State v. Yeargan

• Decision Date: 24 November 1997
• Citation: 958 S.W.2d 626
• Parties: STATE of Tennessee, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Wayne Lee YEARGAN, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

Page 626

958 S.W.2d 626

STATE of Tennessee, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Wayne Lee YEARGAN, Defendant-Appellant.

Supreme Court of Tennessee,

at Nashville.

Nov. 24, 1997.

John Knox Walkup, Attorney General & Reporter, Daryl J. Brand, Senior Counsel, Clinton J. Morgan, Counsel for the State, Kimbra R. Spann, Assistant Attorney General, Nashville, C. Michael Layne, District Attorney General, Kenneth Shelton, Assistant District Attorney General, Manchester, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Donald E. Dawson, Bruce, Weathers, Corley, Dughman and Lyle, Nashville, for Defendant-Appellant.

OPINION

DROWOTA, Justice.

The certified question of law ¹ presented in this appeal is whether the state or federal constitutional right to be free from unreasonable seizures was violated when the motor vehicle which the defendant was operating was stopped by a city police officer, who six months earlier, had arrested the defendant for driving under the influence of an intoxicant and had been present in court when the defendant was convicted of that offense and his driver's license revoked for one year.

The trial court denied the defendant's motion to suppress the evidence of the defendant's intoxication obtained during the stop, and the Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the trial court's decision. Because we conclude that the officer's decision to stop was based upon reasonable suspicion supported by specific and articulable facts that the defendant was driving on a revoked license, the judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeals is affirmed. ²

FACTUAL BACKGROUND

On Thursday, January 28, 1993, at approximately 2:20 p.m., Tullahoma Police Officer Jason Ferrell observed the defendant, Wayne Lee Yeargan, driving a pickup truck on a public street in Tullahoma. Previously Officer Ferrell had arrested the defendant for driving under the influence of an intoxicant and had been present in the general sessions court approximately six months earlier, on July 2, 1992, when the defendant pleaded guilty to the offense and had his driver's license revoked for one year from the date of the judgment. ³

When the officer began following the defendant's truck, Yeargan, according to the officer's testimony, "sped up some, he wasn't going at a high rate of speed, but he accelerated." In the officer's view, Yeargan "attempted to put some traffic between us." The defendant then drove into the parking lot of Ruby's Lounge, a local bar. The officer followed and put on his blue lights. The defendant parked and got out of his truck. The officer asked to see his driver's license. Yeargan produced a restricted license issued pursuant to a court order which permitted him to drive "in Coffee County only as necessary to complete job tasks" between the hours of 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. The defendant's employment was listed on the order granting the restricted license as farming and "rental property owner." The officer testified that when he asked Yeargan why he had driven to the bar, the defendant replied that he "had come to the bar to meet a guy about a cow." Based on his observations and a field sobriety test, the officer concluded that the defendant was under the influence of an intoxicant and arrested him for driving under the influence and driving on a revoked license.

The defendant moved to suppress the evidence obtained as a result of the stop, arguing that the officer did not have reasonable suspicion to believe a crime had been committed when he made the stop because the officer knew of the procedure for obtaining a restricted license and had no reason to believe that the defendant was operating outside the scope of his driving privilege. Testifying at the suppression hearing, the police officer acknowledged that he was aware of the availability of restricted licenses for driving offenders. However, the officer testified it would have taken about 15 minutes for the police radio operator to determine the status of the defendant's license before the stop.

Upon consideration of the proof, the trial court denied the defendant's motion to suppress. Thereafter, the defendant pleaded guilty to driving under the influence of an intoxicant, second offense, ⁴ and driving a motor vehicle with a revoked driver's license, ⁵ but reserved the right to appeal a certified question of law challenging the constitutionality ⁶ of the traffic stop leading to his arrest and subsequent convictions. The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the trial court's denial of the motion to suppress, finding that "a prudent officer could reasonably have believed that the appellant was driving on a revoked license" and holding that the officer had "probable cause to conduct an investigative stop." In reaching that conclusion, the Court of Criminal Appeals relied upon Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968) and State v. Watkins, 827 S.W.2d 293 (Tenn.1992). Thereafter, we granted the defendant permission to appeal and for the reasons that follow, now affirm the decision of the trial court and Court of Criminal Appeals.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

This Court recently clarified the standard of review under which a trial court's findings of fact on suppression issues are to be reviewed:

Questions of credibility of the witnesses, the weight and value of the evidence, and resolution of conflicts in the evidence are matters entrusted to the trial judge as the trier of fact. The party prevailing in the trial court is entitled to the strongest legitimate view of the evidence adduced at the suppression hearing as well as all reasonable and legitimate inferences that may be drawn from that evidence. So long as the greater weight of the evidence supports the trial court's findings, those findings shall be upheld. In other words, a trial court's findings of fact in a suppression hearing will be upheld unless the evidence preponderates otherwise. We also note that this standard of review is consistent with Tenn. R.App. P. 13(d), which provides that in civil cases, findings of fact by a trial court are presumed correct "unless the preponderance of the evidence is otherwise." Hereafter, the proper standard to be applied in reviewing suppression issues is the "preponderance of the evidence" standard.

State v. Odom, 928 S.W.2d 18, 23 (Tenn.1996). The application of the law to the facts found by the trial court, however, is a question of law which this Court reviews de novo. Beare Co. v. Tennessee Dept. of Revenue, 858 S.W.2d 906, 907 (Tenn.1993). We apply these standards to resolve the issue in this appeal.

REASONABLE SUSPICION

In this Court, the defendant contends that the investigatory stop was unconstitutional because the officer did not have reasonable suspicion, supported by specific and articulable facts, to believe that the defendant was violating the law. In support of his claim, the defendant argues that even though the officer knew the defendant's license had been revoked six months earlier, the officer was also aware of the availability of restricted licenses, and therefore, had no reason to believe the defendant was violating the law by operating an automobile. The State responds that given the totality of the information known to the officer, the stop was based upon reasonable suspicion. The State also maintains that the officer was not required to check the status of the defendant's license before initiating the stop.

We begin our analysis of this issue with the text of the Fourth Amendment ⁷ to the United States Constitution which provides:

Unreasonable searches and seizures.--The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Similarly, Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution of Tennessee guarantees

that the people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers and possessions, from unreasonable searches and seizures; and that general warrants, whereby an officer may be commanded to search suspected places, without evidence of the fact committed, or to seize any person or persons not named, whose offences are not particularly described and supported by evidence, are dangerous to liberty and ought not to be granted.

The purpose of the prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment is to "safeguard the privacy and security of individuals against arbitrary invasions of government officials." Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523, 528, 87 S.Ct. 1727, 1730, 18 L.Ed.2d 930 (1967). "[A]rticle I, section 7 is identical in intent and purpose with the Fourth Amendment." State v. Downey, 945 S.W.2d 102, 106 (Tenn.1997), quoting Sneed v. State, 221 Tenn. 6, 13, 423 S.W.2d 857, 860 (1968).

Consequently, under both the federal and state constitutions, a warrantless search or seizure is presumed unreasonable, and evidence discovered as a result thereof is subject to suppression unless the State demonstrates that the search or seizure was conducted pursuant to one of the narrowly defined exceptions to the warrant requirement. Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 454-55, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 2032, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971); State v. Bartram, 925 S.W.2d 227, 229-30 (Tenn.1996).

Though it was a temporary detention for a limited purpose, the stop of the defendant's vehicle in this case, without question, constitutes a seizure and implicates the protection of both the state and federal constitutions. Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, ----, 116 S.Ct. 1769, 1772, 135 L.Ed.2d 89 (1996); Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 654, 99 S.Ct. 1391, 1396, 59 L.Ed.2d 660 (1979); See also United States v. Hensley, 469 U.S. 221, 226, 105 S.Ct. 675, 679, 83 L.Ed.2d 604 (1985); Colorado v. Bannister, 449 U.S. 1, 4 n. 3, 101 S.Ct. 42, 44 n. 3, 66 L.Ed.2d 1 (1980) (When an officer turns on his blue...