State v. Cyrus

997 N.W.2d 671

STATE of Iowa, Appellee,

v.Jaheim Romaine CYRUS, Appellant.

No. 21-0828

Supreme Court of Iowa.

Submitted September 29, 2023

Filed November 17, 2023

On review from the Iowa Court of Appeals.

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Polk County, Brendan E. Greiner (suppression ruling) and Odell G. McGhee II (sentencing), District Associate Judges.

Defendant, claiming he was unlawfully seized in his parked car, seeks further review of court of appeals decision that affirmed the district court’s ruling denying his motion to suppress. Decision of Court of Appeals and District Court Judgment Affirmed.

Martha J. Lucey, Appellate Defender, and Josh Irwin (argued) and Stephan J. Japuntich (until withdrawal), Assistant Appellate Defenders, for appellant.

Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Genevieve Reinkoester (argued), Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.

Waterman, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which all justices joined.

Waterman, Justice.

In this appeal, we must decide whether the defendant was seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and article I, section 8 of the Iowa Constitution. A woman called the police to report a suspicious car parked in front of her home at night. A uniformed police officer responded in a marked patrol car and pulled alongside the parked car, activated rear-facing lights, shined a mounted spotlight into the car, and walked over and asked the driver, "How are you tonight?" Upon smelling a strong odor of burnt marijuana, the officer searched the driver, found a bullet in his pocket and a stolen loaded handgun in his front-seat console, and arrested him. The defendant, charged with firearm violations, filed a motion to suppress, which the district court denied, finding the officer did not seize him before detecting the odor of marijuana. The defendant, a nineteen-year-old Black male, was convicted on the minutes of testimony and appealed, arguing his minority status should have been considered in evaluating whether he had been seized at the outset of the encounter. We transferred the case to the court of appeals, which affirmed the suppression ruling. We granted the defendant’s application for further review.

On our de novo review, we agree with the district court and court of appeals that the officer did not unlawfully seize the defendant. We apply an objective totality-of-the-circumstances test. The lone officer did not activate his siren or front-facing emergency lights, display a weapon, block in the defendant’s already parked vehicle, or command the driver to stay in his car. On this record, the use of the spotlight was insufficient to escalate their initial encounter into a seizure. We follow the great weight of authority and decline to modify our objective "reasonable person" test to factor in the defendant’s race in evaluating the officer’s actions. For the reasons further explained below, we affirm the decision of the court of appeals and the district court’s suppression ruling and judgment of conviction.

I. Background Facts and Proceedings.

At 9:20 p.m. on October 16, 2020, less than five months after George Floyd’s fatal encounter with Minneapolis police, a woman called the Des Moines Police Department to report a "suspicious" car on Ashby Avenue. She said the car initially stopped in her neighbors’ driveway, then parked nearby on the street before moving again to remain in front of her home. When asked what kind of car she saw, the caller said, "[A] gold Impala. Like an older, like probably 2005, 2006." But when asked for the license plate, she said that she could not see it. A uniformed police officer, Shawn Morgan, was dispatched to investigate.

Officer Morgan drove to the caller’s neighborhood in his marked patrol car, and the Impala came into his view. The Impala was legally parked with its engine off on the north side of the T-intersection at Ashby Avenue and 26th Place. Officer Morgan aimed his mounted, directional spotlight to "attempt to see into the vehicle" and, "see who was sitting in the vehicle or what was going on in the vehicle" Officer Morgan turned on his patrol car’s rear-facing lights "to make sure anyone coming from behind didn’t strike [his] vehicle." He did not activate his siren or front-facing emergency top lights.

Officer Morgan’s dashcam video shows that as he slowly pulled alongside the Impala, Jaheim Cyrus, the Impala’s driver, opened its door into the patrol car’s path.¹ Officer Morgan stopped in the middle of the street, without blocking in the Impala. Cyrus looked back at Officer Morgan and showed his hands. Cyrus stayed in the Impala; the spotlight was still directed at the left side of the Impala. As Officer Morgan exited his patrol car, he said in a conversational tone, "How are you tonight?" Those words are clearly heard on the dashcam audio. No further conversation between the officer and driver is audible as Officer Morgan walked around the front of the patrol car, nodded his head toward Cyrus, and spoke into his shoulder-mounted radio. Cyrus put one foot outside the Impala and placed his left hand on top of the car door—as if to get out—but then sat back into the driver’s seat.

Cyrus testified at the suppression hearing that he asked the officer something like, "Can I get out of my car?" and was told, "No, just stay in the car." Cyrus did not describe the officer’s tone. Officer Morgan testified he did not recall directing Cyrus to remain in the car and his practice is not to give such a command when first responding to "suspicious vehicle" complaints, which often "don’t involve criminal activity."

The video shows Officer Morgan walking to the rear of the Impala. The dashcam audio recorded the officer’s recitation of the license plate number moments later. Next, Officer Morgan walked to the driver’s-side window where, as he later testified, he "immediately smelled the strong odor of burnt marijuana." He then placed his left hand on the top of the car door and asked Cyrus for his identification. He noticed Cyrus’s hands were shaking. He opened the car door, pulled out his flashlight, and asked Cyrus about the marijuana odor; Cyrus denied using or possessing any marijuana.

Officer Morgan placed Cyrus in handcuffs, patted him down, and found a round of ammunition in his left front jacket pocket. He put Cyrus in the back seat of his patrol car before searching the Impala. Officer Morgan discovered a Ruger LC9 9 mm handgun with an extended magazine holding nine live rounds of ammunition in the center console.

As Officer Morgan read Cyrus his Miranda warning, he noticed a "green leafy substance" on Cyrus’s tongue and bottom molars. Cyrus admitted to eating a small blunt and said it was the first day he had ever used marijuana. Cyrus explained that he was in the neighborhood to see his girlfriend because they had just had a fight, and he was waiting for her to get home. Cyrus admitted to parking several places on the street because he did not know her exact address. Cyrus denied knowing anything about the Ruger, which Officer Morgan later learned was reported stolen. Like the Ruger, the round of ammunition found in Cyrus’s pocket was 9 mm. The bullet found in Cyrus’s pocket matched that weapon. Cyrus was charged by trial information with carrying weapons under Iowa Code § 724.4(1) (2020) and fourth-degree theft under Iowa Code § 714.2(4).

Cyrus filed a motion to suppress, arguing the totality of the encounter with Officer Morgan constituted an illegal seizure violating both the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and article I, section 8 of the Iowa Constitution. The district court conducted an evidentiary hearing on the motion to suppress. Cyrus and Officer Morgan testified, and the dashcam video was admitted into evidence. Cyrus testified that Officer Morgan had ordered him back into the car; Officer Morgan testified he did not recall doing so and would not have done so under the circumstances presented. Cyrus did not testify that he was aware the patrol car’s rear-facing lights were on or that his Impala was blocked in.

The district court denied the motion to suppress, finding that Cyrus was not seized during the brief encounter before Officer Morgan smelled marijuana and detained him on that ground. The district court declined to find that Officer Morgan had ordered Cyrus to remain in his car during the roughly ten seconds before he smelled marijuana. The court found Cyrus "not credible" because "the video fails to corroborate his testimony" and the State-impeached Cyrus for convictions involving crimes of dishonesty based on his prior theft and burglary convictions. The court declined to give weight to Cyrus’s subjective feelings or find Officer Morgan’s use of the spotlight established a seizure. The court also declined Cyrus’s invitation to consider his age and race in determining whether a person in his situation would have felt free to leave.

Cyrus stipulated to a trial on the minutes of testimony and was convicted of carrying weapons. His sentence was suspended, and he was placed on probation.

Cyrus appealed the denial of the motion to suppress. Cyrus argued that he was seized when the officer "pulled up beside his car, trained a spotlight on him and activated the rear-facing directional lights of the police cruiser." He argued that a reasonable person would not have felt free to leave. Cyrus also argued that the reasonable person test should be broadened to include a new factor: Cyrus’s minority status, including "the racial differences in how police action is perceived." Lastly, Cyrus argued for the first time on appeal that the reasonable person test should be replaced with a "strict scrutiny standard." He made no strict scrutiny argument in district court.

We transferred this case to the court of appeals, which affirmed the district court’s denial of Cyrus’s motion to suppress. The court of appeals analyzed each factor—the rear-facing lights, the...