 157 |
| Parties | STATE of North Carolina v. Freddie THOMPSON. |
| Court | North Carolina Supreme Court |
Rufus L. Edmisten, Atty. Gen. by Harry H. Harkins, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., Raleigh, for the State.
Adam Stein, Appellate Defender by David W. Dorey, Asst. Appellate Defender, Raleigh, for the defendant-appellant.
The controlling question on appeal is whether there was probable cause for the arrest of the defendant without a warrant at the time law enforcement officers took him into custody. We conclude that there was probable cause and that evidence seized as a result of his arrest was properly admitted at trial.
A complete review of the evidence presented at trial is unnecessary in resolving the issue presented on appeal. The evidence at trial tended to show among other things that Linda Gattis left her home at approximately 6:30 p.m. on August 5, 1983 to go to a nearby neighborhood store. She left her nine-year-old daughter Stephanie playing at a neighborhood playground. While at the store, Ms. Gattis saw Wayne Small riding Stephanie's bicycle. When asked he told her that Freddie Thompson, the twenty-seven-year-old defendant in this case, had let him ride the bicycle. The defendant arrived at the store shortly thereafter, and Ms. Gattis told him to take the bicycle back to her house. The defendant indicated that he would do so and left the store.
When Ms. Gattis returned to her home a short while later, Wayne Small told her that Stephanie was with the defendant. Ms. Gattis went immediately to the playground and then to the home of the defendant's sister looking for Stephanie. When she did not find her daughter at either location, she returned to her home and reported the child's absence to the police. The police and Ms. Gattis continued to attempt to locate the child during the night of August 5 and the morning of Saturday, August 6, 1983. A police command post was set up in a parking lot in the neighborhood, and additional officers were called to duty to assist in the search for Stephanie.
On the morning of August 6, Stephanie returned home in the company of a neighbor. She was emotionally distraught and dirty and had blood on her clothing and leaves in her hair.
The child testified at trial that she met the defendant on August 5 as she was returning to her home from the playground. The defendant suggested that they go to his sister's home. Instead of going to the sister's home, they went down a path in the woods. When the defendant told her to undress, she ran but was overtaken by him. After he threatened her, she complied with his demands. He forced her to engage in the sexual acts charged in the bills of indictment against her will.
Medical testimony and physical and scientific evidence were introduced tending to corroborate the child's testimony. This evidence included a pair of jeans removed from the defendant after he was taken into custody which bore bloodstains of the same type as the victim's blood.
The defendant assigns as error the trial court's denial of his motion to suppress evidence seized from him as a result of his arrest. In support of this assignment, he contends that there was no probable cause for arresting him without a warrant, and that any evidence seized as a result of his unlawful arrest could not be admitted against him at trial. We do not agree.
The trial court held a pretrial hearing on several of the defendant's motions including his motion to suppress evidence seized incident to his arrest. The evidence introduced at that hearing tended to show among other things that Chapel Hill Public Safety Officer Mark Porterfield was called at home on August 6, 1983 by Master Public Safety Officer Clark and told to report to a command post which had been set up in the parking lot of Hargraves Recreational Center. He arrived at the command post at about 9:45 a.m. Officer Clark informed Officer Porterfield of the investigation which was being conducted into the disappearance of a nine-year-old black female child. Clark told Porterfield that the child had last been seen on Roberson Street riding a bicycle in a northerly direction with Freddie Thompson. Porterfield was given pictures of the missing child and of Freddie Thompson. Clark told Porterfield that Thompson was a prior sex offender in his mid-twenties and gave Porterfield a detailed physical description of Thompson and of the clothes he had been wearing when last seen with the child. Porterfield then joined other public safety officers in a continuing door-to-door inquiry into the child's whereabouts.
At about 10:10 a.m., Porterfield saw the defendant riding a bicycle. He called out to the defendant and asked him if he was Freddie Thompson. The defendant said, "Yes." Porterfield told the defendant to stop because he needed to talk to him. After the defendant stopped the bicycle, Porterfield again asked if he was Freddie Thompson and received the same answer. Porterfield identified himself as a police officer and told the defendant that Stephanie Gattis was missing and had last been seen with the defendant. He asked the defendant if he knew her. The defendant said that he did not know the child.
Porterfield asked the defendant to accompany him to a nearby house. Porterfield asked a resident there to call the police and tell them that he needed assistance. While Porterfield and the defendant stood on the front porch, the defendant asked "what this was all about." Porterfield showed him a picture of Stephanie Gattis, and the defendant told Porterfield that he had not seen her. "At this time, he was nervous, he was looking at his feet and shifting and asking again and again what was going on, and what was this all about." Porterfield told him again that the police were looking for Stephanie Gattis, and "he was supposed to have been seen with her the night before." The defendant again stated that he knew nothing.
A minute or two after the call was placed to the police department, Master Public Safety Officer Dave Hill and other officers arrived. Master Officer Hill had been given essentially the same information about the missing child and the defendant Thompson as that given to Porterfield. Additionally, Hill had been personally involved during the preceding four years in investigations into assaults by the defendant and at least one sex offense by him with a child. Hill knew the defendant personally. Hill testified that he felt that the police had probable cause to arrest the defendant for kidnapping at that time. Therefore, he ordered Porterfield "to handcuff him and take him to the Police Station, he was under arrest."
Police have the right, without a search warrant, to search a person for weapons or evidence of a crime if the person has been lawfully arrested. Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 reh. denied, 396 U.S. 869, 90 S.Ct. 36, 24 L.Ed.2d 124 (1969); State v. Harris, 279 N.C. 307, 182 S.E.2d 364 (1971). "The fact of a lawful arrest, standing alone, authorizes a search." Michigan v. DeFillippo, 443 U.S. 31, 35, 99 S.Ct. 2627, 2631, 61 L.Ed.2d 343 (1979). Therefore, if the defendant in the present case was lawfully arrested, the items of...
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