Lead Opinion
The opinion of the court was delivered by
Candy Starlene Daniel appeals her conviction of possession of methadone, which was found during a warrantíess search of her vehicle following her arrest for driving with a suspended license. The district court determined the search lawful under K.S.A. 22-2501(c), which at the time authorized certain searches incident to an arrest for the limited purpose of “discovering the fruits, instrumentalities, or evidence of a crime.”
A unique issue arises because K.S.A. 22-2501(c) was declared unconstitutional while Daniel was appealing her conviction based on the warrantless search of her vehicle. See State v. Henning,
The State concedes that under Gant and Henning the search was illegal, so the usual rule would require exclusion of the illegally seized evidence. But the State asks us to salvage Daniel’s conviction by applying a good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule. The United States Supreme Court has recognized some good-faith exceptions when it was determined an officer acted in objectively reasonable reliance of certain circumstances outside of the officer’s control. See Herring v. United States,
This court has not previously considered whether to apply a good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule based upon an officer’s good faith reliance on a statute. Even when we struck down K.S.A. 22-2501(c) in Henning, we did not address whether a good-faith exception saved the illegally seized evidence from exclusion. We simply affirmed the district court’s suppression of that evidence.
But our Court of Appeals has taken a different view and recently applied the good-faith exception under facts similar to this case. See State v. Karson,
As explained below, we hold prior precedent compels recognizing a good-faith exception when it can be determined the officer conducting the search incident to arrest was acting in objectively reasonable reliance on K.S.A. 22-2501(c). This exception is applicable for searches occurring before Gant was decided on Aprü 21, 2009. Accordingly, we affirm Daniel’s conviction.
Factual and Procedural Background
The facts are stipulated by the parties and not in dispute. Augusta Police Officer Matthew Meckel saw Daniel driving and knew
Meckel testified he could not properly inspect the purse’s contents at the scene because of inclement weather, so he took the purse to the police station, where he discovered the drugs. The record does not reflect how much time elapsed between the arrest and the officer’s search of the purse, but it is fair to assume the passenger compartment search was much closer in time to Daniel’s arrest than the search of the purse at the police station.
The State charged Daniel with possession of methadone and driving with a suspended license. Prior to trial, Daniel filed a motion to suppress the methadone, claiming the search of her vehicle and purse violated the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, §15 of the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights, K.S.A. 22-2501, and K.S.A. 22-2509. See K.S.A. 22-3216(1) (“[A] defendant aggrieved by an unlawful search and seizure may move ... to suppress as evidence anything so obtained.”).
In response, the State conceded Meckel searched the vehicle and purse without a warrant simply because those searches were incident to Daniel’s arrest for driving with a suspended license. The State did not contend Daniel consented to the search of her vehicle and purse. Furthermore, the officer acknowledged he had no suspicion Daniel had committed any other crime and was not searching for evidence related to the arrest for driving with a suspended license. It also is understood from these facts that officer safety at the scene was not the purpose for the search.
Based upon testimony at the suppression hearing, the district court found that “the officer stated no suspicion as to discovering any fruits, instrumentalities, or evidence from the crime of driving while suspended, but the officer was making the search for pur
In finding the challenged search of the vehicle’s interior and the purse inside fell within the parameters of K.S.A. 22-2501(c), the district court necessarily concluded that (a) the search occurred incident to an arrest in an “area within [Daniel’s] immediate presence,” i.e., it fell within the physical scope of the statute’s authorized vicinity of search; and (b) the search was conducted for one of the statutoiy purposes stated, i.e., “discovering the fruits, instrumentalities, or evidence of a crime.” K.S.A. 22-2501(c).The parties and the district court agreed to preserve the legal question concerning the search’s legality for this appeal.
Based upon these rulings, a trial was held on stipulated facts. Daniel was convicted of possession of methadone in violation of K.S.A. 65-4160 and driving while her license was suspended in violation of K.S.A. 8-262(a)(l). On the possession conviction, the court sentenced Daniel to 12 months’ probation, with a 13-month underlying prison term. Daniel filed a timely notice of appeal. Less than a year after her conviction and while her appeal was pending, Gant and Henning were decided. We have jurisdiction under K.S.A. 20-3018(c) (transfer on court’s own motion).
Analysis
Standard of Review
On a motion to suppress evidence, this court reviews the factual findings underlying the trial court’s suppression decision by a substantial competent evidence standard and the legal conclusion drawn from those factual findings by a de novo standard. This court does not reweigh evidence. State v. Thompson,
Our state and federal constitutions protect citizens from unlawful searches and seizures. Gant,
Neither the Fourth Amendment nor § 15 of the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights expressly prohibits the use of evidence obtained in violation of their respective protections. Instead a judicially created remedy exists to prevent the use of unconstitutionally obtained evidence in a criminal proceeding against the victim of the illegal search. Krull,
“As with any remedial device, application of the exclusionary rule properly has been restricted to those situations in which its remedial purpose is effectively advanced. Thus, in various circumstances, the Court has examined whether the rule’s deterrent effect will be achieved, and has weighed the likelihood of such deterrence against the costs of withholding reliable information from the truthseeldng process. [Citations omitted.]” (Emphasis added.)480 U.S. at 347 .
The result in Leon was a determination that when a search occurred based upon a warrant, the exclusionary rule applied only if: (1) the magistrate was deliberately misled by false information when issuing the warrant; (2) the magistrate wholly abandoned the detached and neutral role required; (3) there was so little indicia of probable cause in the affidavit that it would be entirely unreasonable for an officer to believe the warrant was valid; or (4) the warrant so lacked specificity that officers could not determine the place to be searched or the items to be seized.
This court has repeatedly accepted the underlying principle in Leon, i. e., that a good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule might be applicable if a search was conducted pursuant to a warrant that was later to be found lacking in probable cause, even though we have disagreed how to apply Leons stated criteria. See Hoeck,
A good-faith exception for objectively reasonable reliance on a statute
We interpret § 15 of the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights to provide the same protection from unlawful government searches and seizures as the Fourth Amendment to the federal Constitution. Henning,
As noted above, the United States Supreme Court has held the exclusionary rule may not apply to evidence obtained by police acting in objectively reasonable reliance upon a statute that was subsequently found to violate the Fourth Amendment. Krull,
*499 “Unless a statute is clearly unconstitutional, an officer cannot be expected to question the judgment of the legislature that passed the law. If the statute is subsequently declared unconstitutional, excluding evidence obtained pursuant to it prior to such a judicial declaration will not deter future Fourth Amendment violations by an officer who has simply fulfilled his responsibility to enforce the statute as written. To paraphrase the Court’s comment in Leon-. ‘Penalizing the officer for the [legislature’s] error, rather than his own, cannot logically contribute to the deterrence of Fourth Amendment violations.’ [Citation omitted.]”480 U.S. at 349-50 .
Beyond looking to the deterrent effect on police, the Supreme Court also rejected an argument that applying the exclusionary rule in this context would deter legislators from enacting unconstitutional statutes. It said; “[W]e are not willing to assume now that there exists a significant problem of legislators who perform their legislative duties with indifference to the constitutionality of statutes they enact.”
“Before assuming office, state legislators are required to take an oath to support the Federal Constitution. [Citation omitted.] Indeed, by according laws a presumption of constitutional validity, courts presume that legislatures act in a constitutional manner. [Citations omitted.]”480 U.S. at 351 .
Despite these assumptions, the Supreme Court was not blind to the possibility that situations might arise in which an obviously unconstitutional statute could be enacted by a legislature yielding “to the temptation offered by the Court’s good-faith exception.”
“A statute cannot support objectively reasonable reliance if, in passing the statute, the legislature wholly abandoned its responsibility to enact constitutional laws. Nor can a law enforcement officer be said to have acted in good-faith reliance upon a statute if its provisions are such that a reasonable officer should have known that the statute was unconstitutional. [Citation omitted.] As we emphasized in Leon, the standard of reasonableness we adopt is an objective one; the standard does not turn on the subjective good faith of individual officers. [Citation omitted.]”480 U.S. at 355 .
In applying these principles to the facts in Krull to determine whether the officer s reliance on the statute in question was objectively reasonable, the Court noted that prior case law had supported similar statutes, the statute appeared to be aimed at a legitimate state purpose, and the constitutional infirmity with the statute was not “sufficiently obvious as to render a police officer’s reliance upon the statute objectively unreasonable.”
We find our case law tying the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights, §15 provisions to United States Supreme Court precedent compels our recognition of the good-faith exception articulated in Krull. Hoeck,
So with the determination made to recognize the good-faith exception articulated in Krull, We next consider in this case whether the officer could objectively and reasonably rely on K.S.A. 22-2501(c) for his warrantless search of Daniel’s vehicle and purse.
K.S.A. 22-2501 states:
“When a lawful arrest is effected a law enforcement officer may reasonably search the person arrested and the area within such person’s immediate presence for the purpose of
“(a) Protecting the officer from attack;
“(b) Preventing the person from escaping; or
“(c) Discovering the fruits, instrumentalities, or evidence of a crime.”
As readily seen, the statute authorizes a search incident to arrest, but it expressly limits both the physical scope and purpose of that search. See State v. Conn,
In Daniel’s case, the challenged search began in the passenger compartment of a parked vehicle after Daniel was handcuffed and secured inside a patrol car. It ended when the officer searched Daniel’s purse after transporting it and Daniel to the police station. Officer safety and escape from custody do not justify the search, so subsections (a) and (b) are not to be considered. The officer admitted he was not looking for evidence to support the crime of the arrest (driving with a suspended license) and had no probable cause to believe any other crime had been committed. When the search occurred, Daniel already had been handcuffed and secured inside a patrol vehicle, so the passenger compartment was not within her reach.
As to the physical scope of Daniel’s search, we consider whether the officer could have objectively and reasonably believed K.S.A. 22-2501(c) was unconstitutional before he searched the passenger compartment when Daniel was no longer in her vehicle. Daniel does not argue the car and purse were outside Daniel’s immediate
The answer to what the officer could objectively and reasonably believe about the Kansas statute from both the constitutional scope and purpose of his search is readily found in Gant. The Court’s decision details the lower courts’ interpretation (and ultimate misinterpretations) of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence regarding warrantless automobile searches incident to arrest since New York v. Belton,
After Belton, in Thornton v. United States,
“need for a clear rule, readily understood by police officers and not depending on differing estimates of what items were or were not within reach of an arrestee at any particular moment, justifies the sort of generalization which Belton enunciated. Once an officer determines that there is probable cause to make an arrest, it is reasonable to allow officers to ensure their safety and to preserve evidence by searching the entire passenger compartment.” (Emphasis added.)541 U.S. at 623 .
In concurring in part in Thornton, Justice O’Connor observed that since Belton: “[L]ower court decisions seem now to treat the ability to search a vehicle incident to arrest of a recent occupant as a police entitlement rather than as an exception ....” (Emphasis added.) Thornton,
The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, which is the federal circuit court with jurisdiction to hear Fourth Amendment controversies arising from Kansas, recently conceded that it too had frequently interpreted Belton “far beyond the underlying justifications” for warrantless vehicle searches incident to arrest, even if there was no possibility the arrestee could gain access to the vehicle at the time of the search. See United States v. McCane,
Prior to Gant, our court had not had occasion to consider and approve a factual scenario similar to Daniel’s search, but we had addressed Belton and its application in rather broad terms. In State v. McClain,
Against this backdrop from the case law precedent, we add a decision from our Court of Appeals released approximately 6 weeks before Daniel’s arrest. In State v. Henning,
Finally, we consider the available legislative history of K.S.A. 22-2501(c) to determine whether there is any suggestion the legislature “wholly abandoned its responsibility to enact constitutional laws” in its passage of the statute. See Krull,
It is not necessary to burden this opinion with the same detailed recitation of the statute’s legislative deliberations and history that is contained in those two opinions. It is sufficient to simply state that neither opinion expresses any suspicion that the debate over the statute’s provisions reflected an abandonment of the legislature’s responsibility to enact constitutional laws. In fact, the Court of Appeals specifically found based on its review of this history that the legislature’s intent in passing the statute was to allow searches incident to arrest to extend to any crime “as constitutionally allowed” by Belton. See Henning,
Following the precedent set by Krull, we find that at the time of the search of Daniel’s vehicle and purse that a reasonable officer would not have known that K.S.A. 22-2501(c) was unconstitutional. The officer’s objectively reasonable rehance on K.S.A. 22-2501(c) is demonstrated by (a) the substantial case law precedent across the country upholding similar searches, which lends added facial vahdity to the statute; (b) an appellate court decision directly on point that was vahd at the time of Daniel’s search; and (c) the statute’s legislative history. For these reasons, we affirm the district court’s denial of Daniel’s motions to suppress.
Affirmed.
Dissenting Opinion
dissenting: I respectfully dissent. The majority makes a facially seductive case for expanding the scope of the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule in this state to permit the admission of illegally obtained evidence where the law enforcement officer is deemed to have reasonably rebed on a statutory provision. However, I do not believe that we are bound to make such an exception for statutory rebanee, simply because the United States Supreme Court has recognized it, and I would not do so. Further, under the facts of this case, I submit that the law enforcement officer was not relying on a statutory provision but rather the justification for the search emanated from certain cases interpret
The majority acknowledges that, to date, this state has only recognized the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule which derived from United States v. Leon,
However, the majority notes that, after Leon, the United States Supreme Court also applied the good-faith exception where the unlawful search resulted from a law enforcement officer’s objectively reasonable reliance on a statute. See Illinois v. Krull,
The disconnect in the majority’s compulsion analysis, in my view, can be found in the majority’s characterization of the exclusionary rule as “a judicially created remedy,” rather than as a constitutional right.
In my view, the Leon exception involves a critical element distinguishing it from the Krull exception. A condition precedent to the Leon exception is a search warrant issued by a judge. In that situation, there has been a judicial interpretation of the law and
Even if I were to accept the majority’s newly adopted reliance-on-a-statute exception, I would not find that it was applicable in this case. The statutory provision upon which the majority believes the officer was entitled to rely was the amendment to K.S.A. 22-2501(c), which changed “the crime” to “a crime.” Cf. State v. Anderson,
Accordingly, the officer was not relying solely on the new text of K.S.A. 22-2501(c). Rather, to give context to the statutory amendment, the officer had to rely on the case law which had broadly interpreted and applied Belton. In effect, then, the majority has created a new exclusionary rule exception based upon a
The Gant majority acknowledged that cases interpreting Belton to allow a vehicle search incident to arrest when the recent occupant of the vehicle had been handcuffed and secured in a patrol car are “legion.”
“We do not agree with the contention in Justice Alito’s dissent.. . that consideration of police reliance interests requires a different result. Although it appears that the State’s reading of Belton has been widely taught in police academies and that law enforcement officers have relied on the rule in conducting vehicle searches during the past 28 years, many of these searches were not justified by the reasons underlying the Chimel[ v. California,395 U.S. 752 ,23 L. Ed. 2d 685 ,89 S. Ct. 2034 (1969),] exception. Coundess individuals guilty of nothing more serious than a traffic violation have had their constitutional right to the security of their private effects violated as a result. The fact that the law enforcement community may view the State’s version of the Belton rule as an entidement does not establish the sort of reliance interest that could outweigh the countervailing interest that all individuals share in having their constitutional rights fully protected. If it is clear that a practice is unlawful, individuals’ interest in its discontinuance clearly outweighs any law enforcement ‘entidement’ to its persistence.”556 U.S. at 349 .
In a footnote to the foregoing passage, the Gant majority apparently felt compelled to address what impact rebanee may have in another context, stating: “Because a broad reading of Belton has been widely accepted, the doctrine of quahfied immunity will shield officers from liability for searches conducted in reasonable rebanee on that understanding.”
For the multiple reasons stated above, I would reject the State’s first-time-on-appeal argument that the unlawfully obtained evidence was admissible under a good-faith exception to the exclu