Case Name: STATE v. GEORGE CARPENTER CURTIS
Court: Minnesota Supreme Court
Jurisdiction: Minnesota
Decision Date: 1971-07-09
Citations: 290 Minn. 429
Docket Number: No. 42283
Parties: STATE v. GEORGE CARPENTER CURTIS.
Judges: Heard before Knutson, C. J., and Nelson, Otis, Rogosheske, and Kelly, JJ.
Reporter: Minnesota Reports
Volume: 290
Pages: 429–465

Head Matter:
STATE v. GEORGE CARPENTER CURTIS.
190 N. W. (2d) 631.
July 9, 1971
No. 42283.
C. Paul Jones, State Public Defender, and Roberta K. Levy and Doris 0. Huspeni, Assistant State Public Defenders, for appellant.
Warren Spannaus, Attorney General, James M. Kelley, Assistant Attorney General, William B. Randall, County Attorney, and Steven C. DeCoster, Assistant County Attorney, for respondent.
Heard before Knutson, C. J., and Nelson, Otis, Rogosheske, and Kelly, JJ.

Opinion:
Otis, Justice.
Defendant appeals from a conviction for possession of marijuana in violation of Minn. St. 618.02. The only issue is whether the search which resulted in the discovery of marijuana following defendant's arrest for a minor traffic violation was valid. We hold that it was not, and the evidence thus obtained should therefore have been suppressed.
On September 29, 1968, at about 10 p. m., Officers Thomas Burke and Robert R. Patsy of the St. Paul Police Department observed defendant driving south on Victoria Street in a car with defective taillights. He stopped at Selby Avenue and turned right without signaling. Thereupon, the officers curbed the defendant. As he got out of his automobile and headed toward the squad car, the officers observed him take an object from his pocket or belt and throw it on the front seat of his car. The officers emerged from their vehicle and Officer Patsy searched defendant for weapons before putting him in the squad car. Officer Patsy testified that he felt the outside of defendant's pockets. He detected some object but couldn't tell what it was. It did not feel like a gun or knife. As the officer reached into the pocket, defendant seized a package from it and dumped part of the contents, later identified as marijuana, inside the squad car and on the ground. While this search was being conducted, Officer Burke walked to defendant's car and found a loaded .45 automatic revolver on the front seat.
Defendant moved to suppress the marijuana. After an extensive hearing the trial court denied the motion, holding that the search was reasonable as an incident of the arrest. At the so-called Rasmussen hearing, Officer Patsy testified that his purpose in stopping defendant was to check his driver's license. He was acquainted with defendant and had previously warned him against driving after suspension. At the time defendant was searched, Officer Patsy did not know defendant was driving without a license or that Officer Burke had found the loaded gun. Neither officer suspected defendant of having marijuana on his person or of being armed. The only purpose in stopping defendant was to make a license check after observing his defective taillights and his failure to signal for a turn.
The justification which the officers offered for searching de fendant was the fact that they were about to put him in the squad car. Officer Patsy testified:
"A. We check everyone that gets into our squad car, yes.
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"Q. Do you, as a matter of course, go immediately into people's pockets to do this ?
"A. When I put them in the squad car I do."
In the same vein, Officer Burke testified:
"Q. And as a matter of course, if you are going to place somebody in that back seat you are going to search before you do, or at least frisk him?
"A. Yes, we are.
"Q. That's a matter of course, is it not?
"A. Yes, sir.
"Q. Usually you will feel down and see whether there is anything suspicious as a weapon or anything might be dangerous to you, is that right ?
"A. Yes, we do."
Neither officer expressed any concern for his personal safety. There was no testimony that they suspected defendant of any other criminal activity or were aware of any dangerous propensities on his part.
1. This was a routine arrest for a trivial traffic offense and nothing more. Under such circumstances, the weight of authority holds that a search of the driver's person is unlawful and violates U. S. Const. Amend. IV. The marijuana seized should therefore have been suppressed. Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643, 81 S. Ct. 1684, 6 L. ed. (2d) 1081, 84 A. L. R. (2d) 933.
The United States Supreme Court has held that a police officer may make a reasonable search for weapons for his own protection where he has reason to believe he is dealing with an armed and dangerous individual. The test is whether a reasonably prudent man would be warranted in the belief that his safety or that of others was in danger. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 27, 88 S. Ct. 1868, 1883, 20 L. ed. (2d) 889, 909; Sibron v. New York, 392 U. S. 40, 64, 88 S. Ct. 1889, 1903, 20 L. ed. (2d) 917, 935. Because in Sibron the officer thrust his hand into defendant's pocket and seized narcotics which he was looking for, the court found that the search was not in fact one for weapons but for contraband which it held to be inadmissible. As we have indicated, the officers in the matter before us pointed to no facts from which they could infer, before he was searched, that defendant was carrying a gun.
Two previous decisions have suggested the result we here reach. In State v. Harris, 265 Minn. 260, 268, 121 N. W. (2d) 327, 333, certiorari denied, 375 U. S. 867, 84 S. Ct. 141, 11 L. ed. (2d) 94, we held that police officers may not ordinarily make searches incident to simple traffic violations, and in State v. Clifford, 273 Minn. 249, 254, 141 N. W. (2d) 124, 127, we held:
" A search for evidence in defendant's possession, incident to an arrest without a warrant, is reasonable if it is to seize weapons which may be used to assault an officer or effect an escape, or to prevent the loss or destruction of the fruits of the crime or the implements used in accomplishing it. Preston v. United States, 376 U. S. 364, 367, 84 S. Ct. 881, 883, 11 L. ed. (2d) 777, 780. None of these purposes has any application in the context of a relatively trivial traffic violation."
2. Although the authorities seem to agree that minor traffic violations do not justify a search for contraband where there is no evidence constituting the fruits or instrumentality of the offense, courts are divided with respect to the circumstances under which a search for weapons is lawful. A leading case which liberally construes U. S. Const. Amend. IY was decided by the New York Court of Appeals in People v. Marsh, 20 N. Y. (2d) 98, 281 N. Y. S. (2d) 789, 228 N. E. (2d) 783. There, defendant was arrested for speeding. A search of his person produced policy slips for which he was prosecuted and convicted. Chief Judge Fuld, speaking for a majority of the court, held (20 N. Y. [2d] 101, 281 N. Y. S. [2d] 792, 228 N. E. [2d] 785):
"Although, as a general rule, when an individual is lawfully arrested, the police officer may conduct a contemporaneous search of his person 'for weapons or for the fruits of or implements used to commit the crime' , we do not believe that the Legislature intended the rule to cover arrests for traffic violations. It is obvious that, except in the most rare of instances, there can be no 'fruits' or 'implements' of such infractions and the search, to be upheld, would have to be justified as one for weapons. But there is something incongruous about treating traffic offenders as noncriminals, on the one hand, and subjecting them, on the other, to the indignity of a search for weapons.
"The search for weapons is a special exception to the proscription against warrantless searches, and it should not be extended beyond its purpose of securing the safety of the officer and preventing an escape. A motorist who exceeds the speed limit does not thereby indicate any propensity for violence or iniquity, and the officer who stops the speeder has not even the slightest cause for thinking that he is in danger of being assaulted. We can only conclude that, even though the 'rules of criminal law are generally applicable' to traffic violations , the Legislature never intended to authorize a search of a traffic offender unless, when the vehicle is stopped, there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that the officer is in danger or there is probable cause for believing that the offender is guilty of a crime rather than merely a simple traffic infraction."
The court concluded that no search for weapons is authorized as incident to an arrest for a minor traffic infraction unless the officer has reason to fear an assault or has probable cause for believing the defendant has committed a more serious crime. The court there cited as authority Sobel, Current Problems in the Law of Search and Seizure, pp. 119-124, and People v. Watkins, 19 Ill. (2d) 11, 166 N. E. (2d) 433. Mr. Justice Sobel in his treatise stated that there can be no lawful search incident to an arrest for a traffic violation because there are no fruits of such crimes and only rarely will a search be required to protect a police officer's personal safety. However, he observed that if there are indications a more serious offense is involved the officer may detain the suspect for investigation without a search.
The Illinois decision to which the Marsh opinion referred was written by another distinguished jurist, Mr. Chief Justice Walter Schaefer. That court recognized as invalid searches arising from minor traffic violations but held that under the circumstances it was reasonable for the arresting officers to assume they were dealing with a more serious offense. The search which produced policy tickets was found constitutionally justified.
In Amador-Gonzalez v. United States (5 Cir.) 391 F. (2d) 308, the defendant was convicted of importing narcotics, and the United States Court of Appeals reversed. Defendant had been arrested for making an improper left turn, speeding, and failing to have a driver's license. The arrest was held to be a pretext for the search and seizure of narcotics found on defendant's person. Judge Wisdom there stated (391 F. [2d] 314) :
"A search incident to an arrest must have as one or more of its purposes the discovery of (1) the fruits of the crime; (2) instrumentalities used to commit the crime; (3) weapons or like material which put the arresting officer in danger or might facilitate escape; (4) contraband, the possession of which is a crime , and, by a recent decision, (5) material which constitutes evidence of the crime or evidence that the person arrested has committed it . Purposes 4 and 5 have no application here, because they require probable cause as a predicate for the search. There are of course no 'fruits' of the sort of traffic offenses Gonzalez may have committed. The only instrumentality is the car itself. The officers appeared to be in no danger: The defendant was outside of his car at the time of the search and virtually surrounded by three police officers. Indeed, [the police officer] even acknowledged that he was in fact looking for narcotics.
"On the record before us, the evidence clearly demonstrates that the arrest of Gonzalez was a pretext to enable the arresting officers to search Gonzalez and his car. My brothers agree that the search was therefore unreasonable.
"I would go further. I would hold that, pretext or no pretext, a lawful arrest of an automobile driver for a traffic offense provides no lawful predicate for the search of the driver or his car —absent special circumstances.
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"The significant element in this case is the danger that the lowly offense of a traffic violation — of which all of us have been guilty at one time or another — may be established as the basis for searches circumventing the rights guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment. This danger exists in lawful traffic arrests as well as in pretextual arrests. There are no fruits, instrumentalities, and contraband reasonably connected with an automobile driver's improper turn, speeding, and failure to have a driver's license — regardless of the arresting officer's motives."
3. Two California court of appeal cases have declined to follow New York court's Marsh decision. People v. Graves, 263 Cal. App. (2d) 719, 70 Cal. Rptr. 509; People v. Weitzer, 269 Cal. App. (2d) 274, 290, 75 Cal. Rptr. 318, 329. In the Weitzer case, the police arrested defendant for speeding, patted him down, and seized from his person a matchbox of marijuana. While acknowledging the principle that the police may not use a traffic offense as a pretext for making a search involving unrelated crimes, the court held that the protection and safety of the arresting officer outweigh the indignity of a traffic offender's being subjected to a search for weapons. In reaching its decision, the court stressed the distinction between cases where a traffic arrest is used as a subterfuge and those where evidence is fortuitously discovered in a routine arrest. Courts uniformly have forbidden the use of a minor traffic offense as a pretext for searches directed at unrelated offenses. Barnes v. State, 25 Wis. (2d) 116, 130 N. W. (2d) 264; State v. Cuellar, 25 Conn. Supp. 229, 200 A. (2d) 729; Taglavore v. United States (9 Cir.) 291 F. (2d) 262; Johnson v. State, 92 Okla. Cr. 63, 220 P. (2d) 469; Holland v. State, 93 Okla. Cr. 180, 226 P. (2d) 448; Ellsworth v. State (Okla. Cr.) 295 P. (2d) 296; People v. Molarius, 146 Cal. App. (2d) 129, 303 P. (2d) 350; State v. Michaels, 60 Wash. (2d) 638, 374 P. (2d) 989; People v. Sapp, 43 Misc. (2d) 81, 249 N. Y. S. (2d) 1020; Hall, Kamisar, LaFave, & Israel, Modern Criminal Procedure (3 ed.) p. 286; Annotation, 10 A. L. R. (3d) 314.
A review of the authorities persuades us that the better view protects Fourth Amendment rights against "routine searches" arising out of ordinary traffic violations. The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit dealt with this problem in United States v. Humphrey, 409 F. (2d) 1055. There, as here, the officers testified (409 F. [2d] 1057) that a search incident to an arrest for running a stop sign was based on "common and customary practice," stating, "We usually shake down almost everybody we stop if it's a man." Chief Judge Murrah, speaking for the court, condemned searches following minor traffic violations and held (409 F. [2d] 1058): "Such searches can only be justified in exceptional, on the spot circumstances which rise to the dignity of probable cause."
4. The conclusions we reach are not inconsistent with those of the Illinois court and others which have expressed a growing concern for the injuries and loss of life experienced by police officers in face-to-face confrontations with traffic offenders. People v. Tadlock, 59 Ill. App. (2d) 481, 208 N. E. (2d) 100. We are in accord with the views of the Maryland court in recognizing the "mounting cases where an officer is subjected to an attack by a motorist while investigating routine or minor traffic violations." Shelton v. State, 3 Md. App. 394, 399, 239 A. (2d) 610, 613. There is merit in the Maryland court's conclusion that the validity of a search for weapons following a traffic arrest depends on whether the officer had reasonable grounds to believe a search was necessary for his own safety or to prevent an escape. Such cases are rare, however, and impose on the officer the burden of proving probable cause for conducting the search of defendant's person in all but the most serious traffic violations.
5. We are not to be understood as holding that the police have no right, for their own protection, to search a person before placing him in a squad car if there is a valid reason for requiring him to enter the vehicle and it is not merely an excuse for an otherwise improper search. Examples of what may constitute probable cause for a search are circumstances where (a) a motorist is known by the police to be habitually armed or to have a record of assaultive behavior, or (b) he assumes a hostile and threatening attitude when stopped, or (c) the police, after stopping him, by cursory observation and without a search have valid reason to believe the motorist is engaged in the commission of a more serious crime.
There was no such evidence in the case before us, and the marijuana which was obtained by the search of defendant should therefore have been suppressed.
6. There is some testimony, to be sure, that defendant himself scattered the marijuana in the car and on the ground. Ordinarily, this would not constitute an impermissible seizure of contraband in plain sight. However, the record rather clearly indicates that defendant's attempt to dispose of the evidence did not precede but followed efforts of the police to conduct an unlawful search. Finally, we do not overlook the fact that the police had observed defendant throw on the front seat of his automobile an object which later proved to be a gun. However, subsequently discovered facts cannot retroactively serve to validate a search which was otherwise unlawful. Nevertheless, we do not suggest that the invalidity of the search would necessarily foreclose a prosecution for the offense, if any, of illegal possession of the gun. The judgment of conviction is accordingly reversed.
Reversed.
Seizure of a wallet containing marijuana in the process of searching for weapons was held improper in State v. O'Neal, 251 Ore. 163, 444 P. (2d) 951.
Under circumstances which had a striking similarity to these, the New Jersey Superior Court held the search of an automobile invalid in State v. Scanlon, 84 N. J. Super. 427, 202 A. (2d) 448.
U. S. Const. Amend. IY and Minn. Const. art. 1, § 10, provide as follows: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrant shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized."
This is analogous to the rule that "[a] search is not made legal or reasonable by what it turns up, since under the established law it is good or bad when it starts." People v. Anonymous, 56 Misc. (2d) 1022, 1029, 290 N. Y. S. (2d) 337, 344.