Court Opinion

ID: 9705472
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:08:11.04314+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:07:16.509568
License: Public Domain

ROBERT G. DOWD, JR., Presiding Judge,
dissenting.
I respectively dissent from the majority opinion. I would reverse the trial court’s decision to suppress the evidence. It is my position, as well as the State’s position, that this case is governed by the principles of New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 101 S.Ct. 2860, 69 L.Ed.2d 768 (1981). Belton stands for the established proposition that when an officer has made a lawful custodial arrest of the occupant of an automobile, “he may, as a contemporaneous incident of that arrest, search the passenger compartment of that automobile.” Id. at 460, 101 S.Ct. 2860. Thus, once there is a lawful arrest of an occupant of the automobile, an officer can search the automobile incident to that arrest. Here, the purpose of the stop was to arrest Bowles pursuant to an outstanding warrant. Once the automobile stopped, the officer made a lawful arrest of Bowles pursuant to that outstanding warrant. Bowles was clearly an “occupant” of the automobile. The passenger compartment of the automobile was then searched incident to the lawful arrest of Bowles. The controlled substance was found in a cigar tube, a “container” as defined in Belton, located in the cupholder, which was inside the passenger compartment of the automobile. Because there is no challenge to the validity of Bowles’s arrest, the search is justified under Belton.
The majority attempts to factually distinguish the present case from Belton. I do not believe Belton is distinguishable. The majority points out that Defendant was not stopped for a traffic violation, as were the men in Belton. The majority also points to the fact that none of the men in Belton owned the automobile, where Defendant owned the automobile and produced a valid driver’s license and registration. The majority further states, “Defendant was not engaged in any illegal activity when he initially observed him parked on the side of the road, he did not commit any traffic violation, he did not issue Defendant any traffic tickets, and Defendant had a clean record.” The majority contrasts the police officer in Belton developed a “new factual predicate” for developing reasonable suspicion when he smelled marijuana and saw the envelope marked “Supergold.” The majority also points out that Bowles was the only occupant arrested. None of the majority’s factual distinctions change the incontrovertible fact that Bowles was lawfully arrested by the officer and the officer had a right to search the automobile incident to that arrest under Belton. The majority seems to argue that an officer has to have reasonable suspicion for every occupant of the automobile and a lawful arrest of those occupants in order to perform a search of the automobile. I do not believe that is the proper application of Belton.
The trial court did not rely on nor discuss Belton and instead based its decision to suppress on the issue of whether the officer had a right to further detain Defendant. In its order, the trial court stated, “[t]he initial stop ended when Duane J. Bowles was arrested, and the officer had no authority to further detain the defen*81dant because he did not have reasonable suspicion that the defendant was engaged in criminal conduct.” I believe the trial court misapplied the law in relying on State v. Taber, 73 S.W.3d 699 (Mo.App. W.D.2002). I do not believe this is a “detention” case like Taber and find the Taber case inapplicable. Under Belton, which is the applicable standard, the officer had a right to conduct a search of the automobile incident to the lawful arrest of one of its occupants. No reasonable suspicion was necessary to effectuate the search of the automobile when the search was incident to an arrest. The majority seems to focus on the reasonable suspicion exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment. I believe the applicable exception to the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement in this case is the search incident to arrest exception. See Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969). The cases cited by the majority, i.e., State v. Young, 425 S.W.2d 177 (Mo.1968), State v. Riddle, 843 S.W.2d 385 (Mo.App. E.D.1992), State v. Woolfolk, 3 S.W.3d 823 (Mo.App. W.D.1999), discussing reasonable suspicion are not applicable in this ease. This is a case of a search incident to an arrest and it is a separate exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment. There was no need for reasonable suspicion under the factual circumstances of this case.
Furthermore, the purpose of the stop was to effectuate the arrest of Bowles. The trial court concluded that the stop ended once Bowles was arrested and the officer needed reasonable suspicion in order to detain Defendant and conduct the search. Under the trial court analysis that the purpose of the stop ended at Bowles’s arrest, there can never be a search incident to arrest when the purpose of the initial stop is to arrest an occupant of the automobile. This conclusion ignores the fundamental principles of searches incident to arrests.
I would reverse the trial court’s suppression of the evidence seized from the automobile.