Williams v. State

• Decision Date: 20 February 1974
• Docket Number: No. 274S38,274S38
• Citation: 261 Ind. 547,307 N.E.2d 457,40 Ind.Dec. 699
• Parties: Josephus W. WILLIAMS and Maylon J. Rogers, Appellants, v. STATE of Indiana, Appellee.
• Court: Indiana Supreme Court

Page 457

307 N.E.2d 457

261 Ind. 547

Josephus W. WILLIAMS and Maylon J. Rogers, Appellants, v. STATE of Indiana, Appellee.

No. 274S38.

Supreme Court of Indiana.

Feb. 20, 1974.

Rehearing Denied April 9, 1974.

Harriette Bailey Conn, Public Defender of Indiana, Malcolm K. McClintick, Deputy Public Defender, Indianapolis, for appellants.

Theodore L. Sendak, Atty. Gen., A. Frank Gleaves, III, Deputy Atty. Gen., Indianapolis, for appellee.

ON PETITION TO TRANSFER

ARTERBURN, Chief Justice.

On appeal from the denial of a Post-Conviction Relief Petition, the Court of Appeals in an opinion by Sullivan, J., White, J., concurring in result, Buchanan, J., dissenting, reversed the trial court. The State, as Appellees, petitioned this Court for transfer. We heard oral argument. We grant transfer and reverse the Court of Appeals and affirm the judgment of the trial court.

Appellants were convicted of Robbery. Certain items of evidence were seized following the stopping of Appellants' automobile. Appellants' contend that the trial court erred in admitting the seized evidence. The trial court held that the arresting officers acted lawfully in stopping Appellants' car despite the absence of probable cause to arrest. It is this conclusion which the Appellants challenge.

At 10:02 p.m. of the night in question, Indiana State Police Sergeant Cox and Trooper Fox were on routine patrol duty in an unmarked police car when they received a radio dispatch informing them that seven (7) minutes earlier a robbery had been committed at the King's Crown Motel of West Lafayette. A second radio report was received. From these two reports the officers learned that the suspects were two male Negroes and that they were possibly traveling northwest.

At the time of these reports, the officers were located on State Road 18, four miles east of U.S. Highway 231, and fifteen miles northwest of the scene of the crime. Knowing Highway 231 to be a major linkup between Highway 52 and Interstate 65 (the most direct route to a possible escape location such as Chicago), the officers proceeded directly to the intersection of Highways 18 and 21.

It took the officers about three minutes to reach this point. They observed in the next two to four minutes two cars heading north. When a third car came by, the officers thought the driver, apparently the only occupant of the car, might be a Negro.

At this time, the officers had deduced that if the suspects were indeed enroute directly to Chicago, they could be observed at just this point. Sergeant Cox testified that:

We knew that a crime had been committed. We knew from the time element that the individual we were looking for had time to be at about this location at about this time.

Acting upon this hypothesis, the officers decided to follow the automobile. After receiving a third radio dispatch stating that one suspect had used a sawed-off shotgun or pistol in the robbery, the officers overtook the car they were following in an unsuccessful attempt to get a better look at the driver. Then, the officers proceeded a short distance to an intersection located at the South edge of the town of Wolcott, and parked in a service station drive. When the car they had been observing stopped at the intersection, the improved lighting conditions allowed one officer to become certain that the driver was a Negro, although the other officer still was not certain.

The officers then used an inside red light to stop the car at the side of the road. The driver (Appellant Williams) left his car and approached. Trooper Fox, the driver of the police car, asked the man to stop. The two officers approached the car, one on each side. As Trooper Fox asked to see the driver's license, he looked into the stopped car and saw a person hiding on the back seat. As the second man (Appellant Rogers) exited the right door of the car, that door was left open and Sergeant Cox saw a sawed-off shotgun in plain view. These occurrences led the police officers to place the Appellants under There is here no contention that the formal arrest of the Appellants was without probable cause. (Indiana law defines arrest as the taking into custody of a person for the purpose of having him answer for a public offense. IC 1971, 35--1--17--1, Burns' Ind.Stat.Ann. § 9--1004 (1956 Repl.).) There is no contention that the seizure of the incriminating evidence was not lawful. The sole contention is that the initial stopping of the Appellants' car was unlawful and that, therefore, the fruits of this unlawful seizure must be excluded from the trial. Wong Sun v. United States (1963) 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441; Mapp v. Ohio (1961), 367 U.S. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081; Weeks v. United States (1914), 232 U.S. 383, 34 S.Ct. 341, 58 L.Ed. 652.

arrest and to seize the incriminating evidence used at trial. The Appellants were later positively identified as the robbers by employees of the motel.

The legal question that confronts us, to be very specific, is: did the police officers have the right to stop the motorist on the basis of the suspicion created by the meager facts received over the radio and the police officers' calculations from those facts? After the stopping of the Appellants' car, it became immediately apparent without a search, but from open observation (the shotgun and the passenger hiding in the car) that probable cause existed for the arrest of the Appellants. If the stopping was legal, then all that followed was legal. As Justice Hunter has said, in situations, of this sort the question is 'whether the facts known . . . at the time he (a police officer) stopped the car were sufficient to warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief that an investigation was appropriate.' Luckett v. State (1972), Ind., 284 N.E.2d 738, at 742. Justice Hunter went on to observe that in the situation presented in Luckett 'we find nothing unreasonable in permitting the investigating officer to request that an operator's license be produced by the driver of the vehicle . . .. Furthermore, it should certainly be permissible for the officer to observe the occupants of the automobile, and to take cognizance of any items in the automobile which are in plain view.' Luckett, supra, at 742.

In fact, this case presents squarely to us the question whether or not under similar circumstances a roadblock could be set up at certain points where it has reasonably been calculated that fleeing robbers might be apprehended. Justice Jackson of the United States Supreme Court, dissenting from the approval of a seizure and search, realized and noted the problem, commenting as follows:

If we assume, for example, that a child is kidnapped and the officers throw a roadblock about the neighborhood and search every outgoing car, it would be a drastic and undiscriminating use of the search. The officers might be unable to show probable cause for searching any particular car. However, I should candidly strive hard to sustain such an action, executed fairly and in good faith, because it might be reasonable to subject travelers to that indignity if it was the only way to save a threatened life and detect a vicious crime. But I should not strain to sustain such a roadblock and universal search to salvage a few bottles of bourbon and catch a bootlegger.

Brinegar v. United States (1948), 338 U.S. 160 at 183, 69 S.Ct. 1302 at 1314, 93 L.Ed. 1879. However, the suggestion by Justice Jackson that the right to stop depends upon the enormity of the crime creates an uncertain and hazardous standard for police officers to follow.

In Terry v. Ohio (1968), 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889, the United States Supreme Court had before it a situation in which a police officer with thirty (30) years experience on a particular beat became suspicious of the actions of two men who repeatedly and alternately made numerous round-trip strolls past a store window. The officer accosted these men when they were conferring with a third . . . in justifying the particular intrusion the police officer must be able to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion. The scheme of the Fourth Amendment becomes meaningful only when it is assured that at some point the conduct of those charged with enforcing the laws can be subjected to the more detached, neutral scrutiny of a judge who must evaluate the reasonableness of a particular search or seizure in light of the particular circumstances. And in making that assessment it is imperative that the facts be judged against an objective standard; would the facts available to the officer at the moment of the seizure . . . 'warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief' that the action taken was appropriate? Cf. Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 45 S.Ct. 280, 69 L.Ed. 543 (39 A.L.R. 790) (1925); Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 96--97, 85 S.Ct. 223, 229, 13 L.Ed.2d 142 (147, 148) (1964).

man with whom they had previously conferred during their strolls. In a brief 'pat down' or 'frisk' the officer discovered concealed weapons on two of the men. In upholding this particular 'search and seizure' the Supreme Court said that:

Terry, supra, at 392 U.S. 21--22, 88 S.Ct. at 1880.

Our society has a right to protect itself. What is 'unreasonable' under the Fourth Amendment is a function of the totality of conditions existing within our society at any moment in history. Social interests under the police power should give law officers the right to stop users of the highways to check, for instance, their right to use the highway or to check the vehicles for safety standards. Myricks v. United States (1967),370 F.2d 901 (5th Cir.) (Texas); Lipton v. United States (1965), 348 F.2d 591, (9th Cir.) (California); State ex rel. Berger v. Cantor (1971), 13 Ariz.A. 555, 479 P.2d 432 (license, registration, safety checks); Mincy v. District of Columbia (1966); D.C.App., ...