State v. Bridges

Page 487

963 S.W.2d 487

STATE of Tennessee, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Ray Anthony BRIDGES, Defendant-Appellant.

Supreme Court of Tennessee at Jackson.

Dec. 31, 1997.

John Knox Walkup, Attorney General and Reporter, Michael E. Moore, Solicitor General, Gordon W. Smith, Associate Solicitor General, Nashville, G. Robert "Gus" Radford, District Attorney General, Huntingdon, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Larry E. Fitzgerald, Memphis, for Defendant-Appellant.

OPINION

PER CURIAM.

The primary issue in this appeal is whether the warrantless seizure of cocaine from the defendant's person during a detention and frisk was constitutionally permissible under the "plain feel" or "plain touch" doctrine expounded in Minnesota v. Dickerson, 508 U.S. 366, 113 S.Ct. 2130, 124 L.Ed.2d 334 (1993). In this case, the trial court denied the defendant's motion to suppress, and thereafter, the defendant pled guilty to possession of cocaine with intent to sell, but reserved the right to appeal the constitutionality of the warrantless seizure pursuant to Tenn. R.Crim. P. 37(b)(2). ¹ The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the trial court's denial of the motion to suppress. Thereafter, we granted permission to appeal.

A majority of this Court has determined that the initial stop and frisk was based upon reasonable suspicion supported by specific and articulable facts. However, a majority of this Court has also concluded that the evidence preponderates against the trial court's finding that the officer had probable cause to believe the object felt during the frisk was contraband. Consequently, the judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeals upholding the trial court's denial of the motion to suppress is reversed. The defendant's conviction is vacated, and the charge is dismissed.

BACKGROUND

The proof at the suppression hearing showed that at 2:47 p.m. on December 23, 1993, Officer D.W. Blackwell of the Paris Police Department had a phone conversation with a confidential informant who had provided reliable information in the past leading to a conviction on a cocaine charge. According to the informant, the defendant, Ray Anthony Bridges, was selling crack cocaine "right then" at a club called "Preacher's." The informant further said that Bridges, was carrying cash and drugs on his person. Officer Blackwell had previously received "half a dozen or so" tips regarding the defendant's dealing crack cocaine in that area. Officer Blackwell proceeded to Preacher's, arrived approximately thirty minutes later at 3:21 p.m., and found Bridges sitting at a table inside Preachers engaged in conversation. Aware that Bridges previously had been convicted of felony assault and recently had been involved in an armed altercation with police, Officer Blackwell identified himself and ordered Bridges to stand against the wall. Officer Blackwell then patted down the outside of Bridges clothing to ensure he was not carrying weapons. During the patdown, Officer Blackwell felt a small object "in the shape of a pill bottle" in the defendant's right jacket pocket and, recognized it as "the kind that a lot of other crack dealers will use to keep their crack in." Officer Blackwell seized the bottle, and upon inspection, determined that it contained crack cocaine, and he also found a knife in the defendant's right pants pocket. As a result, Bridges was arrested, and a further search was conducted of the defendant's person, during which Officer Blackwell discovered a plastic bag of cocaine "in the same pocket" from which the pill bottle containing crack had been removed.

The trial court denied the defendant's pretrial motion to suppress the evidence, and, upon appeal, the Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the denial. For the reasons hereafter explained, a majority of this Court now concludes that seizure of the pill bottle violated the defendant's constitutional rights. Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeals upholding the trial court's denial of the motion to suppress is reversed.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

This case involves the review of a trial court's findings of fact and law in disposing of a motion to suppress. In State v. Odom, 928 S.W.2d 18 (Tenn.1996), this Court clarified the standard to be applied by an appellate court when reviewing a trial court's findings of fact on suppression issues.

Questions of credibility of the witnesses, the weight and value of the evidence, and resolution of conflicts in the evidence are matters entrusted to the trial judge as the trier of fact. The party prevailing in the trial court is entitled to the strongest legitimate view of the evidence adduced at the suppression hearing as well as all reasonable and legitimate inferences that may be drawn from that evidence. So long as the greater weight of the evidence supports the trial court's findings, those findings shall be upheld. In other words, a trial court's findings of fact in a suppression hearing will be upheld unless the evidence preponderates otherwise.

Id. at 18. However, the application of the law to the facts found by the trial court is a question of law which this Court reviews de novo. State v. Yeargan, 958 S.W.2d 626, 629 (Tenn.1997).

CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISIONS

We begin our analysis of the issue in this appeal with the text of the applicable constitutional provisions. The Fourth Amendment ² to the United States Constitution provides:

Unreasonable searches and seizures.--The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Similarly, Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution of Tennessee guarantees

that the people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers and possessions, from unreasonable searches and seizures; and that general warrants, whereby an officer may be commanded to search suspected places, without evidence of the fact committed, or to seize any person or persons not named, whose offences are not particularly described and supported by evidence, are dangerous to liberty and ought not to be granted.

The purpose of the prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment is to "safeguard the privacy and security of individuals against arbitrary invasions of government officials." Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523, 528, 87 S.Ct. 1727, 1730, 18 L.Ed.2d 930 (1967). "[A]rticle I, section 7 is identical in intent and purpose with the Fourth Amendment." State v. Downey, 945 S.W.2d 102, 106 (Tenn.1997), quoting Sneed v. State, 221 Tenn. 6, 13, 423 S.W.2d 857, 860 (1968).

Consequently, under both the federal and state constitutions, a warrantless search or seizure is presumed unreasonable, and evidence discovered as a result thereof is subject to suppression unless the State demonstrates that the search or seizure was conducted pursuant to one of the narrowly defined exceptions to the warrant requirement. Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 454-55, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 2032, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971); State v. Bartram, 925 S.W.2d 227, 229-30 (Tenn.1996).

The defendant contends that no exceptions to the warrant requirement are applicable in this case and that Officer Blackwell had no right to detain or search him. The State, on the other hand, argues that Officer Blackwell had probable cause to arrest the defendant and that the search of the defendant's person was permissible as a search incident to an arrest, an exception to the warrant requirement. Alternatively, the State contends that the initial detention and patdown search were valid as a stop and frisk under Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), and the seizure of the evidence permissible under the plain touch doctrine.

SEARCH INCIDENT TO A LAWFUL ARREST

Because a search incident to a lawful arrest is an exception to the warrant requirement which would independently support the warrantless search of the defendant's person and seizure of the pill bottle, we first determine whether the search and seizure in this case was pursuant to a lawful arrest. See Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 762-63, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 2040, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969); State v. Marshall, 870 S.W.2d 532, 540 (Tenn.Crim.App.1993).

Both the Fourth Amendment and Article I, Section 7, require the existence of "probable cause" for making an arrest without a warrant. Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 91, 85 S.Ct. 223, 225, 13 L.Ed.2d 142 (1964); State v. Jacumin, 778 S.W.2d 430, 431 (Tenn.1989); see also Tenn.Code Ann. § 40-7-103(a)(officers may make a warrantless arrest when they have probable cause to believe that the arrestee has committed or is committing a felony). Probable cause for an arrest without a warrant exists if, at the time of the arrest, the facts and circumstances within the knowledge of the officers, and of which they had reasonably trustworthy information, are "sufficient to warrant a prudent man in believing that the [defendant] had committed or was committing an offense." Beck, 379 U.S. at 91, 85 S.Ct. at 225; State v. Melson, 638 S.W.2d 342, 350 (Tenn.1982). In addition, before a finding of probable cause may be based upon an informant's tip, the basis of the informant's knowledge and the informant's credibility must also be established. State v. Jacumin, 778 S.W.2d 430, 432-436 (Tenn.1989). In this case, the officer acted in response to a informant's tip; therefore we must apply the two-pronged test to evaluate the reliability of the tip.

In the present case the informant who provided the tip about the defendant's criminal activity had assisted Officer Blackwell on a case approximately eight years earlier in which an arrest and conviction were made on a cocaine charge. Blackwell had known this informant for a number of years and said this informant had "always been very...