State v. Vigil

• Decision Date: 21 June 1991
• Docket Number: No. 900147-CA,900147-CA
• Parties: STATE of Utah, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. Raymond J. VIGIL, Defendant and Appellant.
• Court: Utah Court of Appeals

Page 1296

815 P.2d 1296

STATE of Utah, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. Raymond J. VIGIL, Defendant and Appellant.

No. 900147-CA.

Court of Appeals of Utah.

June 21, 1991.

Stephen I. Oda (argued), Layton, for defendant and appellant.

R. Paul Van Dam, State Atty. Gen., David B. Thompson (argued), Asst. Atty. Gen., Salt Lake City, for plaintiff and appellee.

Before BENCH, GREENWOOD and ORME, JJ.

OPINION

ORME, Judge:

Defendant Raymond J. Vigil appeals his conviction for burglary, a second degree felony, claiming the traffic stop and subsequent impound of the vehicle in which he was riding was a pretext and not based on reasonable suspicion. Defendant further claims that consent to the post-inventory search of the vehicle was not voluntary and knowing. We remand for the entry of adequate findings.

FACTS

Defendant was a passenger in a car stopped by a Davis County Sheriff's deputy on the east side of Bountiful on January 14, 1989. The deputy observed defendant and his companions, all young Hispanic males, driving in an older vehicle in an affluent neighborhood. The deputy testified that he noted the youths were dressed as "cholos." ¹ Based on this observation, the deputy followed the car for approximately twenty-three blocks before observing a speeding violation, for which he then stopped the car. He was not aware of any reports of criminal activity in the area at the time of the stop.

As the deputy spoke with the driver, he observed open containers of alcohol in the vehicle, a violation of Utah law, and arrested all three occupants. The deputy impounded the car and searched the interior, excepting the locked glove compartment. The car was then towed by a private company to the company's secured impound facility.

Later that evening the owner of the car, Sally Salazar, the mother of a juvenile arrested with defendant, telephoned police to inquire about the return of her car. She was referred to the arresting deputy, who conducted an extensive interrogation before addressing how she could retrieve her car. The deputy told her he had already inventoried the contents of the car, but he would "need to look through [her] car before we could let it go," and then asked if he could again search the car. Salazar asked if her presence was required for the second search. The deputy replied that it was not and that nothing would be taken, but that he "need[ed] to look through it," and again asked her consent. She then replied: "Yeah, I guess so." The car was searched and the deputy discovered evidence linking defendant to a residential burglary which had occurred earlier that day. ²

The trial court determined that the stop was not pretextual and that the ensuing arrest and impound were lawful. The court also "found," without additional elaboration, that Salazar's consent to the search was voluntary. On appeal, defendant claims the stop was pretextual, thereby invalidating the arrest, impound, and search, and that, in any event, consent was not voluntarily given and did not purge the taint of the unlawful arrest. The state, conceding the pretextual nature of the stop for purposes of the present appeal, ³ responds that we need only consider the voluntariness of Salazar's consent and whether her consent validated an otherwise improper search.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

The state must present proof that consent to search was knowingly and voluntarily granted, State v. Arroyo, 796 P.2d 684, 687 (Utah 1990), applying a totality of the circumstances approach. ⁴ State v. Iacono 725 P.2d 1375, 1377 (Utah 1986). The state's burden is a substantial one when, as here, the state relies on consent as purging the taint of unlawful police conduct. Arroyo, 796 P.2d at 687-88.

The issue remains whether voluntariness of consent is a legal or factual matter. Contrary to the suggestion made by Judge Bench in his separate opinion, this issue is properly before us and must be resolved. If voluntariness of consent is a question of fact, we would affirm since the trial court "found" voluntary consent and that "finding" is supported by evidence in the record. If it is a conclusion of law, we would remand since no subsidiary findings were made by the court which support that conclusion.

Utah appellate court decisions have not been entirely consistent in treating this key question. See State v. Carter, 812 P.2d 460, 468 n. 8 (Utah Ct.App.1991) (Utah Supreme Court "seems" to consider voluntariness of consent as a factual issue and Utah Court of Appeals has sent "mixed signals" on the question). Recent panels of this court have treated--explicitly or implicitly--voluntariness of consent as a purely factual matter and strictly applied clearly erroneous review, eschewing analysis of how any ultimate conclusion in a case could properly be considered a matter of pure fact. See, e.g., State v. Sterger, 808 P.2d 122 (Utah Ct.App.1991); State v. Grovier, 808 P.2d 133 (Utah Ct.App.1991). Other panels have reviewed the trial court's factual findings underlying its conclusion as to voluntariness for clear error, evaluating the ultimate conclusion that such facts establish voluntary consent, in a legal sense, under a correction of error standard. See, e.g., State v. Hargraves, 806 P.2d 228, 231 (Utah Ct.App.1991); State v. Bobo, 803 P.2d 1268, 1272 (Utah Ct.App.1990). See also State v. Palmer, 803 P.2d 1249, 1251 (Utah Ct.App.1990); State v. Talbot, 792 P.2d 489, 493 (Utah Ct.App.1990); State v. Johnson, 771 P.2d 326, 327 (Utah Ct.App.1989), rev'd on other grounds, 805 P.2d 761 (Utah 1991).

The state proposes in this case that evaluation of voluntariness of consent is a question of fact, to which the clearly erroneous standard--nothing more and nothing less--should be applied. ⁵ The state relies primarily on United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U.S. 544, 557, 100 S.Ct. 1870, 1878-79, 64 L.Ed.2d 497 (1980) and Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218, 248-49, 93 S.Ct. 2041, 2058-59, 36 L.Ed.2d 854 (1973). Each of these decisions of the United States Supreme Court contains language, albeit somewhat cursory, to that effect. We remain persuaded that both reasoned analysis and prior precedent sustain our view that the determination of voluntariness of consent is a mixed question of law and fact and is appropriately resolved under a bifurcated examination of, first, the predicate historical facts found by the trial court, weighed against a clearly erroneous standard, and, second, of the emerging legal conclusion, evaluated for correctness. Bobo, 803 P.2d at 1272. The soundness of this view is demonstrated by considering the core functions of trial and appellate courts, the need for some semblance of consistency in the law, the reason for insisting on detailed findings, and the analytical deficiency inherent in treating ultimate issues as matters of fact.

1. Trial and Appellate Functions

Examination of voluntariness of consent mandates a fact-intensive inquiry, see State v. Lovegren, 798 P.2d 767, 770 (Utah Ct.App.1990), although it is essentially a mixed question of law and fact. Regrettably, fact-sensitive issues may spawn confusion surrounding the appellate standard of review. See State v. Ramirez, 817 P.2d 774, 781 n. 3 (Utah 1991) (Supreme Court "might refer casually" to standard of review of voluntariness of a confession as an " 'abuse of discretion' standard. In fact, it is not. It is a correctness standard, which incorporates a clearly erroneous standard for the review of subsidiary factual determinations."). A mixed question of law and fact is one in which "the historical facts are admitted or established, the rule of law is undisputed, and the issue is whether ... the rule of law as applied to the established facts is or is not violated." Pullman-Standard v. Swint, 456 U.S. 273, 289 n. 19, 102 S.Ct. 1781, 1790 n. 19, 72 L.Ed.2d 66 (1982). The Court has "noted the vexing nature of the distinction between questions of fact and questions of law." Pullman-Standard, 456 U.S. at 288, 102 S.Ct. at 1790. There is no "rule or principle that will unerringly distinguish a factual finding from a legal conclusion." Id.

Uniquely within the province of the trial court is the establishment of the predicate facts which emerge after a consideration of all testimony and the weighing of credibility. See Lovegren, 798 P.2d at 771. Because "the truth is rarely pure and never simple," ⁶ the trial judge is in the best position to sift witness credibility and the accuracy of conflicting evidence. Johnson, 771 P.2d at 327. Thus, we will not intrude upon the trial court's distillation of the facts from contradictory evidence unless such findings are clearly erroneous. Id.

Appellate courts, on the other hand, take the facts as found by the trial court and square them with the law, sometimes developing the contours of the law in the process. But that development of the law is necessarily more consistent when undertaken by collegial appellate courts than individual trial judges acting alone, with no input from colleagues, no staff support to speak of, and little time for reflection.

2. Consistency

The judiciary best serves society when the law is interpreted uniformly and in predictable fashion. See United States v. Maragh, 894 F.2d 415, 418 (D.C.Cir.), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 880, 111 S.Ct. 214, 112 L.Ed.2d 174 (1990). This is particularly true when fundamental civil liberties are at stake. Id. ("soundest of jurisprudential considerations compel appellate courts not to shirk their responsibility independently to apply important constitutional standards" and such "responsibility cannot be delegated to the trier of fact").

Appellate review of legal conclusions and "ultimate facts" under a correction of error standard promotes the consistent application of legal principles. Appellate courts do not possess some inherent higher wisdom nor are trial courts bereft of the ability to resolve difficult legal questions. Notwithstanding, the conventional wisdom of two heads being better than one...