Summary
taking judicial notice of contents of a state government website
Summary of this case from Lacy v. Bayhealth Med. Ctr.Opinion
No. 289, 2011
03-01-2012
BYRON STAFFORD, Defendant , Appellant, v. STATE OF DELAWARE, Plaintiff , Appellee.
Santino Ceccotti, Office of the Public Defender, Wilmington, Delaware for appellant. Morgan T. Zurn and Paul R. Wallace (argued), Department of Justice, Wilmington, Delaware for appellee.
Court: Superior Court
of the State of Delaware in
and for New Castle County
Cr. ID No. 0909006979
Before STEELE, Chief Justice, BERGER, Justice and NOBLE, Vice Chancellor.
Sitting by designation pursuant to Del. Const. Art. IV § 12.
Upon appeal from the Superior Court. AFFIRMED.
Santino Ceccotti, Office of the Public Defender, Wilmington, Delaware for appellant.
Morgan T. Zurn and Paul R. Wallace (argued), Department of Justice, Wilmington, Delaware for appellee. STEELE , Chief Justice:
A passenger in a car pulled over by the police provided an officer with a false name, address, and birth date. Once the officer determined the passenger provided false information, the officer had probable cause to arrest the passenger for committing a crime, namely criminal impersonation. An officer may handcuff and pat down a person whom he has probable cause to arrest. We therefore affirm the trial judge's denial of a motion to suppress the gun discovered when the officer patted down the passenger.
I. FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY
On August 23, 2009, two Wilmington Police Officers stopped a car because it had tinted front windows. The driver informed the officers that his license had been suspended, and gave them a Delaware identification card. Rather than immediately calling a tow truck, the officers sought to determine whether the passenger could drive the car home. The officers asked the passenger, Byron Stafford, for identification. Stafford provided no cards, but told the officers his name was Darren Miller, his birthday was November 13, 1979, and that he lived at 401 Robinson Street in Wilmington.
See 21 Del. C. § 4313 (restricting the permissible areas and amount of tint); 2 Del. Admin. Code 2277-1.0.
The officers searched this information in DELJIS and, finding no verification, determined that the information was probably false. Consequently, the officers returned to the car and ordered Stafford out of it. While the officer patted Stafford's leg, a firearm fell out of his pants pocket. The officers arrested Stafford, and later learned that Stafford had provided not only a false name, but also a false address and birth date.
The Court takes judicial notice of DELJIS' website. Delaware Criminal Justice Information System, DELJIS Systems, http://deljis.delaware.gov/WhatWeDo.shtml ("DELJIS maintains a data interface with: Drivers License File, Vehicle Registration File . . . .") (last visited Mar. 1, 2012). Logically, the police who sought to permit the passenger to drive the car away, rather than ordering it towed, attempted to verify that the passenger possessed a valid motor vehicle license.
The State indicted Stafford on four counts: possession of a deadly weapon by a person prohibited, carrying a concealed deadly weapon, receiving a stolen firearm, and criminal impersonation. Stafford moved to suppress the admission of the firearm, and the Superior Court judge denied the motion. Specifically, the trial judge held that the search was permitted as part of a detention under 11 Del. C. § 1902, and that it did not violate the Delaware Constitution or the United States Constitution. Stafford waived his right to a jury, and the trial judge found Stafford guilty of all the offenses except receiving a stolen firearm. The trial judge sentenced Stafford as a habitual offender for the offense of possession of a deadly weapon by a person prohibited.
11 Del. C. § 1902 ("(a) A peace officer may stop any person abroad, or in a public place, who the officer has reasonable ground to suspect is committing, has committed or is about to commit a crime, and may demand the person's name, address, business abroad and destination. (b) Any person so questioned who fails to give identification or explain the person's actions to the satisfaction of the officer may be detained and further questioned or investigated. (c) The total period of detention provided for by this section shall not exceed 2 hours. The detention is not an arrest and shall not be recorded as an arrest in any official record. At the end of the detention the person so detained shall be released or be arrested and charged with a crime.").
Stafford filed this appeal. He contends that the Superior Court judge improperly refused to suppress the gun because an illegitimate search resulted in its seizure.
II. ANALYSIS
We review a trial judge's denial of a motion to suppress for abuse of discretion. "To the extent we review the trial judge's legal conclusions, we review the trial judge's determinations de novo for errors in formulating or applying legal precepts."
Lopez-Vazquez v. State, 956 A.2d 1280, 1284-85 (Del. 2008) (internal citations omitted).
Id.
Stafford contends on appeal that a passenger in a car possesses the right to be free from a police search unless the police have reasonable articulable suspicion that the passenger is armed and dangerous. Stafford correctly states an established principle, but does not state the entirety of the law concerning vehicle passengers. Police need reasonable articulable suspicion to search a passenger in a car, but for Fourth Amendment purposes, a passenger can become a suspect by acting, during a traffic stop, in a manner that gives the police probable cause to suspect the passenger committed a crime. Therefore, while Stafford correctly states a legal precept, that precept does not apply in Stafford's situation. A brief discussion of a recent case suppressing the fruit of the search of a passenger will illustrate the point.
In State v. Holden, this Court suppressed the fruit of a search of a passenger because the officers had no reason to search the passenger. Suspecting that a plate was fictitious, officers pulled over a car and then searched Holden, who was one of the passengers. The officers had no reason to detain and search him aside from suspicions derived from the fictitious plate. This Court applied the principle that "the scope and duration of the detention must be reasonably related to the initial justification for the traffic stop." "Based on the objective facts, we cannot extrapolate from the fact of a fictitious tag alone that (i) a car theft occurred and that (ii) the occupants must be armed and dangerous." This Court therefore granted Holden's motion to suppress, reversing the trial judge's judgment denying the motion.
23 A.3d 843 (Del. 2011).
Holden, 23 A.3d at 847 (citing Caldwell v. State, 780 A.2d 1037, 1046 (Del. 2001).
Holden, 23 A.3d at 849.
But Stafford, unlike Holden, was not only a passenger in a car. When Stafford gave the police false information about his identity, he committed a crime. After the officer discovered his information to be false, the officer had probable cause to suspect that Stafford had committed the crime of criminal impersonation."The focus of probable cause to arrest is upon a 'person,' i.e. whether a criminal offense has been or is being committed by the person to be arrested." Holden did nothing to give the police a reasonable articulable suspicion to detain and then pat him down. Stafford gave the police probable cause to arrest him.
11 Del. C. § 907 ("A person is guilty of criminal impersonation when the person: (1) Impersonates another person and does an act in an assumed character intending to obtain a benefit or to injure or defraud another person . . . .").
LeGrande v. State, 947 A.2d 1103, 1109 at n. 15 (Del. 2008) (quoting Dorsey v. State, 761 A.2d 807, 812 (Del. 2000)).
An officer may arrest a person if circumstances provide probable cause to believe the person committed a crime. The content of the arresting officer's thoughts do not determine his power to arrest Stafford or to conduct a search incident to arrest. Consequently, it does not matter whether the officer could articulate a reasonable suspicion to fear for his safety. Nor would it matter if the officer had thought he was carrying out a detention under 11 Del. C. § 1902. The officer had probable cause, or a reasonable basis to believe that Stafford had provided a false name, to arrest Stafford. Given that objective reality, Stafford possessed no rights under the Fourth Amendment to be free from a patdown search for weapons.
See Whren v. U.S., 517 U.S. 806, 812-13, 116 S.Ct. 1769, 1774 (1996) (collecting cases to demonstrate that officer's motives do not invalidate behavior that is "objectively justifiable" under the Fourth Amendment).
Whether an officer has power to arrest a subject depends on an examination of objective facts, not subjective thoughts. The State contends that a detention for the purpose of determining identity, as called for by 11 Del. C. § 1902(b), is something less than an arrest. On these facts, we need not discuss the constitutional protections that stand between a citizen and an officer's ability to detain, but not arrest. Since the officer has a reasonable basis to believe that Stafford had provided a false name, the officer had probable cause to arrest him.
During an arrest, an officer may of course conduct a search incident to arrest. In U.S. v. Robinson, the United States Supreme Court, while permitting a full-body intrusive search incident to an arrest for driving with a revoked license, stated that the hazards to police from placing a potentially armed person in custody justifies, in all cases, a search more thorough than that typically done in a Terry stop. Even if an arresting officer has probable cause to suspect that the suspect committed a relatively trivial and non-threatening offense, the power to search incident to arrest suffices to support the recovery of a firearm. In this case, the officer plainly stayed within the scope of his authority to search; Stafford's gun fell out of his pocket while the officer was patting down his leg.
U.S. v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 94 S.Ct. 467 (1973).
Id. at 234-35 ("Nor are we inclined, based on what seems to us to be a rather speculative judgment, to qualify the breadth of the general authority to search incident to a lawful custodial arrest on an assumption that persons arrested for the offense of driving while their licenses have been revoked are less likely to possess dangerous weapons than are those arrested for other crimes. It is scarcely open to doubt that the danger to an officer is far greater in the case of the extended exposure which follows the taking of a suspect into custody and transporting him to the police station than in the case of the relatively fleeting contact resulting from the typical Terry-type stop. This is an adequate basis for treating all custodial arrests alike for purposes of search justification."). See also Negron v. State, 979 A.2d 1111 (Del. 2009) (TABLE) (applying Robinson); McDonald v. State, 947 A.2d 1073, 1077 (Del. 2008) (same).
Stafford put forth a state law claim, for protection against the search under Article 1, Section 6 of the Delaware Constitution. But he never offered an explanation of this argument; he merely asserted that he should have protection under both the Delaware and federal constitutions. We do not recognize brief statements of entitlement as arguments. By failing to explain his contention, Stafford waived any claim under state law.
Roca v. E.I. du pont de Nemours and Co., 842 A.2d 1238, 1242 (Del. 2004) (collecting cases illustrating that "the appealing party's opening brief must fully state the grounds for appeal, as well as the arguments and supporting authorities on each issue or claim of reversible error.").
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III. CONCLUSION
Stafford gave the officer an improbable name and address, and therefore the officer had the power to arrest him and conduct a search incident to that arrest. The judgment of the Superior Court is affirmed.