State v. Wade
| Decision Date | 10 November 1980 |
| Docket Number | No. 67565,67565 |
| Citation | 390 So.2d 1309 |
| Parties | STATE of Louisiana v. Robert L. WADE. |
| Court | Louisiana Supreme Court |
William J. Guste, Jr., Atty. Gen., Barbara Rutledge, Asst. Atty. Gen., Harry F. Connick, Dist. Atty., Louise Korns, Cornelius Regan, Asst. Dist. Attys., for plaintiff-appellee.
Orleans Indigent Defender Program, Howard McCurdy, Dwight Doskey, New Orleans, for defendant-appellant.
This case is an appeal from a conviction for armed robbery. La.R.S. 14:64. The single assignment of error challenges the trial court's denial of a motion to suppress physical evidence, a statement given to the police and a one-on-one identification made by the victim.
On January 24, 1979 at approximately 8:10 p. m., two plainclothes police officers were patrolling the New Orleans French Quarter in a blue and white "unmarked typical Ford LTD, the type police use". The officers observed the defendant, Robert Wade, walking in a hurried manner and continually turning his head "as if looking for someone". The officers decided to keep Wade under surveillance for a few minutes as they approached him from the rear in their vehicle. As the car drew nearer to Wade, he caught sight of it and immediately began to run. The officers felt that Wade's actions indicated that he had just perpetrated a crime, so they decided to question him. The officers raced their vehicle until they had pulled alongside Wade. At that time, they stopped and jumped out of their vehicle, identified themselves as police officers, and blocked Wade's path, thereby stopping him.
Officer Oris Buckner explained that they did not draw their pistols when they began walking toward Wade because they could see Wade's hands and he made no sudden move to reach for anything on his person. Buckner testified that because of the nature of Wade's conduct and his presence in a high crime area, he felt that his own safety was in jeopardy and, for this reason, Wade was frisked. The frisk resulted in the seizure of a .38 special chrome-plated revolver from a shoulder holster type bag concealed under Wade's jacket. Wade was immediately arrested for carrying a concealed weapon. The officers also recovered $68.
Their curiosity aroused, the officers radioed their dispatcher and asked if there had been any recent reports of robberies or other crimes involving guns in the area. A reply came back that there had just been a robbery perpetrated at Makin's Grocery, approximately 5 to 7 blocks from the scene of Wade's arrest. The officers, after informing Wade of his Miranda rights, told him that he was under suspicion for the crime of armed robbery. En route to Makin's Grocery, Wade allegedly stated that he committed the robbery at Makin's.
When the officers arrived at the robbery scene, they stood outside the picture window of the grocery with Wade. Craig LeBlanc, the victim of the robbery, was standing inside the store. He glanced through the window and immediately identified Wade as the perpetrator. Wade fit the same description as the man described to the police by Mr. LeBlanc before the one-on-one confrontation occurred.
Defendant contends that the actions of the police in stopping and frisking him were illegal and that, therefore, all evidence obtained as a result of the initial confrontation was inadmissible.
The landmark case of Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), established that the constitution permits a police officer to investigate possible felonious criminal behavior by temporarily stopping and questioning a suspect where there is reasonable cause to believe that a crime has been or is about to be committed. This "stop" can be effected even though there is not sufficient probable cause to subject the suspect to a full custodial arrest. Further, a police officer has the right to conduct a limited "frisk" for weapons after making the investigatory stop when he has drawn a specific reasonable inference from facts and experience that he is dealing with an armed and dangerous individual. The principles embodied in Terry and its progeny provide the constitutional basis for C.Cr.P. art. 215.1, the Louisiana "stop and frisk" statute. 1
In defining reasonable cause sufficient to justify an investigatory stop, this Court stated in State v. Chopin, 372 So.2d 1222, 1224 (La. 1979);
"(R)easonable cause is something less than probable cause and must be determined under the facts of each case by whether the officer had sufficient knowledge of facts and circumstances to justify an infringement on the individual's right to be free from governmental interference."
At the time the officers decided to stop defendant, they had no knowledge that a crime had been recently committed, nor had they observed the defendant committing any crime. In the past, this Court stated that startled looks, State v. Truss, 317 So.2d 177 (La. 1975), or nervousness, State v. Chopin, supra, at the approach of the authorities do not provide reasonable grounds for an investigatory stop. On the other hand, the officers had not only defendant's nervousness ("looking around") but also his apparent sudden flight through a "high crime" area. In State v. Cook, 332 So.2d 760, 763 (La. 1976), this Court held that a defendant's actions "... in an area of nighttime robberies and purse snatchings ... consistent with an intention to commit this type of crime ..." sufficient to justify an investigatory stop. In State v. Taylor 363 So.2d 699, 703 (La. 1979), this Court also observed (albeit in dicta) that defendant's sudden reaction to the presence of the police (in that case, from a fast walk to slow), coupled with his presence at night "in an area where robberies, rapes and purse-snatchings are common", supported a stop and frisk.
The Taylor case is factually distinguishable from the present case in that the defendant fled after viewing the police officer riding in a marked vehicle rather than an unmarked one. However, this distinction does not compel a different result so long as the police officers reasonably believed that Wade knew their identity and reasonably believed that his actions were indicia of criminality.
The testimony of Officer Buckner at the suppression hearing and the trial 2 established that the officers were riding in the same type of vehicle that the marked patrol utilized. He stated that the car was blue and white, although it was not the same blue and white "as a regular police car". Officer Buckner also pointed out that it is common knowledge that this particular type of vehicle is utilized for unmarked patrol. 3 This knowledge gained from experience as a police officer when coupled with the defendant's immediate flight through a high crime area upon seeing the vehicle in which Officer Buckner was riding, was more than enough for him to reasonably suspect that he had been recognized as a police officer, and that some criminality was underway. Thus, the investigatory stop was lawful.
In State v. Hunter, 375 So.2d 99 (La. 1979), this Court pointed out that merely because there are reasonable grounds to justify a lawful investigatory stop, such grounds do not automatically justify a frisk for weapons. The basis for that statement was the implicit realization that criminality and weaponry are neither synonymous nor mutually inclusive. However, because there often is an overlap between the two, in many situations the circumstances that justify the stop also warrant the frisk. See State v. Taylor, supra.
The purpose of allowing a limited weapons search is to prevent harm to police officers by allowing action prior to a crisis stage. Terry, supra. Police officers are not required to stand by and give a suspect the first move before taking action. "The officer need not be absolutely certain that the individual is armed; the issue is whether a reasonably prudent man in the circumstances would be warranted in the belief that his safety or that of others was in danger." Terry, 392 U.S. at 27,...
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