State v. Wilson

• Decision Date: 20 August 2020
• Docket Number: Docket No. 47275
• Parties: STATE OF IDAHO, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. ANDREW REED WILSON, Defendant-Respondent.
• Court: Idaho Court of Appeals

STATE OF IDAHO, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. ANDREW REED WILSON, Defendant-Respondent.

Docket No. 47275

COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF IDAHO

August 20, 2020

Melanie Gagnepain, Clerk

Appeal from the District Court of the Sixth Judicial District, State of Idaho, Bannock County. Hon. Robert C. Naftz, District Judge.

Order granting motion to suppress, reversed and case remanded.

Hon. Lawrence G. Wasden, Attorney General; Kenneth K. Jorgensen, Deputy Attorney General, Boise, for appellant. Kenneth K. Jorgensen argued.

Eric D. Fredericksen, State Appellate Public Defender; Reed P. Anderson, Deputy Appellate Public Defender, Boise, for respondent. Andrea W. Reynolds argued.

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BRAILSFORD, Judge

The State appeals from the district court's order granting Andrew Reed Wilson's motion to suppress. Because we conclude reasonable suspicion existed based on the totality of circumstances, we reverse the court's order and remand the case.

I.FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

The district court made the following factual findings in its ruling granting Wilson's motion to suppress:

During the early morning hours of December 8, 2018, [a] Pocatello Jack in the Box employee . . . contacted Pocatello Police in reference to what he believed to be an intoxicated driver in the drive-through lane of the restaurant. According to the testimony of [the employee], he called the police because the occupants of [the] car were laughing, and when [the employee] stated it would be a 10-15 minute wait for their order, the group told [him] they had alcohol in the car. In response to [the employee's] phone call to the Pocatello Police Department, Officer Ryan Malone was dispatched to the Jack in the Box to perform a welfare check. Based on the information he had received, Officer Malone understood he would find a purple car in the drive-through lane of the Pocatello Jack in the Box whose occupants were possibly intoxicated.

When Officer Malone arrived at the restaurant, he made contact with the occupants of the vehicle. [Wilson] was the driver, and he explained to Officer Malone that the group was not intoxicated, but were just being rowdy while they were ordering food. According to Officer Malone's testimony, at the time he made his initial contact with [Wilson], he observed what appeared to be four empty 32-ounce beer cans on the floor of the vehicle.¹ Officer Malone then told [Wilson] to pull his car over to the side of the parking lot, so Officer Malone could check [Wilson's] eyes and ensure he was safe to drive. [Wilson] complied with that order and pulled his car into the parking lot. [Wilson] then exited his car and met Officer Malone at the back of the vehicle. Officer Malone testified that when the two met at the back of [Wilson's] car, he could smell the odor of an intoxicating beverage coming from [Wilson's] person. Officer Malone then performed standardized field sobriety tests on [Wilson]. Based upon [Wilson's] performance on those tests, he was arrested for suspicion of driving under the influence. Subsequent to [Wilson's] arrest, a search warrant was obtained to draw [Wilson's] blood. The results of the blood test showed [Wilson] had a blood alcohol content of .192.

(Footnotes omitted.) As a result of this encounter, the State charged Wilson with felony driving under the influence, Idaho Code § 18-8004.

Wilson filed a motion to suppress all the evidence obtained during the encounter arguing, among other things, that Officer Malone initially detained him in the drive-through lane and lacked reasonable suspicion to detain him at that time. The State did not respond to this motion before the parties proceeded to an evidentiary hearing, at which both the Jack in the Box employee and Officer Malone testified. At the conclusion of the hearing, the district court took the motion under advisement and ordered post-hearing briefing.

In its post-hearing brief, the State relied on the community caretaking function to explain Officer Malone's initial encounter with Wilson in the drive-through lane. Specifically, the State argued that Officer Malone was performing his community caretaking function when he approached Wilson's car and that Officer Malone did not actually detain Wilson until after Wilson exited his car in the parking lot when Officer Malone saw Wilson's "glassy eyes" andsmelled the odor of alcohol coming from Wilson. At this point in time, the State argued, Officer Malone had reasonable suspicion to detain Wilson.

In a written decision, the district court rejected the State's argument that Officer Malone was performing a caretaking function when he approached Wilson's car in the drive-through lane, concluding "there was no evidence that Officer Malone had a genuine or warranted concern that any of the occupants of the vehicle were in need of any assistance." Rather, the court ruled Officer Malone detained Wilson in the drive-through lane when Officer Malone "instructed him to move his car from the drive through to the restaurant parking lot."

The district court further ruled that reasonable suspicion did not support this detention:

Viewing the totality of circumstances, Officer Malone did not have reasonable suspicion to detain [Wilson]. A review of the facts known to Officer Malone and the inferences that can be reasonably drawn from the totality of circumstances [show Wilson's] detention was not supported by reasonable suspicion that he was engaged in criminal activity. First, a report to law enforcement that occupants in a vehicle located in a drive-through lane of a restaurant had alcohol in the car is not sufficient to establish reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. Further, the smell of alcohol coming from a vehicle with several occupants is not adequate to conclude that [Wilson] himself had consumed any alcohol. Likewise, the presence of empty beer cans in the car does not establish that [Wilson] had consumed any of the alcohol in the cans. Therefore, the detention of [Wilson] was impermissible.

The State timely appeals the district court's order granting Wilson's motion to suppress.

II.ANALYSIS

A. The State's Challenge to the District Court's Ruling Is Preserved for Appeal

On appeal, the State no longer argues Officer Malone was performing a community caretaking function when he engaged Wilson in the drive-through lane. Rather, the State now directly challenges the district court's ruling by arguing Officer Malone had reasonable suspicion to detain Wilson in the drive-through lane. Wilson argues the State failed to preserve this argument. We disagree.

The Idaho Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the Court will not address new issues on appeal. In State v. Gonzalez, 165 Idaho 95, 439 P.3d 1267 (2019), the Idaho Supreme Court clarified the rule governing when a party has preserved or failed to preserve an issue for appeal. Id. at 97, 439 P.3d at 1269. The Court distinguished between a case in which a party consistently maintains the same issue or position but "polishes" its argument with citation to previouslyuncited authority and a case in which a party raises a new substantive issue on which the trial court did not have the opportunity to rule. Id. at 98, 439 P.3d at 1270. The Court held that the former was a permissible "pragmatic evolution" of an appellate issue but that the latter was an issue unpreserved for appeal. Id. Further, the Court emphasized that it will not address on appeal "an issue or a party's position on an issue that [the trial court] did not have the opportunity to address." Id. at 99, 439 P.3d at 1271 (emphasis added).

As this language indicates, an exception to the preservation rule applies if a party argued the issue to the trial court or if the court actually decided the issue. See, e.g., State v. Duvalt, 131 Idaho 550, 553, 961 P.2d 641, 644 (1998) ("An exception to [the general preservation] rule . . . has been applied by this Court when the issue was argued to or decided by the trial court."); State v. Jeske, 164 Idaho 862, 868, 436 P.3d 683, 689 (2019) (noting trial court specifically ruled on issue defendant raised on appeal and stating "this Court recognizes a distinction between issues not formally raised below and issues that never surfaced below") (quotations and brackets omitted).

This exception applies in this case. We agree with the State that the district court had the opportunity to address the issue it raises on appeal--whether Officer Malone had reasonable suspicion to detain Wilson in the drive-through lane. Indeed, the court directly ruled that Officer Malone did not have reasonable suspicion to detain Wilson in the drive-through lane. On appeal, the State does not challenge any of the district court's factual findings but, rather, simply challenges the court's legal application of the reasonable suspicion standard to the facts as the court found them. Specifically, the State argues that--contrary to the court's ruling--the Jack in the Box employee's tip about alcohol in Wilson's car, the odor of alcohol emanating from the car, and the presence of empty beer cans in the car constituted reasonable suspicion to detain Wilson in the drive-through lane.

The facts on which the State relies on appeal to argue that reasonable suspicion existed are the exact same facts the court relied on to conclude the State failed to establish reasonable suspicion. Because the court directly addressed and ruled on the issue of reasonable suspicion based on the same facts the State relies on to argue the contrary, the State's argument is preserved for appeal.

B. Reasonable...