Court Opinion

ID: 9677972
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:07:31.60521+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:00.753442
License: Public Domain

TOM Glaze, Justice, dissenting. In this appeal, we are called tice, trial court’s granting of a defendant’s motion to suppress seized evidence under Ark. R. App. P. 3(a)(1) and Ark. R. Crim. P. 16.2. This court refuses to do so even though it just made such a review in the strikingly similar case of State v. Sullivan, 340 Ark. 315, 11 S.W.3d 526 (2000) (supplemental opinion denying rehearing 340 Ark. 318-A (2000). Like Sullivan, this is the very type of case this court has previously reviewed under Rule 3(a)(1) to insure the correct and uniform administration of the criminal law. This court is wrong in not doing so now. While the majority opinion fails to see the similarities between this appeal and the ones in Sullivan, the reader may make his or her own comparison from the following summary of facts in the two cases: Sullivan Case Officer stopped Sullivan after observing his speeding five miles per hour over the speed limit. Officer asked for Sullivan’s vehicle registration and proof of insurance, which he could not produce. The officer discovered Sullivan’s speedometer did not work and his car windows were illegally tinted. The officer became aware of Sullivans identity as someone who was known to the narcotics section after he stopped Sullivan. The officer also saw a hatchet in the car in plain view. The officer searched Sullivan’s car incident to arrest and as an inventory search. Sullivan moved to suppress, which the trial court granted, riding the officer’s stop was proper, but that the officer unlawfully arrested Sullivan, rather than giving him a citation. The State filed an interlocutory appeal under Ark. R. App. P. — Crim. 3(a)(1), which the attorney general stated required a review of a grant of a motion under Ark. R. Crim. P. 16.2 to suppress seized evidence. Guthrie Case Officer believed Guthrie was an impaired driver when he pulled on Highway 62. He observed Guthrie crossing over center line and saw Guthrie driving about eighteen miles per hour in a thirty-five mile per hour zone. Officer stopped Guthrie after seeing his drivers’ side tire go off the pavement. Officer claimed he did not know Guthrie until Guthrie stopped, and the officer knew Guthrie was a convicted felon, who acknowledged he had a gun in his truck. Officer found methamphetamine on Guthrie when he patted him down. Officers subsequently found additional methamphetamine, twenty-one grams of marijuana, drug paraphernalia, and $3,332.52 in cash. Guthrie moved to suppress, which the trial court granted, ruling there was no reasonable ground for the stop. State filed interlocutory appeal under Ark. R. App. P. — Crim. 3(a)(1), because, like in State v. Sullivan, 340 Ark. 315, 11 S.W.3d 526, the appeal involved the constitutional safeguards applicable to traffic stops and the misinterpretation and misapplication of Ark. R. Crim. P. 16.2, under which the trial court improperly granted Guthrie’s motion to suppress. The attorney general asserted this issue insured the correct and uniform administration of the criminal law in Arkansas. As is readily seen from the above, the respective trial courts in Sullivan and Guthrie suppressed seized evidence following a traffic stop of the defendants’ vehicles. The one meaningful distinction is that the Sullivan suppression motion was granted upon a “pretextual arrest” ground, and the Guthrie motion was granted based on an unreasonable stop. In both cases, the State contended that the search and seizure of the contraband found in each defendant’s vehicle was proper under Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806 (1996). In sum, the State argues that, an officer may validly stop and detain a motorist where the officer has probable cause to believe a traffic violation had occurred. See also Travis v. State, 331 Ark. 7, 959 S.W.2d 32 (1998). Thus, the State’s argument goes, if a valid stop and arrest are made for violations of the law in an officer’s presence, an inventory search or search incident to the arrest is valid as well. Id., see also Burris v. State, 330 Ark. 66, 954 S.W.2d 209 (1997). This court’s decision denying a rehearing in Sullivan was a divided one, 4-3, and it is not at all clear how that decision will affect a traffic stop, arrest, and search when a trial judge premises his granting of a suppression motion on grounds other than a “pretextual arrest.” This court, as it did in Sullivan, should make it clear how it intends to apply the holdings in Whren, Burris, and Travis to facts that are almost identical to those in Sullivan, but differ in that the suppression motions were granted based on different grounds— “pretextual arrest” in Sullivan, as opposed to an “unlawful stop” in Guthrie. The present state of the law in these traffic stop-and-arrest situations is confusing, and this court should attempt to make its holdings clearer. In short, our court should decide whether the traffic stop and resulting arrest and search in Guthrie is valid under Whren when no pretextual arrest was involved like the trial court found in Sullivan. There is absolutely no reason not to address the issue and Rule 3(a)(1) is the means by which this court may do so. The development of the law involving Arkansas’s traffic stop and search-and-seizure cases compel our review, and I would grant and decide the merits of the appeal. IMBER and SMITH, JJ., join this dissent.