Coleman v. Commonwealth of Virginia, Record No. 2676-02-3 (Va. App. 11/18/2003)

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Unpublished Opinion

JEFFREY NEAL COLEMAN v. COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA.

Record No. 2676-02-3.

Court of Appeals of Virginia.

November 18, 2003.

FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF ROCKINGHAM COUNTY, Porter R. Graves, Jr., Judge.

David B. Hargett (Hargett & Watson, PLC, on brief), for appellant.

Kathleen B. Martin, Assistant Attorney General (Jerry W. Kilgore, Attorney General, on brief), for appellee.

Present: Judges Humphreys, Felton and Kelsey Argued at Salem, Virginia.

MEMORANDUM OPINION^* BY JUDGE D. ARTHUR KELSEY.

The appellant, Jeffrey Neal Coleman, claims the trial court erred by not suppressing evidence seized during a search of a camper in which he claimed to have a reasonable expectation of privacy. The trial court also erred, Coleman argues, by refusing jury instructions that would have permitted the jury to conclude that he acted in self-defense when he opened fire into a crowd during a drive-by shooting. Finding Coleman's arguments meritless, we affirm.

I.

On appeal, we review the evidence "in the light most favorable" to the Commonwealth. Commonwealth v. Hudson, 265 Va. 505, 514, 578 S.E.2d 781, 786 (2003). That principle requires us to "discard the evidence of the accused in conflict with that of the Commonwealth, and regard as true all the credible evidence favorable to the Commonwealth and all fair inferences that may be drawn therefrom." Kelly v. Commonwealth, 41 Va. App. 250, 254, 584 S.E.2d 444, 446 (2003) (en banc) (quoting Watkins v. Commonwealth, 26 Va. App. 335, 348, 494 S.E.2d 859, 866 (1998)) (internal quotation marks omitted).

Around 8:30 in the evening on May 11, 1998, Coleman met two men, Shawn Lewis and Donald D. Thomas, on Kelly Street in Harrisonburg to sell them marijuana. Coleman, who was accompanied by his wife and a friend, Wesley Tusing, handed the men small bags containing the marijuana. Without paying Coleman, both men "just took off running with it." Coleman and the others sat in the car for a few minutes, then drove to a house owned by a friend, Keith Trumbo. Inside Trumbo's house, Coleman retrieved a "single shot .22" that he placed in his car. After "a couple of hours," the three went to another location where Coleman retrieved a buried .30 caliber, semi-automatic assault rifle with a "flash suppressor" for nighttime use.¹ So armed, Coleman told the others that they "were going to talk to this dude that gave us a good deal earlier."

At approximately 11:00 that evening, Coleman, his wife, and Tusing returned to Harrisonburg. Coleman, high on marijuana and driving a different car than earlier, placed the assault rifle on "the driver's seat right beside him." Coleman and Tusing then picked up William Heflin, dropped off Coleman's wife, and went back to Kelly Street. Once there, Coleman parked the car and spotted a crowd of "probably 20 people" standing next to the street. A few minutes later, Coleman drove toward the crowd with his lights off and placed the assault rifle "up on the window and just started blasting," firing "12 to 15 rounds" in all. Coleman then "sped up" and quickly left Harrisonburg.

After briefly returning to Trumbo's house where Coleman's wife rejoined them, Coleman, his wife, and Tusing left and "went to some trailer up in the mountain." They arrived at approximately 3:00 a.m. the next morning. The three waited at the camper and "stashed" both the .22 and the .30 caliber rifle. Four hours later they left the camper and returned to Trumbo's house, where the police met them and placed Coleman under arrest.

At the police station, Coleman confessed to the shooting. Claiming that he "didn't plan it," Coleman stated that he only "intended on getting my money back." He admitted firing "probably 10 times" at the men who had earlier stolen his marijuana. The shooting "all happened so fast," Coleman claimed. He stated that he saw "one of `em that was running with the pot and that's when I started pulling the trigger."

Officer Al McDorman visited the camper at about 5:00 p.m. on May 12. Though a locked chain crossed the logging road that approached the camper, the camper did not have a mailbox, any "no trespassing signs," locks on the doors, or any signs indicating that the camper was on private property. McDorman announced his presence and, after hearing no reply, entered the camper without a warrant. Inside, McDorman found a bed with a bedspread, a kitchen table, and a Bible. Near the kitchen, McDorman found a pair of pants and a camouflage hat, while a camouflage jacket lay on the bed. Under the mattress, McDorman located a .22 rifle and, in drawers under the bed, a .30 caliber rifle. Ammunition for the .30 caliber rifle was located in a "small green bag" near the entrance to the camper.

Before trial, Coleman moved to suppress the evidence seized in the camper, claiming that McDorman's warrantless search of the premises violated his Fourth Amendment rights. At the suppression hearing, Betty Ritchie testified that she and her husband owned the land and gave her son permission to keep his "little camper" on the property. Mrs. Ritchie did not know Coleman and did not give him permission to be on the property or to use her son's camper. She understood that her son used the camper for hunting, camping, and cutting wood. The camper was unlocked and "a lot" of people seemed to be in and out of it. Mrs. Ritchie maintained a locked cable across the road leading to the camper.

Her son, Anthony Ritchie, testified that he had occasionally allowed Coleman and "a bunch of people" to use the camper for "camping and to grill out." Anthony, however, "hadn't talked to [Coleman] for a while before this happened" and he "did not know he was staying up there at the time." Anthony said he never gave Coleman permission to "store guns" or "rifles" in the camper. Anthony also understood he did not "have the right to control who goes on that property." "It's not in my name," he explained. His parents, he said, nevertheless did not "care who I take up there."

The trial court denied the motion to suppress. Focusing both on Coleman's use of the camper at the time he stashed his assault rifle there and the timing of Officer McDorman's search ten hours later, the court found as a fact that "the defendant's own evidence shows that at the time they weren't living [there], they had not been given permission to store things there, that they were really just stopping by." For these reasons, the court held, Coleman did not have a "reasonable expectation of privacy in the premises" and thus could not assert a Fourth Amendment challenge to Officer McDorman's search of the camper.

Following the presentation of the evidence at trial, Coleman requested that the court instruct the jury that he acted in self-defense by shooting at the crowd on Kelly Street. Finding insufficient evidence to support Coleman's request, the trial court denied the proposed jury instruction. The jury found Coleman guilty of two counts of malicious wounding (Code § 18.2-51.2) and two counts of use of a firearm while committing a felony (Code § 18.2-53.1). The trial court then sentenced Coleman to 68 years in prison, with no time suspended. Coleman now appeals.

II.

Though the ultimate question whether an officer's conduct violated the Fourth Amendment triggers de novo scrutiny on appeal, the trial court's findings of historical fact bind us due to the weight we give to the inferences drawn from those facts by resident judges and local law enforcement officers. Jackson v. Commonwealth, 41 Va. App. 211, 222, 583 S.E.2d 780, 786 (2003) (en banc). Thus, we must give deference to the factual findings of the trial court and independently determine whether those findings satisfy the requirements of the Fourth Amendment. Slayton v. Commonwealth, 41 Va. App. 101, 105, 582 S.E.2d 448, 450 (2003) (citation omitted).

In addition, the appellant must shoulder the burden of showing that the trial court's decision "constituted reversible error." McGee v. Commonwealth, 25 Va. App. 193, 197, 487 S.E.2d 259, 261 (1997) (en banc) (citations omitted). "Absent clear evidence to the contrary in the record, the judgment of a trial court comes to us on appeal with a presumption that the law was correctly applied to the facts." Craddock v. Commonwealth, 40 Va. App. 539, 547, 580 S.E.2d 454, 458 (2003); Barkley v. Commonwealth, 39 Va. App. 682, 690, 576 S.E.2d 234, 238 (2003).

A.

To have standing to invoke the protections of the Fourth Amendment, a defendant must have a "legitimate expectation of privacy in the place searched." Megel v. Commonwealth, 262 Va. 531, 534, 551 S.E.2d 638, 640 (2001) (citing Minnesota v. Carter, 525 U.S. 83, 88 (1998), and Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 143 (1978)); McCracken v. Commonwealth, 39 Va. App. 254, 260, 572 S.E.2d 493, 496 (2002) (en banc) (recognizing that one without a justifiable privacy expectation has "no standing to contest the entry of the house"). The legitimacy of this expectation depends not only on the person's subjective beliefs — society, too, must be "willing to recognize that expectation as reasonable." Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 33 (2001) (quoting California v. Ciraolo, 476 U.S. 207, 211 (1986)).

While it is often said that the Fourth Amendment "protects people, not places," Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967), it is equally true that "the extent to which the Fourth Amendment protects people may depend upon where those people are," Carter, 525 U.S. at 88; see also Sheler v. Commonwealth, 38 Va. App. 465, 476, 566 S.E.2d 203, 208 (2002) ("[W]e must give effect to `our societal understanding that certain areas deserve the most scrupulous protection from government invasion.'" (quoting Oliver v. United States, 466 U.S. 170, 178 (1984))). The protection of one's home, for example, is at the "very core" of the Fourth Amendment. Kyllo, 533 U.S. at 31. Closely related is the privacy interest of an "overnight guest." Minnesota v. Olson, 495 U.S. 91, 96-97 (1990)....