State v. Campbell

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STATE OF IDAHO, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. BENNY DEAN CAMPBELL, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 49269

Supreme Court of Idaho

June 27, 2024

Appeal from the District Court of the Fourth Judicial District of the State of Idaho, Ada County. Derrick J. O'Neill District Judge.

The judgment of the district court is affirmed.

Erik R. Lehtinen, State Appellate Public Defender, Boise, for Appellant.

Ben McGreevy argued. Raul R. Labrador, Idaho Attorney General Boise, for Respondent. Kale Gans argued.

MOELLER, JUSTICE.

After defendant Benny Dean Campbell was detained in handcuffs by law enforcement while investigating a stolen motorcycle, a police trooper discovered heroin and methamphetamine in Campbell's backpack. Campbell was charged with two felony counts for drug trafficking and possession of a controlled substance, and two misdemeanor counts for possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia. Campbell filed a motion to suppress the evidence, arguing that by initially placing him in handcuffs, the trooper converted his detention into an unlawful seizure under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The district court agreed, concluding that Campbell's detention was a de facto arrest; however, the court also determined that the evidence was admissible under the attenuation doctrine.^[1] State v. Fenton, 163 Idaho 318 413 P.3d 419 (Ct. App. 2017). After the court denied his motion, Campbell entered into a conditional plea agreement that preserved his right to appeal the denied motion. On appeal, he asks this Court to reject the federal attenuation doctrine because Article I, section 17 of the Idaho Constitution affords him greater protections than the federal standard and is incompatible with Idaho's more expansive exclusionary rule. For the following reasons, we affirm the order of the district court.

I. Factual and Procedural Background

At approximately 6:00 a.m. on November 6, 2020, Trooper Andrew D. Weinstein of the Idaho State Police ("the trooper") was driving through what he described as a "high crime area" in Boise, Idaho. He saw two individuals-a male and female-standing near two motorcycles in the parking lot of a hotel. Neither motorcycle had license plates. Both individuals had backpacks and carried motorcycle helmets, and soon walked away towards a nearby gas station. The trooper drove back by the motorcycles and confirmed that both were missing license plates and one of the motorcycles had been spray painted blue. The trooper found this suspicious "given the otherwise nice condition of the motorcycle." On running the visible VIN on the spray-painted motorcycle through dispatch, the trooper learned that it was a stolen vehicle from Nampa that was originally painted green.

The trooper drove to the gas station where he located the two individuals he saw earlier. At this time, backup was on the way. The male and female were standing near the front counter of the station's convenience store with their backpacks and motorcycle helmets. The trooper walked into the store and immediately told both individuals to get down on the ground. His gun remained holstered. The individuals complied, moving to the ground, and lying on their stomachs. The woman asked what was going on. The trooper informed them that one of the motorcycles they were standing next to earlier was stolen. The woman claimed it was hers, having obtained it from a storage unit she purchased. The man stated it was not his.

The trooper had the woman stand up and remove her backpack. He then placed her in handcuffs. The trooper then had the man set his backpack down before placing him in handcuffs. As the trooper escorted both individuals out of the store, backup from the Boise Police Department arrived on scene.

At his patrol car, the trooper patted down the female. He found a loaded handgun magazine in her pocket. The female told the trooper that her handgun was in her backpack. He retrieved their items from the convenience store. He also patted down the male for contraband and nothing was found. The trooper then placed them both in his patrol car.

The male identified himself as Benny Dean Campbell while the woman identified herself as Kaycee Noel Suitter. Another Idaho State Police trooper arrived on scene and ran the second motorcycle's VIN. It came back clear. On running Campbell and Suitter's names through dispatch, the trooper learned that Campbell was on probation. At this point, ten minutes had elapsed since the trooper's first contact with Campbell in the convenience store.

Campbell began to dry heave while Suitter told the trooper that she obtained the motorcycle from a storage unit she purchased. She explained that she had never checked the VIN but had spray painted the bike blue because she disliked its former color. The trooper asked Campbell if he was on probation, and Campbell confirmed that he was. Campbell continued dry heaving, so the trooper removed him from the patrol vehicle. While Boise Police watched Campbell at the curb, the trooper searched Suitter's backpack and found a handgun. Boise Police then informed the trooper that Campbell was claiming to be a confidential informant for Bonner County.

The trooper called the Idaho Department of Correction to inform it of the situation. He learned that Campbell had signed a Fourth Amendment waiver. The probation officer on the line said she would need to contact Campbell's officer to confirm whether he was an informant for Bonner County, as he claimed. However, on learning that Suitter had a handgun, the probation officer authorized the trooper to search Campbell's backpack, where he found a black bag containing 112.7 grams of methamphetamine, 15.9 grams of heroin, a blue silicone pipe with brown residue, a scale, fentanyl, and syringes. Campbell was charged with two felonies for trafficking in heroin and methamphetamine, as well as a misdemeanor charge for possession of drug paraphernalia.

Campbell filed a motion to suppress the evidence from the search of his backpack, asserting that his "Fourth Amendment and Article I, § 17 rights were violated when the police stopped him without reasonable, articulable suspicion, effectuated a de facto arrest, and continued to hold him against his will." The parties briefed their arguments, and the district court held a hearing on the motion on June 2, 2021. The trooper testified at the suppression hearing. He explained that he is POST-certified and had been working as a trooper for the Idaho State Police for four years. The trooper stated that the area he was in on November 6, 2020, is a high-crime area he frequently patrolled. He also explained that his observations on the night in question were detailed in his report, and explained that felony stops carry a "higher risk" to officer safety. After establishing the events of Campbell's detention, and hearing arguments from the parties on whether there was a de facto arrest, the district court raised questions on whether an exception to the exclusionary rule could still permit the evidence to be admitted even if there was an unreasonable seizure. Following the hearing, the district court requested additional briefing on the attenuation doctrine.

After reviewing the briefing, the district court issued a written decision denying Campbell's motion to suppress the evidence. It concluded that, although "Trooper Weinstein was authorized to conduct an investigative detention of [Campbell] and his female companion, to determine their involvement in the theft of the motorcycle," he lacked probable cause to make a de facto arrest by putting Campbell in handcuffs. The district court explained: "the [S]tate presented no evidence during the suppression hearing that the trooper's safety was threatened in any way by the defendant or his female companion and there was nothing known about the theft of the motorcycle that would cause it to be considered violent crime." Additionally, because the trooper did not know Campbell was on probation at the time he was placed in handcuffs, the court determined that Campbell's Fourth Amendment waiver did not authorize an arrest where there were no obvious officer safety or flight issues at risk. On this point, the district court added a footnote to its decision, stating: "The inevitable discovery doctrine also does not assist the State here since there is no indication that there was a parallel path by which the drug evidence would have been discovered, apart from Trooper Weinstein's encounter with the defendant."

While acknowledging that these factors "favor[ed] suppression," the district court determined that the evidence was still admissible under the attenuation doctrine which permits evidence where the "connection between unconstitutional police conduct and the evidence is remote or has been interrupted by some intervening circumstance." Utah v. Strieff, 579 U.S. 232, 238 (2016). The court determined that while there was temporal proximity between the purported de facto arrest and discovery of the evidence, there was the intervening circumstance of discovering Campbell's probation status and getting authorization to search the backpack from the probation officer. The purpose of the trooper's actions also weighed in favor of attenuation because there was no showing "of flagrant or purposeful or systemic misconduct." "Balancing the relative weights of the factors together," the court concluded that after weighing the factors together, "Trooper Weinstein did not exploit an illegality to discover evidence." Thus, the court ruled that the evidence should not be suppressed. While Campbell argued that the federal attenuation doctrine does not apply in Idaho because of the greater protections of the Idaho Constitution, the...