State v. White

• Decision Date: 25 September 1992
• Docket Number: No. C4-90-1430,C4-90-1430
• Citation: 489 N.W.2d 792
• Parties: STATE of Minnesota, Appellant, v. Eddie WHITE, Respondent.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

Page 792

489 N.W.2d 792

STATE of Minnesota, Appellant, v. Eddie WHITE, Respondent.

No. C4-90-1430.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

Sept. 25, 1992.

Rehearing Denied Nov. 3, 1992.

Syllabus by the Court

Pursuant to the rule established in New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 101 S.Ct. 2860, 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981), police officer properly entered and searched automobile of defendant as an incident of defendant's contemporaneous arrest where officer had probable cause to believe that defendant had driven without a license and had given false identification to the officer.

Hubert H. Humphrey, III, Atty. Gen., St. Paul, Michael O. Freeman, Hennepin County Atty., and Donna J. Wolfson, Asst. County Atty., Minneapolis, for appellant.

John M. Stuart, State Public Defender and Lawrence W. Pry, Asst. State Public Defender, St. Paul, for respondent.

Heard, considered and decided by the court en banc.

OPINION

COYNE, Justice.

Defendant was convicted of possession of a controlled substance in the third degree in violation of Minn.Stat. Sec. 152.023, subd. 2(2) (1989). The court of appeals, in a 2-1 decision holding that the search of defendant's car violated the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, "reverse[d] and remand[ed] for [an] evidentiary hearing on whether [the] police would have discovered the evidence, inevitably, without the unconstitutional search." State v. White, 468 N.W.2d 556, 558 (Minn.App.1991). We reverse the decision of the court of appeals and reinstate the judgment of conviction.

On the morning of November 2, 1989, a park police officer was on his way to give a talk to a youth group at Webber Park in North Minneapolis when he saw defendant's car, which had neither front nor rear license plates, make an unsignaled left turn. As the officer turned the corner he saw that the driver, the defendant, was parking the car. Defendant got out and, after making eye contact with the officer, walked into a nearby front yard, ignoring two requests from the officer that he stop and talk. Finally, after a third request, defendant responded.

The officer radioed in the stop, then asked defendant for his license. Defendant said that it had been taken away by a law enforcement agency in Illinois. The officer then asked to see some other identification. Instead of pulling out his wallet, defendant reached inside the open window of the car, removed from the sun visor a traffic citation in the name of Jamal Whitted, offered it to the officer, and said his name was Jamal Whitted. Defendant then pointed to a temporary permit in the rear window of the car, which the officer had not seen because of metal louvers at the window. The permit bore the name Eddie White. Defendant claimed that that was his cousin's name.

Because defendant's identification was both inadequate and highly suspicious, the officer had defendant sit in the back of the squad car while he ran an identification check. The officer asked defendant to give his middle name and defendant said "Lorenzo." Asked to spell it, defendant first said, "L-E-N-R-E-Z-O." Asked to spell it again, defendant said, "L-E-R-N-Z-O."

Considering defendant's assertions of identity untrustworthy, the officer returned to the car to look for further identification. When he entered the driver's side he saw in plain view on the passenger seat an open duffle bag containing a wad of money and, protruding from the bag, a plastic tube containing white powder. The officer, without touching the contents of the defendant's car, returned to the squad car and called his captain. After talking with his captain, the officer told defendant he was under arrest for possession of narcotics.

To guard against leaving fingerprints or exposing himself to toxic substances, the officer went to his brief case in the trunk to get his rubber gloves. Realizing that the gloves were in his jacket in the back of the squad car, he opened the rear door and reached in to get the jacket. Defendant then kicked open the door and tried to flee. At one point as the officer tried to restrain defendant, defendant tugged at the officer's gun. Eventually, after a brief chase, the officer, with gun pointed, got defendant to stop.

When help arrived, defendant was again placed in the back of the officer's squad car. After being given a Miranda warning, he said that his name was Eddie White, that he owned the car, and that the duffle bag in the car was his.

In a subsequent search of the car at the scene officers seized $3,000 in cash, 27.9 grams of 95.9% pure cocaine with a street value of $5,600, and, hidden in the trunk, a police scanner tuned to the Minneapolis-St. Paul Police Department frequencies.

At trial defendant claimed some acquaintance, possibly a person named "Shane," owned the duffle bag. He said the duffle bag he was referring to when he admitted owning one was a duffle bag in the trunk. It appears that there was also a duffle bag in the trunk.

The defendant concedes that the officer had a valid, objective basis for the stop, but contends that the officer exceeded the scope of a Terry search by entering the defendant's car to search for identification papers. The United States Supreme Court and this court have consistently ruled that in the course of a Terry stop police may direct a person to provide identification. United States v. Hensley, 469 U.S. 221, 229, 105 S.Ct. 675, 680, 83 L.Ed.2d 604 (1985); Michigan v. Summers, 452 U.S. 692, 700-01, n. 12, 101 S.Ct. 2587, 2593, n. 12, 69 L.Ed.2d 340 (1981); State v. Schinzing, 342 N.W.2d 105, 109 (Minn.1985); State v. Pleas, 329 N.W.2d 329 (Minn.1983); 3 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure Sec. 9.2(f) at 375 (2d ed. 1987). As we said in Schinzing Requesting a stopped driver to show his license is standard procedure in stop cases. Any rule that in certain stop cases police cannot request the driver's license would create unnecessary confusion among the police.

342 N.W.2d at 109.

The issue here is what happens if, in response to a police officer's perfectly legitimate request for identification, the person stopped refuses to provide any identification or provides obviously false identification. May the police officer then make a limited search for identification? Or may the person stopped bar standard procedure and the officer's ability to discover the person's true identity "by just saying No?" The United States Supreme Court has not decided the issue, and neither have we. See State v. Frazier, 318 N.W.2d 42, 44, n. 1 (Minn.1982) (expressly declining to decide the issue). Because we conclude that the search in this case can be sustained as a search incident to arrest, we again expressly decline to decide the search-for-identification issue.

The court of appeals took the position that the search-incident-to-arrest cases cannot be relied upon as support for the entry and search of the car because, although the officer clearly had probable cause to arrest defendant for driving without a license and for giving false identification to the police, (a) there was no need to search the car for evidence of those offenses, (b) the defendant was not arrested for either of those offenses, and (c) the car was not under the defendant's immediate control or in his immediate vicinity when he was in the back of the squad car. See State v. White, 468 N.W.2d 556, 560-61 (Minn.App.1991).

It seems to us, however, as it did to the dissenter below, that entry and search of the vehicle was permissible under the "bright line" rule established in New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 101 S.Ct. 2860, 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981) and cases of this court relying on Belton. The basic holding of Belton is that when a police officer has made a lawful custodial arrest of the occupant of an automobile, the officer may, as a contemporaneous incident of the arrest, search the passenger compartment of the car and any containers found within the passenger compartment.

That the officer arrested defendant for possession of a controlled substance after the search of his automobile rather than for driving without a license or for giving a false or fictitious name to the officer does not, in our opinion, convert the search into an unlawful search of the kind proscribed in Smith v. Ohio, 494 U.S. 541, 543, 110 S.Ct. 1288, 1290, 108 L.Ed.2d 464 (1990) (arrest of pedestrian based on contraband discovered in search of grocery bag made without warrant or probable cause). ¹

Moreover, the fact that this novice officer had not formally placed defendant under arrest but was continuing to proceed on a Terry stop rationale does not foreclose the state from subsequently justifying the custody of defendant by establishing that objective probable cause to arrest existed, thereby in turn justifying the search as an incidental search. Under the objective test of probable cause which we use, the issue is whether there was objective probable cause to arrest. Thus, in Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491, 103 S.Ct. 1319, 75 L.Ed.2d 229 (1983), the Court said the fact the officer testified at a suppression hearing that he did not believe there was probable cause and the fact he...