STATE OF OHIO v. DAMAAD S. GARDNER
C.A. CASE NO. 24308
IN THE COURT OF APPEALS FOR MONTGOMERY COUNTY, OHIO
November 4, 2011
[Cite as State v. Gardner, 2011-Ohio-5692.]
FROELICH, J.
T.C. NO. 10CR910 (Criminal appeal from Common Pleas Court)
Rendered on the 4th day of November, 2011.
TIMOTHY J. COLE, Atty. Reg. No. 0084117, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, 301 W. Third Street, 5th Floor, Dayton, Ohio 45422 Attorney for Plaintiff-Appellee
REBEKAH S. NEUHERZ, Atty. Reg. No. 0072093, 150 N. Limestone Street, Suite 218, Springfield, Ohio 45501 Attorney for Defendant-Appellant
FROELICH, J.
{¶ 1} Defendant-appellant Damaad Gardner appeals from his conviction for possession of cocaine. For the following reasons, the judgment of the trial court is Reversed, and the case is Remanded.
I
{¶ 3} The driver parked the truck in the driveway of a residence. The driver and his passenger got out and entered the residence. Detective House decided to watch the house believing that a short stay could be indicative of drug activity. Seeing no suspicious activity, Detective House left after about fifteen minutes.
{¶ 4} Approximately three hours later, Detective House drove past the residence again. The truck was still in the driveway, along with a car. The car was registered to Richard Easter, who had an active warrant for his arrest from Butler County for failure to appear for trial on a drug charge. The LEADS system described Easter as a 56-year-old white male, approximately six feet tall, 160 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes.
{¶ 5} Detective House moved up the street and resumed watching the house to see if Easter would emerge. Two younger (than Easter‘s listed age) men came out of the house. One, later identified as Gardner, sat in the passenger seat
{¶ 6} Before House was able to contact a marked cruiser, the driver turned into a gas station and parked, got out of the car, and walked up to the window and purchased cigarettes. Detective House, who was wearing a Dayton Police Department utility vest, parked 25 or 30 feet away and approached the driver. The man admitted that he was Richard Easter, and Detective House placed him under arrest. As Detective House was handcuffing Easter near the driver‘s door, he saw Gardner moving around inside the car, appearing to be ready to exit the car. Detective House walked Easter behind the car and around to the passenger side so that the detective could talk to the passengers. As the detective and Easter walked around the car, Detective House could see Gardner rise out of his seat and appear to reach into the back of his shorts. Concerned that Gardner might be armed, Detective House shouted for Gardner to place his hands on the dashboard, and Gardner did as told.
{¶ 7} Detective House had Easter sit on the ground with his back against the rear door and then tried to open the front passenger door, but it was locked. He ordered Gardner to get out of the car, and Gardner complied. Because he was still the only officer on the scene, Detective House handcuffed Gardner. Detective
{¶ 8} The trial court overruled the motion to suppress. Gardner pled no contest to one count of possession of cocaine and was sentenced to community control. Gardner appeals.
II
{¶ 9} Gardner‘s Assignment of Error:
{¶ 10} “THE TRIAL COURT ERRED WHEN IT OVERRULED APPELLANT‘S MOTION TO SUPPRESS, FINDING THAT APPELLANT‘S OUTSTANDING ARREST WARRANT CURED AN OTHERWISE ILLEGAL SEARCH.”
{¶ 11} In his sole assignment of error, Gardner claims that the trial court should have granted his motion to suppress because the officer lacked reasonable, articulable suspicion of criminal activity to justify detaining him and patting him down. When assessing a motion to suppress, the trial court is the finder of fact, judging the credibility of witnesses and the weight of evidence. State v. Jackson, Butler App. No. CA2002-01-013, citing State v. Fanning (1982), 1 Ohio St. 3d 19, 20. An appellate court must rely on those findings and determine “without
{¶ 12} Both the
{¶ 13} In overruling the motion, the court discussed, but specifically did not make factual findings, whether there was a reasonable, articulable suspicion to justify the pat down or whether the seizure resulted from the plain feel doctrine. Rather, the court held that when a valid warrant exists for a defendant‘s arrest, the individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy, and the exclusionary rule does not apply to exclude evidence that may have otherwise been unlawfully obtained by a police officer, even when the officer is not aware of the existence of the warrant until after the unlawful detention.
{¶ 14} In Dayton v. Click (Oct. 5, 1994), Montgomery App. No. 14328, discretionary appeal not allowed, (1995), 71 Ohio St. 3d 1477, Click was the driver of a vehicle that, the court found, was stopped with “no reasonable suspicion that [he] was involved in criminal activity.” He originally gave a false name and was
{¶ 15} In State v. Brown (Jan. 28, 2000), Montgomery App. No. 17965, the trial court found that the officer “did not have the requisite reasonable suspicion to detain and question” the defendant. We held that when a warrant was subsequently discovered, “the warrant justified Brown‘s arrest” and that the search of the vehicle incident to arrest was lawful; the drugs that were found were not subject to suppression.
{¶ 16} In State v. Jamison (May 11, 2001), Montgomery App. No. 18453, appeal dismissed 93 Ohio St. 3d 1413 (2001), the trial court found that the stop and pat down of Jamison were justified, but that the seizure of his identification card, as opposed to any weapons or contraband, exceeded Terry v. Ohio (1968), 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889. Therefore, despite the fact that the officers determined, based on this identification, that there was a warrant for his arrest, the
{¶ 17} However, in State v. Smith, Montgomery App. No. 22434, 2008-Ohio-5523, ¶ 12, discretionary appeal not accepted; motion for limited remand to the court of appeals to resolve intradistrict conflict en banc denied as moot, 121 Ohio St. 3d 1411, 2009-Ohio-805, we “specifically overrule[d Jamison] to the extent that it contradicts our holding in Dayton v. Click * * *.” We held that Smith “had no reasonable expectation of privacy in being free from being stopped arbitrarily by police since the police were authorized and directed by an Indiana court to arrest him. * * * A search incident to that arrest would have disclosed the guns and drugs recovered by the police.” Id. at ¶ 11. Later that year, in a case where the officer learned of an outstanding warrant after the discovery of drugs, we held that “the existence of the warrant rendered [the officer‘s] search and seizure of the drugs lawful.” State v. Williams, Montgomery App. No. 22535, 2008-Ohio-6030, ¶ 22, citing Click, supra, and Smith, supra.
{¶ 18} In State v. Walker-Stokes, 180 Ohio App. 3d 36, 2008-Ohio-6552, ¶ 39, we said “we need not decide whether those difficulties [regarding lack of probable cause for a stop] rise to the level of reversible error.” Even assuming an unlawful stop, a warrant was then found, the vehicle was searched, and a weapon was
{¶ 19} A trial court found in State v. Harding, 180 Ohio App. 3d 497, 2009-Ohio-59, appeal not accepted, 121 Ohio St. 3d 1504, 2009-Ohio-59; reconsideration denied 122 Ohio St. 3d 1483, 2009-Ohio-2511, that a pedestrian was unlawfully stopped. When he supplied his name and social security number, which were transmitted to the dispatcher, a warrant was discovered. The defendant was arrested, and drugs were found on him. Finding that “[e]specially on close questions of law, the doctrine of stare decisis requires that we follow the latest holding of our court on an issue of law,” we held that the “defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy because he had an outstanding warrant for his arrest * * *” and thus it does “not matter that the police became aware of the warrant following, and as a result of, an otherwise unlawful detention.” Id. at ¶¶ 19-22. See, also, State v. Gray, Montgomery App. No. 22688, 2009-Ohio-1411, ¶ 12, stating “[t]he mere existence of an outstanding warrant, in other words, renders a seizure lawful, whether or not the officer is aware of the warrant at the time of the seizure.”
{¶ 20} An individual cannot complain of a search and request that anything seized be suppressed unless he or she has a reasonable and legitimate
{¶ 21} However, when a person is seized (assuming it is a seizure1), he or she has a reasonable expectation of privacy — to be let alone by the State — that has been violated. An individual “may not be detained even momentarily without reasonable, objective grounds for doing so.” Florida v. Royer (1983), 460 U.S. 491, 498, 103 S.Ct. 1319, 75 L.Ed.2d 229. As the Supreme Court reiterated in Terry, 392 U.S. at 9, “No right is held more sacred, or is more carefully guarded, by the common law, than the right of every individual to the possession and control of his own person, free from all restraint or interference of others, unless by clear and unquestionable authority of law.” (Quoting Union Pacific R. Co. v. Botsford (1891), 141 U.S. 250, 251, 11 S.Ct. 1000, 35 L.Ed. 734).
{¶ 22} Individuals do not forfeit this expectation of privacy merely because there is a warrant for their arrest. They may not know of the warrant (or even of the allegation that they committed a crime or failed to pay a ticket), or the warrant could have been issued (or failed to have been recalled) in error. Further, even if
{¶ 23} Obviously, as Justice Frankfurter famously observed, many people who raise
{¶ 24} “The exclusionary rule suppresses evidence only when a constitutional violation is a proximate cause of the government‘s receipt of the evidence. However, rather than speak in terms of proximate cause in exclusionary rule cases, the court has spoken of ‘attenuation’ and ‘dissipation of the taint.’ Its
{¶ 25} For example, as far back as Nardone v. United States (1939), 308 U.S. 338, 341, 60 S.Ct. 266, 84 L.Ed. 307, the court said that the causal connection between government‘s unlawful conduct and its proof could “become so attenuated as to dissipate the taint;” as when an independent intervening cause, such as a defendant‘s unprompted decision to confess or a witness‘s unprompted decision to cooperate, has broken the causal chain. Wong Sun v. United States (1963), 371 U.S. 471, 487, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (not all evidence is fruit of the poisonous tree simply because it would not have come to light but for the illegal actions of the police; “the more apt question” is whether the evidence “has been come at by exploitation of that illegality or instead by means sufficiently distinguishable to be purged of the primary taint“).
{¶ 26} The Sixth Circuit has directly addressed the question of “whether the discovery of a valid arrest warrant may serve to dissipate the taint of an unlawful detention.” United States v. Gross (C.A.6, 2010), 624 F.3d 309. It held that “where there is a stop with no legal purpose, the discovery of a warrant during that stop will not constitute an intervening circumstance.” Id. at 320. See, also, United States v. Lopez (C.A.10, 2006), 443 F.3d 1280 (where there was no reasonable suspicion or probable cause to detain a defendant, the continued detention of the defendant while an officer ran a warrants check constituted an unlawful seizure and
{¶ 27} “To hold otherwise would result in a rule that creates a new form of police investigation, whereby an officer patrolling a high crime area may, without consequence, illegally stop a group of residents where he has a ‘police hunch’ that the residents may: 1) have outstanding warrants; or 2) be engaged in some activity that does not rise to a level of reasonable suspicion. Despite a lack of reasonable suspicion, a well-established constitutional requirement, the officer may then seize those individuals, ask for their identifying information (which the individuals will feel coerced into giving as they will have been seized and will not feel free to leave or end the encounter), run their names through a warrant database, and then proceed to arrest and search those individuals for whom a warrant appears. Under this scenario, an officer need no longer have reasonable suspicion on probable cause, the very crux of our
{¶ 28} The Arizona Supreme Court in State v. Hummons (2011), 227 Ariz. 78, 253 P.3d 275, analyzed whether an illegal stop is sufficiently attenuated from a subsequent search to avoid the exclusionary rule. Applying Brown v. Illinois (1975), 422 U.S. 590, 603, 95 S.Ct. 2254, 45 L.Ed.2d 416, the court considered three factors: the time elapsed between the illegality and the acquisition of the evidence; the presence of intervening circumstances; and the purpose and flagrancy of the official misconduct.
{¶ 29} The court found that “in essentially every case” the time between the illegal stop and the discovery of the evidence is short and that the discovery of a valid arrest warrant is an intervening cause, but not one that can validate a search “i[f] the purpose of an illegal stop or seizure is to discover a warrant — in essence, to discover an intervening circumstance.” Id. at ¶ 12. The court then examined the third factor, the purpose and flagrancy of the illegal conduct, and found that the officer did not approach the defendant “with the hope of arresting and searching him, nor did she otherwise engage in purposeful or flagrant illegality.” Id. at ¶ 13.
{¶ 30} The Sixth Circuit in Gross, supra, also applied Brown, but found that “where a stop has no legal purpose, the discovery of a warrant during that stop will not constitute an intervening circumstance” that would dissipate the taint of an unlawful detention. Gross, at 320-21. “* * * [H]olding that the discovery of a warrant after an illegal stop is an intervening circumstance so long as the purpose of the stop is not because the officer believes the suspect has an outstanding warrant would encourage an officer to offer alternative reasons for the stop, such as a police hunch or community-caretaking. Essentially, we will have created a system of post-hoc rationalization through which the
{¶ 31} Click‘s progeny in this District (we can find no citations to it by any other appellate court) is labyrinthine, if not desultory. “Stare decisis is a principle of policy and not a mechanical formula of adherence to the latest decision.” Gallimore v. Children‘s Hosp. Med. Center (1993), 67 Ohio St. 3d 244, 257 (Moyer, C.J. dissenting). “Stare decisis remains a controlling doctrine in cases presenting questions on the law of contracts, property, and torts, but it is not controlling in cases presenting constitutional questions.” State v. Bodyke, 126 Ohio St. 3d 266, 275, 2010-Ohio-2424, ¶ 37. Because there is a constitutional protection underlying the proper application of the exclusionary rule, “stare decisis does not compel us with the same force as it does in other areas of the law.” See, e.g., State v. Johnson, 128 Ohio St. 3d 153, 2010-Ohio-6314,
{¶ 32} If an individual is unlawfully stopped and evidence is seized, it is subject to the exclusionary rule because of the
{¶ 33} None of this means that a defendant cannot be arrested for the outstanding warrant simply because his name was discovered as a result of an unlawful stop. “There is no sanction to be applied when an illegal arrest only leads to discovery of the man‘s identity.” Hoosilapa v. I.N.S. (C.A.9, 1978), 575 F.2d 735, 738. Most courts hold that I.N.S. v. Lopez-Mendoza (1984), 468 U.S. 1032, 1039, 104 S.Ct. 3479, 82 L.Ed.2d 778, stands for the proposition that “the body or identity of a defendant * * * in a criminal or civil proceeding is never itself suppressible as a fruit of an unlawful arrest.” See, e.g., United States v. Oscar-Torres (C.A.4, 2007), 507 F.3d 224 (fingerprints); United States v. Navarro-Dias (C.A.6, 2005), 420 F.3d 581 (denying motion to suppress “regardless of whether the information was obtained by a violation of his
{¶ 34} This was recently before the United States Supreme Court. Jose Tolentino was unlawfully stopped, and his name and the fact that he was driving under suspension were discovered. The question before the court was whether that information, obtained only through his unlawful detention, could be used. The
{¶ 35} In Herring v. United States (2009), 555 U.S. 135, 129 S.Ct. 695, 172 L.Ed.2d 496, the majority held that unreasonable searches do not automatically trigger the exclusionary rule. See, e.g., Nolasco, et al., What Herring Hath Wrought: An Analysis of Post-Herring Cases in the Federal Courts, 38 Am.J.Crim.L. 221 (Spring, 2011). In Herring, the police relied on incorrect computer information that failed to reflect that a warrant had been recalled. The court stated that the exclusionary rule does not apply to unconstitutional searches resulting from mistakes due to “isolated negligence attenuated from the arrest.” Herring, at 698. How this holding affects general
{¶ 36} Regardless, we cannot speculate on what a higher court might eventually hold. Some courts have held that discovery of a warrant after an illegal arrest is the fruit of the poisonous tree; others have held that the warrant is an intervening and attenuating circumstance; and others have held that the flagrancy of the police conduct and/or the foreseeability2 of the discovery of a warrant should
{¶ 37} Whether viewed as lack of proximate cause or as attenuation, there is a point, albeit perhaps ultimately subjective, at which the discovery of a warrant, and a search incident to arrest under the warrant, is so removed, unrelated, unforseen, and independent from the unlawful stop and seizure that the exclusionary rule is not applicable. In the case before us, the warrant was discovered as a direct, proximate and non-attenuated result of Gardner‘s seizure.
{¶ 38} In summary, Gardner had a reasonable expectation of privacy at the time of the stop despite there being a warrant for his arrest. Once the warrant was discovered, the law enforcement officers had the right to infringe upon that expectation, arrest him, and conduct a search incident to that arrest. However, if the warrant was discovered as a result of an unlawful stop or seizure (unless its discovery was unconnected to and attenuated from the illegality), then any evidence seized in the search incident to the arrest must be suppressed.
{¶ 39} We cannot tell from the record exactly when and how the officers discovered Gardner‘s name or that there was a warrant; whether the court found facts justifying — or not justifying — a Terry patdown; or whether, if such a patdown were justified, whether the seizure of the drugs was within the plain feel exception. We will reverse the judgment and remand the case to the trial court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
HALL, J., dissenting:
{¶ 40} At the time of his encounter with police, which led to the pat down and discovery of crack cocaine hidden in his shorts, the defendant had an outstanding warrant for his arrest. The warrant was not discovered until sometime after the pat down. This court held in Dayton v. Click (Oct. 5, 1994), Montgomery App. No. 14328, that a defendant with an outstanding arrest warrant does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy to be free from arrest and search. I recognize that the court has at times struggled with that decision. See, e.g., State v. Jamison (May 11, 2001) Montgomery App. No. 18453, overruled by State v. Walker-Stokes, 180 Ohio App.3d 36, 2008-Ohio-6552. But the case law of the court, reaffirmed repeatedly, is that when a defendant has an outstanding arrest warrant, he has “no reasonable expectation of privacy to be free from arrest and search by the police.” State v. Williams, Montgomery App. No. 22535, 2008-Ohio-6030, ¶ 22, citing State v. Smith, Montgomery App. No. 22434, 2008-Ohio-5523, ¶ 11. The majority opinion effectively overrules those holdings.
{¶ 41} In this record, there is no evidence that the police acted indiscriminately or in flagrant disregard of the defendant‘s rights. When a case with such police activity is presented to us, then will be the time to re-examine Click, Smith, and Williams.
{¶ 42} Based upon the above case law, I believe that the trial court correctly determined that the defendant did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy and, therefore, the trial court properly overruled the defendant‘s Motion to
Copies mailed to:
Timothy J. Cole
Rebekah S. Neuherz
Hon. Timothy N. O‘Connell