Court Opinion

ID: 9748634
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 16:08:31.608871+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:37.838835
License: Public Domain

KERN, Senior Judge,
dissenting:
With deference, I am unable to agree upon the particular facts and circumstances of this case that the police violated either appellant’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from an unreasonable search and seizure or his Fifth Amendment right not to be compelled to incriminate himself.
The record reflects that two quartets of police officers were patrolling in each of two unmarked ears on the lookout for drug violations in response to neighborhood complaints of illicit drug activity.1 They observed an auto parked askew in a parking lot adjacent to an apartment development known to them to have had prior activities involving drugs. They saw four men seated inside this auto, another man standing outside this auto on the passenger side smoking a marijuana cigarette, and appellant standing on the driver’s side of this parked car. Appellant, upon- seeing the officers, thrust his head inside the parked car. The officers intended (a) to arrest the marijuana smoker on the other *949side of the car, and (b) to investigate what the four men inside the parked car were doing. One officer ordered appellant to remove himself and step back from the parked car.2 It is my view that this particular police action, viz, removing appellant’s head from inside a parked car containing four other men, did not constitute a violation of appellant’s Fourth Amendment rights. Rather, under established case law, this was an appropriate police reaction of sorting out and clarifying the situation they confronted. See Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U.S. 106, 108-109, 98 S.Ct. 330, 54 L.Ed.2d 331 (1977) (police ordered driver out of car after traffic stop); Cousart v. United States, 618 A.2d 96, 100-101 (D.C.1992) (en banc) (police ordered passengers to put hands in view); Welshman v. Commonwealth, 28 Va.App. 20, 32, 502 S.E.2d 122, 127-28 (1998) (en banc) (police ordered people in immediate proximity to suspects to lie on ground).
When the lead officer asked appellant (and then repeated his question after appellant gave no answer) whether he was carrying anything illegal, appellant replied “yes,” and that it was in his right pants pocket. Upon receiving this information, the officer searched appellant and found proscribed drugs on his person. I am unable to conclude under applicable precedent that this particular police action, viz, asking appellant within the presence of five other civilians and seven other police officers in daylight on a parking lot in the heart of the city, constituted a coercive and custodial interrogation in violation of appellant’s Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself. Mr. Justice Thur-good Marshall, surely no shrinking violet when it comes to protecting civil liberties, articulated in Berkemer v. McCarty, 468 U.S. 420, 104 S.Ct. 3138, 82 L.Ed.2d 317 (1984), the following with reference to questioning motorists after a traffic stop:
In the years since the decision in Miranda, we have frequently reaffirmed the central principle established by that case: if the police take a suspect into custody and then ask him questions without informing him of the rights [conferred by the Fifth Amendment], his responses cannot be introduced into evidence to establish his guilt- [Questioning incident to an ordinary traffic stop is quite different from stationhouse interrogation, which frequently is prolonged, and in which the detainee often is aware that questioning will continue until he provides his interrogators the answers they seek.... [T]he typical traffic stop is public, at least to some degree. Passersby, on foot or in other cars, witness the interaction of officer and motorist. This exposure to public view both reduces the ability of an unscrupulous policeman to use illegitimate means to elicit self-incriminating statements and diminishes the motorist’s fear that, if he does not cooperate, he will be subjected to abuse. [Id. at 429, 438, 86 S.Ct. 1602; emphasis added.]
The police action in the instant case, i.e., removing appellant’s head and shoulders from inside the auto where four men sat and by which a fifth man stood smoking marijuana, is far less intrusive than a traffic stop and a removal from an auto of its driver, which was the case in Berkemer where Justice Marshall concluded that the questioning of the person thus stopped and then questioned “outside the stationhouse” and in “public view” did not constitute the custodial interrogation that Miranda forbids under the Fifth Amendment.
Accordingly, I agree with the conclusion that the conscientious trial judge made after careful analysis of existing precedent upon the facts here that the police did not *950violate appellant’s constitutional rights. Accordingly, I would affirm the judgment of conviction.3

. I think it important to note that the police here were not on their patrol randomly harassing citizens, but rather were responding to residents' complaints.

. There was some testimony that the officer physically moved appellant away from the auto in which the four men were sitting and *950beside which the fifth man was smoking marijuana.

. I respectfully suggest that this decision has a chilling effect on appropriate police actions of controlling and clearing a crime scene and questioning those who are on the scene and may be involved.