Court Opinion

ID: 9518844
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 01:03:26.556934+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:37:15.129406
License: Public Domain

RILEY, Judge
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the majority's conclusion that the encounter between Marshal Adams and Cochran was consensual. Rather, I find that Cochran was seized for Fourth Amendment purposes without an objectively reasonable basis; consequently, I conclude that the information Marshal Adams gathered from Cochran during the seizure should have been suppressed.
The United States Supreme Court has acknowledged that the test for determining whether a seizure has occurred is "nee-essarily imprecise, because it is designed to assess the coercive effect of police conduct, taken as a whole, rather than to focus on particular details of that conduct in isolation." Bentley v. State, 779 N.E.2d 70, 74 (Ind.Ct.App.2002) (quoting Michigan v. Chesternut, 486 U.S. 567, 573, 108 S.Ct. 1975, 100 L.Ed.2d 565 (1988)). "In order to determine whether a particular encounter constitutes a seizure, a court must consider all the cirenmstances surrounding the encounter to determine whether the police conduct would have communicated to a reasonable person that the person was not free to decline the officers' requests or otherwise terminate the encounter." Bentley, 779 N.E.2d at 73-74 (quoting Florida v. Bostick, 501 U.S. 429, 111 S.Ct. 2382, 115 L.Ed.2d 389 (1991)). As long as an individual engaged by the police remains free to leave, the encounter is consensual, and there has been no intrusion upon that person's liberty or privacy to require some particularized and objective justification. Sanchez v. State, 803 N.E.2d 215, 220 (Ind.Ct.App.2004), trans. denied. "What constitutes a restraint on liberty prompting a person to conclude that he is not free to 'leave' will vary, not only with the particular police conduct at issue, but also with the setting in which the conduct occurs." Bentley, 779 N.E.2d at 74 (quoting Chesternut, 486 U.8. at 573, 108 S.Ct.1975).
Here, I find that while Marshal Adams may have been initially conducting a casual inquiry, an investigatory stop was initiated onee Marshal Adams requested Cochran's identifying information with the purpose of running a background check on him. See Shirley v. State, 803 N.E.2d 251, 255 (Ind.Ct.App.2004) (where this court found that a stop ensued once an officer requested identification from a biker whom he had first pulled up alongside to ask if the biker was "all right"); See also Finger v. State, 799 N.E.2d 528, 533 (Ind.2003) (holding that a reasonable person who leaves identification with an officer would not feel free to leave). Although Marshal Adams did not possess any tangible form of Cochran's identification, my evaluation of the record indicates that Cochran was not free to leave during this period of time. In particular, I find evidence in the record showing that Marshal Adams' questioning reasonably led Cochran to feel as though he had to comply with the requests for information, and was not free to terminate the encounter until Marshal Adams finished *987the background check. See Bentley, 779 N.E.2d at 73-74.
In addition, even though law enforcement may detain an individual for investigatory purposes without probable cause, the detainment must be based on specific and articulable facts, and the officer must have a reasonable suspicion that the person detained is involved in eriminal activity. Finger, 799 N.E.2d at 532. Furthermore, to withstand Constitutional serutiny, the facts supporting a reasonable suspicion must rise to "some minimum level of objective justification" for the temporary detention of a person. Shirley, 803 N.E.2d at 255-56. In the present case, any reasonable suspicion that Marshal Adams may have had that Cochran was involved in criminal activity would have originated with the citizen complaint received by dispatch, which merely alleged that Cochran's protest signs were obscene. Moreover, once Marshal Adams observed Cochran conducting a lawful protest, there was no supplementary reason to suspect Cochran of illegal activity. Thus, I fail to find that any reasonable suspicion existed to even briefly detain Cochran. As a result, I conclude that the information Marshal Adams' seized during his investigatory stop of Cochran, specifically that Cochran did not have a driver's license, was unlawfully obtained and in violation of Cochran's Fourth Amendment rights.