State v. Scullark

1

STATE OF IOWA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. PATRICK SCULLARK, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 23-1218

Court of Appeals of Iowa

August 21, 2024

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Black Hawk County, Linda M Fangman, Judge.

A defendant appeals his convictions for possession of methamphetamine with intent to deliver and failure to affix a tax stamp. REVERSED AND REMANDED.

Martha J. Lucey, State Appellate Defender, and Josh Irwin, Assistant Appellate Defender, for appellant.

Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Thomas J. Ogden (until withdrawal) and Timothy M. Hau, Assistant Attorneys General for appellee.

Considered by Tabor, C.J., and Badding and Buller, JJ.

TABOR Chief Judge.

"All the stuff you're handing her, I'm searching, just so you know." That's what Waterloo Police Officer Jacob Bolstad told Patrick Scullark as he handcuffed and arrested him on an assault charge. And the officer was true to his word- seizing and searching the fanny pack Scullark passed to his friend. Inside Scullark's fanny pack, police found cash and twenty-three grams of methamphetamine. Scullark moved to suppress the drugs, alleging the warrantless search of the fanny pack violated his constitutional rights. The district court denied the motion, finding a valid search incident to Scullark's arrest. Scullark now challenges that ruling.

Because Scullark had no realistic ability to access the fanny pack after he was handcuffed and escorted to the patrol car, the search did not meet the incident-to-arrest exception to the warrant requirement. Thus, we reverse the suppression ruling and remand for further proceedings.

I. Facts and Prior Proceedings

A former girlfriend accused Scullark of throwing a watch, hitting her in the face, and causing a laceration. She alerted Officer Bolstad to the address where Scullark was moving. The officer located Scullark outside that house, talking on the phone, "pretty agitated" and "emotional." Officer Bolstad recorded their encounter on his body camera. The officer heard Scullark say he was on parole and didn't want to go back to jail. When Scullark noticed the officer approaching "he decided to bolt inside of the residence." The officer ordered Scullark to stop, but he ignored that command. So the officer followed him inside.

Scullark was crying and repeating that he didn't do anything wrong. In fact, he was so overwrought he crumpled to the floor. The officer recalled trying "to keep him calm and deescalate the situation because ultimately he was going to be going to jail for domestic assault."

When Officer Bolstad broke the news to Scullark that he was under arrest, Scullark was wearing a fanny pack around his waist. The officer estimated that it was ten by five inches-big enough to hold a small firearm or a knife. Before he was handcuffed, Scullark told the officer, "don't touch me right now" and handed the fanny pack to his friend, Tammy, who was standing nearby. Bolstad did not protest the handoff because he was the only officer present and did not want to "escalate the situation."

A few seconds later, Officer Bolstad handcuffed Scullark and informed him that the police would search the items passed to Tammy. By then, Tammy had taken three or four steps away from Scullark. The officer said: "Tammy, you stay over here with that." She then set the fanny pack down on a plastic tub next to a laundry basket just across the threshold of an adjoining room. As Scullark continued to lament-"I can't go to jail bro"-he walked toward the spot where Tammy left the fanny pack. Bolstad told him to stop and tightened the handcuffs. The officer later conceded that Scullark could not have reached the fanny pack at that point because his hands were cuffed behind his back.

The officer then picked up the fanny pack and carried it outside while escorting Scullark to the waiting patrol car. Tammy and another friend of Scullark joined them outside. By then, at least two other officers had arrived at the scene. As Officer Bolstad stood with Scullark just outside the open back door of his patrol car, the officers searched the fanny pack. Bolstad later testified: "And while we were searching the bag, [we] located a large amount of money, an amount of drugs, and I don't really recall what else was in the bag."^[1]

Based on that discovery, the State charged Scullark with possession of methamphetamine with intent to deliver, a class "B" felony, in violation of Iowa Code section 124.401(1)(b)(7) (2022) and failure to affix a drug tax stamp, a class "D" felony, in violation of section 453B.12. He moved to suppress the evidence seized by the officers, alleging a violation of his rights under the Fourth Amendment of the federal constitution and article 1, section 8 of the Iowa Constitution. The court denied his motion.

Scullark then entered a conditional guilty plea to the charged offenses, reserving his right to raise the suppression issue on appeal. The court entered judgment and sentence-from which Scullark now appeals.

II. Jurisdiction/Conditional Guilty Plea

Traditionally, when defendants enter a guilty plea, they waive "all defenses and challenges not intrinsic to the voluntariness of the plea." State v. Tucker, 959 N.W.2d 140, 146 (Iowa 2021). To some degree, that changed effective July 1, 2023. Now defendants may enter conditional guilty pleas to preserve their potential appellate challenges to adverse rulings on a pretrial motion. Iowa R. Crim. P. 2.8(2)(b)(9)^[2]; Iowa Code § 814.6(3).^[3] But under the statutory language, we have jurisdiction over an appeal from a conditional plea only when "appellate adjudication of the reserved issue is in the interest of justice."^[4] Id. § 814.6(3)

At the July 20, 2023 plea hearing, the State consented to Scullark's request to enter a conditional guilty plea to reserve the right to contest the denial of his motion to suppress on appeal. The court accepted the plea and advised Scullark of his right to appeal. Now Scullark urges appellate review of his suppression issue "is in the interest of justice" under section 814.6(3). See generally Iowa R. App. P. 6.103(2)(a) (requiring appellant's brief, in appeal from judgment of sentence following a guilty plea, to include a jurisdictional statement establishing "grounds that establish 'good cause' for purposes of Iowa Code section 814.6(1)(a)(3)"). Recognizing that the "interest of justice" is undefined in chapter 814, Scullark asks us to adopt this common meaning: "the proper view of what is fair and right in a matter in which the decision-maker has been granted discretion." Interests of Justice, Black's Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019). From there, Scullark argues that fairness favors appellate adjudication for three reasons: (1) correct resolution of this constitutional question is valuable not only to him "but to all Iowans"; (2) he has no other avenue for relief; and (3) review would serve "the general purpose" of "good cause" under the statutory scheme. See State v. Treptow, 960 N.W.2d 98, 109 (Iowa 2021) (describing "good cause" as "a legally sufficient reason" which in turn means "a reason that would allow a court to provide some relief").

We agree that adjudication of the suppression issue is in the interest of justice.^[5] Reviewing this contested constitutional claim-whether the officer acted legally in conducting the warrantless search of Scullark's fanny pack-fulfills the quintessential purpose of the newly enacted scheme of conditional guilty pleas. Because it is "fair and right" that we decide the reserved issue, we have jurisdiction to proceed. See Criminal Procedure § 12:3 n.105 ("The 'interest of justice' finding must be the good cause standard for permitting the appeal of a conditional plea to go ahead.").

III. Scope and Standards of Review

This appeal involves the constitutional right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. Thus, we review the suppression ruling de novo. State v. Gaskins, 866 N.W.2d 1, 5 (Iowa 2015). That standard means that we independently evaluate "the totality of the circumstances as shown by the entire record." State v. Baker, 925 N.W.2d 602, 609 (Iowa 2019) (citation omitted). "We give deference to the district court's factual findings, but they do not bind us." Id.

Scullark contests the warrantless search of his fanny pack under the federal and state constitutions. See U.S. Const. amend. IV; Iowa Const. art. I, § 8. The district court decided to "analyze the search of the fanny pack under both of those constitutions as one" asserting that the defense did not provide "any argument or basis to distinguish between the federal and state constitution as it pertains to these particular protections." On appeal, Scullark challenges that assertion, insisting his trial attorney did distinguish between precedent decided under the state constitution, see Gaskins, 866 N.W.2d at 14, and federal caselaw, see Arizona v. Gant, 556 U.S. 332 (2009). We agree that Scullark raised article I, section 8 as an independent ground for relief in the suppression proceedings. So, as appropriate, we may apply a different standard to his claims under the Iowa Constitution. See State v. Vance, 790 N.W.2d 775, 789 (Iowa 2010) (declining to "blindly follow federal precedent on issues of Iowa constitutional law").

IV. Analysis

A search conducted without prior judicial approval is per se unreasonable unless the State can show that a recognized exception to the warrant requirement applies. Gaskins, 866 N.W.2d at 7. Here, the State relies on the exception for searches incident to arrest. That exception "derives from interests in officer safety and evidence preservation that are typically implicated in arrest situations." Gant, 556 U.S. at 338; accord Gaskins, 866 N.W.2d at 8. "The...