Court Opinion

ID: 9957741
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-04-05 06:05:17.615267+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:18:36.568095
License: Public Domain

If this opinion indicates that it is “FOR PUBLICATION,” it is subject to
                  revision until final publication in the Michigan Appeals Reports.

                            STATE OF MICHIGAN

                              COURT OF APPEALS

PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF MICHIGAN,                                          FOR PUBLICATION
                                                                          April 4, 2024
                Plaintiff-Appellee,

v                                                                         No. 355554
                                                                          Genesee Circuit Court
DAVID HENRY SERGES,                                                       LC No. 18-042951-FC

                Defendant-Appellant.

Before: HOOD, P.J., and SWARTZLE and REDFORD, JJ.

SWARTZLE, J. (concurring dubitante).

         There is little about this case that is not unsettling. The brutality of the murder is unsettling.
The police officer’s purported suspicion of defendant based on the mere brushing of one’s legs,
and that officer’s subsequent change in testimony about why defendant was arrested, are
unsettling. The lack of reliable evidence of guilt, aside from the DNA evidence, is unsettling. And
finally, our state’s jurisprudence with regard to the warrantless search of a person’s property absent
probable cause or plain sight is, while maybe not unsettling, at least unsettled. Because the
question of whether the search was lawful is a close question, I cannot find either plain error or
fault with defense counsel’s performance regarding the DNA evidence. I concur dubitante,
however, to suggest that our Supreme Court take a close look at this case in light of our unsettled
jurisprudence.

        To begin, as to why defendant was initially arrested, the majority states: “Detective
Freeman testified unequivocally [during the Ginther hearing on remand] that defendant was
arrested for the murder. Defendant’s detention and jailing arose in relation to the murder
investigation and not any investigation of his pending misdemeanors. The two aspects of
defendant’s placement in jail appear to have intersected coincidentally. In any event, the record
supports that defendant’s pants were taken incidental to his lawful arrest which gave the police the
authority to search them.”

        With respect, there was nothing coincidental about the two aspects. From the outset, the
police suspected defendant of the victim’s murder, but there was little-to-no reliable evidence tying
him to the scene. There were no fingerprints, shoe prints, weapons, visible blood, or the like to

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connect defendant with the murder. There were eye-witnesses putting defendant on the general
scene within a day or so of the crime, but this was not particularly damning given that defendant
had done numerous odd jobs for the victim. This “vicinity” evidence was all that police had when
defendant was arrested, and such evidence could hardly be said to amount to probable cause.

       Consistent with this lack of probable cause of murder at the time of arrest, the evidence
introduced at trial and defendant’s motion for new trial confirms that police initially arrested him
on a misdemeanor charge for failing to appear at court. The register of actions in the unrelated
misdemeanor case, for example, shows that defendant was arrested on a warrant in that case on
November 30, 2017, three days after the murder. Then, while in jail on that misdemeanor,
defendant was arrested for another unrelated charge of theft on January 18, 2018. A day later,
defendant’s pants were submitted to a state laboratory for testing, during which the victim’s DNA
was subsequently identified in a speck of blood that was unobservable with the naked eye. The
DNA report was completed on March 8, 2018, and the felony warrant and complaint charging
defendant with the victim’s murder were issued on March 12, 2018.

         To be sure, during the trial court’s Ginther hearing on remand, Officer Freeman testified
that he arrested defendant on suspicion of murder on November 29, 2017. But, the officer also
testified that he immediately sought a warrant for defendant for the murder, but the warrant was
denied. The officer went on to explain that defendant remained in jail on the unrelated charges.
When confronted with a police report that indicated defendant was initially arrested on an unrelated
charge, Officer Freeman testified that the report was inaccurate.

         Except for Officer Freeman’s testimony during the Ginther hearing, no other evidence in
the record—either during defendant’s trial, the motion for new trial, or on remand—suggests that
defendant was initially arrested for murder. With that said, if the trial court had concluded that,
based on its own review of the evidence, as a matter of fact defendant had been initially arrested
for murder, then this Court would have had to accept that factual finding in the absence of clear
error. But critically, the trial court made no such finding—just the opposite. Specifically, the trial
court explained in its ruling after the Ginther hearing, “[T]he pants are ones that he was wearing
when he was taken into custody on an unrelated matter. He had an outstanding warrant on another
case. And, when he was taken into custody, those pants he was wearing, and they were held by
the jail.” (Emphasis added.)

       Thus, I take it as an established fact that defendant was not initially arrested and held on
suspicion of murder, but rather he was arrested and subsequently held on unrelated misdemeanor
charges. I have no doubt that police suspected defendant of murder, but until the DNA report came
back in March, there was no probable cause to support such suspicion.

        With respect to the lack of probable cause to search the pants, one could legitimately ask,
“But so what?” Police unquestionably had lawful possession of defendant’s possessions, including
his pants, while he was in jail on the unrelated charges. And, as part of their investigation, police
could certainly consider any evidence in plain view or inventoried in the normal course that might
incriminate him in the murder, such as blood on his pants. Fair points both.

        And yet, neither point is dispositive on whether police had lawful authority to send the
pants to be analyzed for DNA in January 2018. On the first point, “[i]f the police lack probable

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cause to believe that an object in plain view is contraband without conducting some further search
of the object, that is, if its incriminating character is not immediately apparent, then the plain-view
doctrine” does not excuse the lack of a warrant. 68 Am Jur 2d, Searches and Seizures, § 249, p
480. The speck of blood was not visible to the naked eye; it was only after a lab technician used
a magnifying glass and filter-paper rubs that a blood stain was even suspected, and subsequent
testing was needed to confirm that there was, in fact, a blood stain. Moreover, the fact that
defendant, a vagrant, intravenous heroin addict, had a tiny speck of blood on his pants is not, in
and of itself, particularly strong evidence of murder—especially this murder, where there was a
significant amount of the victim’s blood strewn about the crime scene, suggesting that the murderer
would likely also have had a significant amount of blood on his or her person. Thus, even a plain
view of the pants, augmented with a microscope and filter paper, did not suggest evidence of this
particularly gruesome murder.

        On the second point, with respect to the police’s warrantless possession of the pants, our
state’s jurisprudence is unsettled. There are two decisions of our Supreme Court from several
decades ago that suggest that a person does not lose all civil liberties related to his property merely
because that property is in the possession of police and the person is being held on a charge
unrelated to the one for which police are investigating. In People v Carr, 370 Mich 251, 253; 121
NW2d 449 (1963), our Supreme Court reviewed a defendant’s appeal of his conviction of
breaking-and-entering with the intent to commit larceny. The defendant had been pulled over for
driving with a defective taillight, and he was arrested when unrelated stolen property was found
during a subsequent search of the car. Id. The defendant pleaded guilty to possession of stolen
property and was sentenced to 30 days in jail. Id. at 253-254. While serving that sentence, the
defendant’s car was stored in the jail’s parking lot. Id. at 254.

        Later, during his time in jail, the police decided to question the defendant about the
breaking-and-entering at issue. Id. Defendant did not provide any useful information, so police
performed a warrantless search of the defendant’s car sitting in the jail’s parking lot. Id. The
police removed a monkey wrench from the car, took the car to a different county, evaluated tracks
from the car’s tires, and took paint from the car and wrench for further testing. Id. After
conducting those tests, the defendant was charged and later convicted of breaking-and-entering
with the intent to commit larceny. Id.

         On whether the trial court should have suppressed the evidence, the Court concluded that
the trial court erred, explaining:

                It could not be seriously urged that the search and seizure made by the
       officers without [the] defendant’s consent or without a search warrant could not,
       nor likely would not, even have been attempted, had [the] defendant been at liberty
       and his automobile been parked on his own premises. [The d]efendant was not
       stripped of his civil rights and his constitutional safeguards merely because he was
       serving a sentence in the county jail for an unrelated misdemeanor. It would be a
       dangerous rule of law and an invitation to circumvent the constitutional guaranty
       against unreasonable search and seizure were the citizen convicted of a
       misdemeanor and in jail, possibly in default of payment of a fine, to be stripped of
       all his civil liberties. [Id.]

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The Court focused on the police action of searching the defendant’s car even when an interview
of the defendant had not produced any probable cause for the search. Id. at 256. If the officer had
obtained probable cause, then, the Court insisted, he should have obtained a warrant. Id. The
Court concluded: “Here a search of the defendant’s possession—his automobile was made without
a search warrant, without cause, probable or otherwise related to the alleged crime, without any
basis other than possibly understandable suspicion. Such search and seizure was made in patent
violation of the State Constitution of 1908, art 2, § 10.” Id. (footnote omitted).

        In the end, the Court determined the evidence should have been suppressed, and because
without it the defendant likely would not have been convicted, the Court reversed. Id. Importantly,
our Supreme Court decided the case entirely on the basis of the Michigan Constitution, and even
expressly refused to consider federal precedent when analyzing the issue: “In view of our holding
under the State Constitution, neither the question of the applicability of Mapp v Ohio, [367 US
643; 81 S Ct 1684; 6 L Ed 2d 1081 (1961)], nor the other allegations of error need be discussed.”
Id. at 256-257.

        Eight years later, our Supreme Court considered a similar issue in People v Trudeau, 385
Mich 276; 187 NW2d 890 (1971). The defendant had been arrested on unrelated burglary charges,
and an officer suspected that the defendant had been involved in a separate burglary that had led
to a murder. The officer went to the courthouse during the defendant’s preliminary examination
on the unrelated charges. Id. at 278. A shoeprint had been found at the scene of the murder, so
the officer asked the defendant to lift his feet so the officer could see the heel of the defendant’s
shoes. Id. The defendant complied, but subsequently refused to give the officer his shoes. Id.
The officer took the shoes anyway, without a warrant. Id. After significant testing, an expert
witness determined the defendant’s shoes matched the heel print from the murder scene. Id. at
279-280.

       The defendant was charged with murder, and he moved to suppress the evidence. Id. at
278. The argument was unsuccessful, the evidence was used against the defendant at trial, and he
was convicted of murder. Id. at 278-279. Our Supreme Court subsequently granted leave to
consider whether evidence related to the defendant’s shoes should have been suppressed. Id. at
279.

        As to the prosecutor’s argument that the plain-view exception applied, the Court noted the
police had not established probable cause to believe the shoes were connected to the murder until
after the laboratory conducted its lengthy investigation. Id. at 280. This meant the police officer’s
plain view of the shoes had not amounted to probable cause to believe the shoes were related to
the crime at issue. Id.

        Next, the Court considered whether the defendant’s incarceration at the time of the search
and seizure changed the outcome. Id. Relying on Carr, the Trudeau Court held that the defendant
“did not lose his civil rights or liberties while he was in police custody awaiting trial on another
charge.” Id. at 281. When Trudeau was decided, our current 1963 Constitution had been adopted
and was in place. As in Carr, the Trudeau Court made sure to clarify it was not “in any way
affecting essential steps which must be taken by the police in processing a prisoner . . . and to
assure the protection of the police and of other prisoners.” Id. The Court reversed the defendant’s
conviction and remanded for a new trial. Id.

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        The similarities between the present case, Trudeau, and Carr, are evident. Defendant was
in jail on misdemeanor charges unrelated to the victim’s murder. During that time, the police
removed his pants from jail, sent them to a state laboratory, and conducted forensic testing on
them. The police did so without a warrant. The tests were solely related to the victim’s murder,
not the other charges for which defendant had actually been jailed. Both the Carr and Trudeau
Courts held the laboratory testing on the automobile from Carr and the shoes from Trudeau
amounted to an unreasonable search.

        Although neither Carr nor Trudeau has been overturned by our Supreme Court, one can
legitimately ask whether there is much left of them beyond their specific facts. As the majority
points out, the ground of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence has shifted considerably since Carr
and Trudeau were decided. Moreover, although Carr explicitly relied only on the state
Constitution, and Trudeau relied on Carr, it has been the general law of this state that the standard
of reasonableness for searches and seizures is no higher under article 1, § 11 of our Constitution
of 1963 than under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. People v Carter, 250 Mich
App 510, 519-520; 655 NW2d 236 (2002). Panels of this Court have explicitly questioned the
reach and viability of Trudeau, as the majority recognizes. See, e.g., People v Bembeneck,
unpublished per curiam opinion of the Court of Appeals, issued January 20, 2022 (Docket No.
352919), slip op at 5 n 4.

        Even so, with Carr and Trudeau remaining at least nominally the law of this state for now,
I might well have dissented rather than concurred but for one decisive factor—the privacy interest
at stake. Both the U.S. Supreme Court and our Supreme Court have held in recent years that
warrantless searches, or searches beyond the scope of an existing warrant, of mobile devices and
the like violate the Fourth Amendment. Riley v California, 573 US 373; 134 S Ct 2473; 189 L Ed
2d 430 (2014); People v Hughes, 506 Mich 512; 958 NW2d 98 (2020). In today’s world, such a
device holds access to a vast amount of private information about the device’s owner. Had police
obtained evidence in this case by accessing a mobile device of defendant without a warrant or
permission—even if they had lawful possession of the device as part of their normal jailing
procedures—such evidence would likely have been suppressed had defense counsel moved to do
so.

        What tips the scale in favor of affirming here, however, is that it was the victim’s blood on
the surface of defendant’s pants that was discovered through the DNA testing. Whether a
defendant would have a legitimate privacy interest in his own blood on the surface of his own
pants is an interesting question. Similarly, if the blood had not been found on the surface of the
pants, but instead the search somehow required the pants to be ripped apart, raises yet another
interesting question. Neither of these questions is before us here.

        Rather, we have the blood of the victim, for which defendant does not have a legitimate
privacy interest, found on the surface of defendant’s pants, for which identification of the blood
did not require invasive search, even if it required extensive analysis. Although I believe that this
case presents a much closer call than does the majority, defendant’s claim that the evidence would
have been suppressed had a motion been made falls just short on the facts of this case. See Sheffield
v United States, 111 A3d 611, 622 (DC App, 2015) (concluding that defendant did not have any
legitimate expectation of privacy in victim’s blood on his pants).

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         And yet, what makes this case remain unsettling in my view is the dearth of reliable
evidence of defendant’s guilt apart from the speck of the victim’s blood found on his pants. The
only other reliable evidence related to guilt was the evidence putting defendant in the general
vicinity within a day or so of the crime. As noted earlier, however, this vicinity evidence was
rather weak given that defendant had performed odd jobs for the victim in the recent past. Even
the DNA evidence is not as strong as one would normally associate with such evidence, given
other evidence that the victim was diabetic and often bled from her feet, and defendant had helped
her in the past with household chores. While supposition, this equivocal evidence is likely what
resulted in the hung jury in defendant’s first trial. No other reliable evidence linked defendant
with this crime, either directly or circumstantially. My colleagues see “a significant amount” of
guilt in this record that I simply do not see, especially discounting, as I do, any notion that brushing
one’s legs is somehow to be taken seriously as evidence of deception.

        With that said, because there does not appear to have been a clear ground for suppressing
the DNA evidence, I agree with my colleagues that there was no plain error or ineffective
assistance of counsel with respect to suppression of that evidence. Further, I agree with my
colleagues that defendant’s remaining claims on appeal do not warrant reversal.

       Accordingly, I concur in affirming defendant’s conviction, albeit I do so dubitante, given
the unsettled nature of this state’s search-and-seizure case law.

                                                                /s/ Brock A. Swartzle

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