State v. Wyatt

• Decision Date: 16 August 1984
• Docket Number: No. 9280,9280
• Citation: 687 P.2d 544,67 Haw. 293
• Parties: STATE of Hawaii, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Jacqueline L. WYATT, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: Hawaii Supreme Court

Page 544

687 P.2d 544

67 Haw. 293

STATE of Hawaii, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Jacqueline L. WYATT, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 9280.

Supreme Court of Hawai'i.

Aug. 16, 1984.

Syllabus by the Court

1. The government seeking to punish an individual must produce the evidence against him by its own independent labors, rather than by the cruel, simple expedient of compelling it from his own mouth.

2. The rule that the prosecution may not use statements, whether exculpatory or inculpatory, stemming from custodial interrogation of the defendant unless it demonstrates the use of procedural safeguards effective to secure the privilege against self-incrimination, applies even where the object of the prosecution is to establish the commission of a misdemeanor traffic offense.

3. Whether interrogation was carried on in a custodial context is dependent on the totality of circumstances surrounding the questioning. The relevant circumstances include the time, place, and length of the interrogation, the nature of the questions asked, and the conduct of the police at the time of the interrogation.

4. The ultimate test in deciding whether the interrogation was custodial is whether the questioning was of a nature that would subjugate the individual to the will of his examiner and thereby undermine the privilege against compulsory self-incrimination.

5. Stopping an automobile and detaining its occupants constitute a seizure within the meaning of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, even though the purpose of the stop is limited and the resulting detention quite brief.

6. The privilege against self-incrimination is not necessarily implicated whenever a person suspected of criminal activity is compelled in some way to cooperate in developing evidence which may be used against him.

7. The privilege against self-incrimination stands as a bar against compelling "communications" or "testimony" from a person suspected or accused of crime. But compulsion which makes the suspect or accused the source of "real or physical evidence" does not violate the privilege.

8. The overriding function of the Fourth Amendment and article I, section 7 of the Hawaii Constitution is to protect personal privacy and dignity against unwarranted intrusion by the State. The values they protect overlap those protected by the self-incrimination clauses of the federal and state constitutions.

9. A rule of search and seizure jurisprudence holds that an official seizure of the person must be supported by probable cause, even if no formal arrest is made. But in Terry v. Ohio, the Supreme Court established the narrow authority of police officers who suspect criminal activity to make limited intrusions on an individual's personal security based on less than probable cause.

10. Terry v. Ohio and subsequent decisions adopting and extending its reasoning recognize that some seizures admittedly covered by the Fourth Amendment constitute such limited intrusions on the personal security of those detained and are justified by such substantial law enforcement interests that they may be made on less than probable cause, so long as police have an articulable basis for suspecting criminal activity.

11. Terry v. Ohio and its progeny sanction investigative stops. The reasonableness of an investigative stop turns on the facts and circumstances of each case. In determining reasonableness, the Supreme Court has emphasized (1) the public interest served by the seizure, (2) the nature and scope of the intrusion, and (3) the objective facts upon which the law enforcement officer relied in light of his knowledge and expertise.

12. Although implications of a search are inherent in any quest for evidence by the police, no one has ever suggested that every instance of such seeking is a "search" in the constitutional sense.

13. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of constitutional protection.

14. Where an object observed by the police is in open view, it is not subject to any reasonable expectation of privacy and the observation is not within the scope of the constitution.

15. The fact that the visual inspection was aided by a flashlight did not convert the scan of a vehicle's interior, which otherwise was not a search in the constitutional sense, into a constitutionally regulated search.

Gary A. Modafferi, Honolulu, (Arthur E. Ross on the briefs), Deputy Prosecuting Attorneys, Honolulu, for plaintiff-appellant.

Mark R. Zenger, Deputy Public Defender, Honolulu, for defendant-appellee.

Before LUM, C.J., NAKAMURA, PADGETT, HAYASHI and WAKATSUKI, JJ.

NAKAMURA, Justice.

Three questions are presented in this appeal by the State of Hawaii from an order suppressing evidence in a prosecution brought against Jacqueline L. Wyatt for Driving Under the Influence of Intoxicating Liquor in violation of Hawaii Revised Statutes (HRS) § 291-4 ¹ and Possessing Intoxicating Liquor While Operating a Motor Vehicle on a Public Street in violation of HRS § 291-3.1. ² They are: (1) whether the roadside questioning of the defendant after she had been stopped for a traffic violation constituted custodial interrogation for purposes of applying the Miranda rule; (2) whether the results of sobriety tests administered to the defendant were excludable as evidence on grounds that "neither probable cause nor reasonable grounds" existed for the administration of such tests; and (3) whether the seizure of evidence from the passenger compartment of her automobile was unreasonable because it was preceded by a flashlight-aided scan of the compartment. Unlike the District Court of the First Circuit, we conclude from a review of the record and relevant precepts of criminal jurisprudence that the questions call for answers in the negative. Thus, we set aside the district court's suppression order and remand the case for trial.

I.

While standing on a sidewalk abutting Kalakaua Avenue near midnight on March 13, 1983, Officers Main and Todt of the Honolulu Police Department observed an automobile, an MG convertible with its top down, being driven without lighted headlamps. ³ Officer Main thus directed the driver, Jacqueline L. Wyatt, to drive the vehicle to the curb. When she did so, the officer asked her to produce her driver's license, the vehicle's registration certificate, and her no-fault insurance card. While she rummaged through her purse for those documents, Officer Main became aware of a smell of intoxicating liquor emanating from the passenger compartment of the automobile. So he asked if she had been drinking, which she readily admitted. She told him she had a drink earlier that night and then volunteered she had been cited for three traffic violations a few minutes earlier. ⁴ At this juncture, the officer ordered her to alight from the car and proceeded to administer a field sobriety test. When it indicated she might have been driving while under the influence of intoxicants, she was arrested for violating HRS § 291-4.

Meanwhile, Officer Todt, who had been directing traffic around the parked convertible, approached the vehicle's left rear and noticed a green bottle behind the driver's seat. He used his flashlight to obtain a better view of the passenger compartment and saw two empty bottles he instantly recognized as containers of a particular brand of beer, Moosehead. Looking further with the aid of the flashlight, he saw what appeared to be a bottle of vodka, half-full, between the two front seats. By then, Officer Main had arrested the defendant and directed her to a police car for transport to the police station.

Officer Todt continued to scan the passenger compartment after the defendant had been ordered from her vehicle and found two open Diet Pepsi cans smelling of alcohol and another empty Moosehead beer bottle. He seized all of the beverage containers. And when the defendant was booked at the police station, she was also charged with possessing opened containers of intoxicating liquors while operating a motor vehicle on a public street.

Prior to trial the defendant moved to exclude as evidence the admission that she had consumed an alcoholic beverage on the night of her arrest, the results of the field sobriety test and a subsequent intoxilyzer test administered at the police station, and the empty beer bottles and half-empty vodka bottle seized from her vehicle. The district court excluded the statement because the defendant had not been apprised of her Miranda rights before being asked if she had been drinking; it suppressed the test results because it found "neither probable cause nor reasonable grounds for requiring the defendant to step out of the car to take a field test" existed when she was asked to do so; and it ruled the beverage containers were excludable as evidence because Officer Todt's flashlight-aided scan of the passenger compartment, in its opinion, constituted an unreasonable search. The State perfected a timely appeal of the suppression order to this court pursuant to HRS § 641-13(7).

II.

Our analysis of the issues posed for decision begins with the roadside questioning of the defendant after she was stopped for operating a motor vehicle on a street in Waikiki without lighted headlamps in violation of the City's traffic code.

A.

"[T]he government seeking to punish an individual [must] produce the evidence against [her] by its own independent labors, rather than by the cruel, simple expedient of compelling it from [her] own mouth." Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 460, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 1620, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966); State v. Russo, 67 Haw. 126, 131-32, 681 P.2d 553, 558 (1984). And the rule that "the prosecution may not use statements, whether exculpatory or inculpatory, stemming from custodial interrogation of the defendant unless it demonstrates the use of procedural safeguards effective to secure the privilege against self-incrimination," Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. at 444, 86 S.Ct. at 1612 (emphasis...