State v. Julius

869 S.E.2d 778

STATE of North Carolina

v.Joanna Kaye JULIUS

No. COA20-548

Court of Appeals of North Carolina.

Filed March 1, 2022

Attorney General Joshua H. Stein, by Assistant Attorney General William Walton, for the State.

Appellate Defender Glenn Gerding, by Assistant Appellate Defender Hannah Hall Love, for defendant-appellant.

TYSON, Judge.

¶ 1 Joanna Kaye Julius ("Defendant") appeals her convictions of trafficking in methamphetamine by possession and possession of methamphetamine with the intent to sell or deliver. We find no error.

I. Background

¶ 2 McDowell County Sheriff's Deputy Jesse Hicks ("Deputy Hicks") and State Highway Patrol Trooper Justin Sanders ("Trooper Sanders") responded to a single-car accident on Tom's Creek Road on 20 May 2018. At the time of the crash, Defendant was the passenger and her acquaintance, Kyle, was driving the vehicle with Defendant's permission. The silver Suzuki SUV was owned by Defendant's parents, and had come to rest in a drainage ditch on the side of the road, with the driver's side partially submerged in water.

¶ 3 At least three witnesses at the site of the accident told the officers the driver had fled the scene and walked into nearby woods because of having outstanding warrants. Defendant stood alone, away from those gathered on the side of the road, with a pink backpack on the ground next to her. She provided Trooper Sanders with her identification from the wallet inside her pink backpack. Defendant also told Trooper Sanders the driver, a man she knew as Kyle, had fled the scene. Defendant claimed not to know Kyle's full or last name.

¶ 4 Trooper Sanders searched the SUV to "look[ ] for Kyle's driver's license or ID." He entered the car through the passenger side and found a black and green Nike bag on the passenger side floorboard. Inside the Nike bag, Trooper Sanders discovered a black box. Inside the box were two cell phones, a scale, and two large bags of a clear crystal-like substance, which was later determined to be 40.83 grams of methamphetamine.

¶ 5 Officers placed Defendant into custody after locating the substances inside of the vehicle. The officers searched her pink backpack. Inside of Defendant's backpack, the officers found a glass smoking pipe, five cell phones, a handgun, a notebook, $1,785 in cash, and a clear container holding several bags of a white crystal-like substance, one of which contained one tenth of an ounce of methamphetamine.

¶ 6 Defense counsel filed a pretrial motion to suppress the evidence found in the black and green Nike bag and the pink backpack, alleging the search of the vehicle violated Defendant's Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable searches and seizures.

¶ 7 During a hearing on 5 March 2019, Trooper Sanders testified he had searched the vehicle to locate the driver's identification in order to investigate the motor vehicle collision and a potential hit-and-run. The alleged driver, Kyle, had left the scene of a car accident after causing property damage. The trial court concluded the warrantless search was constitutional because Trooper Sanders had probable cause to search the SUV and denied Defendant's motion.

¶ 8 Defendant was indicted for two counts of possession of methamphetamine, possession of drug paraphernalia, two counts of trafficking methamphetamine, possession with intent to sell and deliver a Schedule II controlled substance, and failure to appear.

¶ 9 Defendant's trial began on 15 April 2019. Defendant pled guilty to possession of methamphetamine. Pursuant to her plea, the State agreed to consolidate the conviction of possession of methamphetamine with Defendant's conviction of possession with intent to sell and deliver methamphetamine in 18 CRS 50818 and dismiss the charges of possession of drug paraphernalia and failure to appear.

¶ 10 Defendant was convicted of trafficking in methamphetamine by possession by a jury's verdict and sentenced to the mandatory minimum of 70 to maximum 93 months imprisonment. The court consolidated Defendant's convictions of possession with intent to sell and deliver and possession of methamphetamine for judgment, and imposed a sentence of 6-17 months in prison that was suspended for 30 months of supervised probation, to commence upon Defendant's release from prison. Defendant appealed.

II. Jurisdiction

¶ 11 Appellate jurisdiction is proper pursuant to N.C. Gen. Stat. § 7A-27(b)(1) (2021).

III. Issues

¶ 12 Defendant contends the trial court: (1) erred in denying her motion to suppress evidence found in a warrantless search of her parents’ vehicle without sufficient probable cause; and, (2) plainly erred by failing to provide an additional instruction about her actual knowledge of the drugs found inside the vehicle.

IV. Standard of Review

In examining the case before us, our review is limited. It is the trial judge's responsibility to make findings of fact that are supported by the evidence, and then to derive conclusions of law based on those findings of fact. Where the evidence presented supports the trial judge's findings of fact, these findings are binding on appeal.... The trial court's conclusions of law, however, are fully reviewable on appeal.

State v. Hughes , 353 N.C. 200, 207–08, 539 S.E.2d 625, 630–31 (2000).

V. Defendant's Motion to Suppress

¶ 13 It is well established that "searches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by judge or magistrate, are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment-subject only to a few specifically established and well delineated exceptions." State v. Fizovic , 240 N.C. App. 448, 452, 770 S.E.2d 717, 720 (2015) (citations omitted).

[W]here a search of a suspect's person occurs before instead of after formal arrest, such search can be equally justified as "incident to the arrest" provided probable cause to arrest existed prior to the search and it is clear that the evidence seized was in no way necessary to establish the probable cause. If an officer has probable cause to arrest a suspect and as incident to that arrest would be entitled to make a reasonable search of his person, we see no value in a rule which invalidates the search merely because it precedes actual arrest. The justification for the search incident to arrest is the need for immediate action to protect the arresting officer from the use of weapons and to prevent destruction of evidence of the crime.

State v. Wooten , 34 N.C. App. 85, 89–90, 237 S.E.2d 301, 305 (1977) (citation and quotation marks omitted).

¶ 14 The same reasoning in Wooten applies to the search of Defendant's parents’ vehicle involved in the accident and subsequently of her person and backpack. Our Supreme Court held, "when investigators have a reasonable and articulable basis to believe that evidence of the offense of arrest might be found in a suspect's vehicle after the occupants have been removed and secured, the investigators are permitted to conduct a search of that vehicle." State v. Mbacke , 365 N.C. 403, 409-10, 721 S.E.2d 218, 222 (2012).

¶ 15 Defendant challenges the following conclusion of law: "Trooper J.L. Sanders did not know ... the true identity of the suspect, the cause of the collision, the extent of any damage caused by the collision, or the reason the alleged perpetrator had fled, if any. The answer to those inquiries lay within the vehicle driven by Kyle Lytle."

¶ 16 Here, the evidence and findings show officers received a dispatch call and responded to the scene of a vehicle accident. Defendant told officers the vehicle belonged to her parents, she was a passenger in the car at the time of the accident, and she had allowed Kyle to drive the SUV. Defendant stated she did not know "Kyle's full name."

¶ 17 Officers on the scene were told the purported driver of the vehicle had fled from the scene because he had pending active arrest warrants. Defendant claimed she was not driving the vehicle at the time of the accident. Defendant could not tell officers if the purported driver had taken his driver's license or other identification with him. Trooper Saunders’ search of the vehicle was limited to plain view areas and containers in which the alleged driver's identification could have reasonably been located.

¶ 18 Officers had reasonable suspicion to search the vehicle to verify the claims of another occupant and custodian of the vehicle to determine that alleged driver's identity. Kyle's true identity was unknown at the time of the search. Kyle's identification may not have been inside the vehicle, but there was no other way for the officers to try to find information to identify the driver if the passengers and other witnesses did not know or would not provide his full name. The identification of the purported driver may have reasonably been determined from looking inside the wrecked vehicle.

¶ 19 It is not disputed, and evidence supports the trial court's finding that the officers did not know the "true identity" of the purported driver, the cause of the collision, the extent of the damage caused by the collision, or the reason the driver had fled. Presuming the last sentence of the conclusion: "The answer to those inquiries lay within the vehicle" is overstated, the officers were trying to identify the driver, who had fled from the scene of the accident, which itself is a crime, and who reportedly had outstanding warrants for other crimes. Defendant providing the name "Kyle" did not identify the driver. As it turned out, "Kyle" was middle name of the driver.

¶ 20 In either event, the officers were justified in searching the wrecked vehicle to get it out of the ditch for an inventory or for officer safety. Officers searched the vehicle in an effort to find the purported driver's name or some means of identification. Once they discovered the black and green Nike bag containing drug-like substances and multiple cell phones was discovered, the officer testified "the nature of the investigation changed." The trial court properly denied Defendant's motion to suppress. Mbacke...