Title: Koonce v. State

State: arkansas

Issuer: Arkansas Supreme Court

Document:

598 S.W.2d 741 (1980) Frederick Lee KOONCE a/k/a, Frederick Roberts, Appellant, v. STATE of Arkansas, Appellee. No. CR 80-43. Supreme Court of Arkansas. May 27, 1980. Jack T. Lassiter, Little Rock, for appellant. Steve Clark, Atty. Gen. by Robert J. De-Gostin, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., Little Rock, for appellee. FOGLEMAN, Chief Justice. Appellant Frederick Lee Koonce, also known as Frederick Roberts, was sentenced to 16 years' imprisonment as a habitual *742 criminal, after having been found guilty of aggravated robbery by a jury. He was also found guilty of unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, as a lesser included offense on the charge of theft of property, and sentenced to imprisonment for one year on that charge. On this appeal, he alleges that the trial court erred in failing to grant his motion to suppress as evidence a .22 caliber weapon seized in the search of the vehicle. He also asserts that the court erred in failing to give an instruction on choice of evils that he had requested. The weapon was a .22 caliber revolver seized by an officer of the police department of McComb, Mississippi on the date of the alleged robbery in Cabot, Arkansas. Officer Ronald Yoas was on patrol in McComb on the evening of September 2, 1978, when he saw a motor vehicle parked behind a deserted filling station. As he approached the vehicle, he observed two male persons putting oil in the car and drinking beer from a quart bottle and two cans. He asked them for identification. One of these men produced an Indiana driver's license identifying him as Tommy R. Burcham. The other was identified as Lonnie L. Burcham. They were arrested after Officer Yoas requested information from the National Crime Information Center and was told that Tommy Burcham was wanted on a charge in Indiana. Yoas approached the vehicle and observed a man asleep inside it. He awakened this man, who was the appellant, and asked him for identification. Koonce exhibited an insurance or hospital card issued to Jerry Ashley. At the time a driver's license bearing the name Jerry Ashley fell to the floorboard of the vehicle from a wallet in possession of the person in the car. The picture on this license was not that of the person in the vehicle. Officer Yoas observed an open, half-full, quart bottle of beer in the back of the vehicle and noticed the odor of marijuana. The officer placed appellant under arrest for possession of open beer. The officer removed appellant from the vehicle and searched it. He found several knives and a fully loaded Central .22 caliber nine-shot revolver, which was identified as appellant's by Jerry Ashley, the alleged victim of the robbery, as looking like the revolver that was held on him at the time of the robbery. The weapon was found under the front seat of the automobile on the passenger side. Lonnie Burcham told Officer Yoas that he and his brother Tommy had bought the car. Tommy Burcham testified at the suppression hearing that the car belonged to him and his brother Lonnie. All three of the persons taken into custody were charged with possession of "open" beer in violation of a McComb city ordinance. One or more of them were charged with possession of marijuana. Koonce testified at the suppression hearing that he claimed no ownership of the car and that to the best of his knowledge it belonged to Lonnie Burcham. He also said that he did not own the pistol. Since Koonce had neither a property interest nor a possessory one, either in the vehicle in which he was only a backseat passenger or in the weapon seized, he had no legitimate expectation of privacy under the front seat of the vehicle, which would entitle him to invoke the exclusionary rule. Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 99 S. Ct. 421, 58 L. Ed. 2d 387, reh. den. 439 U.S. 1122, 99 S. Ct. 1035, 59 L. Ed. 2d 83 (1978). For this reason, we do not consider other arguments pertaining to the reasonableness of the search. Appellant also contends that the trial court erred in failing to give instructions on the defense of "choice of evils" on each charge against him. This defense is new to Arkansas criminal jurisprudence and seems to be a rather new concept which has not been defined by statute in many jurisdictions. It is included in the defense of justification in our criminal code. Ark.Stat. Ann. § 41-504 (Repl. 1977). That section provides: Appellant requested, and the court refused, AMCI 4102, based upon this section of the statute, on both charges. We do not think appellant made a showing entitling him to these instructions. Included in the commentary to this section is the following statement: The evidence upon which appellant bases his argument that he was entitled to these instructions is as follows: We readily agree with a New York court [People v. Brown, 70 Misc.2d 224, 333 N.Y.S.2d 342 (1972).] that a statute such as this is to be narrowly construed and applied. The seed for this section of our criminal code was furnished by The American Law Institute in Tentative Draft No. 8 of its Model Penal Code (1958). The language of our statute differs to some extent, and is more limiting, but the basic principles of this new defense are similar to those espoused by the institute. In justifying the extension of the defense to offenses other than homicide, in its comments the institute said: In its proposed official draft of the Model Penal Code, the institute made some changes in the language of the section defining the defense, but referred to the tentative draft for commentary. The evidence here does not bear any similarity whatever to the examples set out in either the commentary to the governing section of our criminal code or to that in the ALI tentative draft. We find the instruction inappropriate to the facts in this case. The judgment is affirmed.