Furtive movements in the back seat of a vehicle during a traffic stop in Massachusetts led the officer to conduct a “protective sweep” [actually it should be called a “vehicle frisk under Long” but the former is taking on a broader meaning] of the back seat area and found severed hand in a plastic bag. All four in the vehicle were taken in for questioning, and two were not involved in the murders but talked about the others bragging about it. The seizure was governed by Massaschusetts law but the search was governed by Rhode Island law. The stop was based on stuff hanging from the rearview mirror which made the stop valid under Massachusetts law. State v. Quinlan, 921 A.2d 96 (R.I. 2007):
The trial justice held and both parties agree that the lawfulness of the stop is governed by Massachusetts law, but the subsequent search and motion to suppress will be analyzed under Rhode Island law. We agree. See Briggs, 756 A.2d at 739-40 (applying an interest-weighing approach and determining that Rhode Island law applied to “constitutional validity of the police seizure” that occurred in a different state).
The trial justice determined that the initial stop was lawful and that defendants lacked the requisite standing to challenge the automobile search. Even though he found that the parties had no expectation of privacy in the Jeep, the trial justice went on to find that the search of the vehicle was lawful. Our review of the record in this case leads us to the same conclusion–the vehicle was lawfully stopped, and defendants have no standing to challenge the subsequent search.
Comment: This rule has a lot to commend it for its ease of use, although it could sometimes lead to a search being sustained in the state of trial where the evidence might have been suppressed in the state of seizure. Thus, it literally could make an invalid seizure valid because it located evidence used elsewhere. If the law is different in state of seizure, it would seem that the courts of that state should be the ones determining the lawfulness of the search under its own law. If the other state’s rule is clear, however, there would be no interpretation problems. As a practical matter, this will not happen much, and will usually be limited to situations of search incident where Thornton is rejected, inventory searches where courts do not indulge in fictions, or some states where the good faith exception is not a magic bullet that cures all police mistakes. So, the same outcome will occur at least 95+% of the time, no matter which law is applied. The really interesting cases will be where the search was valid in the law of the state of seizure, but invalid where it was admitted. Then, the court has to look at the question of what value exclusion has, which could have happened here in the abstract, where the police in, say, Massachusetts acted lawfully but have no knowledge of some quirk in Rhode Island law that would make the search invalid there, and they had no knowledge that the search and seizure implicated a crime in another state. In that situation, it is safe to say that the exclusionary rule should not be applied because there was nothing to deter.
Defendant was a suspect in a murder, and he was standing about 15 feet from his vehicle and officers took the keys from him. Before an entry could occur, the officer looked in with a flashlight and, in plain view, was a gun. The court sustained the search on plain view and did not decide on the lawfulness of a search incident because the record was unclear on the question of whether defendant was a “recent occupant” of the vehicle and the parties did not raise it in the trial court. State v. Reffegee, 2007 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 499 (June 27, 2007).*
Emergency entry justified because of open door and person inside not responding to repeated calls for him. “Deputy Williamson testified that it is not normal for a person to leave the door wide open, and both officers stated that, based on their experience, open-door calls to residences can involve assault victims or persons otherwise injured inside. … As such, under these circumstances, we find the facts known to the officers could establish a reasonable belief that someone inside appellant’s residence needed immediate aid.” Shepherd v. State, 230 S.W.3d 738 (Tex. App. — Houston (14th Dist.) 2007).*
Defendant’s conduct may have been innocuous in isolation, but, to a trained law enforcement officer, it was more than a mere hunch that something illegal was going on. State v. Cook, 38 Kan. App. 2d 20, 161 P.3d 779 (2007):
Cook’s conduct, to an untrained eye, may have raised no suspicion whatsoever or, at most, a mere hunch that something funny was going on. The average citizen of Johnson County, familiar with the scene, more likely would look upon the general area as a popular shopping destination with upscale stores such as Nordstrom’s nearby, rather than a center for drug activity. The conduct that justified Officer McFadden’s detention of the defendant in Terry was not on its face illegal and could have been innocent. Similarly, Cook’s conduct could have been entirely innocent. It is certainly not illegal to engage in a meeting late at night at a gas station. When stopped by Honglso, Brown and Cook each provided different but certainly possible innocent scenarios. One had to do with getting some clothes, the other with getting a job. Conduct that is susceptible of an innocent explanation, such as the explanations Brown and Cook later tried to use on Hongslo, may nevertheless cause an officer, trained in drug enforcement having a familiarity with the drug history of the area, to harbor a reasonable and specific suspicion of illegal drug activity that needs further investigation.
State could rely on Franks on appeal. Although it did not cite it in the trial court, it clearly stated the premise of Franks. Applying Franks and purging the information from the affidavit for the warrant still left probable cause. State v. Garcia, 2007 UT App 228, 164 P.3d 1264, 581 Utah Adv. Rep. 19 (2007).*
