Court Opinion

ID: 9895736
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-11-08 17:04:03.607747+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:11:27.758293
License: Public Domain

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF DELAWARE

MARVIN DAVIS,                                §
                                             §
                Defendant-Below              §      No. 419, 2022
                Appellant,                   §
                                             §      Court Below—Superior Court
                                             §      of the State of Delaware
                       v.                    §
                                             §      Cr. ID No. 2103008825A/B (N)
STATE OF DELAWARE,                           §
                                             §
                Appellee.                    §

                              Submitted: September 13, 2023
                              Decided:   November 8, 2023

Before SEITZ, Chief Justice; VALIHURA, TRAYNOR, LEGROW, and
GRIFFITHS, Justices constituting the Court en banc.

                                           ORDER
         This 8th day of November, 2023, after careful consideration of the parties’

briefs, the argument of counsel, and the record on appeal, it appears to the Court

that:

         (1)    On March 14, 2020, at approximately 9:30 p.m., Trooper Evans of the

Delaware State Police, while patrolling near Churchman’s Road in Newark,

observed a white Mercury sedan driven by Marvin Davis. Running a DELJIS1

inquiry on the vehicle, Trooper Evans discovered that Davis’s car, which was

transferred 10 days earlier, was not properly registered. Consequently, he initiated

1
    “DELJIS” is an acronym for the Delaware Criminal Justice Information System.
a traffic stop to address the registration violation. Trooper Evans initially stood

outside Davis’s front passenger window and asked Davis, the sole occupant of the

vehicle, for his license, registration, and insurance. After Davis advised that he had

a learner’s permit and that he had just purchased the car from a friend, Trooper Evans

told him the reason for the stop—the registration violation—and Davis replied that

he was aware that he needed to re-register the vehicle in his name.

       (2)    When Davis handed his paperwork to Trooper Evans, Evans saw

Davis’s arm shaking. He then asked Davis why he was in the area and where he

lived. After returning the papers, Trooper Evans noted that Davis was taking rapid,

shallow breaths.

       (3)    Although Davis answered all Trooper Evans’s questions and was

generally cooperative, Trooper Evans asked Davis to step out of the car. The trooper

described the exit order as “pretty routine”2 and a practice he follows during “almost

every traffic stop”3 he conducts. In Trooper Evans’s words, “[w]hen I pull them out

of the vehicle, I conduct a brief . . . pat-down of the exterior to make sure there’s no

knives or firearms. . . .”4

2
  App. to Opening Br. at A77.
3
  Id. at A79.
4
  Id. at A101.
                                           2
          (4)     When Davis began “to adjust in his seat to get out of the car,”5 Trooper

Evans saw that he was sitting on what appeared to be a handgun magazine protruding

beneath his right leg. Trooper Evans then ordered Davis to put his hands up, drew

his service pistol, and asked if there was a gun under Davis’s leg.

          (5)     Davis, who denied having a gun, failed to comply with repeated orders

to put his hands up. Davis was held at gunpoint until assisting officers arrived on

the scene, at which point he was taken into custody without incident. Trooper Evans

then collected the firearm located on Davis’s driver’s seat; the handgun, loaded with

14 rounds of ammunition, had a round in the chamber. Soon after, Trooper Evans

asked Davis if he understood how close he came to getting shot. He then allowed

Davis to call someone to pick up his car to avoid having it towed. While on the

phone, Davis told the person he called that he had a firearm in his possession.

          (6)     Davis was indicted on three felony charges: carrying a concealed

deadly weapon, possession of a firearm by a person prohibited, and possession of

ammunition by a person prohibited.

          (7)     Before trial, Davis moved to suppress all evidence seized during the

traffic stop, including the handgun found on the driver’s side seat and Davis’s

statements to Trooper Evans. His motion advanced four arguments. First, Davis

contended that Trooper Evans impermissibly extended the traffic stop without

5
    Id. at A81.
                                              3
sufficient justification unrelated to the initial motor vehicle infraction in violation of

this Court’s holding in Caldwell v. State.6 Second, Davis argued that the United

States Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Fourth Amendment in Pennsylvania v.

Mimms,7 which condoned the use of exit orders during traffic stops in the absence

of an articulable suspicion of criminal activity or actual danger, should not be

extended to stops “when the police action is taken in order to investigate an

additional crime (other than the traffic offence [sic] for which the stop was

initiated).”8 Third, even if Mimms were controlling under the Fourth Amendment to

the United States Constitution, according to Davis, Delaware courts should afford

broader protection from automatic exit orders under Article I, § 6 of the Delaware

Constitution. Similar—but not identical—to the Fourth Amendment, Article I, § 6

recognizes the right of “[t]he people . . . [to] be secure in their persons, houses, papers

and possessions, from unreasonable searches and seizures[.]” But importantly for

present purposes, this Court has concluded that Article I, § 6 reflects different and

broader protections than those guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment. Fourth, Davis

asserted that Trooper Evans’s failure to notify Davis of his Miranda rights before

questioning him violated “his constitutional right against self-incrimination.”9

6
  780 A.2d 1037 (Del. 2001).
7
  434 U.S. 106 (1977).
8
  App. to Opening Br. at A23.
9
  Id. at A29.
                                            4
          (8)    In the trial court’s bench ruling following a suppression hearing, the

court identified “two challenges in [Davis’s] motion to suppress: [o]ne, that Trooper

Evans unlawfully extended the motor vehicle stop; and, two, the statements made

after defendant’s arrest should be suppressed under Miranda v[.] Arizona. . . .”10 The

court did not mention Davis’s argument under Article I, § 6.

          (9)    The Superior Court rejected Davis’s Miranda claim, a ruling that Davis

has not appealed.

          (10) Addressing Davis’s claim that Trooper Evans had unlawfully extended

the vehicle stop for reasons unrelated to the motor vehicle violation, the court quoted

heavily from this Court’s opinion in Caldwell:

         In order to be valid under the Fourth Amendment “the stop and inquiry
         must be justified at its inception by reasonable suspicion of criminal
         activity.” That’s Caldwell v[.] State, 780 A.2d 1037[, 1046], Supreme
         Court of Delaware 2001. . . . “Once the officer has issued a citation or
         warning and has run routine checks, the vehicle must be released unless
         the driver voluntarily consents to further questioning or the officer
         uncovers facts that independently warrant additional investigation.”
         [Id. at 1047].11

         (11) The court also noted that, under Arizona v. Johnson, Trooper Evans’s

questioning of Davis about matters unrelated to the registration violation would not

“convert the encounter into something other than a lawful seizure, as long as those

10
     Opening Br. Ex. A at 83.
11
     Id. at 83–84.
                                             5
inquiries do not measurably extend the duration of the stop.”12 Noting that only one

minute and 13 seconds elapsed between Trooper Evans’s knocking on Davis’s

passenger side window and his ordering Davis out of the car, the court found that

the trooper’s pre-exit order questioning did not measurably extend the stop. Based

on this finding and the court’s determination that the questioning did not stray

“beyond what is required and permitted to complete the traffic stop,”13 the court

rejected Davis’s Caldwell claim.

       (12) The court addressed the exit order next and determined that it was

permissible “under [the] Fourth Amendment,”14 citing this Court’s ruling in Loper

v. State.15 In Loper, this Court addressed a claim that an exit order following a traffic

stop issued after a passenger in Loper’s car was arrested on an outstanding capias

constituted a “second seizure” requiring suspicion independent of the suspicion

justifying the stop.      Loper grounded his argument on the Fourth, Fifth, and

Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and Article I, § 6 of the

Delaware Constitution. Apparently recognizing that his argument ran contrary to

the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Mimms, Loper argued that Article I,

§ 6 provided greater protection from unreasonable search and seizures than did the

12
    Id. at 84 (quoting Arizona v. Johnson, 555 U.S. 323, 333 (2009)).
13
   Opening Br. Ex. A at 88.
14
   Id. at 89.
15
   8 A.3d 1169 (2010).
                                                6
Fourth Amendment, a general principle this Court recognized in Jones v. State.16

The Court rejected Loper’s state constitutional claim, deferring instead to Mimms’s

Fourth Amendment analysis:

          As the United States Supreme Court held in Pennsylvania v. Mimms,
          the police may order the driver or a passenger to exit the car after a valid
          traffic stop, and that order is not a “seizure” under the Fourth
          Amendment. Loper has cited no authority, nor made any cogent legal
          argument, for why this Court should expand the meaning of “seizure”
          under Jones and Article 1, § 6 of the Delaware Constitution, to hold
          that a person already being lawfully detained as a result of a valid traffic
          stop is “seized” a second time when ordered to leave his car. The
          constitutional claim, therefore, fails.17

          (13) Based upon the Court’s exclusive reliance on Mimms in the passage

from Loper quoted above, in this case, Davis pressed the trial court to consider his

challenge to the exit order, without which the weapon would not have been

discovered, under the broader protection from unreasonable searches and seizures

under Article I, § 6. Unlike the defendant in Loper, Davis devoted six pages of his

motion to suppress to his state constitutional claim, explaining why legislative

history, pre-existing state law, and state and local concerns weighed in favor of a

more expansive reading of Article I, § 6 than the United States Supreme Court

16
     745 A.2d 856 (1999).
17
     Loper, 8 A.3d at 1174.
                                               7
afforded the Fourth Amendment in Mimms.18 Davis also cited opinions from other

states that refused to endorse automatic exit orders under their state constitutions.19

       (14) In the State’s Response to Defendant’s Motion to Suppress, the State

did not squarely address Davis’s state constitutional arguments, relying instead on

“Mimms and its state-law progeny,”20 i.e., Loper.

       (15) Despite Davis’s framing of the state constitutional law issue in the

manner that this Court has encouraged,21 the Superior Court did not address it. The

following exchange at the conclusion of the court’s bench ruling leaves no doubt

that its decision was based on its application of the Fourth Amendment as interpreted

in Mimms:

        THE COURT: Does anybody have any questions?

        DEFENSE COUNSEL: I do, Your Honor. Defense also made an
        argument under the Delaware Constitution, the State didn’t . . .
        respond to that.

        THE COURT: I’m not going to take up that issue at this time. I
        found that under the United States Constitution that it’s satisfied.
        If the State wants to make any additional arguments about that
        now[?]

        THE STATE: No, Your Honor.

        ...

18
   App. to Opening Br. at A23–29.
19
   Com. v. Gonsalves, 711 N.E.2d 108 (Mass. 1999); State v. Sprague, 824 A.2d 539 (Vt. 2003);
State v. Kim, 711 P.2d 1291 (Haw. 1985).
20
   App. to Opening Br. at A50.
21
   See infra ¶ 19.
                                             8
           DEFENSE COUNSEL: I want to make sure that it’s been preserved,
           that the defendant has raised it and the Court has decided not to
           address [it].

           THE COURT: That’s acknowledged. I saw it in your papers, and it
           is acknowledged. Thank you.22

         (16) In consequence of its rulings that (i) Trooper Evans’s roadside

questioning of Davis did not measurably extend the duration of the stop, (ii) the exit

order was permissible under Mimms, and (iii) there was no Miranda violation, the

Superior Court denied Davis’s motion to suppress.

         (17) Davis was tried before a jury and convicted of the three weapons

charges. After the State moved to declare Davis a habitual offender, Davis was

sentenced to 23 years of incarceration followed by probation, and he appealed.

         (18) On appeal, Davis does not challenge the Superior Court’s denial of his

motion to suppress to the extent that it was based on the court’s consideration of

federal constitutional protections. Instead, he argues that the Superior Court erred

by not ruling on his claim that Trooper Evans’s exit order violated his rights under

Article I, § 6 of the Delaware Constitution. That section, according to Davis,

prohibits exit orders and consequent frisks in the absence of “individualized

reasoning and articulable facts . . . justify[ing] the additional seizure . . . ” effected

22
     App. to Opening Br. at A152–53 (emphasis added).
                                               9
by the exit order.23 Davis contends that the court’s failure to address this state

constitutional claim at all constitutes reversible error. We agree.

       (19) In Ortiz v. State, this Court observed that “[t]he proper presentation of

an alleged violation of the Delaware Constitution should include a discussion and

analysis of one or more of the criteria set forth in Jones [v. State]24 or other

applicable criteria.”25 The Jones criteria, which are non-exclusive, comprise textual

language, legislative history, pre-existing state law, structural differences, matters

of particular state interest or local concern, state traditions, and public attitudes.

Davis’s motion discussed and analyzed three of these eight criteria; it also cited cases

from other jurisdictions, based upon provisions in their state constitutions, that have

refused to limit their scrutiny of exit orders to what Pennsylvania v. Mimms

requires.26 Thus, the legal issue and the factual questions related to it were squarely

in front of the court. And yet the Superior Court did not address the issue, even

when Davis raised it again after the court failed to rule on the issue in its bench

ruling.

       (20) As this Court noted in Holden v. State, “[o]ur case law mandates that a

trial judge make factual determinations and supply a legal rationale for a judicial

23
   Opening Br. at 10.
24
   745 A.2d 856, 864–65 (Del. 1999).
25
   869 A.2d 285 (Del. 2005).
26
   See supra note 19.
                                          10
decision as a matter of law. Failure to do so may be an abuse of discretion.”27 Here,

the trial court did not explain its legal rationale for denying Davis’s state

constitutional claim. That failure was an abuse of discretion. Not only this, but

without the court’s legal rationale, we cannot discern the extent to which factual

determinations were required to fairly adjudicate Davis’s motion. For instance, had

the court held that, unlike the Fourth Amendment as applied in Mimms, Article I, §

6 requires a showing of an actual safety concern to justify an exit order for the

purpose of frisking a traffic-law offender, the court would have been compelled to

weigh Trooper Evans’s actual safety concerns. No doubt, this inquiry would have

required careful analysis, given Trooper Evans’s testimony that he routinely uses

exit orders followed by pat-downs in “almost every traffic stop.”28 This testimony

in turn raises factual questions concerning the existence of Delaware State Police

policies addressing the use of exit orders, including whether such policies, if they

exist, are uniformly followed. We rightfully commit factual inquiries of this nature

to the experience and expertise of our trial courts.

       (21) We note, moreover, that Davis’s suppression motion challenged

Mimms’s factual underpinning—that traffic stops pose an “inordinate risk”29 to

police officers that justifies what the Court deemed to be the de minimis intrusion

27
   Holden v. State, 23 A.3d 843, 846 (Del. 2011) (footnotes omitted).
28
   App. to Opening Br. at A77, A79, A101.
29
   Mimms, 434 U.S. at 110.
                                               11
into a motorist’s personal liberty that an exit-order causes. A determination whether

the Mimms approach to exit orders comports with Article I, § 6’s protections requires

a thoughtful, evidence-based consideration of these factual assumptions underlying

the Mimms majority’s analysis.

       (22) In short, the important state constitutional claim Davis has raised

deserved full and fair consideration by the trial court in this case.

       NOW, THEREFORE, IT IS ORDERED that this matter be remanded to the

Superior Court for further proceedings consistent with this order. Jurisdiction is

retained.30

                                                      BY THE COURT:

                                                      /s/ Gary F. Traynor
                                                            Justice

30
  In accordance with Supreme Court Rule 19(c), a certified copy of this order shall issue. The
Superior Court shall issue its decision and file the same within 120 days of the issuance of the
certified copy of this order. If it shall not be feasible for the Superior Court to issue its decision
within the time provided above, it shall file a status report within such time.
                                                 12