Case Title: State v. Klingler

Citation: 173 N.W.2d 275

Docket Number: 

State: south-dakota

Court: South Dakota Supreme Court

Date: 1969-12-16T00:00:00Z

Document:
173 N.W.2d 275 (1969) STATE of South Dakota, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Ralph Leroy KLINGLER, Defendant and Appellant. No. 10492. Supreme Court of South Dakota. December 16, 1969. *276 R. James Zieser, Asst. Atty. Gen., Pierre, for plaintiff and respondent; Gordon Mydland, Atty. Gen., on the brief. Joe W. Cadwell, Sioux Falls, for defendant and appellant; Marvin D. Keller, Sioux Falls, on the brief. BIEGELMEIER, Presiding Judge. Defendant appeals from the sentence entered on his conviction of robbery in the first degree. SDCL 1967, § 22-30-1 and § 22-30-6. Shortly after 4 a. m. on May 17, 1967 a man held up a service station in Sioux Falls by use of a revolver. The robber had dark hair, had not shaved for a couple of days, wore sunglasses, dark pants and an olive green jacket. Jensen, the attendant who later identified defendant as the robber, phoned the police who arrived in a couple of minutes and the information was put out over the police radio. All of the police officers hereafter named heard of the holdup and were working on it. About 4:30 a. m. officers Konda and Nygaard talked to attendant McColey at another service station a mile away about this robbery. The attendant advised them that around 3:45 a. m. two men in a brown and white 1957 Pontiac with Minnesota license plates were customers of the station. One of them was wearing dark jeans and needed a shave. Some of their actions aroused his suspicions so he had noted down the license numbers which he gave to the police. He told them he thought the person the police described as the robber could be the same party who had just bought gas from him. A few minutes thereafter he called the attendant at the station which was robbed and passed this information on to him. He later identified defendant as one of the men in this car. Police officer Kisecker heard of the robbery over the radio in his police car and about 5 a. m. while checking buildings for security noticed a car parked along some trucks in a private lot of a moving company. As he rounded the corner it started moving forward and then turned its lights on. After it pulled into the street he stopped the car; it was a 1957 white and coral Pontiac with South Dakota plates on it and two men in it. One of them, with clothing similar to that of the driver of the Pontiac served by attendant McColey, was defendant Klingler. He said they had been sleeping in the car, were unemployed and looking for work. Officer Konda arrived in a police car and then officer Nygaard. Officer Konda had the description of the robber, his height, weight and of his three-day beard. After some conversation the two men were put under arrest for vagrancy. Inside the Pontiac could *277 be seen a number of boxes, a construction hat in the back window and sunglasses on the dash of the car. Reaching through the open door the officers moved a loosely-fitted ventilated air cushion on the front seat and saw a .22 calibre revolver lying on the seat; a roll of pennies on the floorboard and currency and coins in a pocket of the left front air cushion. Two Minnesota license plates were noticed under the front seat. Photographs of the inside of the Pontiac taken from the outside with the doors open showing the pistol on the seat, the coins and license plates on the car floor were received in evidence. These items were discovered at the time the arrested men were being taken to the police cars nearby and the photographs were then taken. The robbed attendant testified the ivory and brown handled revolver was the one used by defendant in the robbery and the numbers on the Minnesota license plates were identical with those earlier given to the police by attendant McColey as being on the 1957 Pontiac. Defendant asserts the admission in evidence of the revolver and photographs was erroneous and presents his contentions under four headings: (1) Did the police have probable cause to believe defendant had committed vagrancy, or (2) a crime other than vagrancy? (3) If they suspected he committed robbery, was the vagrancy arrest a pretext to the search? and (4) If no probable cause existed for a vagrancy arrest and it was a pretext used to justify a search, then the fruits of the search should have been excluded. The discovery of the .22 calibre revolver under the ventilated cushion on the front seat formed the basis for a charge of violating 15 U.S.C. § 902(e), a section of the Federal Firearms Act, which prohibits a former convict, such as Klingler was proven to be, from transporting a firearm in interstate commerce. Upon conviction thereof in the United States District Court for the District of South Dakota he appealed to the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit where his conviction was affirmed. Klingler v. United States, April 3, 1969, 8th Cir., 409 F.2d 299. There the same search was challenged as illegal for similar reasons and arguments made here. The Court of Appeals, in an opinion by Judge Bright, discussed these contentions and because the opinion so far as it concerns this appeal meets with our approval it will be much alluded to, though citations and some text will be omitted. We first dispose of the validity of the arrest on stated vagrancy grounds. The Court of Appeals determined "vagrancy was an unsuitable ground for the arrest"; for the purposes of this opinion and without detailing the evidence on that point we come to the same conclusion. The Court of Appeals in dealing with the arrest wrote: At this point we interpolate that while the statement as to wearing an olive green waistcoat and some other minor details do not appear in our record, the added verifying statements of attendant McColey appear here and are not specifically mentioned in the Bright opinion. His statements and those of Jensen to the officers may also be taken by them as worthy information upon which to base their actions. Discussing a statement not in this record except only that defendant was not then arrested for armed robbery, the opinion continues: The court then considered whether the arrest was invalid because the arresting officer notified defendant he was under arrest for vagrancy rather than for armed robbery, quoting from SDC 1960 Supp. 34.1609, now SDCL 1967, § 23-22-9. That section provides: The court in Application of Kiser, 1968, S.D., 158 N.W.2d 596, held a warrantless arrest valid when the peace officer told defendant he was holding him for police who were on their way from a nearby town. It said the quoted statute provided no particular ritual to be followed and the notice was sufficient when it was such as to inform a reasonable man of the authority and purpose of the one making the arrest and the reason thereof. After mentioning this opinion the Court of Appeals continued: * * * * * * The court then addressed itself to the search in the following language: The reasoning of the Court of Appeals equally applies to this appeal and we conclude the challenged evidence was properly admitted by the trial court.[3] This opinion could end here except for Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 89 S. Ct. 2034, 23 L. Ed. 2d 685, decided June 23, 1969. There the court held the arrest of a defendant in his home under a warrant of arrest but without a search warrant did not authorize the officers to make a general *281 search of the entire three-bedroom house. This court in State v. Nelson, July 24, 1969, S.D., 169 N.W.2d 533, cited among others the opinions in Preston[4] and Chimel, supra, and applied Preston by holding a search of a car in the sheriff's garage at two o'clock in the afternoon of the day after a 9:30 p. m. arrest on the highway some distance away was too remote in time and place to be incident to the arrest. We see a distinction between a general search of the entire home, from attic and shop to bedroom, and an easily moved car found parked on private property not that of the owner at four o'clock in the morning. How then was it practicable to procure a search warrant or protect the property when the one officer was left alone with it? If one man held up one station, two suspiciously use a credit card at another, may not a third be operating in the truck and warehouse area ready to remove the car and evidence? Here the officer looked under the seat through the opened door and saw the license plates and by moving the loose-fitting air cushion observed the pistol and money. We believe the United States Supreme Court recognized the validity of such a search in Chimel in footnote 9 when it wrote: Our reliance on the Court of Appeals' decision in Klingler v. United States from which we have quoted extensively receives some support as the Supreme Court let the decision stand by denying certiorari on October 13, 1969, see Klingler v. United States, 396 U.S. 859, 90 S. Ct. 127, 24 L. Ed. 2d 110. Validity for the search may therefore be based on probable cause that defendant was the robber and the car he occupied was used in the robbery under the Carroll and Brinegar decisions. See also State v. Baych, July 24, 1969, Iowa, 169 N.W.2d 578. The judgment appealed from is affirmed. All the Judges concur. [1] Our court equated probable cause and reasonableness in State v. Hermandson, 1969, S.D., 169 N.W.2d 255. [2] Police radio messages were the basis of stopping vehicles in Application of Kiser, infra, and State v. McCreary, 82 S.D. 111, 142 N.W.2d 240, and also arrest in McCreary. [3] Accord: Cook v. Sigler, U.S.D.C.Neb., 299 F. Supp. 1338. [4] In Preston the search was made after the car had been driven to the police station, the men in it booked and the car towed to a garage.