State v. HaleState v. Hale
[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it may be cited as State v. Hale, Slip Opinion No. 2024-Ohio-4866.]
NOTICE
This slip opinion is subject to formal revision before it is published in an advance sheet of the Ohio Official Reports. Readers are requested to promptly notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of Ohio, 65 South Front Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215, of any typographical or other formal errors in the opinion, in order that corrections may be made before the opinion is published.
SLIP OPINION NO. 2024-OHIO-4866
THE STATE OF OHIO, APPELLEE, v. HALE, APPELLANT.
[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it may be cited as State v. Hale, Slip Opinion No. 2024-Ohio-4866.]
Criminal law—Warrantless seizure—Fourth Amendment to United States Constitution—A passenger who has alighted from a parked vehicle may be detained by law-enforcement officers under Fourth Amendment as part of an investigatory stop of vehicle‘s driver long enough to allow officers to dispel any reasonable, articulable suspicion of criminal activity officers had for initiating the stop, and detention of the passenger may continue as facts evolve during encounter that give officers reasonable suspicion to believe the passenger was involved in other criminal activity—Judgment affirmed.
(No. 2023-0621—Submitted December 12, 2023—Decided October 10, 2024.
APPEAL from the Court of Appeals for Licking County, No. 2022 CA 00043, 2023-Ohio-1057.
DONNELLY, J., authored the opinion of the court, which KENNEDY, C.J., and DEWINE, STEWART, BRUNNER, and DETERS, JJ., joined. FISCHER, J., dissented, with an opinion.
DONNELLY, J.
{¶ 1} The
BACKGROUND
{¶ 2} On August 30, 2021, plain-clothes detectives from the Central Ohio Drug Enforcement Task Force saw Terrance Cunningham driving a gold minivan. Cunningham was known to the task force as a suspected drug trafficker. The task-force detectives relayed the minivan‘s license-plate number and Cunningham‘s identity to Detective Benjamin Martens with the Licking County Sheriff‘s Office, who was also assigned to the task force. Detective Martens checked Cunningham‘s information in a law-enforcement database and confirmed that Cunningham did not have a valid driver‘s license. Together, Detective Martens and the task-force detectives decided that Detective Martens should stop Cunningham‘s vehicle.
{¶ 3} Using information provided to him by the plain-clothes officers, Detective Martens located the minivan in the parking lot of a convenience store. Detective Martens pulled into the parking lot and parked behind the minivan, which was parked directly in front of the store‘s entrance. When Detective Martens arrived at the parking lot, Cunningham was standing next to the minivan while Katrina Hale, who had been a passenger in the minivan, exited the convenience store, returned to the minivan, and leaned through the passenger‘s-side window.
{¶ 4} Detective Martens asked Cunningham if he was supposed to be driving, to which Cunningham responded that they had traveled only a short distance and that Hale was the driver. Cunningham then pointed toward Hale, who was leaving the passenger‘s side of the minivan and trying to go back inside the store. Detective Martens
{¶ 5} Next Detective Martens resumed questioning Cunningham. After informing Cunningham that he knew Cunningham had been driving the minivan, Detective Martens conducted a pat-down search of Cunningham, during which he discovered a plastic bag containing a substance that Cunningham identified as cocaine. While allowing Cunningham to finish smoking a cigarette, Detective Martens asked Cunningham several questions, including what officers might find when they searched the minivan. Cunningham stated that a firearm registered to Hale was in the minivan. Once Cunningham finished his cigarette, Detective Martens placed him in the back of the patrol car.
{¶ 6} Detective Martens then turned his attention to Hale, who was standing at the front of the patrol car. Moving Hale‘s purses—which were on the patrol car‘s hood—out of her reach, Detective Martens asked Hale whether there were any illegal items or any guns in the minivan. Hale admitted that her registered firearm was in the minivan, as well as marijuana roaches. Hale also admitted to not having a medical-marijuana card. While this discussion was ongoing, Detective Martens searched Hale‘s purses, discovering in one of them a bag containing methamphetamines. At this point, Detective Martens informed Hale of her Fifth Amendment rights to remain silent and to counsel. After some discussion, Hale invoked her right to remain silent and was placed in the rear of a second patrol car.
{¶ 7} In his search of the minivan, Detective Martens discovered an unloaded firearm in a drawer under the front passenger‘s seat, two loaded magazines (one in a bag on the floor of the front passenger‘s seat and one in a bag in the rear of the vehicle), an open container of alcohol, and a digital scale. The Licking County Grand Jury indicted Hale on one count of aggravated possession of methamphetamine, in violation of
{¶ 8} Before trial, Hale moved to suppress the evidence gathered during the stop. Hale argued that because Detective Martens had lacked reasonable suspicion to stop Cunningham, anything Detective Martens learned from his interaction with Cunningham could not form the basis for his later detention of Hale and his search of her clutch purses. Hale also argued that the automobile exception to the
{¶ 9} After a hearing on the motion, the Licking County Common Pleas Court found that Hale was no longer a passenger in the minivan when Detective Martens stopped and detained Cunningham on suspicion
{¶ 10} A divided panel of the Fifth District Court of Appeals reversed the trial court‘s judgment. The Fifth District found that Hale remained a passenger in the minivan when Detective Martens effected a valid stop of Cunningham for a suspected traffic violation. 2023-Ohio-1057, ¶ 15 (5th Dist.). To reach this determination, the appellate court relied on Hale‘s being near the minivan during her encounter with Detective Martens, her return to the minivan and reaching into the vehicle before attempting to go back inside the convenience store, and her admission to being a passenger in the minivan when questioned by Detective Martens, as showing that Hale had remained a passenger of the minivan. Id. Hale‘s status as a passenger, the appellate court reasoned, allowed Detective Martens to detain her for the duration of the stop. And as circumstances developed that supported extending the stop, so too did Detective Martens‘s justification for detaining Hale. Id. at ¶ 15-17. The appellate court also addressed Detective Martens‘s search of Hale‘s purses separately from the propriety of his detention of Hale during the stop, concluding that the search was valid under the automobile
exception to the
{¶ 11} Hale appealed to this court, and we accepted jurisdiction to resolve whether Detective Martens‘s seizure of Hale and his search of her purses violated the
DISCUSSION
{¶ 12} In this case, Hale asks us to reverse the court of appeals’ judgment and reinstate the trial court‘s order suppressing the evidence collected after she was detained by Detective Martens. Our review of a motion to suppress presents a mixed question of law and fact. State v. Burnside, 2003-Ohio-5372, ¶ 8. We must accept the trial court‘s factual findings if those findings are supported by competent, credible evidence. See State v. Fanning, 1 Ohio St.3d 19, 20 (1982). But we do not afford the trial court‘s legal conclusions any deference, and we determine
The Fourth Amendment permits warrantless investigatory stops based on a reasonable, articulable suspicion of criminal activity
{¶ 13} The crux of Hale‘s argument is that her detention by Detective Martens in the convenience store‘s parking lot violated her constitutional rights under the
initial stop was unconstitutional, everything that flowed from the stop—including Detective Martens‘s discovery of the methamphetamines in one of her purses—was impermissible and should be suppressed.
{¶ 14} The
{¶ 15} “The
basis’ for suspecting legal wrongdoing.” United States v. Arvizu, 534 U.S. 266, 273 (2002), quoting Cortez at 417.
{¶ 16} Once an investigatory stop has occurred, the detaining officer must tailor the scope and duration of the stop to the circumstances of the encounter. Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491, 500 (1983). Thus, the investigative methods used by law enforcement must be the “least intrusive means reasonably available to verify or dispel the officer‘s suspicion” of criminal activity. Id. Similarly, the detention “must be temporary and last no longer than is necessary” to carry out the stop‘s purposes. Id.
{¶ 17} In their briefs to this court, both parties focus on whether Detective Martens‘s detention of Hale should be considered a traffic stop and should be subject to the
{¶ 18} To be sure, the facts here cut both ways concerning whether the encounter between Hale and Detective Martens was a “traffic stop.” In favor is the fact that Detective Martens initiated the stop after plain-clothes law-enforcement officers reported witnessing Cunningham commit an alleged traffic violation, which Detective Martens confirmed when he learned Cunningham had been driving without a valid driver‘s license. On the other hand, Cunningham had parked the minivan and Hale was no longer a passenger inside the vehicle when Detective Martens initiated his detention of Cunningham; by that time, Hale had exited the vehicle and entered the convenience store. But when Detective Martens detained Hale, she‘d been identified as a potential driver of the minivan and had returned to the vehicle‘s vicinity. In sum, the facts do not clearly answer whether the encounter between Hale and Detective Martens falls within the realm of a traffic stop. But focusing on answering that question misses the forest for the trees.
{¶ 19} The United States Supreme Court has consistently treated traffic stops as a form of an investigatory stop. See, e.g., Navarette, 572 U.S. at 395-396 (characterizing a traffic stop as a type of investigatory stop); Kansas v. Glover, 589 U.S. 376, 380 (2020) (applying the reasonable-and-articulable-suspicion standard when assessing a law-enforcement officer‘s investigatory traffic stop). And recently, this court noted that traffic stops should be evaluated using the standard for brief investigatory stops. State v. Dunlap, 2024-Ohio-4821, ¶ 16 (lead opinion), citing Berkemer v. McCarty, 468 U.S. 420, 439 (1984). Irrespective of whether Detective Martens‘s detention of Hale was a traffic stop, the question before us in assessing the stop‘s constitutionality remains the same: Did Detective Martens have a reasonable, articulable suspicion that criminal activity was afoot when he detained Hale? And it is to that question that we now turn.
Detective Martens‘s initial detention of Hale was reasonable
{¶ 20} When the circumstances of Detective Martens‘s detention of Hale are viewed in their totality, they show that Detective Martens possessed a reasonable, articulable suspicion of criminal activity. For that reason, Detective Martens‘s investigatory stop of Hale to confirm or dispel that suspicion was reasonable.
{¶ 21} Let‘s start at the beginning. Law-enforcement officers witnessed Cunningham, who was known to them as a suspected drug trafficker, driving a gold minivan. They radioed that information to Detective Martens, who checked the relevant law-enforcement database and confirmed that Cunningham‘s driver‘s license had been
support the officer‘s reasonable suspicion of the traffic violation, justifying an investigatory stop). Based on that belief, Detective Martens had the authority to briefly detain Cunningham to confirm or dispel his suspicion of criminal activity. See Maumee v. Weisner, 87 Ohio St.3d 295, 297 (1999), citing United States v. Hensley, 469 U.S. 221, 231 (1985) (law-enforcement officers may rely on police dispatches for facts to justify an investigatory stop). And that is what Detective Martens did in the convenience store‘s parking lot.
{¶ 22} It was during that valid investigatory stop of Cunningham that Detective Martens also detained Hale. Hale argues that Detective Martens could not detain her, because when he effected the stop, she was no longer a passenger in the minivan—i.e., the vehicle was parked and she had exited the vehicle and entered the convenience store. But whether Hale was still a passenger in the vehicle when Detective Martens detained her is not dispositive of the question whether Detective Martens had a reasonable suspicion to believe that Hale was involved in criminal activity. Rather, the dispositive question is whether the facts that Detective Martens possessed when he stopped Hale provided a reasonable basis for his suspicion. See Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21-22 (1968), citing Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132 (1925), and Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 96-97 (1964). And we conclude that they did.
{¶ 23} After being lawfully stopped by Detective Martens, Cunningham claimed that Hale had been driving the minivan and pointed toward her. When Detective Martens approached Hale, she was in the vicinity of the minivan. Indeed, the dashboard-camera video footage from Detective Martens‘s patrol car shows that Hale had exited the convenience store, leaned into the minivan‘s passenger‘s-side window, and retrieved items from or replaced items in the minivan while Detective Martens spoke with Cunningham. Far from being a dispassionate and unrelated observer to what was going on, Hale actively associated herself with and exercised control over the vehicle that was at the center of the suspected criminal activity.
What is more, evidence at the hearing on Hale‘s motion to suppress shows that Hale was walking from the minivan and attempting to go back inside the convenience store when Detective Martens stopped her to investigate her involvement in the suspected criminal activity that precipitated his stop of Cunningham. At that point, given Cunningham‘s assertions that Hale had been the person driving the minivan and Detective Martens‘s own observations, Detective Martens possessed facts that supported his suspicion that Hale was involved in suspected criminal activity.
{¶ 24} This suspicion was bolstered by Detective Martens‘s continued interaction with Hale. In response to Detective Martens‘s questioning, Hale admitted that she knew Cunningham did not have a valid driver‘s license and that despite that knowledge, she still asked him to drive her to the store. This admission by Hale gave Detective Martens reasonable suspicion to believe that Hale had wrongfully entrusted
{¶ 25} Applying the law to the facts here shows that Detective Martens‘s actions satisfy the
Detective Martens to detain Hale once she was identified as a possible driver of the minivan while the detective investigated the suspected criminal activity. Furthermore, the facts that show Hale was associating herself with and exercising some control over the minivan when Detective Martens first approached her. Indeed, even if Hale had exited the vehicle and entered the convenience store while Detective Martens detained and questioned Cunningham, the fact remains that Hale had returned to the vehicle, leaned inside it, and was walking away from the vehicle when she was detained by Detective Martens. These circumstances provided a reasonable basis for Detective Martens to detain Hale. And as a result, Hale‘s detention by Detective Martens did not violate the
We do not reach the constitutionality of Detective Martens‘s search of Hale‘s purses
{¶ 26} In her sole proposition of law, Hale alleges that Detective Martens‘s seizure and search of her two purses also violated the
{¶ 27} An appellate court addresses and resolves legal error as presented and argued by the parties. State v. Quarterman, 2014-Ohio-4034, ¶ 19. It is not the court‘s task to formulate and resolve a party‘s legal arguments for her. Id. In the proceedings before the trial court and the Fifth District, Hale asserted that Detective Martens‘s search of her purses violated the
questioning. The only argument she makes is that the evidence found during the search of her purses is the fruit of an unconstitutional stop. As discussed above,
CONCLUSION
{¶ 28} Nothing in this case leads us to believe that Detective Martens‘s detention of Hale as part of his investigatory stop after plain-clothes officers reported witnessing Cunningham commit an alleged traffic violation is unreasonable. As a result, Detective Martens‘s seizure of Hale was not an unconstitutional investigatory stop and therefore did not violate the
Judgment affirmed.
FISCHER, J., dissenting.
{¶ 29} The majority opinion holds that the
{¶ 30} The Fifth District Court of Appeals treated this case as involving a traffic stop and stated that under the circumstances of the traffic stop, officers could
detain appellant, Katrina Hale, if she was considered a “passenger of the vehicle.” 2023-Ohio-1057, ¶ 15 (5th Dist.). The court of appeals concluded that Hale was a passenger of the vehicle because the vehicle was parked directly in front of the convenience store where the stop took place; the officer‘s body camera recorded Hale exiting the store, returning to the vehicle, and reaching into the passenger‘s side of the vehicle before trying to return to the store; and Hale “was at or very near the vehicle” at all times pertinent to the stop. Id. Furthermore, Terrence Cunningham, who had been seen driving the vehicle, told Detective Martens—the officer who initiated the stop—that Hale had been driving the vehicle, and upon questioning, Hale admitted that she had been a passenger in the vehicle. Id.
{¶ 31} The majority opinion states that analyzing whether the stop in this case was a traffic stop “misses the forest for the trees,” majority opinion, ¶ 18, because traffic stops are a form of investigatory stop, id. at ¶ 19. Therefore, the majority opinion concludes that what matters here is whether Hale‘s detention was proper under the requirements for investigatory stops and whether Detective Martens had “a reasonable, articulable suspicion that criminal activity was afoot when he detained Hale.” Id. at ¶ 19.
{¶ 32} The majority opinion concludes that Detective Martens did have a reasonable suspicion of some sort of unspecified criminal activity to justify his seizure of Hale because when he arrived in the parking lot to initiate the stop, Hale “was walking from the minivan and attempting to go back inside the convenience store,” id. at ¶ 23, and because Cunningham asserted that Hale had been driving the minivan, id. at ¶ 23. But the majority opinion never says what kind of criminal activity Detective
Cunningham of driving with a suspended license. Therefore, there were two possibilities here: either Hale had been driving, which was not a crime, or Cunningham had been driving with a suspended license while Hale was a passenger. But it is not a crime to ride in a vehicle being driven by someone with a suspended license.
{¶ 33} The majority opinion suggests that perhaps Detective Martens had a reasonable, articulable suspicion to believe that Hale had engaged in negligent entrustment because she stated that she had asked Cunningham to drive her to the store. But Hale did not inform Detective Martens of that fact until after Detective Martens detained her and told her that she was not free to leave. And regardless, Detective Martens had no reason to believe that Hale knew Cunningham‘s driver‘s license was suspended or that Hale owned or had control over the minivan that Cunningham had driven. See
{¶ 34} But this was not a typical traffic stop. The vehicle was already parked in the convenience store‘s parking lot and both Cunningham and Hale had already exited the vehicle when Detective Martens and other law-enforcement officers arrived on the scene. In fact, Hale was coming out of the convenience store when Detective Martens pulled into the parking lot. As discussed below, while courts have held that law-enforcement officers may legally order passengers of a lawfully stopped vehicle to get out of the vehicle under certain circumstances, no
court that I am aware of, other than the Fifth District in this case, has ever held that officers may detain people who have been recent passengers in a vehicle that was already parked when officers arrived.
{¶ 35} In Maryland v. Wilson, 519 U.S. 408, 414-415 (1997), the United States Supreme Court held that law-enforcement officers may order passengers out of a vehicle during a traffic stop to protect officer safety. However, the Court noted that passengers have a stronger liberty interest than drivers because while the officer making the stop has probable cause to believe the driver has committed a vehicular offense, there is no probable cause to believe that the passenger has committed a crime. Id. at 413. The court stated that therefore, “there is no such reason to stop or detain the passengers,” id., but held that because passengers are already detained by virtue of the traffic stop, id. at 414, ordering them to exit the vehicle is a “minimal” additional intrusion that is warranted by the interest in officer safety, id. at 415.
{¶ 36} However, the Court‘s reasoning in Wilson does not extend to people who
outside the vehicle and attempting to reenter the store.
{¶ 37} Furthermore, while officers may detain passengers of a vehicle to protect officer safety, that exception to the warrant requirement of the
{¶ 38} Nor was Hale exercising control over a “center of suspected criminal activity” as the majority opinion suggests. See majority opinion at ¶ 23. In Arizona v. Gant, 556 U.S. 332, 335 (2009), the United States Supreme Court held that law-enforcement officers may not search a vehicle if they do not have probable cause to believe that they will find evidence of the suspected crime in the vehicle. In that case, as in this case, the driver of the vehicle was suspected of driving with a suspended license. The Court held that the driver‘s arrest for driving with a suspended license did not justify the officers’ search of the vehicle, because it was not reasonable to believe that evidence of the offense of arrest would be found in the vehicle. Id.
{¶ 39} Likewise in this case, when Hale was detained, Detective Martens had reasonable suspicion to believe that Cunningham had been driving without a valid license. But there would be no evidence of that offense in the vehicle. Therefore, Detective Martens did not have a right to search the vehicle during
Hale‘s detention, and he did not have any reason to believe that Hale was removing evidence of a crime or meddling with a crime scene. Hale had every right to remove her belongings from the vehicle when she did. Furthermore, even if Detective Martens had reason to believe that Hale was meddling with a crime scene, which he did not, he could have ordered her to stop what she was doing short of actually detaining her. Then, if she had continued her actions, it would have been reasonable for Detective
{¶ 40} Hale‘s detention was not a traffic stop. It was not an investigatory stop. Detective Martens had no reason to believe that allowing Hale to leave the scene would jeopardize officer safety or the integrity of a crime scene. In short, Hale‘s detention violated the
Jenny Wells, Licking County Prosecuting Attorney, and Kenneth W. Oswalt, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, for appellee.
Elizabeth R. Miller, Ohio Public Defender, and Craig M. Jaquith, Assistant Public Defender, for appellant.