Appellant Donald Cagle entered a conditional plea of guilty to one count each of possession of methamphetamine with purpose to deliver and possession of drug paraphernalia. His conditional plea reserved his right to appeal from the circuit court's denial of his motion to suppress evidence. On appeal, Cagle contends that the initial traffic stop of his vehicle was invalid and that the subsequent search of his vehicle was unlawful. We find no error and affirm.
I. Background
Cagle was pulled over for alleged traffic violations by Officer Keith Shelby of the Fort Smith Police Department. During the traffic-violation investigation, Officer Shelby conducted a canine search and found contraband in Cagle's car. Cagle was arrested on charges of possession of methamphetamine with purpose to deliver and possession of drug paraphernalia. Cagle subsequently filed a motion to suppress the evidence seized during that traffic stop. The circuit court held a hearing on Cagle's suppression motion and subsequently entered an order denying Cagle's motion to suppress. Cagle then entered a conditional plea of guilty pursuant to Arkansas Rule of Criminal Procedure 24.3(b), reserving his right to appeal the denial of his suppression motion. The circuit court sentenced him to ten years in the Arkansas
II. Standard of Review
When reviewing a circuit court's denial of a motion to suppress evidence, we conduct a de novo review based on the totality of the circumstances, reviewing findings of historical facts for clear error and determining whether those facts give rise to reasonable suspicion or probable cause, giving due weight to the inferences drawn by the circuit court. Bathrick v. State ,
III. The Suppression Hearing
Cagle filed a motion to suppress, alleging that the initial traffic stop was invalid pursuant to Arkansas Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.1 and that the subsequent search of his vehicle by a canine officer followed an "unlawfully prolonged" delay. At the motion hearing, the circuit court heard evidence that Shelby effectuated a traffic stop of a Chevy Tahoe driven by Cagle. Shelby observed the Tahoe traveling northbound. Cagle initially had his turn signal on; however, when he saw Shelby and his marked patrol unit, he "acted nervous, turned his blinker off, and kept going straight." Based on this, Shelby pulled in behind the Tahoe and ran its tags.
Cagle got out of his car and appeared nervous and acted as though he did not want Shelby looking in the vehicle. Shelby asked multiple times for consent to search the vehicle, which Cagle eventually denied. Shelby then got his canine out of his car and had the dog perform a sniff of Cagle's vehicle. The dog alerted twice on the Tahoe, and Shelby's subsequent search uncovered a "rather large bag" of methamphetamine and a meth pipe. The court reviewed a video of the incident. According to the video, no more than eight minutes elapsed between Shelby's initial contact with Cagle and the discovery of the drugs.
IV. Validity of the Traffic Stop
In its order denying Cagle's motion to suppress, the circuit court found that four separate issues justified Shelby's decision to stop Cagle's vehicle: (1) Cagle's "last-second decision" to abandon his turn when he saw the officer's vehicle; (2) the lack of valid insurance on Cagle's vehicle; (3) Cagle's failure to activate his right-hand-turn signal more than one hundred feet before his turn into the gas-station
Our supreme court has settled that a police officer may stop and detain a motorist when the officer has probable cause to believe that a traffic violation has occurred. Pokatilov v. State ,
Although Cagle addresses each of the factors on which the circuit court relied, we address only the lack of valid insurance on Cagle's vehicle. Arkansas Code Annotated section 27-22-104(a)(1)(b) (Repl. 2014) provides that it is "unlawful for a person to operate a motor vehicle within this state unless the motor vehicle and the person's operation of the motor vehicle are each covered by ... [a]n insurance policy issued by an insurance company authorized to do business in this state." Section 27-22-104(a)(2)(A) provides, in pertinent part, that "a failure of the Vehicle Insurance Database ... to show current insurance coverage at the time of the traffic stop creates a rebuttable presumption that the motor vehicle or the person's operation of the motor vehicle is uninsured."
In Small v. State ,
Cagle does not challenge the factual underpinning of the circuit court's finding that the Vehicle Insurance Database reflected that he had no insurance on the Tahoe he was driving. Instead, he asks this court to overrule Small , relying on the dissenting opinion's concerns with the reliability of the information in the database. As the State notes, however, Officer Shelby testified below, without objection, that he routinely runs tags for proof of insurance, and in his experience, the database is accurate more than 90 percent of the time. Although the appellate courts have the power to overrule previous decisions, we will uphold them unless great injury or injustice would result. Houghton v. State ,
Further, pursuant to Small , the lack of insurance information in the database was sufficient to provide Shelby with probable cause to believe that a traffic violation had occurred. Accordingly, the circuit court's reliance on this fact to deny Cagle's motion to suppress is affirmed.
V. Validity of Vehicle Search
In his second argument on appeal, Cagle argues that, even assuming that the traffic stop was lawful-which, as addressed above, it was-the subsequent search of his vehicle was unlawful for two reasons: (1) Shelby decided to search the vehicle based solely on Cagle's invocation of his Fourth Amendment rights, and (2) Shelby had abandoned his investigation of the insurance-coverage violation-i.e., the purpose of the stop-by the time he decided to run his drug dog around Cagle's vehicle.
Cagle's first argument is not preserved for our review. At the suppression hearing, the court heard evidence that Shelby requested permission to search Cagle's Tahoe. Cagle responded that he wanted to speak to his attorney first and eventually denied consent. Cagle did briefly raise the argument that Shelby searched his vehicle because of the invocation of his constitutional right at the suppression hearing. The circuit court, however, did not make a ruling on this issue in its order denying Cagle's motion to suppress. The failure to obtain a ruling on an issue at the circuit court level, including a constitutional issue, precludes review on appeal. See Van Winkle v. State ,
Cagle's second argument is that the purpose of the stop-to determine whether Cagle had insurance on his vehicle-had ended by the time Shelby decided to run his drug dog around the Tahoe. As part of a valid traffic stop, a police officer may detain a traffic offender while the officer completes certain routine tasks, such as computerized checks of the vehicle's registration and the driver's license and criminal history, and the writing up of a citation or warning. Sims v. State ,
Our supreme court has held, however, that a stop is not completed until the driver's license and any accompanying paperwork is returned. Jackson v. State ,
Our review of the dashcam video supports the circuit court's factual findings on this point. The encounter lasted less than eight minutes, and by the time the dog sniff was conducted, Shelby still had not retrieved any insurance paperwork. Because the purpose of the stop had not concluded by the time Shelby deployed his drug dog, the circuit court did not clearly err in concluding that the detention of Cagle was not unreasonably prolonged. See Sims , supra ; see also Illinois v. Caballes ,
Affirmed.
Virden and Klappenbach, JJ., agree.
Notes
We previously ordered rebriefing in order to address a deficiency in Cagle's addendum. Cagle v. State ,
In his motion to suppress and at the suppression hearing, Cagle argued that Shelby had illegally accessed the Vehicle Insurance Database; however, he has abandoned this argument on appeal.