Meeks v. State , 2016 Ark. App. LEXIS 21 ( 2016 )

Cite as 2016 Ark. App. 9
ARKANSAS COURT OF APPEALS
DIVISION I
No. CR-15-502
OPINION DELIVERED JANUARY 13, 2016
WILLIAM DANIEL MEEKS APPEAL FROM THE WASHINGTON
APPELLANT COUNTY CIRCUIT COURT
[NO. CR-14-2118-6]
V.
HONORABLE MARK LINDSAY,
JUDGE
STATE OF ARKANSAS
APPELLEE REVERSED AND REMANDED
ROBERT J. GLADWIN, Chief Judge
Pursuant to Arkansas Rule of Criminal Procedure 24.3 (2014), appellant William
Daniel Meeks entered a conditional plea of guilty in the Washington County Circuit Court
to the charge of DWI-First Offense. On appeal, Meeks argues that Fayetteville Police
Officer Kristin Mercado seized him by conducting a traffic stop without reasonable suspicion
as required by Arkansas Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.1 (2014) and that the stop was not
authorized by Officer Mercado’s community-caretaking function or any emergency-aid
exception. We agree; accordingly, we reverse and remand.
I. Facts
The facts of this case are undisputed. On March 16, 2014, at approximately 1:00
a.m., Officer Mercado observed a black Chevy Tahoe parked in the Marvin’s IGA parking
lot approximately fifty feet off of the nearest public road. Marvin’s IGA was closed. The
Tahoe was parked and not moving, and there were no other vehicles in close proximity.
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As she was driving past the parking lot, Officer Mercado observed that the passenger-
side door was open and that a passenger was leaning out of the vehicle vomiting. She
observed the passenger vomiting for ten-to-fifteen seconds. Officer Mercado turned right
into the parking lot, stopped behind the Tahoe, and placed her spotlight on the vehicle, but
she did not activate her blue lights at this time. She was not responding to any call
concerning this vehicle, Marvin’s IGA, or the parking lot.
Prior to Officer Mercado getting out of her vehicle, but after she pulled in behind
the Tahoe, the passenger finished vomiting, sat back up in the vehicle, and closed the
passenger door. After the passenger shut the passenger door, Meeks—who was driving the
Tahoe—started to drive toward an exit from the parking lot. Prior to Meeks’s attempt to
drive away, Officer Mercado did not do anything to indicate to Meeks that he needed to
remain, that he should not leave, or that he needed to stop and talk to Officer Mercado. As
Meeks was starting to exit the parking lot, he did not spin or squeal his tires, and he did not
drive in an erratic, careless, or reckless manner.
Just as Meeks began to drive away, but while still in the parking lot, Officer Mercado
activated her blue lights and notified dispatch that she was conducting a traffic stop. Before
she activated her blue lights, Officer Mercado did not see Meeks commit any traffic
violations or criminal acts, and Meeks immediately pulled into a parking place very close to
where he had originally stopped the vehicle. Officer Mercado ultimately arrested Meeks and
charged him with DWI-First Offense.
Meeks filed a motion to suppress illegally obtained evidence on December 23, 2014.
The motion asserted that Officer Mercado illegally stopped, detained, seized, and searched
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Meeks without a warrant in violation of the Fourth Amendment to United States
Constitution, article 2, section 15 of the Arkansas Constitution, and the Arkansas Rules of
Criminal Procedure. The circuit court conducted a hearing on the motion on February 13,
2015, and subsequently denied the motion.
After the denial of the motion, Meeks entered a conditional plea on the charge of
DWI–First Offense. The circuit court sentenced Meeks to a fine of $600; $300 in court
costs; $20 in booking/administrative fees; and ninety days in the county jail, with eighty-
eight of those days suspended, and credit given for one day already served pursuant to a
February 19, 2015 sentencing order. Meeks filed his timely notice of appeal on March 20,
2015.
II. Standard of Review
Meeks raises two points in this appeal, both of which relate to the circuit court’s
decision to deny his motion to suppress. The standard of review is the same for both points.
In reviewing a circuit court’s denial of a motion to suppress evidence, we conduct a de novo
review based on the totality of the circumstances, reviewing findings of historical facts for
clear error and determining whether those facts give rise to reasonable suspicion or probable
cause, giving due weight to inferences drawn by the circuit court and proper deference to
the circuit court’s findings. E.g., Johnson v. State, 2015 Ark. 387, 472 S.W.3d 486. A finding
is clearly erroneous, even if there is evidence to support it, when the appellate court, after
review of the entire evidence, is left with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has
been made. Id. We defer to the superiority of the circuit court to evaluate the credibility of
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witnesses who testify at a suppression hearing. Id. We reverse only if the circuit court’s
ruling is clearly against the preponderance of the evidence. Id.
III. Illegal Seizure by Conducting a Traffic Stop Without Reasonable Suspicion as
Required By Arkansas Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.1
Meeks asserts that he was pulled over by Officer Mercado while obeying the law,
committing no traffic or criminal violations, and doing nothing more than he had the legal
right to do. In Arkansas, all police-citizen encounters are classified into one of three
categories: (1) a consensual, voluntary encounter; (2) a seizure; or (3) an arrest. See Cockrell
v. State, 2010 Ark. 258, 370 S.W.3d 197. All police-citizen encounters are transformed into
a seizure when a reasonable person would believe that he is not free to leave. See id. It is
well settled in Arkansas that a person is “seized” by a police officer when the police officer
effectuates a traffic stop by using blue lights. Hammons v. State, 327 Ark. 520, 940 S.W.2d
424 (1997); State v. McFadden, 327 Ark. 16, 938 S.W.2d 797 (1997); Stevens v. State, 91 Ark.
App. 114, 208 S.W.3d 843 (2005).
Meeks asserts, and the State acknowledged at the oral argument on this appeal, that
he was seized by Officer Mercado within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment to the
United States Constitution and article 2, section 15, of the Arkansas Constitution at the time
she activated her blue lights to conduct a traffic stop on the vehicle driven by Meeks. These
constitutional protections extend to even brief investigatory stops of persons or vehicles. See
Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968); Davis v. State, 351 Ark. 406, 94 S.W.3d 892 (2003). Both
the federal and state constitutional provisions are nearly identical and prohibit unreasonable
searches and seizures not supported by probable cause or reasonable suspicion. See U.S.
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Const. amend. IV; Ark. Const., art. II, § 15. The remaining question is whether Officer
Mercado had probable cause to do so. We hold that she did not.
In Arkansas, a law enforcement officer lawfully present in any place may seize any
person or vehicle if the officer has, under the totality of the circumstances, specific,
particularized, and articulable reasons indicating the person or vehicle may be involved in
criminal activity. See Cockrell, supra. Essentially, a seizure must be based on a reasonable
suspicion that the person has committed or is about to commit a crime. Rule 3.1 of the
Arkansas Rules of Criminal Procedure authorizes a police officer to stop and detain any
person who he or she reasonably suspects is committing, has committed, or is about to
commit (1) a felony or (2) a misdemeanor involving danger of forcible injury to persons or
property. Our supreme court has defined “reasonable suspicion” as suspicion that is based
on facts or circumstances which give rise to more than a bare, imaginary, or purely
conjectural suspicion. See Hammons, supra. Further, a police officer is justified in making a
traffic stop if he or she has probable cause to believe that the vehicle has violated a traffic
law. See Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806 (1996); Sims v. State, 356 Ark. 507, 157 S.W.3d
530 (2004); Mosley v. State, 2009 Ark. App. 799, 370 S.W.3d 273. Accordingly, before
Officer Mercado could stop Meeks using her blue lights, she needed to have reasonable
suspicion that he had committed a crime or probable cause to believe that he had committed
a traffic violation. Meeks notes that based upon Officer Mercado’s own testimony, she had
neither.
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Officer Mercado specifically testified that she did not see Meeks commit any traffic
violations or any criminal act before she activated her blue lights. The following colloquy
occurred during the cross-examination of Officer Mercado:
MR. NELSON: Before you turned the blue lights on did you see Mr. Meeks commit
any traffic violations?
OFFICER MERCADO: No, sir.
MR. NELSON: Did you see him commit any criminal acts?
OFFICER MERCADO: No, sir.
Officer Mercado testified honestly and truthfully that she did not see Meeks commit
any traffic violations or criminal acts. She testified that she was not “making a traffic stop”
at this time because she had not “observe[d] any infractions.” She explained that she “was
just pulling in to check on the vehicle and the occupants.” Based on that testimony,
combined with our de novo review of the dash-cam video of the stop, we hold that the
circuit court’s denial of Meeks’s motion to suppress was clearly erroneous. Officer Mercado
did not observe anything that would lead a reasonable person to suspect that either Meeks
or his passenger was committing any crime. The only information known about Meeks’s
passenger was that he was leaning out of a vehicle and vomiting. This act gives rise to a
suspicion only that the passenger was sick, the cause of which is irrelevant because, whether
due to a stomach virus, a gastrointestinal condition, eating too much, drinking alcohol, or
any combination of these things, none of these things is illegal in Arkansas. At this point,
there existed no fact that could give rise to reasonable suspicion or probable cause of any
crime or traffic violation in the mind of an objectively reasonable officer knowing what
Officer Mercado knew at the time.
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Officer Mercado testified that the only thing that changed between the time she first
pulled in and the time it took her to activate her blue lights was Meeks starting to drive
away. Based on our viewing of the dash-cam video, the other thing that changed was that
the passenger stopped throwing up, sat back up, and closed the vehicle door. Meeks’s vehicle
was not parked in a manner taking up several parking spots but was, instead, stopped in the
driving lane of the parking lot. It was clear that the brake lights were on, and the vehicle
was sitting stationary while the passenger was leaning out of his open door vomiting. It
appeared that the passenger door was open for only a few seconds. Though difficult to see,
it appeared that Officer Mercado’s spotlight was turned on and was pointed in the direction
of Meeks’s vehicle while the passenger was still vomiting, that a few seconds went by, the
passenger door closed, and the vehicle started to leave.
A review of the dash-cam video confirms that Meeks did not flee from or evade
Officer Mercado. He simply left after it was safe to do so, after his passenger was back inside
the vehicle with the door shut. Under these specific circumstances, we reverse the circuit
court’s conclusion that Meeks’s act of leaving amounted to an attempted flight or an evasive
procedure that somehow gave Officer Mercado reasonable suspicion to then activate her
blue lights and conduct a traffic stop on Meeks’s vehicle.
IV. Illegal Seizure by Conducting a Traffic Stop Not Authorized by the
Community-Caretaking Function or Emergency-Aid Exception
Because Officer Mercado’s stop of Meeks was not supported by Rule 3.1, we next
analyze whether the stop of Meeks was authorized by Officer Mercado’s community-
caretaking function or an emergency-aid exception. Under these particular circumstances,
we hold that these theories also do not support Officer Mercado’s stop.
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In Cady v. Dombrowski, the United States Supreme Court held that a search of the
trunk of a disabled vehicle without a warrant did not violate the Fourth and Fourteenth
Amendments, explaining that local police officers frequently “engage in what, for want of
a better term, may be described as community caretaking functions, totally divorced from
the detection, investigation, or acquisition of evidence relating to the violation of a criminal
statute.” 413 U.S. 433, 441 (1973). Courts from the Eighth Circuit and the State of Arkansas
have acknowledged that certain situations give rise to an officer’s community-caretaking
functions. For example, as part of the community-caretaking function, an officer is
authorized to respond to the scene of an accident and make contact with those present when
a vehicle is partly in the roadway. See United States v. Smith, 162 F.3d 1226 (8th Cir. 1998).
In addition, an officer is authorized to respond to the report of a stolen vehicle found
abandoned and constituting a hazard on a public highway and to perform an inventory
search pursuant to department policy. See Lipovich v. State, 265 Ark. 55, 576 S.W.2d 720
(1979). An officer is even authorized pursuant to the community-caretaking function to
have a vehicle towed and to perform an inventory search pursuant to department policy
after arresting a driver on outstanding warrants. See Colyer v. State, 9 Ark. App. 1, 652
S.W.2d 645 (1983).
This court recognized the existence of an officer’s “community caretaking function”
in Blakemore v. State, 25 Ark. App. 335, 758 S.W.2d 425 (1988). In Blakemore, a deputy
approached a vehicle with its motor running and lights on. The deputy observed that the
driver was “either asleep or passed out” in the front seat. Blakemore, 25 Ark. App. at 336–
37, 758 S.W.2d at 426. After the deputy repeatedly knocked on the window, the driver
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woke up, and the deputy smelled alcohol and observed appellant stumble when he got out
of his vehicle. Id. This court held that “[a]lthough he did not see any blood or physical
injuries, Deputy Rushing did not know if the appellant was ill, drunk, or merely asleep.
Given these circumstances we believe that Deputy Rushing, as part of his community
caretaking function, was justified in knocking on the appellant’s window to question him
and make an inquiry.” Id. at 340, 758 S.W.2d at 428–29.
More recently, in Szabo v. State, 2015 Ark. App. 512, 470 S.W.3d 696, this court
permitted an officer to detain a driver for further investigation pursuant to the community-
caretaking function. As in Blakemore, supra, an officer approached a vehicle and observed the
driver in the front seat, unconscious, with the motor running. After the driver failed to
respond to the officer knocking on his window, the officer continued his community-
caretaking function by opening the unlocked door.
In 2001, the Eighth Circuit also addressed an officer’s community-caretaking
functions. See Winters v. Adams, 254 F.3d 758 (8th Cir. 2001). In Winters, the police officers
responded to a report of an intoxicated person exiting and reentering a vehicle on a dead-
end street. See id. When the police officers arrived on scene, they made consensual contact
with an individual sitting in the driver’s seat of the only vehicle on the dead-end street. See
id. After some discussion between an officer and the driver, the driver raised the car window,
locked the door, and stated that he wished to be left alone. See id. Officers then observed
the occupant of the vehicle begin to sweat, to behave strangely and extremely hyper, to
move wildly about the car, to become highly agitated, and to yell at the police officers to
leave him alone. See id. The officers testified that they began to suspect that the suspect was
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under the influence of an illegal drug and was possibly overdosing. See id. The officers
therefore decided to make entry into the vehicle. See id. The Eighth Circuit found that the
police contact was justified because there had been enough observations by the police
officers to suspect that the suspect was intoxicated on some substance and was a danger to
himself and others. See id.
There are factors distinguishing Winters, Szabo, and Blakemore from the present case.
First, Officer Mercado was not responding to any type of report, let alone an intoxicated
person or a vehicle with a visibly impaired driver. Second, Meeks never said or did anything
to give Officer Mercado the impression that Meeks needed her help. The correct standard,
and what Officer Mercado must show to justify her actions based on an alleged medical
emergency, is that she had an objective basis for believing that someone in the vehicle was
in immediate need of medical assistance or was in imminent danger. See Mincey v. Arizona,
437 U.S. 385, 390 (1978); Miller v. State, 2010 Ark. 1, 362 S.W.3d 264.
A case from the Texas Court of Appeals, Andrews v. State, 79 S.W.3d 649 (Tx. Ct.
App. 2002), is instructive. In Andrews, a police officer saw a vehicle pull to the paved
shoulder of Interstate 45 at 1:00 a.m., and he saw a female lean out of a passenger door and
begin vomiting. Id. The officer pulled up behind the vehicle, at which time the passenger
shut her door and the vehicle began to pull away. See id. The officer then activated his blue
lights and stopped the vehicle. See id. In deciding whether the stop was justified by the
officer’s community-caretaking function, the court analyzed four factors: (1) the nature and
level of distress exhibited by the individual; (2) the location of the individual; (3) whether
or not the individual was alone and/or had access to assistance independent of the officer;
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and (4) to what extent the individual—if not assisted—presented a danger to himself or
others. See id. After pointing out that there was another individual on scene, the driver, who
was able to assist the individual vomiting and that nothing indicated that the passenger’s
condition was any more serious than an upset stomach, the Andrews court held that this stop
was not justified by a community-caretaking function. Id.
The present case is factually similar to Andrews. The vomiting passenger likewise
showed no signs of having anything more serious than an upset stomach. Nothing indicated
that Meeks could not provide whatever assistance the passenger needed, and neither Meeks
nor the passenger indicated a need or desire for assistance from Officer Mercado. See also
Wright v. State, 18 S.W.3d 245, 246 (Tx. Ct. App. 2000). The officers in Wright stopped a
vehicle out of concern for the welfare of the passenger after observing him leaning out of
the rear window and vomiting at 4:00 a.m. See id. The court held that the traffic stop was
an illegal seizure, noting that (1) the vomiting person was a passenger in a car that was being
driven in a lawful manner; (2) the passenger appeared to be having some gastric distress, but
that the driver appeared to be able to aid the passenger; (3) no one in the vehicle indicated
that they needed help from the officer; and (4) nothing indicated that the officer’s assistance
was necessary or would add to the comfort or welfare of the passenger. See id.
We contrast these facts with those in the recent Nebraska Court of Appeals case that
examined this issue and reached the opposite conclusion. In State v. Rohde, , 864 N.W.2d
704 (Neb. Ct. App. 2015), the court examined at length opinions from courts across the
country that both favor and oppose the ability of an officer to offer assistance in cases
involving a passenger, rather than the driver. Id. The court concluded that the community-
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caretaking function applies equally to drivers and passengers, and, based on factors such as
those listed in Andrews, it held that it was reasonable for the officer in that case to stop a car
where the officer observed a female passenger’s upper body was sticking out through the
moon roof of a moving vehicle waving her arms in order to determine if she may have been
trying to wave him down for assistance. For this reason, the officer activated his blue lights
and stopped the vehicle. See id. The Nebraska Court of Appeals upheld the stop based on
the officer’s community-caretaking function because the officer could have reasonably
concluded that the passenger was “attempting to flag him down to obtain his assistance.”
See id. In this case, Meeks and his passenger did just the opposite of the passenger in Rohde.
Meeks and his passenger did nothing to indicate that they wanted or needed Officer
Mercado’s assistance.
Although the police have the right to respond to emergency situations, the Fourth
Amendment bars police officers from engaging in a warrantless seizure based on an alleged
medical condition unless the police officer can show that it was objectively reasonable to
believe that a person was in need of immediate aid or was in imminent danger. See Mincey,
supra; Miller, supra. There must be an objectively reasonable basis for believing that medical
assistance was needed or persons were in danger. Miller, supra. In this case, there are no
facts to indicate that Meeks or his passenger was in imminent danger or that anyone in the
vehicle was in need of immediate aid. When viewed objectively, it is clear that it was
unreasonable for Officer Mercado to think that Meeks or his passenger was in imminent
need or danger of any of these things. Therefore, there was no emergency that authorized
Officer Mercado’s stop of Meeks under the facts of this case.
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We hold that the circuit court erred by denying Meeks’s motion to suppress because
Officer Mercado acted unreasonably and illegally seized Meeks in violation of the Fourth
Amendment to the United States Constitution and article 2, section 15, of the Arkansas
Constitution. When viewed objectively, there are no facts that could lead a reasonable
person to think that either Meeks or his passenger was in immediate need of medical
assistance or was in imminent danger. The circuit court should have granted the motion,
and all evidence obtained after this illegal seizure should have been suppressed. Accordingly,
we reverse and remand to the circuit court for further proceedings consistent with this
opinion.
Reversed and remanded.
GLOVER and VAUGHT, JJ., agree.
Norwood & Norwood, P.A., by: Jon Nelson and Doug Norwood, for appellant.
Leslie Rutledge, Att’y Gen., by: Brad Newman, Ass’t Att’y Gen., for appellee.
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