State v. Serrano

136 N.E.3d 249

STATE of Indiana, Appellant-Plaintiff,

v.Julio SERRANO, Appellee-Defendant

Court of Appeals Case No. 19A-CR-305

Court of Appeals of Indiana.

FILED November 13, 2019

Attorneys for Appellant: Curtis T. Hill, Jr., Attorney General of Indiana, Angela N. Sanchez, Courtney L. Staton, Deputy Attorneys General, Indianapolis, Indiana

Attorney for Appellee: Zachary J. Stock, Zachary J. Stock, Attorney at Law, P.C., Indianapolis, Indiana

May, Judge.

[1] The State appeals the trial court's order granting Julio Serrano's supplemental motion to suppress. The State raises one issue, which we revise and restate as whether the trial court erred in granting Serrano's supplemental motion to suppress. We reverse and remand.

Facts and Procedural History¹

[2] On the night of February 20, 2017, Brownsburg Police Department Officers responded to a dispatch regarding an armed suspect in a residential neighborhood. The dispatch was later updated to a report of an armed robbery in progress. The dispatch described the suspect as being near a silver Chevrolet Envoy. Officer Corey Sears,² who had responded to the dispatch, encountered a witness at the scene. Officer Sears asked the witness what car the suspect was driving, and the witness responded that he did not know. Officer Sears' bodycam had not captured a white Cadillac Escalade, but he radioed that a white Cadillac Escalade left the neighborhood at a high rate of speed. Officer Sears did not relay the speed the vehicle was traveling, the vehicle's plate number, a description of the driver, the number of occupants, or any identifying information about any of the occupants. Officer Sears told another officer at the scene that he did not know if the Cadillac was involved, but he did not convey these doubts over the radio.

[3] Detective Dirk Fentz and other officers, including Officer Chad Brandon, also responded to the dispatch and heard the information reported by Officer Sears about the white Cadillac. Detective Fentz observed a white Cadillac stopped at a traffic light and pulled his car "nose-to-nose" with the Cadillac. (Tr. Vol. II at 12.) He approached the Cadillac, noticed a female driver and two other people in the backseat of the vehicle, and ordered the occupants to show their hands. Detective Fentz testified:

We tried to get them to unlock and exit the vehicle. As we did, the doors became unlocked, Mr. Serrano began to exit the back of the vehicle, pushed between me and Officer [Jonathan] Flowers and then ran across Odell [Street] pulling a firearm.

(Id. at 14.) Serrano began to turn toward the officers, started to fumble his firearm, regained possession, and then faced the officers. Detective Fentz used his service weapon to shoot Serrano one time. The officers then recovered Serrano's firearm. Serrano was transported to Eskenazi Hospital, and the court issued an arrest warrant.

[4] The State charged³ Serrano with Level 4 felony unlawful possession of a firearm by a serious violent felon⁴ and alleged Serrano was a habitual offender.⁵ On October 15, 2018, Serrano filed a motion to suppress arguing the traffic stop was unconstitutional. During the hearing on the motion to suppress, Serrano relied on the testimony of Officer Brandon and Officer Fentz to argue no evidence supported the white Cadillac's involvement in the alleged robbery. After the hearing, the trial court issued a written order denying the motion to suppress that stated, in part:

The Court finds that due to the vehicle at issue being in the area of the armed robbery and that Officer Brandon testified that the vehicle dispatch reported was involved in the armed robbery was a white Cadillac [E]scalade that law enforcement did not have to provide the Court with the speed limit of the area of the stop or the vehicle's exact speed. The key is that the vehicle was leaving the area at a rate of speed that Detective Fentz (an experienced officer) described at [sic] a high rate of speed.

(App. Vol. 2 at 103-04.)

[5] On January 18, 2019, Serrano filed a supplemental motion to suppress. At a hearing on the supplemental motion, Serrano introduced into evidence bodycam footage from Officer Sears. This footage had not been entered into evidence during the first hearing on Serrano's motion to suppress. After that hearing, the trial court granted Serrano's motion to suppress without entering any specific findings. The State filed a motion to correct error. The trial court denied the State's motion, and the State appeals because the grant of the motion to suppress effectively precluded prosecution. See Ind. Code § 35-38-4-2(5) (defining circumstances under which State may appeal trial court decision).

Discussion and Decision

[6] The State has the burden of showing the trial court's ruling on the motion to suppress was contrary to law because the State is appealing from a negative judgment. State v. Bouye , 118 N.E.3d 22, 24 (Ind. Ct. App. 2019). We evaluate "whether the record contains substantial evidence of probative value that supports the trial court's decision." State v. Lucas , 112 N.E.3d 726, 729 (Ind. Ct. App. 2018). Our review of the denial of a motion to suppress is similar to our review of other sufficiency issues. Stark v. State , 960 N.E.2d 887, 888 (Ind. Ct. App. 2012), trans denied . We do not reweigh the evidence and we consider conflicting evidence in favor of the trial court's ruling. Id. We will also consider uncontested evidence favorable to the defendant. Id. at 889. "We review de novo a ruling on the constitutionality of a search or seizure, but we give deference to a trial court's determination of the facts, which will not be overturned unless clearly erroneous." Id.

Reasonable Suspicion and the Traffic Stop

[7] The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article I, Section 11 of the Indiana Constitution generally prohibit warrantless seizures subject to a few well-delineated exceptions. M.O. v. State , 63 N.E.3d 329, 331-32 (Ind. 2016). The State has the burden of proving that one of the well-delineated exceptions applies. Randall v. State , 101 N.E.3d 831, 837 (Ind. Ct. App. 2018), trans. denied . Further, the Indiana Constitution requires any search or seizure be reasonable under the totality of the circumstances. Litchfield v. State , 824 N.E.2d 356, 359 (Ind. 2005). Evidence obtained pursuant to an unconstitutional search or seizure is subject to exclusion and may not be used as evidence against the defendant at trial. Clark v. State , 994 N.E.2d 252, 266 (Ind. 2013). This exclusion extends to "evidence directly obtained by the illegal search or seizure as well as evidence derivatively gained as a result of information learned or leads obtained during that same search or seizure." Id.

[8] The State contends the traffic stop meets one of the exceptions to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement because it was an investigatory stop based on reasonable suspicion. Further, the State argues, the traffic stop satisfied the Indiana Constitution because the police conduct was entirely reasonable. Serrano argues the officers violated both the Fourth Amendment and the Indiana Constitution by stopping the vehicle. However, we need not decide whether the traffic stop was constitutional because, regardless, Serrano's conduct after the stop was sufficiently distinguishable and attenuated from the stop to be purged of whatever taint may have accompanied the seizure of the Cadillac.

Attenuation and Serrano's Conduct After the Traffic Stop

[9] Under the United States Constitution, evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment may still be used against a criminal defendant if it falls within certain recognized exceptions to the exclusionary rule. C.P. v. State , 39 N.E.3d 1174, 1180 (Ind. Ct. App. 2015). For example, the Supreme Court of the United States has recognized exceptions if the officers rely in good faith on a subsequently invalidated warrant, if the causal connection between the constitutional violation and the evidence is remote, if the evidence would have inevitably been discovered without the constitutional violation, or if a lawful, genuinely independent seizure would have yielded the same evidence. Id. (citing United States v. Leon , 468 U.S. 897, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984), reh'g denied ; Hudson v. Michigan , 547 U.S. 586, 126 S.Ct. 2159, 165 L.Ed.2d 56 (2006) ; Nix v. Williams , 467 U.S. 431, 104 S.Ct. 2501, 81 L.Ed.2d 377 (1984) ; and Murray v. United States , 487 U.S. 533, 108 S.Ct. 2529, 101 L.Ed.2d 472 (1988) ). One such exception is the new-crime exception. Id. at 1182 (holding defendant who battered police officer committed new and distinct crime after being illegally seized such that evidence of the battery was properly admitted). The new-crime exception is a subset of the attenuation doctrine. Wright v. State , 108 N.E.3d 307, 314 (Ind. 2018).

[10] The attenuation doctrine⁶ provides that, for Fourth Amendment purposes, the collection of evidence may be so far removed from an illegal search or seizure that the evidence is untainted. Wright , 108 N.E.3d at 317. Therefore, courts may admit evidence that derives from an illegal search or seizure if the evidence itself or the circumstances in which the evidence was discovered are sufficiently distinguishable from the illegal search or seizure. Id. at 321. Courts assess the following factors to determine whether the taint from an illegal search or seizure has been purged: the temporal proximity between the unconstitutional conduct and the discovery of the evidence, the presence of intervening circumstances, and the flagrancy of police misconduct. Utah v. Strieff , ––– U.S. ––––, 136 S. Ct. 2056, 2062, 195 L.Ed.2d 400 (2016) ; see also Wright , 108 N.E.3d at 319-20 (considering the timeline, intervening circumstances, and degree of police misconduct when determining whether defendant's statements were sufficiently attenuated from illegal search and seizure to be admissible).

[11] Even though the Fourth...