Court Opinion

ID: 9680871
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 07:40:13.26903+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:31.065215
License: Public Domain

Robert the L. Brown, Justice, dissenting. I disagree that the police officers had a reasonable suspicion for stopping Davis in this case. For that reason, I would suppress the search. The majority opinion describes the events leading up to the stop as follows: As two police officers, Lieutenant Billy White and Sergeant Brandon Ivy, on bicycle patrol rode past the house, they observed appellant and another man engage in an apparent hand-to-hand transaction. When appellant and the other man saw the police officers, they separated and walked away quickly. I first note that after reciting the above facts, the majority later errs by adding facts to its reasonable-suspicion analysis that arose after Sergeant Ivy stopped Davis and began questioning him. Only the facts leading up to the stop may be considered for purposes of determining whether a police officer had a reasonable suspicion to warrant a stop under Ark. R. Crim. P. 3.1. See, e.g., Florida v. J. L., 529 U.S. 266, 271 (2000); Jefferson v. State, 349 Ark. 236, 247, 76 S.W.3d 850, 856 (2002). Next, I disagree that the facts established a “hand-to-hand transaction.” Lieutenant Billy White testified that Davis and another man were “standing side by side as though they were exchanging something.” Lieutenant White admitted on cross-examination that he “did not see them exchanging anything,” and that he “didn’t see anything actually being handed back and forth.” Sergeant Brandon Ivy merely relied on what Lieutenant White told him. This rendition of events hardly qualifies as a “transaction.” Other jurisdictions have focused on the failure to observe anything actually exchanged. See People v. Saint-Veltri, 923 P.2d 337 (Colo. 1996), overruled on other grounds by People v. Saint-Veltri, 945 P.2d 1339 (1997) (holding that a police officer did not have reasonable suspicion when he observed the defendant and another man exchange an unidentified blue item and then engage in a “cupped” handshake, but did not actually see anything exchanged between the two men); Williams v. State, 769 So.2d 404 (Fla. Ct. App. 2000) (police officer lacked reasonable suspicion when he observed an encounter lacking any hand-to-hand transaction at an apartment complex known for drug activity); Commonwealth v. Martinez, 735 N.E.2d 1272 (Mass. Ct. App. 2000) (officers had reasonable cause when acting on a tip of drug sales at a specific apartment by a specific defendant and actually observed walk-up, hand-to-hand transactions taking place at that address by that defendant); People v. Murphy, 267 N.Y.S.2d 443 (1999) (“The hearing court properly determined that the police officer had reasonable suspicion . . . given the police officer’s experience and training, the large number of drug sales in the area, and his view of a hand-to-hand transaction wherein' the defendant received money for a small item.”) (citations omitted). In particular, the District of Columbia has weE-developed rules on hand-gestures: This court has, on many occasions, evaluated the import of an exchange of money or objects between individuals in the context of an investigative stop. GeneraUy, we have concluded that a “one-way exchange” — the passing of an object or money from one individual to another — is insufficient to justify a stop, whereas a “two-way exchange” is often “decisive” in establishing reasonable suspicion. Compare In re T.T.C., 583 A.2d 986, 990 (D.C. 1990) (holding that passing a small white object in a high crime area, without further evidence of an exchange, is insufficient to support a Terry stop) and Gray v. United States, 292 A.2d 153, 156 (D.C. 1972) (holding that “the mere passing of money on a street, which the arresting officers characterized as a ‘high narcotics area,’” does not give reasonable grounds to conclude that a narcotics transaction is taking place) with Thompson v. United States, 745 A.2d 308, 313 (D.C. 2000) (holding that the exchange of currency for an object, along with other factors indicating drug activity, formed the basis for an articulable suspicion). But cf. Reyes v. United States, 758 A.2d 35, 38 (D.C. 2000) (holding that a surreptitious one-way exchange in an “open air drug market” was sufficient to justify an investigatory stop); United States v. Bennett, 514 A.2d 414, 416 (D.C. 1986) (holding that a one-way transfer of money, coupled with the defendant’s flight and telltale signs of a drug transaction, is sufficient to create an articulable suspicion). We have reasoned that one-way exchanges have relatively little probative value because they are capable of “innumerable innocent explanations,” see Duhart, 589 A.2d at 899, while two-way exchanges are less susceptible of multiple meanings, and at least establish a reasonable inference of a sale. See, e.g., Thompson, 745 A.2d at 313. Black v. United States, 810 A.2d 410, 412 (D.C. 2002). Here, Officers White and Ivy saw no hand transaction at all, one-way or two-way. Accordingly, I would exclude a “hand-to-hand transaction” from the analysis. Nor do I consider walking away quickly to be a legitimate factor in determining reasonable suspicion. See Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119, 125 (2000) (“[W]hen an officer, without reasonable suspicion or probable cause, approaches an individual, the individual has a right to ignore the police and go about his business.”). See also Meadows v. State, 269 Ark. 380, 602 S.W.2d 636 (1980) (overturning a Terry stop based on the fact that the defendant quickly walked past officers and continued to look back at them). Unprovoked flight from police officers is a different matter and may factor into the reasonable suspicion analysis. See id. But that is not what occurred in the case before us. What distinguishes this case from Jefferson v. State, supra, is that in Jefferson, the police officers saw the furtive actions of the defendant at night coupled with his putting his hand in his pocket which was perceived by the arresting officers as a threat. Here, the stop not only occurred during broad daylight but there was no threatening gesture by the defendant. This case appears to be more closely aligned to Stewart v. State, 332 Ark. 138, 864 S.W.2d 793 (1998), where the stop took place largely due to the fact that the defendant was in a high crime area. Hand-to-hand contact and dispersal, without more, does not constitute reasonable suspicion in my judgment. I respectfully dissent.