Title: JOSEPH WILSON V. THE STATE OF WYOMING

State: wyoming

Issuer: Wyoming Supreme Court

Document:

JOSEPH WILSON V. THE STATE OF WYOMING2009 WY 1199 P.3d 517Case Number: S-08-0020Decided: 01/13/2009
OCTOBER 
TERM, A.D. 2008

 
 
JOSEPH 
WILSON,Appellant(Defendant),v.THE STATE OF 
WYOMING,Appellee(Plaintiff).

 
 
Appeal 
from the DistrictCourtofNatronaCounty

The 
Honorable Scott W. Skavdahl, Judge

 
 

Representing 
Appellant:

Tina 
N. Kerin, Appellate Counsel, Wyoming Public Defender; John D. King, Acting 
Faculty Director, Diane E. Courselle, Faculty Director, and Andy F. Sears, 
Student Intern, University of Wyoming Defender Aid Program.  Argument by Mr. 
Sears.

 
 

Representing 
Appellee:

Bruce 
A. Salzburg, Wyoming Attorney General; Terry L. Armitage, Deputy Attorney 
General; D. Michael Pauling, Senior Assistant Attorney General; Jenny L. Craig, 
Assistant Attorney General.  
Argument by Ms. Craig.

 
 
Before 
VOIGT, C.J., and GOLDEN, HILL, KITE, and BURKE, 
JJ.

 
 
VOIGT, 
Chief Justice.

 
 
[¶1]      Appellant, Joseph 
Wilson, contends that the district court erred when it found that a police 
officer's use of a patrol car computer to search for outstanding warrants did 
not constitute a search and/or seizure.  
Appellant also argues that the district court erred when it declined to 
find a search of Appellant's person unconstitutional because the evidence did 
not support a finding that police used excessive force during the 
encounter.

 
 
ISSUES

 
 
[¶2]     1.   Did the district court err when it 
determined that a warrant check is not a search or a seizure and therefore does 
not trigger the protection of the Fourth Amendment of the United States 
Constitution or of Article I, Section 4 of the Wyoming 
Constitution?

 
 
           
2.   Did the district 
court err when it declined to find the search of Appellant's person 
unconstitutional because the evidence presented did not support a determination 
that officers used excessive force during the encounter? 

 
 
FACTS

 
 
[¶3]      Appellant was 
walking down the street when Officer Ben Baedke of the Casper Police Department 
stopped him and initiated a conversation.  Officer Baedke, who remained seated in 
his patrol car, asked for Appellant's name.  Appellant gave his first name, but the 
officer looked at him "expecting a little bit more -- something a little bit 
more specific," and Appellant provided his full name.  Officer Baedke used the computer in his 
car to run a warrant check on Appellant while they talked.  The computer search returned an 
outstanding warrant in Appellant's name and Officer Baedke confirmed that the 
picture attached to the warrant was of Appellant.

 
 
[¶4]      Officer Baedke 
radioed for backup and for confirmation of the warrant.  He got out of his car, approached 
Appellant, and informed him that there was a warrant for his arrest.  After dispatch confirmed the warrant, 
Officer Baedke and Officer Walters, who had responded as backup, placed 
Appellant under arrest.  Officer 
Baedke handcuffed Appellant and performed a search of Appellant's person 
incident to arrest, finding a counterbalance weight1 in Appellant's pants pocket.  Officer Baedke then requested that 
Appellant open his hand, which was clenched.  Appellant responded that he did not 
understand why he had to open his hand, at which point Officer Walters 
unholstered his TASER, removed the cartridge, and held the TASER to Appellant's 
neck.  Officer Baedke ordered 
Appellant to open his hand and informed him that the officers would deploy the 
TASER if he did not comply.  
Approximately three seconds later, Officer Walters deployed the TASER and 
Appellant fell to the ground, injuring his head by striking it on the pavement. 
When ordered by the officers again to open his hand, Appellant said "I dropped 
it!"  The officers helped Appellant 
up and found three baggies of a crystalline substance, later confirmed to be 
methamphetamine, on the ground where Appellant had fallen.  The officers transported Appellant to 
the hospital where he was checked for serious injury, treated, and 
released.

 
 
STANDARD 
OF REVIEW

 
 
[¶5]                  
            
Findings on factual issues made by the district court considering a 
motion to suppress are not disturbed on appeal unless they are clearly 
erroneous.  Since the district court 
conducts the hearing on the motion to suppress and has the opportunity to assess 
the credibility of the witnesses, weigh the evidence, and make the necessary 
inferences, deductions, and conclusions, evidence is viewed in the light most 
favorable to the district court's determination.  The issue of law, whether an 
unreasonable search or seizure has occurred in violation of constitutional 
rights, is reviewed de novo.  

 
 

Holman 
v. State, 
2008 WY 54, ¶ 8, 183 P.3d 368, 371 (Wyo. 2008) (quoting Grant v. State, 2004 WY 45, ¶ 10, 88 P.3d 1016, 1018 (Wyo. 2004)) (citations omitted).

 
 
DISCUSSION

 
 
[¶6]      Appellant 
contends that officers violated his constitutional right to be free from 
unreasonable search and/or seizure during the encounter that led to his 
arrest.  He first attacks Officer 
Baedke's warrant check by contending that his initial contact with Officer 
Baedke was a seizure and that reasonable suspicion of criminal activity was 
required to support Officer Baedke's actions.  Appellant then argues that the warrant 
check itself was a search and that Officer Baedke had to have reasonable 
suspicion of criminal activity or Appellant's consent to run the warrant 
check.  Finally, Appellant asserts 
that the search of his person was rendered unreasonable when officers used 
excessive force by deploying a TASER to get him to open his closed hand during 
the arrest, and that the district court should have suppressed evidence 
collected as a result of that excessive use of force.  

 
 
Seizure: 
 Initial Contact 

 
 
[¶7]      Appellant claims 
that he was seized for the purposes of the Fourth Amendment of the United States 
Constitution or of Article I, Section 4 of the Wyoming Constitution when Officer 
Baedke stopped him on the street and asked for his name.  We have described the three levels of 
contact between police and citizens as follows:

 
 
The 
most intrusive encounter, an arrest, requires justification by probable cause to 
believe that a person has committed or is committing a crime.  The investigatory stop represents a 
seizure which invokes Fourth Amendment safeguards, but, by its less intrusive 
character, requires only the presence of specific and articulable facts and 
rational inferences which give rise to a reasonable suspicion that a person has 
committed or may be committing a crime.  
The least intrusive police-citizen contact, a consensual encounter, 
involves no restraint of liberty and elicits the citizen's voluntary cooperation 
with non-coercive questioning.  

 
 

Wilson 
v. State, 
874 P.2d 215, 220 (Wyo. 1994) (citations omitted).  Under both the federal and the 
Wyoming state 
constitutions, a person has been seized "only if, in view of all of the 
circumstances surrounding the incident, a reasonable person would have believed 
that he was not free to leave."  
Id. (quoting United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U.S. 544, 554-55, 100 S. Ct. 1870, 
1877, 64 L. Ed. 2d 497 (1980)).  We 
have already determined that "[a] request for identification is not, by itself, 
a seizure."  Id. at 222.  In Wilson, we found 
that a consensual encounter with police remained consensual when a police 
officer requested identification and ran a computerized warrant check using that 
information.  Id.  We found that a seizure occurred in that 
case only after the citizen complied with the officer's order not to leave while 
the check was being completed.  
Id. at 223.  

 
 
[¶8]      Unlike in 
Wilson, Appellant 
in this case was never instructed not to leave.  Officer Baedke ran the warrant check 
while engaged in casual conversation with Appellant, and the patrol car's 
computer returned the results in three to five seconds.  Officer Baedke made no show of authority 
that would have caused a reasonable person to believe he could not leave the 
scene.  Appellant claims that the 
fact that Officer Baedke hesitated and looked at Appellant expectantly when 
Appellant only provided his first name was sufficient to convert the encounter 
from a consensual interaction to a stop requiring reasonable suspicion of 
criminal activity.  We are not 
prepared to find, in the absence of any other aggravating factor, that a mere 
expectant look can constitute detention for the purposes of the Fourth Amendment 
of the United States Constitution or Article I, Section 4 of the Wyoming 
Constitution.  

 
 
Search:  Warrant 
Check

 
 
[¶9]      Appellant next 
argues that the warrant check itself constituted a seizure and that Officer 
Baedke was required to have either reasonable suspicion of criminal activity or 
Appellant's consent in order to carry out such a check.  In Meek v. State, 2002 WY 1, ¶ 11, 37 P.3d 1279, 1283 (Wyo. 2002), however, we stated, "we fail to see how requesting 
an NCIC check alone could implicate Mr. Meek's constitutional rights."  The officer in Meek ran an NCIC check on 
a car Mr. Meek was driving and stopped Mr. Meek based on the result of that 
search.  Id. at ¶ 3, 37 P.3d  at 1281.  In that case, we 
emphasized that "the officer in the instant case did not conduct a limited 
seizure or impose any restriction on Mr. Meek's freedom to leave while waiting 
for the NCIC check to be completed."  
Id. at ¶ 10, 37 P.3d  at 1283.  The situation is the 
same here.  As we found above, 
Appellant was engaged in a consensual conversation with the officer when the 
warrant check was conducted.  The 
search was complete within seconds and Appellant was in no way detained or 
restricted while the officer checked police department records to determine 
whether Appellant had any outstanding warrants.2  

 
 
Suppression:  Excessive Use of 
Force

 
 
[¶10]   Appellant also asks this Court to 
find that the district court should have granted his motion to suppress evidence 
because the officers used excessive force in obtaining that evidence.  In Roose v. State, 759 P.2d 478 (Wyo. 1988), we discussed 
the application of the exclusionary rule3 in the context of excessive use of 
force. In Roose, based on the 
totality of the circumstances surrounding the arrest, we found that officers did 
not use excessive force when they shot a suspect who was not complying with 
police orders and whose actions would have caused a reasonable police officer to 
believe he might be reaching for a weapon.  
Id. at 484.  In the present case, we find that the 
district court acted appropriately because the evidence presented would not have 
allowed the court to reach the conclusion that officers used excessive force 
under the circumstances.  

 
 
[¶11]   A review of the record indicates 
that the district court had almost no evidence before it that would have allowed 
it to conclude that the force used by officers in this case was excessive under 
the circumstances.  The suppression 
hearing transcript shows that Officer Baedke was the only witness.  Officer Baedke testified that he was 
trained in the use of the TASER and that he had been trained to aim for "central 
body mass" when deploying the weapon.  
However, there was no testimony about the reason for such a rule, or 
whether using a TASER on Appellant's neck increased the risk of harm to 
Appellant.  Officer Baedke was also 
unable to give competent testimony with respect to the use of force 
continuum.  Defense counsel 
attempted to elicit testimony from Officer Baedke about the possible danger of 
deploying a TASER in the neck area, but Officer Baedke did not have the personal 
knowledge or expertise to answer such complex medical questions.  There was no medical testimony.  Officer Baedke testified that he did not 
attempt to pry Appellant's fingers open because he did not know what was in 
Appellant's hand and because there was potential for injury either to the 
officers or to Appellant from such an attempt.  There was no testimony by any expert on 
law enforcement procedures.  There 
was no testimony from any expert on risks associated with TASER deployment.  There was no testimony that the use of 
the TASER was not appropriate in these circumstances, or that such use would 
have unacceptably increased the risk to someone in this situation.  There was no competent evidence that 
would have allowed the district court to find that the use of the TASER to open 
Appellant's hand in this situation, constituted excessive use of force.  

 
 
CONCLUSION

 
 
[¶12]   The district court did not err when 
it determined that Appellant's initial contact with police was consensual and 
that running Appellant's name through a warrant check computer did not 
constitute a search for constitutional purposes.  The district court did not err in 
declining to find a search unconstitutional where the evidence presented did not 
support a conclusion that officers used excessive force in the conduct of that 
search.  Therefore, we 
affirm.

 
 
FOOTNOTES

 
 

1Officer 
Baedke testified that the presence of such a weight could be related to drug 
use.

 
 

2An NCIC 
check involves the use of the NationalCriminalInformationCenter database.  Officer Baedke testified that the 
warrant check in this case involved only the local database.  However, that distinction does not 
change the result of the analysis.

 
 

3We 
discussed excessive use of force as a due process violation in accordance with 
U.S. Supreme Court precedent at the time Roose was written.  Roose, 759 P.2d  at 484.  However, the Court has since determined 
that the Fourth Amendment is the proper framework for resolution of claims of 
excessive use of force during a search or seizure.  Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 395, 109 S. Ct. 1865, 1871, 
104 L. Ed. 2d 443 (1989).