Summary 2007 WY 182

Summary of Decision issued November 15, 2007

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Case Name: Pierce v. State

Citation: 2007 WY 182

Docket Number: 05-145

Appeal from the District Court of Natrona County, the Honorable W. Thomas Sullins, Judge

Representing Appellant (Defendant): Kenneth M. Koski, State Public Defender; Donna D. Domonkos, Appellate Counsel; Marion Yoder, Senior Assistant Appellate Counsel; and Ryan R. Roden, Senior Assistant Appellate Counsel. Argument by Ms. Yoder.

Representing Appellee (Plaintiff): Patrick J. Crank, Attorney General; Paul S. Rehurek, Deputy Attorney General; D. Michael Pauling, Senior Assistant Attorney General; Eric A. Johnson, Director Jonathan Haidsiak, Student Director and Orintha Karns, Student Intern, of the Prosecution Assistance Program. Argument by Ms. Karns.

Issues: Whether the search at issue in the instant case violated Article I, Section 4 of the Wyoming Constitution. Whether the search at issue in the instant case violated the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Facts/Discussion: A Casper police officer arrested Appellant for two traffic violations and proceeded to search the vehicle Appellant had been occupying prior to the arrest. Appellant later filed a motion in the district court to suppress the drug-related evidence that the officer seized from the vehicle.
Standard of Review: Findings on factual issues made by the district court considering a motion to suppress are not disturbed on appeal unless they are clearly erroneous. The Court noted they were concerned in the appeal with the applicability of the search-incident-to-arrest exception.
Wyoming Constitution: The Court stated they have eschewed bright-line rules in considering non-consensual vehicle searches conducted incident to arrest, and instead favor an approach that requires a search be reasonable under all of the circumstances as determined by the judiciary in light of the historical intent of the state’s search and seizure provision. It was the State’s burden to prove that the search-incident-to-arrest exception applied and the applicability of such an exception was dependent upon all of the facts and circumstances viewed in their entirety. The Court stated that the state constitution requires that the Court be able to find a reasonable basis, articulable from the totality of the circumstances in each case, to justify a search. The Court stated that the instant case was clearly distinguishable from other cases in which the Court has upheld non-consensual searches under Article I, Section 4.
United States Constitution: The Court stated that the search clearly fell within the purview of New York v. Belton which established that arrest justifies the search of a vehicle’s passenger compartment, including any open or closed container in it, without consideration of the privacy interest involved.
The Court noted that the majority opinion was founded in Article I, Section 4 of the Wyoming Constitution, particularly as interpreted and applied in O’Boyle and Vasquez, passim. The dissent relied almost entirely upon United States Supreme Court cases and the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Court stated that the dissent’s argument was a plea for the adoption of a rule that officer safety always trumps a reasonableness analysis made under the totality of the circumstances when an arrest is made. It was also a plea to abandon O’Boyle and Vasquez and adopt the Belton bright-line rule that the Court previously rejected. United States v. Robinson, cited twice in the dissenting opinion in support of the concept of searching a vehicle incident to the arrest of its driver, involved a search of the arrestee’s person not his vehicle.

Holding: Having found that the search violated Article I, Section 4 of the Wyoming Constitution, the Court reversed the denial of Appellant’s suppression motion and remanded the matter to the district court.

Reversed and remanded.

C.J. Voigt delivered the opinion.

J. Burke dissented: He would have affirmed the district court’s decision that this was a valid search incident to arrest and reasonable under all of the circumstances. He felt the majority reached the opposite result by misapplying the standard of review, marginalizing officer safety as a factor to be weighed in the analysis and overlooking the most meaningful difference between the state and federal standards.

J. Hill dissented: He agreed with the material part of J. Burke’s dissent but wrote separately to emphasize his concern that the narrow slot carved out in the Vasquez case appeared to be widened by the majority decision in the instant case.

Link: http://tinyurl.com/38hov6 .