State v. Wilkinson

• Decision Date: 30 October 2008
• Docket Number: No. 20060904-CA.,20060904-CA.
• Citation: 2008 UT App 395,197 P.3d 96
• Parties: STATE of Utah, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. Jack WILKINSON, Defendant and Appellant.
• Court: Utah Court of Appeals

197 P.3d 96

2008 UT App 395

STATE of Utah, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. Jack WILKINSON, Defendant and Appellant.

No. 20060904-CA.

Court of Appeals of Utah.

October 30, 2008.

Margaret P. Lindsay, Spanish Fork; and Patrick V. Lindsay, Provo, for Appellant.

Mark L. Shurtleff and Marian Decker, Salt Lake City, for Appellee.

Before Judges GREENWOOD, THORNE, and BENCH.

OPINION

THORNE, Associate Presiding Judge:

¶ 1 Jack Wilkinson was convicted of possession of a controlled substance, see Utah Code Ann. § 58-37-8(2)(a)(i) (Supp.2005), and providing false information to a police officer, see Utah Code Ann. § 76-8-507(1) (2003). Wilkinson appeals, challenging the district court's denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained when Wilkinson was searched during a traffic stop. We affirm.

BACKGROUND

¶ 2 On February 8, 2005, Officer Plank of the Utah State Bureau of Investigations stopped a vehicle for speeding. Wilkinson was a passenger in the rear seat of the vehicle on the driver's side. When Officer Plank approached and spoke with the driver, Novetta Payne, she immediately informed him that her driver license was suspended. Officer Plank returned to his vehicle where he verified Payne's suspended license and requested that a canine unit be dispatched to the scene. At some point early in the stop, Officer Plank requested the names of the passengers. Wilkinson gave Officer Plank a false name.

¶ 3 The canine handler, Deputy Williams, was in the area and arrived approximately two minutes after Officer Plank's request. Deputy Williams deployed his dog to sniff the exterior of the vehicle for drugs, and the dog indicated on the driver's side of the vehicle. The officers had the vehicle's occupants step out of the vehicle, and the dog then indicated on Wilkinson. Deputy Williams also recognized Wilkinson's true identity, and the officers determined that there was a warrant for his arrest. The officers arrested Wilkinson pursuant to the warrant, and a search of Wilkinson incident to his arrest revealed methamphetamine on his person.

¶ 4 Charged with drug and false information offenses, Wilkinson moved to suppress the evidence obtained as a result of the traffic stop. Wilkinson argued that Officer Plank's request for a canine unit was unsupported by reasonable suspicion and was therefore an impermissible extension of the scope and duration of Wilkinson's detention. The district court denied Wilkinson's motion, and he was convicted at trial. Wilkinson appeals.

ISSUE AND STANDARD OF REVIEW

¶ 5 Wilkinson argues that the district court erred in determining that Officer Plank's request for a canine unit did not impermissibly expand the scope or duration of Wilkinson's detention. Challenges to suppression rulings present questions of law that we review for correctness. See Layton City v. Oliver, 2006 UT App 244, ¶ 11, 139 P.3d 281 ("We review the trial court's ruling on a motion to suppress for correctness, without deference to the trial court's application of the law to the facts.").

ANALYSIS

¶ 6 The only issue before us is Wilkinson's argument that a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights, see U.S. Const. amend. IV,¹ occurred in the short period of time between the actual stop of the vehicle and Wilkinson's arrest on the warrant. Wilkinson argues that Officer Plank unlawfully extended both the scope and duration of Wilkinson's detention in the few moments that he took to request that a canine unit be dispatched to the scene of the stop and that the incriminating events that followed—Deputy Williams's identification of Wilkinson, the discovery of Wilkinson's warrant status, the drug dog alerting, and Wilkinson's arrest and search—all flow from Officer Plank's impermissible request. Wilkinson argues that evidence discovered in the search should therefore be suppressed and his criminal convictions reversed. We disagree and hold that Officer Plank's request for a canine unit did not impermissibly expand the scope or duration of Wilkinson's detention under the circumstances.

¶ 7 Wilkinson's argument that Officer Plank's request extended the scope of the detention is unavailing in light of Illinois v. Caballes, 543 U.S. 405, 125 S.Ct. 834, 160 L.Ed.2d 842 (2005). In Caballes, the United States Supreme Court held that the use of a dog to reveal drugs during the course of an otherwise lawful traffic stop does not implicate a reasonable expectation of privacy because it only reveals contraband and therefore does not alter the nature of the stop itself. See id. at 408, 125 S.Ct. 834 ("[C]onducting a dog sniff would not change the character of a traffic stop that is lawful at its inception and otherwise executed in a reasonable manner, unless the dog sniff itself infringed respondent's constitutionally protected interest in privacy. Our cases hold that it did not." (emphasis added)). If the arrival and deployment of the canine unit cannot be said to implicate reasonable privacy interests or impermissibly expand the scope of a detention, it follows that the mere request for such assistance does not implicate those same interests either.² See id. at 407-08, 125 S.Ct. 834.

¶ 8 Wilkinson's remaining argument, that Officer Plank's request for a canine unit unreasonably extended the duration of Wilkinson's detention, presents a closer question. Here, the district court found that "the duration of the stop was not extended by the canine sniff, not even by the few seconds it took to call for the dog." Wilkinson argues, cursorily, that the district court's conclusion is erroneous both because the record is unclear as to how long Officer Plank's request actually took and because Officer Plank took some unspecified additional amount of time to apprise Deputy Williams of what was "going on" upon his arrival. Because these events necessarily took some time and were related to the investigation of narcotics violations rather than speeding, Wilkinson argues that the justified seizure for speeding was unlawfully prolonged.

¶ 9 Wilkinson's argument essentially asks that courts micromanage the actions and decisions of police officers during traffic stops and other detentions. Wilkinson's proposed rule — that any deviation from the pursuit of the immediate purpose of a stop automatically and impermissibly extends the stop—would place untenable demands on officers on the street. If we were to agree with Wilkinson's argument, an officer would violate a detainee's rights by attending to any number of minor, unrelated matters that might arise during the course of a traffic stop.³ We decline Wilkinson's invitation to evaluate each traffic stop with a second-by-second accounting of an officer's actions and instead evaluate the reasonableness of the overall duration of Wilkinson's detention under the totality of the circumstances. See State v. Worwood, 2007 UT 47, ¶ 28, 164 P.3d 397 ("The reasonableness of a detention should be evaluated on the basis of the totality of the circumstances facing the officer, not on judicial second-guessing.").

¶ 10 The district court found, and Wilkinson does not...