Title: Davis v. State

State: delaware

Issuer: Delaware Supreme Court

Document:

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF DELAWARE 
 
MARVIN DAVIS,  
 
 
§ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
§ 
 
 
Defendant-Below  
§ 
No. 419, 2022 
 
 
Appellant,  
 
§ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
§ 
Court Below—Superior Court 
 
 
 
 
 
 
§ 
of the State of Delaware 
 
 
 
v. 
 
 
§ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
§ 
Cr. ID No. 2103008825A/B (N) 
STATE OF DELAWARE, 
 
§ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
§ 
 
 
Appellee. 
 
 
§ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Submitted: September 13, 2023 
 
 
 
 
 
Decided: 
November 8, 2023 
 
Before SEITZ, Chief Justice; VALIHURA, TRAYNOR, LEGROW, and 
GRIFFITHS, Justices constituting the Court en banc. 
 
 
ORDER 
This 8th day of November, 2023, after careful consideration of the parties’ 
briefs, the argument of counsel, and the record on appeal, it appears to the Court 
that: 
(1) 
On March 14, 2020, at approximately 9:30 p.m., Trooper Evans of the 
Delaware State Police, while patrolling near Churchman’s Road in Newark, 
observed a white Mercury sedan driven by Marvin Davis.  Running a DELJIS1 
inquiry on the vehicle, Trooper Evans discovered that Davis’s car, which was 
transferred 10 days earlier, was not properly registered.  Consequently, he initiated 
 
1 “DELJIS” is an acronym for the Delaware Criminal Justice Information System. 
2 
 
a traffic stop to address the registration violation.  Trooper Evans initially stood 
outside Davis’s front passenger window and asked Davis, the sole occupant of the 
vehicle, for his license, registration, and insurance.  After Davis advised that he had 
a learner’s permit and that he had just purchased the car from a friend, Trooper Evans 
told him the reason for the stop—the registration violation—and Davis replied that 
he was aware that he needed to re-register the vehicle in his name. 
 
(2) 
When Davis handed his paperwork to Trooper Evans, Evans saw 
Davis’s arm shaking.  He then asked Davis why he was in the area and where he 
lived.  After returning the papers, Trooper Evans noted that Davis was taking rapid, 
shallow breaths. 
 
(3) 
Although Davis answered all Trooper Evans’s questions and was 
generally cooperative, Trooper Evans asked Davis to step out of the car.  The trooper 
described the exit order as “pretty routine”2 and a practice he follows during “almost 
every traffic stop”3 he conducts.  In Trooper Evans’s words, “[w]hen I pull them out 
of the vehicle, I conduct a brief . . . pat-down of the exterior to make sure there’s no 
knives or firearms. . . .”4 
 
2 App. to Opening Br. at A77. 
3 Id. at A79. 
4 Id. at A101. 
3 
 
(4) 
When Davis began “to adjust in his seat to get out of the car,”5   Trooper 
Evans saw that he was sitting on what appeared to be a handgun magazine protruding 
beneath his right leg.  Trooper Evans then ordered Davis to put his hands up, drew 
his service pistol, and asked if there was a gun under Davis’s leg.   
(5) 
Davis, who denied having a gun, failed to comply with repeated orders 
to put his hands up.  Davis was held at gunpoint until assisting officers arrived on 
the scene, at which point he was taken into custody without incident.  Trooper Evans 
then collected the firearm located on Davis’s driver’s seat; the handgun, loaded with 
14 rounds of ammunition, had a round in the chamber.  Soon after, Trooper Evans 
asked Davis if he understood how close he came to getting shot.  He then allowed 
Davis to call someone to pick up his car to avoid having it towed.  While on the 
phone, Davis told the person he called that he had a firearm in his possession.   
(6) 
Davis was indicted on three felony charges: carrying a concealed 
deadly weapon, possession of a firearm by a person prohibited, and possession of 
ammunition by a person prohibited. 
 
(7) 
Before trial, Davis moved to suppress all evidence seized during the 
traffic stop, including the handgun found on the driver’s side seat and Davis’s 
statements to Trooper Evans.  His motion advanced four arguments.  First, Davis 
contended that Trooper Evans impermissibly extended the traffic stop without 
 
5 Id. at A81. 
4 
 
sufficient justification unrelated to the initial motor vehicle infraction in violation of 
this Court’s holding in Caldwell v. State.6  Second, Davis argued that the United 
States Supreme Court’s  interpretation of the Fourth Amendment in Pennsylvania v. 
Mimms,7 which condoned the use of exit orders during traffic stops in the absence 
of an articulable suspicion of criminal activity or actual danger, should not be 
extended to stops “when the police action is taken in order to investigate an 
additional crime (other than the traffic offence [sic] for which the stop was 
initiated).”8  Third, even if Mimms were controlling under the Fourth Amendment to 
the United States Constitution, according to Davis, Delaware courts should afford 
broader protection from automatic exit orders under Article I, § 6 of the Delaware 
Constitution.  Similar—but not identical—to the Fourth Amendment, Article I, § 6 
recognizes the right of “[t]he people . . . [to] be secure in their persons, houses, papers 
and possessions, from unreasonable searches and seizures[.]”  But importantly for 
present purposes, this Court has concluded that Article I, § 6 reflects different and 
broader protections than those guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment.  Fourth, Davis 
asserted that Trooper Evans’s failure to notify Davis of his Miranda rights before 
questioning him violated “his constitutional right against self-incrimination.”9   
 
6 780 A.2d 1037 (Del. 2001). 
7 434 U.S. 106 (1977). 
8 App. to Opening Br. at A23. 
9 Id. at A29. 
5 
 
(8) 
In the trial court’s bench ruling following a suppression hearing, the 
court identified “two challenges in [Davis’s] motion to suppress:  [o]ne, that Trooper 
Evans unlawfully extended the motor vehicle stop; and, two, the statements made 
after defendant’s arrest should be suppressed under Miranda v[.] Arizona. . . .”10  The 
court did not mention Davis’s argument under Article I, § 6. 
(9) 
The Superior Court rejected Davis’s Miranda claim, a ruling that Davis 
has not appealed. 
(10) Addressing Davis’s claim that Trooper Evans had unlawfully extended 
the vehicle stop for reasons unrelated to the motor vehicle violation, the court quoted 
heavily from this Court’s opinion in Caldwell:   
In order to be valid under the Fourth Amendment “the stop and inquiry 
must be justified at its inception by reasonable suspicion of criminal 
activity.”  That’s Caldwell v[.] State, 780 A.2d 1037[, 1046], Supreme 
Court of Delaware 2001. . . . “Once the officer has issued a citation or 
warning and has run routine checks, the vehicle must be released unless 
the driver voluntarily consents to further questioning or the officer 
uncovers facts that independently warrant additional investigation.”  
[Id. at 1047].11 
 
(11) The court also noted that, under Arizona v. Johnson, Trooper Evans’s 
questioning of Davis about matters unrelated to the registration violation would not 
“convert the encounter into something other than a lawful seizure, as long as those 
 
10 Opening Br. Ex. A at 83. 
11 Id. at 83–84. 
6 
 
inquiries do not measurably extend the duration of the stop.”12  Noting that only one 
minute and 13 seconds elapsed between Trooper Evans’s knocking on Davis’s 
passenger side window and his ordering Davis out of the car, the court found that 
the trooper’s pre-exit order questioning did not measurably extend the stop.  Based 
on this finding and the court’s determination that the questioning did not stray 
“beyond what is required and permitted to complete the traffic stop,”13 the court 
rejected Davis’s Caldwell claim. 
 
(12) The court addressed the exit order next and determined that it was 
permissible “under [the] Fourth Amendment,”14 citing this Court’s ruling in Loper 
v. State.15  In Loper, this Court addressed a claim that an exit order following a traffic 
stop issued after a passenger in Loper’s car was arrested on an outstanding capias 
constituted a “second seizure” requiring suspicion independent of the suspicion 
justifying the stop.  Loper grounded his argument on the Fourth, Fifth, and 
Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and Article I, § 6 of the 
Delaware Constitution.  Apparently recognizing that his argument ran contrary to 
the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Mimms, Loper argued that Article I, 
§ 6 provided greater protection from unreasonable search and seizures than did the 
 
12  Id. at 84 (quoting Arizona v. Johnson, 555 U.S. 323, 333 (2009)). 
13 Opening Br. Ex. A at 88. 
14 Id. at 89. 
15 8 A.3d 1169 (2010). 
7 
 
Fourth Amendment, a general principle this Court recognized in Jones v. State.16  
The Court rejected Loper’s state constitutional claim, deferring instead to Mimms’s 
Fourth Amendment analysis: 
As the United States Supreme Court held in Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 
the police may order the driver or a passenger to exit the car after a valid 
traffic stop, and that order is not a “seizure” under the Fourth 
Amendment.  Loper has cited no authority, nor made any cogent legal 
argument, for why this Court should expand the meaning of “seizure” 
under Jones and Article 1, § 6 of the Delaware Constitution, to hold 
that a person already being lawfully detained as a result of a valid traffic 
stop is “seized” a second time when ordered to leave his car.  The 
constitutional claim, therefore, fails.17 
 
(13) Based upon the Court’s exclusive reliance on Mimms in the passage 
from Loper quoted above, in this case, Davis pressed the trial court to consider his 
challenge to the exit order, without which the weapon would not have been 
discovered, under the broader protection from unreasonable searches and seizures 
under Article I, § 6.  Unlike the defendant in Loper, Davis devoted six pages of his 
motion to suppress to his state constitutional claim, explaining why legislative 
history, pre-existing state law, and state and local concerns weighed in favor of a 
more expansive reading of Article I, § 6 than the United States Supreme Court 
 
16 745 A.2d 856 (1999). 
17 Loper, 8 A.3d at 1174. 
8 
 
afforded the Fourth Amendment in Mimms.18  Davis also cited opinions from other 
states that refused to endorse automatic exit orders under their state constitutions.19 
 
(14) In the State’s Response to Defendant’s Motion to Suppress, the State 
did not squarely address Davis’s state constitutional arguments, relying instead on 
“Mimms and its state-law progeny,”20 i.e., Loper.   
 
(15) Despite Davis’s framing of the state constitutional law issue in the 
manner that this Court has encouraged,21 the Superior Court did not address it.  The 
following exchange at the conclusion of the court’s bench ruling leaves no doubt 
that its decision was based on its application of the Fourth Amendment as interpreted 
in Mimms:   
THE COURT:  Does anybody have any questions? 
 
 
DEFENSE COUNSEL: I do, Your Honor.  Defense also made an 
argument under the Delaware Constitution, the State didn’t . . .  
respond to that. 
 
THE COURT: I’m not going to take up that issue at this time.  I 
found that under the United States Constitution that it’s satisfied.  
If the State wants to make any additional arguments about that 
now[?] 
 
THE STATE: No, Your Honor.  
 
. . . 
 
18 App. to Opening Br. at A23–29. 
19 Com. v. Gonsalves, 711 N.E.2d 108 (Mass. 1999); State v. Sprague, 824 A.2d 539 (Vt. 2003); 
State v. Kim, 711 P.2d 1291 (Haw. 1985). 
20 App. to Opening Br. at A50. 
21 See infra ¶ 19. 
9 
 
 
DEFENSE COUNSEL: I want to make sure that it’s been preserved, 
that the defendant has raised it and the Court has decided not to 
address [it]. 
 
THE COURT:  That’s acknowledged.  I saw it in your papers, and it 
is acknowledged.  Thank you.22 
 
 
 
(16) In consequence of its rulings that (i) Trooper Evans’s roadside 
questioning of Davis did not measurably extend the duration of the stop, (ii) the exit 
order was permissible under Mimms, and (iii) there was no Miranda violation, the 
Superior Court denied Davis’s motion to suppress.   
 
 
(17) Davis was tried before a jury and convicted of the three weapons 
charges.  After the State moved to declare Davis a habitual offender, Davis was 
sentenced to 23 years of incarceration followed by probation, and he appealed. 
 
 
(18) On appeal, Davis does not challenge the Superior Court’s denial of his 
motion to suppress to the extent that it was based on the court’s consideration of 
federal constitutional protections.  Instead, he argues that the Superior Court erred 
by not ruling on his claim that Trooper Evans’s exit order violated his rights under 
Article I, § 6 of the Delaware Constitution.  That section, according to Davis, 
prohibits exit orders and consequent frisks in the absence of “individualized 
reasoning and articulable facts . . . justify[ing] the additional seizure . . . ” effected 
 
22 App. to Opening Br. at A152–53 (emphasis added). 
10 
 
by the exit order.23  Davis contends that the court’s failure to address this state 
constitutional claim at all constitutes reversible error.  We agree.   
 
 
(19) In Ortiz v. State, this Court observed that “[t]he proper presentation of 
an alleged violation of the Delaware Constitution should include a discussion and 
analysis of one or more of the criteria set forth in Jones [v. State]24 or other 
applicable criteria.”25  The Jones criteria, which are non-exclusive, comprise textual 
language, legislative history, pre-existing state law, structural differences, matters 
of particular state interest or local concern, state traditions, and public attitudes.  
Davis’s motion discussed and analyzed three of these eight criteria; it also cited cases 
from other jurisdictions, based upon provisions in their state constitutions, that have 
refused to limit their scrutiny of exit orders to what Pennsylvania v. Mimms 
requires.26  Thus, the legal issue and the factual questions related to it were squarely 
in front of the court.  And yet the Superior Court did not address the issue, even 
when Davis raised it again after the court failed to rule on the issue in its bench 
ruling.  
 
 
(20) As this Court noted in Holden v. State, “[o]ur case law mandates that a 
trial judge make factual determinations and supply a legal rationale for a judicial 
 
23 Opening Br. at 10. 
24 745 A.2d 856, 864–65 (Del. 1999). 
25 869 A.2d 285 (Del. 2005). 
26 See supra note 19. 
11 
 
decision as a matter of law.  Failure to do so may be an abuse of discretion.”27  Here, 
the trial court did not explain its legal rationale for denying Davis’s state 
constitutional claim.  That failure was an abuse of discretion.  Not only this, but 
without the court’s legal rationale, we cannot discern the extent to which factual 
determinations were required to fairly adjudicate Davis’s motion.  For instance, had 
the court held that, unlike the Fourth Amendment as applied in Mimms, Article I, § 
6 requires a showing of an actual safety concern to justify an exit order for the 
purpose of frisking a traffic-law offender, the court would have been compelled to 
weigh Trooper Evans’s actual safety concerns.  No doubt, this inquiry would have 
required careful analysis, given Trooper Evans’s testimony that he routinely uses 
exit orders followed by pat-downs in “almost every traffic stop.”28  This testimony 
in turn raises factual questions concerning the existence of Delaware State Police 
policies addressing the use of exit orders, including whether such policies, if they 
exist, are uniformly followed.  We rightfully commit factual inquiries of this nature 
to the experience and expertise of our trial courts.     
 
 
(21) We note, moreover, that Davis’s suppression motion challenged 
Mimms’s factual underpinning—that traffic stops pose an “inordinate risk”29 to 
police officers that justifies what the Court deemed to be the de minimis intrusion 
 
27 Holden v. State, 23 A.3d 843, 846 (Del. 2011) (footnotes omitted). 
28 App. to Opening Br. at A77, A79, A101. 
29 Mimms, 434 U.S. at 110. 
12 
 
into a motorist’s personal liberty that an exit-order causes.  A determination whether 
the Mimms approach to exit orders comports with Article I, § 6’s protections requires 
a thoughtful, evidence-based consideration of these factual assumptions underlying 
the Mimms majority’s analysis. 
 
 
(22) In short, the important state constitutional claim Davis has raised 
deserved full and fair consideration by the trial court in this case.  
 
 
NOW, THEREFORE, IT IS ORDERED that this matter be remanded to the 
Superior Court for further proceedings consistent with this order.  Jurisdiction is  
retained.30 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
BY THE COURT:  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
/s/ Gary F. Traynor 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Justice 
 
30 In accordance with Supreme Court Rule 19(c), a certified copy of this order shall issue.  The 
Superior Court shall issue its decision and file the same within 120 days of the issuance of the 
certified copy of this order.  If it shall not be feasible for the Superior Court to issue its decision 
within the time provided above, it shall file a status report within such time.