Travis v. State
| Decision Date | 24 September 1997 |
| Docket Number | No. CA,CA |
| Citation | 954 S.W.2d 277,58 Ark.App. 320 |
| Parties | Mark TRAVIS, Appellant, v. STATE of Arkansas, Appellee. CR 96-1344. |
| Court | Arkansas Court of Appeals |
Val P. Price, Jonesboro, for appellant.
Winston Bryant, Attorney General, David R. Raupp, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Little Rock, for appellee.
An individual operating or traveling in an automobile does not lose all reasonable expectation of privacy simply because the automobile and its use are subject to government regulation. Automobile travel is a basic, pervasive, and often necessary mode of transportation to and from one's home, workplace, and leisure activities. Many people spend more time each day traveling in cars than walking on the streets. Undoubtedly, many find a greater sense of security and privacy in traveling in an automobile than they do in exposing themselves by pedestrian or other modes of travel. Were the individual subject to unfettered governmental intrusion every time he entered an automobile, the security guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment would be seriously circumscribed.... [P]eople are not shorn of all Fourth Amendment protection when they step from their homes onto the public sidewalks. Nor are they shorn of those interests when they step from the sidewalks into their automobiles.
Justice Byron R. White, writing for the Supreme Court of the United States in Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 662, 99 S.Ct. 1391, 1400-01, 59 L.Ed.2d 660 (1979).
Mark Travis has appealed a trial judge's decision denying his motion to suppress a .22 caliber rifle upon which appellant's conditional guilty plea to the charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm was based. We hold that the decision by the trial judge must be reversed because the police officer who stopped appellant's vehicle lacked a reasonable basis for doing so pursuant to the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, court decisions pertaining to unreasonable seizures, and Rules 2.1, 3.1, and 4.1 of the Arkansas Rules of Criminal Procedure.
Appellant was charged by information with being a felon in possession of a firearm in violation of Ark.Code Ann. § 5-73-103 (Repl.1993) after Deputy Glen Smith of the Lawrence County Sheriff's Department stopped the pickup truck in which he was a passenger and noticed a .22 caliber rifle barrel sticking out from behind the seat of the pickup. Deputy Smith testified at the hearing on appellant's motion to suppress that he noticed the pickup truck traveling northbound on U.S. Highway 67 at Minturn (Lawrence County), Arkansas, and observed that the Texas license plate on the truck did not have an expiration decal. The truck was driven by appellant's nephew, James E. Travis, whose driver's license had been suspended, but the truck belonged to appellant. Under Texas motor-vehicle laws, the registration and inspection sticker is displayed on the windshield of the vehicle, not the license plate. Appellant's vehicle did have the required sticker on the windshield. Alleging that Deputy Smith lacked reasonable suspicion to stop the vehicle, appellant moved to suppress the rifle. After the trial court denied the motion, appellant entered a conditional plea of guilty pursuant to Ark. R.Crim. P. 24.3(b), and this appeal followed.
The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was ratified in 1791 by a new nation with a vivid memory about the evils of unbridled and random governmental intrusion into the private affairs of its people. That concern included sensitivity about the interference into individual freedom and the intrusion into privacy posed when law enforcement officers stop a vehicle and detain its occupants. Although the Supreme Court of the United States held in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), that police may stop persons without probable cause under limited circumstances, it has also held that stopping a vehicle and detaining its occupants constitutes a seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 99 S.Ct. 1391, 59 L.Ed.2d 660 (1979). In Prouse, the Court considered whether police officers acting under a police regulation permitting officers to stop vehicles at random to check driver's licenses and registrations in Delaware violated the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against unreasonable seizures. The Court concluded as follows:
[W]e hold that except in those situations in which there is at least articulable and reasonable suspicion that a motorist is unlicensed or that an automobile is not registered, or that either the vehicle or an occupant is otherwise subject to seizure for violation of law, stopping an automobile and detaining the driver in order to check his driver's license and the registration of the automobile are unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. This holding does not preclude the State of Delaware or other states from developing methods for spot checks that involve less intrusion or that do not involve the unconstrained exercise of discretion. Questioning of all oncoming traffic at roadblock-type stops is one possible alternative. We hold only that persons in automobiles on public roadways may not for that reason alone have their travel and privacy interfered with at the unbridled discretion of police officers.
Prouse, 440 U.S. at 663, 99 S.Ct. at 1401 (emphasis added). Although the Court recognized the legitimate interest of government in promoting highway safety, it determined that the intrusion on Fourth Amendment rights to travel and be left alone posed by the unbridled discretion of the police officer during a random stop in the field outweighed that governmental interest. Id. The Court also reasoned that there are methods of promoting the governmental interest in highway safety that are less intrusive to the rights protected by the Fourth Amendment. Id.
In Brown v. Texas, 443 U.S. 47, 99 S.Ct. 2637, 61 L.Ed.2d 357 (1979), the Supreme Court again discussed the seizures caused when police officers stop motorists and reached the following conclusion Consideration of the constitutionality of such seizures involves a weighing of the gravity of the public concerns served by the seizure, the degree to which the seizure advances the public interest, and the severity of the interference with individual liberty. [Citations omitted.]
A central concern in balancing these competing considerations in a variety of settings has been to assure that an individual's reasonable expectation of privacy is not subject to arbitrary invasions solely by the unfettered discretion of officers in the field. [Citations omitted.] To this end the Fourth Amendment requires that a seizure must be based on specific, objective facts indicating that society's legitimate interests require the seizure of the particular individual, or that the seizure must be carried out pursuant to a plan embodying explicit, neutral limitations on the conduct of individual officers.
Id. at 50-51, 99 S.Ct. at 2640-41 (emphasis added). Furthermore, the Supreme Court has recently reiterated that an automobile stop is subject to the constitutional imperative that it not be unreasonable under the circumstances, but that the decision to stop an automobile is reasonable where the police have probable cause to believe that a traffic violation has occurred. Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 116 S.Ct. 1769, 135 L.Ed.2d 89 (1996).
In Hill v. State, 275 Ark. 71, 628 S.W.2d 284, cert. denied, 459 U.S. 882, 103 S.Ct. 180, 74 L.Ed.2d 147 (1982), the Arkansas Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of an investigatory stop of the appellant's vehicle that exhibited an Oklahoma license plate because the late model maroon Ford Thunderbird matched the description of a car driven by an armed man who had robbed a Montgomery County service station and a Game and Fish Commission officer, kidnapped the proprietor of the station along with the officer, shot and killed the station proprietor, and wounded the officer before driving away. The wounded officer gave the police a description of his assailant and the car he was driving before being rushed to a hospital. Law enforcement offices in the surrounding area began receiving radio dispatches from the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) regarding the crimes, and the Hot Springs Police Department had broadcast a description of the assailant and the late model Ford Thunderbird, maroon in color, with blue or black lettering on a white license plate. A Hot Springs police officer observed and stopped a vehicle matching that description traveling in Hot Springs, ultimately resulting in the arrest of the appellant who was convicted and sentenced for capital felony murder (death), kidnapping (50 years), and aggravated robbery (50 years) in connection with the offenses against the store proprietor, and for attempted capital murder (life), kidnapping (50 years), and aggravated robbery (50 years) in connection with the offenses against the Game and Fish Commission officer. The supreme court reasoned that the police had reasonable suspicion to make an investigatory stop of appellant's car because it matched the description of the police broadcast, because it was unlikely that another vehicle with that description was in the Montgomery-Garland County area at that time, and because the crimes had only recently been committed in the small community of Pencil Bluff in neighboring Montgomery County. Id. at 80, 628 S.W.2d at 288.
In Cooper v. State, 297 Ark. 478, 763 S.W.2d 645 (1989), the Arkansas Supreme Court cited the Hill case in holding that the initial stop of appellant's vehicle was valid based upon testimony at a hearing on the appellant's motion to suppress evidence seized from his vehicle in connection with prosecutions for attempted capital murder, possession of methamphetamine with intent to deliver, possession of marijuana with intent to deliver, possession of drug...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Travis v. State
...with credit for five months time served. The Court of Appeals reversed the Trial Court's suppression ruling. Travis v. State, 58 Ark.App. 320, 954 S.W.2d 277 (1997). We granted the State's petition to review the decision of the Court of Appeals and now affirm the Trial When we grant a petit......