Court Opinion

ID: 9762419
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:23:06.723399+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:33.098391
License: Public Domain

PREWITT, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. I believe that the circumstances and Corporal Elmore’s testi*937mony establish that his actions after stopping defendant were not to determine if defendant properly had possession of the car, but to coerce defendant into allowing a search of the vehicle for illegal substances. Defendant’s third point is correct that his motion to suppress should have been granted. Although defendant’s other points raise substantial questions, I believe it unnecessary to reach a decision on them.
Elmore testified that he followed the vehicle defendant was driving for three to five miles on a four lane road until it changed lanes without signalling. Apparently by that time he at least noticed that it had out-of-state, if not Florida, license plates. Elmore testified that after defendant produced the letter from the bank stating that defendant was to return the vehicle to Florida for the bank, he asked for a title on the vehicle which defendant said he did not have. Elmore said he then “explained to him that before I could release him I needed to establish legal — that he had a legal right to the car. I didn’t feel that this letter met that qualification. And I asked him if he would object to me looking through the vehicle to try to find something to establish ownership.” That search included looking under the seat of the vehicle and into defendant’s suitcase which the trooper said he searched “fairly extensively”.
Elmore stated that the letter from the bank did not in his “opinion, meet the requirement of the law. He had no legal title to the vehicle.” Elmore said he wanted to see a “title for the vehicle”. Although requested, Elmore did not call Springfield Nissan where the vehicle had been repaired and defendant had picked it up, until he had searched the vehicle, arrested defendant and went back to headquarters. When he got there he called Springfield Nissan and verified that defendant had picked the vehicle up there that day.
As earlier noted, initially Elmore testified that he told defendant he would not “release him” until he saw further proof of defendant’s right to have the car. Later, Elmore testified that until he found what he thought was cocaine and placed the defendant under arrest, defendant was free to leave. Sergeant Weaver of the Highway Patrol, who arrived after defendant was stopped, but before the cocaine was found, said that although defendant was not under arrest at the time he arrived, defendant could not have left.
It is obvious from Elmore’s testimony and his subsequent actions that the stop was a mere pretext for the search. This requires that defendant’s motion to suppress be granted. See State v. Blair, 691 S.W.2d 259 (Mo. banc 1985). In Blair, the defendant was arrested for a parking violation to gather evidence for an unrelated homicide. The court stated that a “well established limitation on the search incident to a valid arrest exception is the rule that an arrest may not be used as a pretext to search for evidence.” Id. at 262.
A situation strikingly similar to this occurred in United States v. Guzman, 864 F.2d 1512 (10th Cir.1988). There, a New Mexico state police officer stopped the defendant’s car after following it for some three miles because the defendant was not wearing a seat belt. The car also had Florida plates. The officer questioned the defendant and asked that he sign a consent form to allow the officer to search the car. He signed the consent form and the officer’s search turned up $5000 in cash and a package of cocaine. Id. at 1514.
The Tenth Circuit noted that “[i]n determining whether the seizure and search were ‘unreasonable’ our inquiry is a dual one — whether the officer’s action was justified at its inception, and whether it was reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place.” Id. at 1518.
The court in Guzman further noted that to determine if a stop was pretextual, “the proper inquiry ... is not whether the officer could validly have made the stop but whether under the same circumstances a reasonable officer would have made the *938stop in the absence of the invalid purpose.” Id. at 1515, citing United States v. Smith, 799 F.2d 704 (11th Cir.1986). The Guzman court found that although the officer’s hunch proved correct and was perhaps a tribute to his intuition, it was not however sufficient to justify a seizure that was not objectively reasonable. Id. at 1520.
To allow officers to stop vehicles and search them based upon an offense such as failure to signal in changing lanes, a very common and usually ignored violation in Missouri, “ ‘... places the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer,’ precisely the kind of arbitrary authority which gave rise to the Fourth Amendment.” Id. at 1516. Additionally, if these pretextual stops continue the state’s recognition of the individual’s constitutional rights will depend on “the state of the digestion of any officer who stops us or, more likely, upon our obsequiousness, the price of our automobiles, the formality of our dress, the shortness of our hair or the color of our skin.” Id.
The state does not refer to any statute or court decision that allows a police officer to hold someone until they establish ownership of a vehicle or a right to its possession after a stop for a routine traffic violation. If a highway patrolman can hold the driver of a vehicle until ownership or a right to possession is established, then, might not a police officer restrain a deliveryman, who is stopped for jaywalking, until he establishes a right to possession of the package he says he is delivering, or even a right to the uniform he is wearing. Of course, allowing that would be ridiculous.
Furthermore even if some proof of right to possession can be required, the trooper’s insistence on seeing the car’s title defies reason and is completely unrealistic. Seldom does anyone regularly carry a vehicle’s title in it, in part because of the danger that if the vehicle is stolen the title would make it easier for the thief to dispose of it. Of course, in many cases a financial institution financing the purchase of the automobile retains the title. Requiring an out-of-state motorist stopped for a traffic violation to produce a title before being released, as Elmore testified he did, is a condition that could take days to fulfill, if at all. Obviously Elmore and defendant recognized this. Furthermore even had the title been present in the vehicle, it would not have established defendant’s right to possess the car. Elmore’s action constituted an unreasonable restraint, in effect an arrest, without any probable cause. Defendant was improperly and illegally coerced into the search.
Defendant showed Elmore a letter from the bank. He was stopped in the middle of a working day when it would not have been difficult for Elmore, or by use of his radio to have someone at his headquarters, contact the bank if Elmore in good faith really questioned the letter defendant carried. The facts do not support Elmore’s contention that he was looking for documents to substantiate ownership or a right to possession. There was nothing more that El-more could have found that would have supported defendant’s right to the car than what Elmore was given and chose to ignore. Certainly Elmore was not going to find such evidence under the seat or in defendant’s suitcase. If defendant had such in his suitcase, he would have been aware of it. He gave Elmore all the authorization he had or could have been expected to have.
The evidence obtained in the search was the result of improper action both in the stop and retention of defendant. Evidence obtained directly or indirectly due to the exploitation of police illegality is not admissible. U.S. v. Klopfenstine, 673 F.Supp. 356, 360 (W.D.Mo.1987), citing Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 484-88, 83 S.Ct. 407, 415-17, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963). Although the search here was consented to by the defendant, and his consent was found to be voluntary, courts have noted that the “evidence found as a result of such search still must be suppressed if the earlier unconstitutional conduct is not sufficiently attenuated to be purged of the *939primary taint.” Klopfenstine at 360. Here, the consent given was clearly not attenuated from officer Elmore’s pretextual stop and threat to hold defendant.
I agree that we must defer to the trial court on matters of credibility, but not where the testimony defies all reason and commonsense. Elmore’s testimony established that he deliberately and calculatedly coerced defendant into consenting to the search. To uphold such a search is to allow law enforcement officers, by coercive means, to abrogate the rights of citizens chat certain officers obviously do not think citizens should have.