Opinion
No. 5-876 / 05-0586
Filed January 19, 2006
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Marion County, Terry Wilson, District Associate Judge.
The State appeals from the district court's grant of Michael McIntosh's motion to suppress evidence obtained following the stop of his vehicle and from the court's order dismissing the OWI charge resulting from the stop. AFFIRMED IN PART, REVERSED IN PART, AND REMANDED.
Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, Thomas Tauber and Mary Tabor, Assistant Attorneys General, Terry Rachels, County Attorney, and Marc Wallace, Assistant County Attorney, for appellant.
Matthew Lindholm of Hoyt Law Firm, Des Moines, for appellee.
Considered by Zimmer, P.J., and Miller and Vaitheswaran, JJ.
The State appeals from the district court's grant of Michael McIntosh's motion to suppress evidence obtained following the stop of his vehicle due to a lack of reasonable suspicion supporting the stop and from the court's order dismissing the operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated (OWI) charge resulting from the stop. We affirm in part, reverse in part, and remand.
I. Background Facts and Proceedings
On December 11, 2004, between 5:30 and 6:00 p.m., Reserve Deputy Eric Goemaat witnessed a vehicle come to a stop on the side of a rural gravel road approximately one-eighth of a mile from his home. Watching through binoculars from his home, the reserve deputy saw a person walk in front of the vehicle's headlights. The vehicle remained stationary for approximately eight minutes. It then continued down the road and turned into a farm driveway that led to the home of Deputy Sheriff Ronald Goemaat. Eric Goemaat is Ronald Goemaat's son. Eric Goemaat called his father and told him a vehicle that "looked suspicious" was coming up his driveway. The reserve deputy did not tell his father that he observed any crime or traffic violations being committed by the driver of the vehicle.
After visiting with his son on the phone, Deputy Goemaat looked out his window and saw a vehicle pull into the yard at the end of his quarter-mile-long driveway. The vehicle stopped for a few seconds, turned around, and headed back down the driveway. The deputy's fully marked patrol vehicle was parked in the yard and illuminated by a yard light. Deputy Goemaat left his house, got into his patrol vehicle, turned on the "bar lights," and followed the vehicle back to the gravel road, where the driver, Michael McIntosh, pulled over. McIntosh was subsequently arrested and charged with OWI in violation of Iowa Code section 321J.2 (2003).
McIntosh filed a motion to suppress alleging that Deputy Goemaat lacked "the requisite probable cause or reasonable suspicion to support the stop" in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and article I, section 8 of the Iowa Constitution. McIntosh maintained that all the evidence uncovered as a result of the illegal stop must be suppressed. Following hearing, the district court granted the motion, suppressed the evidence that resulted from the stop, and dismissed the OWI charge. The State now appeals.
II. Discussion
The State contends that Deputy Goemaat had reasonable suspicion to stop McIntosh's vehicle for investigatory purposes, so the evidence obtained as a result of the stop should not have been suppressed. The State also maintains that the record does not show any proper basis for the district court's dismissal of the OWI charge because the court did not give any reason for its action, and the only remedy for an unconstitutional search or seizure is exclusion of the resulting evidence.
Because McIntosh asserts his constitutional rights under the Fourth Amendment were violated, our review is de novo. State v. Heminover, 619 N.W.2d 353, 356 (Iowa 2000) rev'd in part on other grounds by State v. Turner, 630 N.W.2d 601, 606 (Iowa 2001). We independently evaluate McIntosh's claim under the totality of the circumstances. State v. Kinkead, 570 N.W.2d 97, 99 (Iowa 1997). We give deference to the district court's assessments of credibility and findings of fact, but we are not bound by those findings. Turner, 630 N.W.2d at 606.
Warrantless searches are per se unreasonable unless an exception applies to the warrant requirement. Kinkead, 570 N.W.2d at 100 (citations omitted). One exception to the warrant requirement is an investigatory stop. Id. An officer effects a seizure when he or she restrains the liberty of an individual by means of a show of authority or physical force. State v. Johnson, 395 N.W.2d 661, 664 (Iowa Ct.App. 1986) (citation omitted). An investigatory stop is a seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Heminover, 619 N.W.2d at 357 (citations omitted).
A law enforcement officer may stop and briefly detain individuals for investigative purposes if the officer has reasonable cause to believe a crime may have occurred. State v. Rosenstiel, 473 N.W.2d 59, 61 (Iowa 1991) (citations omitted). The officer must be able to articulate something more than an inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or hunch in order to meet the reasonable cause standard. State v. Haviland, 532 N.W.2d 767, 768 (Iowa 1995) (citations omitted). The reasonableness of the stop is gauged by whether or not the facts available to the officer at the moment of the stop would cause a reasonably cautious individual to deem the action taken by the officer appropriate. State v. Wiese, 525 N.W.2d 412, 414-15 (Iowa 1994) (citations omitted) ( overruled on other grounds by State v. Cline, 617 N.W.2d 277, 281 (Iowa 2000)). Any evidence obtained in violation of McIntosh's Fourth Amendment rights is inadmissible and should be suppressed regardless of its probative value or relevance. State v. Schrier, 283 N.W.2d 338, 342 (Iowa 1979) (citing Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 655, 81 S. Ct. 1684, 1691, 6 L. Ed. 2d 1081, 1090 (1961)).
At the hearing on McIntosh's motion to suppress, Deputy Goemaat testified that his reason for stopping McIntosh was "[j]ust because of his suspicious behavior, first stopping by the end of my lane and sitting there awhile and then pulling on my yard and stopping on my yard." Deputy Goemaat suspected that McIntosh was casing his property for a burglary, and he testified that "[w]e've had occasional burglaries in the area for probably three years now." The State contends that Deputy Goemaat was in possession of facts which were sufficient to give him specific and articulable cause to reasonably believe that criminal activity was afoot. For the reasons which follow, we believe the record reveals nothing more than an inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or hunch that McIntosh was involved in, or soon to be involved in, any criminal behavior.
Deputy Goemaat testified that deer poaching was common in the area as well.
Eric Goemaat did not relay any information to his father which indicated that he observed the driver of the vehicle commit any traffic violations or engage in any criminal behavior. McIntosh approached Deputy Goemaat's home sometime between 5:30 and 6:00 p.m., not late at night. He kept the headlights of his vehicle on at all times. After stopping in Deputy Goemaat's yard for a few seconds, McIntosh drove his vehicle back down the driveway slowly enough that Deputy Goemaat caught up with him before he reached the end of the driveway. Goemaat did not observe any erratic driving, and McIntosh did not take any evasive action after Deputy Goematt activated the lights of his patrol vehicle. The facts are consistent with someone who was lost, approached the wrong house, and turned around.
We also conclude the controlling case law supports the district court's ruling. In Haviland, 532 N.W.2d at 768, the Iowa Supreme Court found that police officers did not have reasonable suspicion to stop a vehicle when it was parked at 12:30 a.m. in a remote, closed business area, the area had been the subject of past burglary complaints, and the vehicle turned on its lights and drove toward the police as their patrol car rounded a curve in the road. We believe the facts relied on by the State in this case provide less support for an investigatory stop than the facts found wanting in Haviland.
McIntosh's actions also lack the furtiveness described in State v. Richardson, 501 N.W.2d 495, 497 (Iowa 1993). In Richardson, the court found a police officer had reasonable suspicion to stop a vehicle when it parked next to a fence in a nonresidential area with no legitimate attractions at 12:40 a.m. when all the surrounding businesses were closed, the area had "frequently been burglarized[,]" the officer observed what he considered deliberately furtive actions when the defendant pulled out just as the officer began to approach after executing a U-turn, and the vehicle changed lanes without signaling. Id. Here, McIntosh approached Deputy Goemaat's home in the early evening hours, not late at night. He kept the headlights of his vehicle on at all times, and he drove back down the driveway slowly enough that Deputy Goemaat caught up with him before he reached the end of the driveway.
Although Deputy Goemaat testified there had been "occasional burglaries" in the area during the past three years, the record simply does not support the conclusion that this was a high crime location. In contrast to the occasional burglaries in this case, the court noted that "frequent" burglaries were a factor in giving the police reasonable cause to stop the defendant's car in Richardson. Id.
Deputy Goemaat had a generalized suspicion that any vehicle that stopped on the road approaching his driveway and turned around in the driveway might be casing the property for burglary. We conclude Deputy Goemaat did not have reasonable suspicion to stop McIntosh's vehicle. We agree with the district court's conclusion that the evidence obtained from the illegal stop must be suppressed.
The State's final argument is that the record does not show any proper basis for the district court's order dismissing the OWI charge against McIntosh and several simple misdemeanor offenses. The remedy for an unconstitutional search or seizure is exclusion of the resulting evidence. Nothing in the appellate record indicates that either McIntosh or the State filed a motion to dismiss the charges pending against the defendant, and the court gave no reasons for its dismissal order. Although it may well be that the State will be unable to proceed with this prosecution because of a lack of evidence, we conclude the district court improperly dismissed the OWI charge sua sponte. Accordingly, we reverse the district court's order dismissing the OWI charge, and we remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
III. Conclusion
Because we conclude Deputy Goemaat did not have reasonable cause to stop McIntosh's vehicle, we affirm that part of the district court's ruling sustaining McIntosh's motion to suppress. We reverse the district court's sua sponte dismissal of the charges pending against McIntosh, and we remand for proceedings consistent with this opinion.