State v. Williams

• Decision Date: 09 May 1990
• Docket Number: No. 89-229,89-229
• Citation: 51 Ohio St.3d 58,554 N.E.2d 108
• Parties: The STATE of Ohio, Appellant, v. WILLIAMS, Appellee.
• Court: Ohio Supreme Court

Page 58

51 Ohio St.3d 58

554 N.E.2d 108

The STATE of Ohio, Appellant, v. WILLIAMS, Appellee.

No. 89-229.

Supreme Court of Ohio.

Submitted Feb. 21, 1990.

Decided May 9, 1990.

On September 30, 1987, at approximately 6:00 p.m., Deputy Sheriff James Garst was investigating a complaint that three persons had been observed leaving a rural, partially wooded area of Sandusky County, two of whom appeared to be carrying off produce from someone's garden, and the third waiting in a gray compact automobile. Deputy Garst had changed into civilian clothes, which was standard procedure for walking through fields, and drove to the scene of the complaint in his own brown car. He parked his car in a driveway leading to an abandoned brick farmhouse and some farm buildings, and exited the car wearing a black jacket, his deputy sheriff's hat with a badge attached, a portable radio, and a sawed-off shotgun slung over his shoulder.

Garst followed a hedgerow along the house, past a field of corn to the place where the subjects had come down a path out of the woods. He then noticed green leaves among the dying autumn foliage in a field behind the house. Upon further investigation, Garst discovered several large growing fields of marijuana. He immediately radioed the department, requesting Sheriff's Detective Lee Swartz to join him.

Meanwhile, appellee, Larry E. Williams, arrived at the farmhouse in his red pickup truck, which he parked behind Deputy Garst's car. Williams was wearing military camouflage hat and coat, with a hunting license attached to the back of his coat, and he had stopped ostensibly to get permission to hunt squirrels and spot for deer. When no one answered the door of the farmhouse, Williams went behind the house to find the owner of the brown car.

Deputy Garst, after radioing for assistance, circled the marijuana field and followed a winding path which led to and through several other marijuana fields, and eventually back to the path, which he followed back up to the barn. As Garst turned the corner of the barn, he saw Williams standing directly behind the house against a wire fence. Garst walked toward Williams and asked him what he was doing there. Williams, thinking at first that Garst was another hunter, asked what Garst was doing there, and then responded that he was there to squirrel hunt. Garst, knowing it was nearly too late in the day to legally squirrel hunt and observing that Williams did not have a hunting rifle with him, directed Williams to follow him along the fence to his car, where Garst patted him down.

During the frisk, Garst removed a folding knife from Williams's right trouser pocket. In Williams's left-hand coat pocket, Garst felt something heavy which moved and felt like several .22 caliber shells. He reached into the pocket and pulled a few of the shells out, confirming their caliber. He then asked Williams where the gun was that went to those shells. Williams said that it was in his truck. Garst then asked whether it was loaded, and Williams said, "yes." Garst finished the pat down, walked over to the truck and looked in the window, where he observed the rifle in plain view, lying in front of the seat across the hump of the floor.

Detective Swartz and a patrolman from the Gibsonburg Police Department then arrived. Swartz recognized Williams's name, checked with the Fremont Police Department and learned that Williams had been convicted in 1985 of trafficking in marijuana. Williams was then read his Miranda rights, and gave his consent to search the locked vehicle, at which time the loaded rifle was seized. ¹

Williams was subsequently charged with and later indicted for having a firearm while under disability, in violation of R.C. 2923.13(A)(3). On December 31, 1987, Williams moved to suppress the rifle and shells, alleging that the search and seizure of his person and his truck violated the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. On January 7, 1988, following a suppression hearing, the trial court denied Williams's motion. On February 5, 1988, Williams withdrew his plea of not guilty and entered a plea of no contest. The trial court found him guilty and sentenced him to eighteen months'imprisonment.

The court of appeals reversed, holding that Deputy Garst did not have "a reasonable and articulable suspicion to detain appellant beyond the time [for] which Williams could explain his presence," and further holding "that no evidence was adduced at the hearing which justified the officer's intrusion into appellant's privacy by subjecting him to an unwarranted and improper frisk."

The cause is now before this court upon the allowance of a motion for leave to appeal.

John E. Meyers, Pros. Atty., and Ronald J. Mayle, Freemont, for appellant.

Robert G. Hart, Freemont, for appellee.

PER CURIAM.

We are asked to determine whether the stop and frisk of appellee by Deputy Garst violated appellee's right, as guaranteed by the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. We answer such query in the negative, as Deputy Garst's conduct was lawful under the dictates of Terry v. Ohio (1968), 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889, and its progeny.

Terry stands for the proposition that "a police officer may in appropriate circumstances and in an appropriate manner approach a person for purposes of investigating possibly criminal behavior even though there is no probable cause to make an arrest." Id. at 22, 88 S.Ct. at 1880. "The Fourth Amendment does not require a policeman who lacks the precise level of information necessary for probable cause to arrest to simply shrug his shoulders and allow a crime to occur or a criminal to escape. On the contrary, Terry recognizes that it may be the essence of good police work to adopt an intermediate response. See id., at 23, 88 S.Ct. at 1881. A brief stop of a suspicious individual, in order to determine his identity or to maintain the status quo momentarily while obtaining more information, may be most reasonable in light of the facts known to the officer at the time. Id., at 21-22, 88 S.Ct. at 1879-1880; see Gaines v. Craven, 448 F.2d 1236 (CA9 1971); United States v. Unverzagt, 424 F.2d 396 (CA8 1970).

"The Court recognized in Terry that the policeman making a reasonable investigatory stop should not be denied the opportunity to protect himself from attack by a hostile suspect. 'When an officer is justified in believing that the individual whose suspicious behavior he is investigating at close range is armed and presently dangerous to the officer or to others,' he may conduct a limited protective search for concealed weapons. 392 U.S., at 24 ." Adams v. Williams (1972), 407 U.S. 143, 145-146, 92 S.Ct. 1921, 1922-1923, 32 L.Ed.2d 612.

In order to warrant a brief investigatory stop pursuant to Terry, the police officer involved "must be able to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion." Terry, supra, 392 U.S. at 21, 88 S.Ct. at 1880. Such an investigatory stop "must be viewed in light of the totality of the surrounding circumstances" presented to the police officer. State v. Freeman (1980), 64 Ohio St.2d 291, 18 O.O.3d 472, 414 N.E.2d 1044, paragraph one of the syllabus. The standard for reviewing such police conduct is an objective one: "would the facts available to the officer at the moment of the seizure or the search 'warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief' that the action taken was appropriate?" Terry, supra, 392 U.S. at 21-22, 88 S.Ct. at 1879-1880; United States v. Wright (C.A.8, 1977), 565 F.2d 486, 489. That is, "[a]n investigatory stop must be justified by some objective manifestation that the person stopped is, or is about to be, engaged in criminal activity." United States v. Cortez (1981), 449 U.S. 411, 417, 101 S.Ct. 690, 695, 66 L.Ed.2d 621.

We observe initially that no apparent "seizure" of Williams occurred, and thus the Fourth Amendment was not implicated, until Deputy Garst asked Williams to accompany him to Garst's car. ² Garst's approach to Williams, and his initial question ("I asked him what he was doing there"), cannot be said to have restrained Williams's liberty in such a way that he was not free to leave.

Even if this initial encounter were characterized as a "seizure" for Fourth Amendment purposes, our review of the entire record leads us to the conclusion that Deputy Garst acted reasonably in investigating Williams's presence at the abandoned farmhouse. In checking out the complaint from earlier in the day, Deputy Garst had not found a picked-over country garden, but rather had discovered several growing fields of marijuana, as well as a path leading from the woods into such fields and on down to the abandoned farm buildings. A possible, and reasonable, inference led Garst to suspect that the men which the complainant had observed carrying "produce" were actually carrying marijuana plants from the woods. Upon returning to the farm buildings, Garst happened upon Williams, whom he did not know and of whom he reasonably inquired as to his reason for being there.

Williams's answer, that he was at this farmhouse to ask the owner's permission to hunt on his land, further aroused Garst's suspicion. The farmhouse was obviously abandoned, and there remained only minutes in the day during which Williams could legally squirrel hunt. This combination of facts, together with rational inferences drawn from them, reasonably justified Garst in detaining Williams further to determine his identity and to question him. See United States v. Purry (C.A.D.C.1976), 545 F.2d 217, 220. We hold that Deputy Garst possessed a reasonable suspicion that Williams was engaged in or was about to engage in criminal activity.

"The second aspect of Terry was its approval of frisks by the police of the persons they have stopped. Such...