Ronald L. Woodruff appeals his conviction for trafficking in crack cocaine. Woodruff contends the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress evidence pursuant to
Terry v. Ohio,
FACTS/PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
At the suppression hearing, the trial court viewed two police video tape recordings which depicted a June 4, 1998 traffic stop and thirty minute detention. One of the video tapes came from Officer Matthew Durham’s patrol car. The second video tape was obtained from Officer James Littleton’s patrol car. Both officers testified at trial regarding the detention. The tapes, together with the testimony, reveal the following.
At approximately 10:22 a.m. on June 4, 1998, Officer Matthew Durham, with the Anderson County Sheriffs Department, stopped a vehicle for speeding. The driver of the automobile was Alex Graham. One of the vehicle’s windows was broken. Shortly after Officer Durham stopped the vehicle, Officer James Littleton arrived on the scene. Woodruff was a passenger in the vehicle. Officer Durham asked to see Graham’s driver’s license or identification, but Graham was unable to produce either. Graham told Officer Durham his last name was “Harriston” and provided an address and date of birth. Graham informed Officer Durham that he and Woodruff had been to Atlanta to “see some girls” and the vehicle belonged to Woodruff. Officer Durham called in the information Graham provided for verification, along with the automobile’s tag number. Officer Durham testified the resulting report indicated the car belonged to Robert Moore, who had been reported missing.
According to Officer Durham, Woodruff, when questioned, declared he owned the automobile, but he was unable to produce a registration for the car. Upon further questioning, Woodruff indicated he and Graham had taken Graham’s girl
About 10:34 a.m., Officer Durham issued Graham a warning ticket for speeding and asked him for permission to search the car. Graham consented to the search.
At approximately 10:35 a.m., prior to the vehicle search, Woodruff got out of the car. Officer Durham conducted a pat-down on both Graham and Woodruff. Neither search revealed weapons. The vehicle search, which lasted approximately ten minutes, produced a small set of scales and a number of identification cards, none of which depicted either Graham or Woodruff. Officer Durham stated Woodruff claimed to be one of the persons pictured on one of the identification cards, but the claim proved to be false.
After the vehicle search, Officer Durham searched Woodruff a second time. On direct examination, Officer Durham gave the following account of the second search:
A. At that time after all the names and anything was adding up — kept finding different IDs, the inconsistencies with their stories, the busted window, — at that time I did a more thorough search on the passenger using my hands and went down through his groin area and at that time I felt a bulge in his groin area.
Q. And what did you do when you felt that bulge?
A. Asked the subject what was in his pants.
Q. And what did he tell you?
A. He pulled his britches out and at that time I could visually see the cocaine in his pants.
Q. Did you remove it?
A. No, ma’am.
Q. Who removed it?
A. I asked the subject to remove it for me.
On cross-examination, Officer Durham testified as follows regarding the second search:
A. At that time we started finding more IDs. I think he produced the ID and we got to finding IDs in the car. The stories that they were giving weren’t adding up as to where they said they were going and where theywere coming from and the window being busted out of the car. Supposedly now he’s a missing person out of North Carolina, and then he goes from there to that he’s not even the owner of the car — At that time I decided I may have missed something, so, I searched him again.
Q. Okay, when you patted him down the first time, youdidn’t find any weapons?
A. No, sir.
Q. You didn’t expect to find any weapons when you patted him down again, did you?
A. At that time I wasn’t looking for weapons.
Q. Well, what were you looking for?
A. I was looking to see if there was any more IDs or anything else on him that made me believe that he isn’t who he says he is.
Q. And the second time you searched him this was a more extensive search, wasn’t it?
A. Yes, it was.
Q. But, — you felt a bulge in his pants.
A. That’s correct.
Q. Okay, did that bulge feel like a knife?
A. A knife?
Q. Yeah.
A. No.
Q. Did it feel like a gun?
A. No.
Q. Did it feel like brass knuckles?
A. No.
Q. Did it feel like any type of weapon?
A. No.
Q. What did it feel like?
A. At the time I wasn’t sure; that’s why I asked him what he had in his pants and at that time he pulled his waistband out and when he did that I looked down inhis pants and you could visually see the cocaine in the bag.
Approximately thirty minutes elapsed between the time Officer Durham made the traffic stop and the time he conducted the second search of Woodruff. The material seized from Woodruff was determined to be 30.34 grams of crack cocaine.
LAW/ANALYSIS
Woodruff argues the trial court erred in refusing to suppress the crack cocaine because it was seized pursuant to an unlawful and unreasonable thirty minute Terry search. We agree.
I. Law
The Fourth Amendment guarantees “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” U.S. Const, amend IV. The Fourth Amendment is applicable to the States through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Mapp v. Ohio,
“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.”
Union Pacific Ry. Co. v. Botsford,
In determining whether an encounter between a law enforcement official and a citizen constitutes a seizure, thereby implicating Fourth Amendment protection, the correct inquiry is whether, considering all of the circumstances surrounding the encounter, a reasonable person would have believed he was not free to leave.
Mendenhall,
The Supreme Court has often observed that searches and seizures “ ‘conducted outside the judicial process, without pri- or approval by judge or magistrate, are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment — subject only to a few specifically established and well delineated exceptions.’ ”
Thompson v. Louisiana,
A police officer may stop and briefly detain and question a person for investigative purposes, without treading upon his Fourth Amendment rights, when the officer has a reasonable suspicion supported by articulable facts, short of probable cause for arrest, that the person is involved in criminal activity.
Terry,
The term “reasonable suspicion” requires a particularized and objective basis that would lead one to suspect another of criminal activity.
United States v. Cortez,
Generally, the decision to stop an automobile is reasonable where the police have probable cause to believe a traffic violation has occurred.
Whren v. United States,
In assessing whether a suspect is armed and dangerous, “[t]he officer need not be absolutely certain that the individual is armed; the issue is whether a reasonably prudent man in the circumstances would be warranted in the belief that his safety or that of others was in danger.”
Terry,
The scope of a search authorized by
Terry
is limited. In
Minnesota v. Dickerson,
On appeal, the Supreme Court held that police officers may seize nonthreatening contraband detected through the sense of touch during a protective patdown search permitted by
Terry,
but only if the officers’ search stays within the bounds marked by
Terry. Id.
at 373,
If a police officer lawfully pats down a suspect’s outer clothing and feels an object whose contour or mass makes its identity immediately apparent, there has been no invasion of the suspect’s privacy beyond that already authorized by the officer’s search for weapons; if the object is contraband, its warrantless seizure would be justified by the same practical considerations that inhere in the plain-view context.
Dickerson,
“The purpose of this limited search is not to discover evidence of crime, but to allow the officer to pursue his investigation without fear of violence____” Adams [v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143 , 146,92 S.Ct. 1921 , 1923,32 L.Ed.2d 612 , 617 (1972)]. Rather, a protective search — permitted without a warrant and on the basis of reasonable suspicion less than probable cause — must be strictly “limited to that which is necessary for the discovery of weapons which might be used to harm the officer or others nearby.” Terry, supra, at 26,88 S.Ct. at 1882 ,20 L.Ed.2d 889 ; see also Michigan v. Long,463 U.S. 1032 , 1049, and 1052, n. 16,103 S.Ct. 3469 , 3480-81, and 3482, n. 16,77 L.Ed.2d 1201 (1983); Ybarra v. Illinois,444 U.S. 85 , 93-94,100 S.Ct. 338 , 343-44,62 L.Ed.2d 238 (1979). If the protective search goes beyond what is necessary to determine if the suspect is armed, it is no longer valid under Terry and its fruits will be suppressed. Sibron v. New York,392 U.S. 40 , 65-66,88 S.Ct. 1889 , 1904,20 L.Ed.2d 917 (1968).
Dickerson,
The courts of this state have recognized and applied the principle that law enforcement officers are not granted, under the purview of
Terry,
a general warrant to rummage and seize at will,
1
and that any evidence stemming from an unlawful detention must be excluded as “fruit of the poisonous tree.” The case of
Sikes v. State,
When an officer stops a vehicle for a traffic violation, he may briefly detain the vehicle and its occupants while he examines the vehicle registration and the driver’s license. Delaware v. Prouse,440 U.S. 648 ,99 S.Ct. 1391 , 59 L.Ed.2d660 (1979) (emphasis added). Although Sikes does not challenge the officers’ initial stop of the automobile, Sikes claims that the officers improperly seized him to run a warrant check with no reasonable cause. An individual is “seized” when an officer restrains his freedom, even if the detention is brief and falls short of arrest. The scope and duration of seizure must be strictly tied to and justified by the circumstances which rendered its initiation proper. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 ,88 S.Ct. 1868 ,20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). In South Carolina, we have gone a little further by holding that an officer may stop a car and briefly detain the occupants if he has a reasonable suspicion that the occupants are involved in criminal activity. Knight v. State,284 S.C. 138 ,325 S.E.2d 535 (1985) (emphasis added).
Here the officers’ “reasonable suspicion” was that the car was either stolen or that the driver was uninsured. Under Knight, supra, neither of these reasons gave the officers the right to seize or question the car’s passenger. Moreover, even assuming arguendo that this stop was reasonable, certainly a twenty minute detention while the officers “went fishing” for evidence of some crime was not brief within the definition announced in Prouse, supra, or in Knight, supra. See also State v. Damm,246 Kan. 220 ,787 P.2d 1185 (1990) (seizure of occupants of the vehicle while routine records checks were made of the occupants was unreasonable); State v. Johnson,805 P.2d 761 (Utah 1991) (the leap from asking for the passenger’s name and date of birth to running a warrants check on her severed the rational inference from specific and articulable facts and degenerated into an attempt to support an as yet unparticularized suspicion or hunch).
The detention and arrest of the Petitioner was unlawful; therefore, the evidence of the Petitioner’s possession of crack cocaine would have been inadmissible as fruit of the poisonous tree. Wong Sun v. United States,371 U.S. 471 ,83 S.Ct. 407 ,9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963); State v. Plath,277 S.C. 126 ,284 S.E.2d 221 (1981).
Sikes,
Given the intrusive nature of a seizure and considering the fact that on occasion a person may be wrongfully stopped, the United States Supreme Court has held, as has the Supreme Court of this State, that the scope and duration of a
Terry
detention “must be strictly tied to and justified by the circumstances which rendered its initiation proper.”
Florida v. Royer,
In State v. Rodriquez, this Court considered the scope of a thirty minute detention. The Court discussed the background of a train trip by Rodriquez resulting in his detention and explicated:
Even assuming an investigative detention was proper at that point, we find a thirty minute detention while the officers attempted to elicit incriminating evidence from Rodriquez is the type of fishing expedition denounced by our Supreme Court in Sikes,448 S.E.2d at 563 (assumingarguendo, that stop of motor vehicle passengers was reasonable, twenty minute detention while officers “went fishing” for some evidence of crime was not brief). In light of the foregoing, we hold the intrusion of the officers in this case was not reasonable.
Rodriquez,
II. Analysis
In the instant case, Woodruff moved to suppress the crack cocaine Officer Durham found in Woodruffs pants as poisonous fruit of an improper frisk. After viewing police video tapes of the incident, the trial court ruled the cocaine admissible, concluding that although the second search was questionable, the officers acted reasonably in light of the developing scenario. We hold the evidence was improperly admitted.
Because Officer Durham observed Graham speeding, he was justified in conducting a traffic stop. Once Graham was lawfully detained for speeding, Officer Durham could ask Woodruff to step out of the vehicle. Graham consented to a search of the vehicle. There has been no challenge as to the propriety of Officer Durham’s initial patdown of Woodruff in order to search for weapons. Thus, the dispositive issue before us is whether Officer Durham discovered the contraband on Woodruffs person while acting within the lawful parameters of Terry.
Officer Durham’s second search of Woodruff was, without question, unrelated to any reasonable apprehension Woodruff was armed with a weapon. Officer Durham had already searched Woodruff for weapons and admitted he was not looking for weapons during the second search. Rather, because he feared he may have “missed something” the first time he searched Woodruff, Officer Durham decided to conduct a second, more thorough search for evidence of a crime.
CONCLUSION
We hold the second search of Woodruff was constitutionally violative. Therefore, evidence of his possession of crack cocaine was inadmissible as fruit of the poisonous tree.
See Wong Sun v. United States,
REVERSED.
Notes
.
See Texas v. Brown,
