Opinion
No. COA11–958.
2012-05-15
STATE of North Carolina v. John Douglas SQUIRES, Defendant.
Attorney General Roy Cooper, by Assistant Attorney General Tammera S. Hill, for the State. Harrington, Gilleland, Winstead, Feindel & Lucas, LLP, by Anna S. Lucas, for defendant-appellant.
Appeal by defendant from judgment entered 19 April 2011 by Judge Elaine M. Bushfan in Orange County Superior Court. Heard in the Court of Appeals 30 April 2012. Attorney General Roy Cooper, by Assistant Attorney General Tammera S. Hill, for the State. Harrington, Gilleland, Winstead, Feindel & Lucas, LLP, by Anna S. Lucas, for defendant-appellant.
GEER, Judge.
Following the denial of his motion to suppress, defendant John Douglas Squires pled guilty to the charge of driving while impaired, but specifically reserved the right to appeal the order denying his motion to suppress. Defendant contends on appeal that an N.C. State Highway Patrol Trooper detained him longer than necessary to effectuate the purpose of ensuring the vehicle was not stranded or its occupants in need of assistance. Because we find the officer did not improperly extend an investigatory stop, we hold the trial court did not err in denying defendant's motion to suppress.
Facts
On 23 May 2010, just after midnight, Highway Patrol Trooper Jason Stewart observed a small pickup truck pulled off to the right-hand side of the road with the headlights on and an individual standing at the rear of the truck. The trooper turned around to go back and see if the person needed any assistance.
Trooper Stewart pulled up behind the truck with his blue lights activated. As he approached the truck, Trooper Stewart spoke with the man standing outside. Trooper Stewart asked if there was a problem, and the man replied that he was just urinating. Trooper Stewart then asked if the man was the owner of the truck and was told “no.” The trooper then noticed that there were two other people in the truck.
Trooper Stewart approached the driver's side window to confirm that the motorists were not stranded or in need of help. Defendant, who was the driver, retrieved his license for Trooper Stewart, indicated everything was okay, and said he was giving his friends a ride home. While speaking with defendant, Trooper Stewart noticed a moderate to strong odor of alcohol coming from defendant. Trooper Stewart had defendant get out of the truck to perform standardized field sobriety tests. After defendant performed the tests, Trooper Stewart formed the opinion that defendant had consumed a sufficient amount of an impairing substance to impair his mental or physical faculties or both.
Defendant was charged with driving while impaired. He pled guilty in District Court on 4 January 2011 and appealed to Superior Court. On 13 April 2011, defendant filed a motion to suppress, arguing that the trooper lacked reasonable suspicion for the stop and lacked probable cause for the arrest. In an order entered 20 April 2011, the trial court denied defendant's motion to suppress.
Defendant then pled guilty to driving while impaired. The trial court imposed a 30–day suspended sentence and placed defendant on probation for 12 months. Defendant timely appealed to this Court.
Discussion
“The scope of review of the denial of a motion to suppress is ‘strictly limited to determining whether the trial judge's underlying findings of fact are supported by competent evidence, in which event they are conclusively binding on appeal, and whether those factual findings in turn support the judge's ultimate conclusions of law.’ “ State v. Bone, 354 N.C. 1, 7, 550 S.E.2d 482, 486 (2001) (quoting State v. Cooke, 306 N.C. 132, 134, 291 S.E.2d 618, 619 (1982)).
Findings of fact not challenged on appeal—such as those in this case—are binding on this Court. State v. Brown, 199 N.C.App. 253, 256, 681 S.E.2d 460, 463 (2009). The trial court's conclusions of law, however, “must be legally correct, reflecting a correct application of applicable legal principles to the facts found.” State v. Fernandez, 346 N.C. 1, 11, 484 S.E.2d 350, 357 (1997). In this case, our review is limited to determining whether the trial court's findings of fact support its conclusions of law and the denial of the motion to suppress.
Defendant does not contend on appeal that Trooper Stewart was unjustified in activating his blue lights and stopping to determine whether the vehicle was stranded or in need of assistance. Instead, defendant argues that Trooper Stewart's detention of him lasted longer than necessary to effectuate that purpose. Therefore, defendant argues, the results of the field sobriety tests and all other evidence should have been suppressed. The State contends, however, that Trooper Stewart had reasonable suspicion to approach the driver of the vehicle, as it was stopped on the shoulder of the road after midnight and that no Fourth Amendment protections were triggered until Trooper Stewart asked defendant to step out of the vehicle.
“[A]n investigative detention must be temporary and last no longer than is necessary to effectuate the purpose of the stop. Similarly, the investigative methods employed should be the least intrusive means reasonably available to verify or dispel the officer's suspicion in a short period of time.” Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491, 500, 75 L.Ed.2d 229, 238, 103 S.Ct. 1319, 1325–26 (1983). Generally, the “scope of the detention must be carefully tailored to its underlying justification.” Id., 103 S.Ct. at 1325. “Once the original purpose of the stop has been addressed, there must be grounds which provide a reasonable and articulable suspicion in order to justify further delay.” State v.. Falana, 129 N.C.App. 813, 816, 501 S.E.2d 358, 360 (1998).
Here, even assuming, without deciding, that Trooper Stewart performed an investigatory stop when he initially spoke to defendant, we hold that any detention was properly tailored to its underlying justification. The trial court found that Trooper Stewart's reason for conducting an investigatory stop was “to see why the motorist was pulled off of the road and if he needed any assistance.” The court also found that when Trooper Stewart discovered that the individual standing by the rear of the truck was not the owner of the vehicle, he approached the open window on the driver's side of the truck “to confirm that this was not a stranded motorist situation.” The scope of the detention was thus limited to making a determination whether the truck was stranded and whether the occupants of the vehicle needed assistance.
Defendant contends that the detention exceeded the scope of the investigation because Trooper Stewart was informed by the man standing outside the vehicle that everything was fine. According to defendant, the trooper should have left at that point. However, after Trooper Stewart was made aware that the man standing outside the truck was not the owner and that there were other people in the truck, he still had not definitively determined whether assistance was needed by the two other occupants of the truck. Therefore, the trooper's decision to approach the truck's open driver's window and speak with the driver was directly related to the reason for the stop of the truck, assuming a stop occurred.
Defendant does not dispute that once Trooper Stewart spoke to defendant, the trooper acquired reasonable suspicion sufficient to further detain defendant. Defendant also does not challenge the trial court's conclusion that Trooper Stewart had probable cause to arrest defendant after administering the field sobriety tests.
Therefore, we conclude that the trial court's findings, which established that Trooper Stewart approached the driver's side of the truck to confirm that this was not a stranded motorist situation and then noticed that the driver had a strong to moderate odor of alcohol, supported the court's conclusion that Trooper Stewart properly checked the truck stationed on the side of the road to see if anyone needed assistance and that Trooper Stewart had probable cause to arrest defendant for driving while impaired. Accordingly, we affirm the denial of the motion to suppress.
Affirmed. Judges BRYANT and ROBERT N. HUNTER, JR. concur.
Report per Rule 30(e).