ID: For stop of a person in proximity to searched premises, courts have to evaluate the layout, size of premises, and where it happened

Applying Summers and Bailey, defendant approached a four unit apartment building as police were executing a search warrant, and he was properly detained. The size of the apartment building and his proximity made it reasonable. It turned out that defendant had text messaged the occupant about a drug deal, and the officer making the initial stop didn’t even know that yet. State v. Davis, 2015 Ida. App. LEXIS 41 (May 22, 2015):

When determining whether a person is in the immediate vicinity of a searched premises, the trial court should consider the layout of the property–including the location of entrances to the searched unit–and the detained individual’s proximity to the apartment’s entrance. Here, Davis arrived at a small apartment complex, walked down the sidewalk, and turned toward the common entrance shared by four apartments. Davis argues that officers were not permitted to detain him because he was not within the immediate vicinity of the apartment being searched. Davis also argues that none of the agents who detained Davis in the common area of the complex had any reason to believe Davis was an occupant of, or even a visitor to, the apartment being searched. In addition, an agent admitted that he did not know if Davis was going to the apartment. Therefore, according to Davis, the agent did not have an articulable basis for suspecting any criminal activity at the moment he detained Davis.

. . .

Davis was detained on a communal sidewalk that led to the common entry area of only four apartments. While Davis was not inside the apartment or immediately outside the door to the apartment, he was walking toward the stairs–the only entrance to the second-floor apartment. As found by the district court, when Davis was stopped, he was very close to the stairs leading to the apartment being searched. It appears from the record that Davis was perhaps 8 to 10 feet, at the most, from the bottom of the stairs. Accordingly, we hold that Davis was in the immediate vicinity of the apartment being searched and that the agent was justified in stopping Davis for the limited purpose of ascertaining his identity and relationship to the apartment. Further, the five minutes that Davis was detained was not unreasonable given the circumstances. It took several minutes for the agents to ascertain Davis’s identity, go up the stairs to where the officers were conducting the search, and communicate that a person named Russell Davis had arrived in order to determine whether he had a relationship to the premises. Thus, Davis’s detention was reasonable under the circumstances.