State v. Correa

549 P.3d 679

2024 UT App 69

STATE of Utah, Appellee

v.Sergio Giovani CORREA, Appellant.

No. 20220313-CA

Court of Appeals of Utah.

Filed May 9, 2024

Fourth District Court, Heber Department, The Honorable Jennifer A. Mabey, No. 205500004

Wendy M. Brown, Salt Lake City, Debra M. Nelson, and Benjamin Miller, Attorneys for Appellant

Scott H. Sweat and McKay King, Provo, Attorneys for Appellee

Judge Ryan D, Tenney authored this Opinion, in which Judges Ryan M. Harris and Amy J. Oliver concurred.

Opinion

TENNEY, Judge:

¶1 Sergio Giovahi Correa appeals the denial of a motion to suppress evidence that was obtained during an investigatory stop. This appeal asks us to decide whether an officer’s knowledge that Correa did not have a valid driver license two months before the stop created a reasonable suspicion that Correa still didn’t have a valid license and was therefore driving impermissibly. We hold that it did not. We accordingly reverse.

BACKGROUND¹

¶2 Late in the evening of January 30, 2020, a white truck was pulling onto a highway near Heber City when it passed an officer (Officer) who was out on patrol. As the vehicles passed each other, the "driver looked at" Officer and then "quickly looked away." Officer made a U-turn and began following the truck.

¶3 While following the truck, Officer ran its license plate through a police database. From this search, Officer learned the owner of the truck was a female but "that in recent history a Hispanic male name[d] Sergio Correa had been operating that vehicle without a license" and "that he’d been recently stopped and cited for it." Officer later clarified that by "recent," he meant "in the last two months," and he agreed that the offense could have been as far back as three months. As Officer continued to follow the truck, he tried "to get more information from dispatch [and] from other officers." During these efforts, Officer tried to pull up a photograph of Correa. Before he was able to pull up the photograph, however, the truck pulled into the parking lot of an apartment complex. At that moment, Officer had only been behind the truck "for a very short period" of "maybe two minutes," and he did not yet know who the driver was.

¶4 Officer followed the truck into the parking lot and parked nearby. When the driver exited the truck and "started to go into [the] apartment complex," Officer got out of his vehicle too, and he activated his overhead lights "as [he] was exiting" his vehicle. Officer then approached the driver on foot and engaged him in conversation. During that conversation, Officer learned that the driver was indeed Sergio Correa and that he did not have a valid driver license. During the remainder of the conversation and an ensuing investigation, Officer obtained evidence that Correa was under the influence of drugs and was also in possession of both drugs and drug paraphernalia.

¶5 Based on this evidence, Correa was later charged with three counts of possession or use of a controlled substance, one count of driving with a measurable controlled substance in the body, one count of possession of drug paraphernalia, and one count of driving on a denied license.

¶6 Correa subsequently filed a motion to suppress "all evidence collected in this case, including officer observations, statements by the defendant, and chemical evidence taken from the defendant and its laboratory analysis." Correa argued that this evidence should be suppressed because he had been detained by Officer without reasonable suspicion, thus violating the Fourth Amendment.

¶7 Officer later testified at a suppression hearing. In his testimony, he confirmed that he had not "observe[d] any traffic violations, any infractions, or misdemeanors" at the time that he turned on his lights and approached Correa. When asked why he activated his lights and approached Correa, Officer responded: "I had an individual who matched the description of somebody who had been operating the vehicle in the past who did not have a license. He was leaving the area, [and] I wanted to make contact with him to determine his identity."

¶8 At the close of the hearing, the court issued an oral ruling denying the motion to suppress. The court expressed its view that although Officer "didn’t recognize" Correa offhand, his "[k]nowledge that someone by the name of Mr. Correa had been driving that vehicle without a license fairly recently" was "enough to meet the minimum standard" to justify an investigatory stop. The court also opined that "licensing issues [are] often a situation where the condition … extends," so "if you know someone’s driving without a license … there is some likelihood that if you see them driving a vehicle, that perhaps they’re driving again without a license."

¶9 Correa later pleaded guilty to two counts of possessing a controlled substance and one count of impaired driving, but he reserved the right to appeal the denial of his motion to suppress.

ISSUE AND STANDARD OF REVIEW

[1] ¶10 Correa argues that the district court erred in denying his motion to suppress. We "review a district court’s ruling on a motion to suppress for an alleged Fourth Amendment violation as a mixed question of law and fact." State v. Hebeishy, 2022 UT App 136, ¶ 12, 522 P.3d 952. "Specifically, we review the court’s factual findings for clear error, and we review its legal conclusions, including its application of law to the facts of the case, for correctness." Id.

ANALYSIS

[2] ¶11 The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution affirms that "[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated." Under the Fourth Amendment, it "is settled law that a police officer may detain and question an individual when the officer has reasonable, articulable suspicion that the person has been, is, or is about to be engaged in criminal activity." State v. Alverez, 2006 UT 61, ¶ 14, 147 P.3d 425 (quotation simplified); accord Kansas v. Glover, 589 U.S. 376, 380, 140 S.Ct. 1183, 206 L.Ed.2d 412 (2020) ("Under this Court’s precedents, the Fourth Amendment permits an officer to initiate a brief investigative traffic stop when [the officer] has a particularized and objective basis for suspecting the particular person stopped of criminal activity." (quotation simplified)).

¶12 On appeal, Correa argues that Officer did not have reasonable suspicion that he was engaging in criminal activity before Officer detained him. We agree. Before explaining why, however, we briefly note two threshold questions that were briefed and argued but that we ultimately do not decide.

¶13 The first threshold question is when the seizure in this case occurred. Correa claims that he "was seized for purposes of the Fourth Amendment when [Officer] turned on his overhead lights." The United States Supreme Court has recently clarified, however, that "a seizure by acquisition of control" involves "either voluntary submission to a show of authority or the termination of freedom of movement." Torres v. Madrid, 592 U.S. 306, 322, 141 S.Ct. 989, 209 L.Ed.2d 190 (2021); see also California v. Hodari D., 499 U.S. 621, 626, 111 S.Ct. 1547, 113 L.Ed.2d 690 (1991). Here, even if we accept Correa’s assertion that Officer made a "show of authority" when he turned on his lights, the record remains unclear as to whether Correa submitted at that moment or whether Correa instead only submitted when Officer approached him on foot and began the conversation. In any event, the State has not disputed Correa’s implicit agreement that he was at least seized by the time the conversation began. And the record contains no indication that Officer learned anything of significance in between turning on his lights and beginning the conversation. For purposes of our analysis, we’ll accordingly focus on whether Officer had reasonable suspicion at the time that the conversation began.²

¶14 The second threshold question is whether Officer had a reasonable basis for suspecting that the driver he saw in the white truck was the same "Sergio Correa" from the prior incident that Officer had learned about through the records search he conducted while following the truck. This question matters because the justification for the subsequent seizure was Officer’s suspicion that (i) this driver was the same Sergio Correa and (ii) Correa still did not have a valid driver license. In the briefs and again at oral argument, the parties disputed whether Officer had enough information to suspect that this was the same person, and they also disputed whether ethnicity played an inappropriate role in this suspicion. In Correa’s view, Officer engaged in impermissible racial profiling. In the State’s view, however, Officer more benignly used ethnicity as a descriptive identifier to facilitate comparison with a known suspect.

[3] ¶15 We need not resolve this question either. For purposes of our analysis, we’ll assume that Officer did have a reasonable and non-discriminatory basis for suspecting that the driver of this truck was the same Sergio Correa from the prior incident. But even with that assumption, we still conclude that the seizure was unlawful because Officer did not have a reasonable basis for suspecting that Correa was currently engaged in criminal behavior.

¶16 The justification given by the State and accepted by the district court was that Officer reasonably suspected that Correa was driving without a valid driver license. Indeed, on this front, the State first asserts that Officer had more than a mere suspicion. In its brief, the State argues that Officer "did, in fact, know the status" of Correa’s driver license before he detained Correa. (Emphasis added.)

¶17 To support this argument, the State points to a moment in the suppression hearing in which Officer testified that "at the time [he] made personal contact" with Correa, he "knew the driver’s license status of Sergio Correa." But when read in context, that...