State v. Wood

• Decision Date: 07 August 1987
• Docket Number: No. 84-199,84-199
• Citation: 148 Vt. 479,536 A.2d 902
• Court: Vermont Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE of Vermont v. Gary WOOD.

Page 902

536 A.2d 902

148 Vt. 479

STATE of Vermont v. Gary WOOD.

No. 84-199.

Supreme Court of Vermont.

Aug. 7, 1987.

Reargument Denied Oct. 8, 1987.

Jeffrey L. Amestoy, Atty. Gen., Elizabeth J. Grant, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Steve Norten, Law Clerk (on the brief), Montpelier, for plaintiff-appellee.

David W. Curtis, Defender Gen., and David Carpenter and William A. Nelson, Appellate Defenders, Montpelier, for defendant-appellant.

Before ALLEN, C.J., DOOLEY, J., BARNEY, C.J. (Ret.), KEYSER, J. (Ret.), and SPRINGER, District Judge (Ret.), specially assigned.

ALLEN, Chief Justice.

The defendant appeals his conviction of aiding in the concealment of stolen property in violation of 13 V.S.A. § 2561. He claims error in the trial court's denial of his pretrial motion to suppress the product of a warrantless search by state police officers. The trial court denied the motion, concluding that the defendant lacked standing to challenge the search under the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, and Chapter I, Article Eleven of the Vermont Constitution. We hold that the defendant has standing to challenge the search under the Vermont Constitution, and reverse the court's ruling. The defendant's conviction is vacated and the matter remanded for further proceedings.

I.

The challenged evidence in this case is testimony, documents and other evidence identifying a car and two motorcycles as well as the vehicles themselves. These vehicles were seized by a state police officer from the yard of a summer camp where the defendant was staying. The officer conducted the search that yielded the vehicles, without a warrant, as part of an investigation into the theft of stolen motorcycles from members of the "Blue Knights" motorcycle club.

The defendant, his wife and child occupied a trailer situated on the summer camp property. The camp was located in a remote summer resort development near Woodford, Vermont. A wooden camp dwelling was also on the property. The yard surrounding the buildings was bounded by a dirt road on one side and by woods on the other three sides. The property had approximately 44 feet of frontage along the road, and a depth of between 80 and 100 feet. The road frontage was marked by shrubs and a stone wall with an opening for a driveway.

The defendant and his family had stayed in the trailer for two weeks before the search. The defendant's wife had been given permission to stay in the trailer by its owner, who was the caretaker of the premises and the brother of the owner of the land upon which the camp and trailer were located. The camp caretaker was an acquaintance of the defendant and knew that he was on the property. The caretaker observed the defendant on the property on two occasions, and although he never expressly told the defendant he could stay, he never told him to leave. The camp caretaker often allowed people to stay at the camp on a casual basis in this manner, and the camp and trailer were generally left unlocked. Cars and other motor vehicles were left from time to time on the property with the caretaker's permission.

The search and seizure were conducted while the defendant was away from the camp. After determining that the vehicles were stolen, the officer impounded them, and the defendant was charged with aiding in the concealment of stolen property. Before trial, the defendant moved to suppress testimony or documents identifying the stolen car and motorcycles, contending they were the products of an unlawful warrantless search.

The trial court held that the defendant did not have standing to contest the search, and denied the motion without addressing defendant's challenge to the lack of a warrant. Applying the test developed by the United States Supreme Court in Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 143, 99 S.Ct. 421, 430, 58 L.Ed.2d 387 (1978), the court concluded that the defendant did not have a "legitimate expectation of privacy" interest in the camp grounds where the stolen vehicles were found. While its decision was based on Rakas, the court also held that the defendant lacked standing under the Vermont Constitution, without conducting a separate analysis.

The State argues the defendant did not present his state constitutional claim to the trial court, and therefore did not adequately preserve the question for appeal. A review of the record demonstrates that the claim was preserved. On appeal, the parties have carefully briefed the issue of whether the federal rule of standing should be applied to Chapter I, Article Eleven.

II.

In State v. Jewett, 146 Vt. 221, 229, 500 A.2d 233, 238 (1985), this Court declared that:

[t]o protect his or her client, it is the duty of the advocate to raise state constitutional issues, where appropriate, at the trial level and to diligently develop and plausibly maintain them on appeal. It is the corresponding obligation of the Vermont Supreme Court, when state constitutional questions of possible merit have been raised, to address them....

Declaring that the claim should be reviewed under the state constitution does not necessarily mean extending the state constitutional protection beyond the federal law. As stated in Jewett, this Court must avoid the use of the "state constitution chiefly to evade the impact of the decisions of the United States Supreme Court. Our decisions must be principled, not result-oriented." Id. at 224, 500 A.2d at 235. ¹

A number of rationale for divergence from federal constitutional doctrine are set forth in Jewett. These include the determination that either the plain meaning or historic purpose of the applicable state constitutional provision mandates a different definition from that assigned to the federal provision. In our view, current Fourth Amendment standing analysis is inconsistent with both the plain meaning and historic purpose of Article Eleven, and this Court must therefore adopt a standing analysis independent of the approach taken by the United States Supreme Court. ²

III.

The trial court's determination under Rakas that the defendant lacked standing to challenge the search in this case highlights the change that has occurred in Fourth Amendment standing analysis. The Rakas standard is markedly different from and more stringent than that announced in its predecessor, Jones v. United States, 362 U.S. 257, 260-62, 80 S.Ct. 725, 730-31, 4 L.Ed.2d 697 (1960), for it both altered the focus of Fourth Amendment analysis, and increased the burden imposed upon a defendant seeking to invoke the protection of the Fourth Amendment.

A.

Rakas transformed the review of an accused's Fourth Amendment claim from an evaluation of the reasonableness of the challenged governmental conduct under the warrant requirement to an assessment of whether the defendant has demonstrated a privacy interest sufficient to come within the protection of the Fourth Amendment. Before that decision, it was emphasized "[o]ver and again ... that the mandate of the [Fourth] Amendment requires adherence to judicial processes." United States v. Jeffers, 342 U.S. 48, 51, 72 S.Ct. 93, 95, 96 L.Ed. 59 (1951).

Thus the most basic constitutional rule in this area is that "searches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by judge or magistrate, are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment-subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions." Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 357 [88 S.Ct. 507, 514, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967) ]. The exceptions are "jealously and carefully drawn," Jones v. United States, 357 U.S. 493, 499 [78 S.Ct. 1253, 1257, 2 L.Ed.2d 1514], and there must be "a showing ... that the exigencies of the situation made that course imperative." McDonald v. United States, 335 U.S. 451, 456, 69 S.Ct. 191, 193, 93 L.Ed. 153 (1948).

Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 454-55, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 2031-32, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971). The inquiry into the reasonableness of a search might also have concentrated on the validity of the warrant relied on to conduct the search if one had been obtained. See, e.g., Coolidge, 403 U.S. at 449, 91 S.Ct. at 2029. In either case, the central focus of Fourth Amendment analysis was on the validity of the search, viewed in the light of the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment.

In the relatively few cases in which it was conducted, the inquiry into a defendant's capacity to raise a Fourth Amendment challenge was viewed as a collateral question of standing. Standing analysis explored whether the claim was being presented by one "whose rights were violated by the search itself," rather than "aggrieved solely by the introduction of damaging evidence" obtained by a search that violated the Fourth Amendment rights of another. Alderman v. United States, 394 U.S. 165, 171-72, 89 S.Ct. 961, 965, 22 L.Ed.2d 176 (1969); see also Jones, 362 U.S. at 261, 80 S.Ct. at 731; Simmons v. United States, 390 U.S. 377, 389, 88 S.Ct. 967, 974, 19 L.Ed.2d 1247 (1968). An accused seeking to challenge a search that invaded the rights of someone other than the accused was viewed as a third party to the search, and denied standing to raise the challenge, because "Fourth Amendment rights are personal rights which, like some other constitutional rights, may not be vicariously asserted." Alderman, 394 U.S. at 174, 89 S.Ct. at 966-67.

In those cases where the State contested the defendant's allegation that "he himself was a victim of an invasion of privacy," the preliminary standing analysis ensured that the defendant was invoking his personal Fourth Amendment rights. Jones, 362 U.S. at 261, 80 S.Ct. at 731. Thus, in Alderman, 394 U.S. at 171, 89 S.Ct. at 965, it was held that only a defendant whose conversations were improperly overheard could rely on the protection of the Fourth Amendment, while co-conspirators or co-defendants could not vicariously invoke that defendant's interest, and in Jeffers, 342 U.S. at 50-52, 72 S.Ct. at 94-96, it was determined that...