Reginald Spinks v. State of Indiana ( 2013 )

Pursuant to Ind.Appellate Rule 65(D), FILED
this Memorandum Decision shall not be Feb 12 2013, 8:51 am
regarded as precedent or cited before any
court except for the purpose of CLERK
establishing the defense of res judicata, of the supreme court,
court of appeals and
tax court
collateral estoppel, or the law of the case.
ATTORNEY FOR APPELLANT: ATTORNEYS FOR APPELLEE:
SUZY ST. JOHN GREGORY F. ZOELLER
Marion County Public Defender Attorney General of Indiana
Indianapolis, Indiana
MONIKA PREKOPA TALBOT
Deputy Attorney General
Indianapolis, Indiana
IN THE
COURT OF APPEALS OF INDIANA
REGINALD SPINKS, )
)
Appellant-Defendant, )
)
vs. ) No. 49A04-1206-CR-314
)
STATE OF INDIANA, )
)
Appellee-Plaintiff. )
APPEAL FROM THE MARION SUPERIOR COURT
The Honorable Linda Brown, Judge
Cause No. 49F10-1107-CM-50556
February 12, 2013
MEMORANDUM DECISION - NOT FOR PUBLICATION
FRIEDLANDER, Judge
Reginald Spinks appeals his conviction of Carrying a Handgun Without a License1 as
a Class A misdismeanor. Spinks raises the following restated issues for our review:
1. Did the trial court abuse its discretion in admitting evidence discovered
during the traffic stop for a seat belt violation?
2. Did the trial court err by denying a motion for mistrial?
We affirm.
On July 16, 2011, during Black Expo weekend, Reginald Spinks, a Louisville,
Kentucky resident, drove to Indianapolis for the event. Indianapolis Metropolitan Police
Department Officer Bradley Gosnell was patrolling downtown Indianapolis in his fully
marked patrol car on that date. When he observed Spinks’s 1972 green Buick Skylark he
noticed that Spinks was not wearing a seatbelt and initiated a traffic stop. Officer Gosnell
asked Spinks for his driver’s license and vehicle registration. After Spinks handed Officer
Gosnell his driver’s license, he reached toward his glove compartment to retrieve his
registration information. When Spinks opened the glove compartment, Officer Gosnell noted
a green box inside the glove compartment, which through Officer Gosnell’s training and
experience he knew to be similar to boxes in which new handguns are sold.
Officer Gosnell asked Spinks whether there was a weapon in the car, and Spinks
responded that there was. When asked if he had a handgun license, Spinks replied that he did
not. Officer Gosnell then took Spinks’s license, registration, and gun to his cruiser and
determined that Spinks did not have an Indiana gun permit. The gun was a Smith and
1
Ind. Code Ann. § 35-47-2-1 (West, Westlaw current through 2012 2nd Reg. Sess.).
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Wesson, black, nine millimeter semi-automatic handgun that was loaded with five live
rounds in the magazine, but none in the chamber.
Spinks told Officer Gosnell that he was in the process of obtaining a firearms permit
in Kentucky. He had passed the course and received a signed certificate of completion on
July 10, 2011. While Spinks had applied for a license to carry a concealed deadly weapon in
Kentucky, he had not received it at the time of the offense in Indiana, but subsequently
received a license from the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Spinks told Officer Gosnell that
his understanding of Kentucky law was that he was allowed to transport a gun, loaded or
unloaded, in a car as long as it was in a box in the glove compartment. He further stated that
he believed that Indiana and Kentucky recognized each other’s gun laws. After this
conversation, Officer Gosnell placed Spinks in handcuffs.
The State charged Spinks with class A misdemeanor carrying a handgun without a
license. On the day of his jury trial, Spinks moved to suppress the handgun, but that motion
was denied at the conclusion of an evidentiary hearing on the matter. At the conclusion of
the trial, the jury found Spinks guilty as charged. The trial court discharged the jury and then
notified counsel that a letter had been tendered by four of the jurors along with the verdict.
The letter read as follows:
Honorable Judge Brown,
We believe that Mr. Reginald Spinks violated the law as it is written.
However, we believe the violation was not intentional and without malice. We
urge the court to be as lenient as possible in determining Mr. Spinks’ sentence.
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Appellant’s Appendix at 122. Spinks moved for a mistrial, which was denied by the trial
court. In ruling on the motion the trial court indicated that it interpreted the letter from the
jury as a request for leniency at sentencing. The trial court sentenced Spinks to 365 days in
jail with 361 days suspended with four days of credit. Spinks now appeals.
1.
Spinks argues that the trial court erred by admitting the handgun in evidence at trial.
In particular, Spinks argues that Officer Gosnell’s inquiry about the presence of weapons was
inappropriate under Indiana’s Seatbelt Enforcement Act. 2 Spinks also claims that admission
of the handgun was an abuse of discretion because it was discovered in an unreasonable
manner under the article 1, section 11 of the Indiana Constitution.
The decision to admit or exclude evidence lies within the trial court’s sound
discretion. Filice v. State, 886 N.E.2d 24 (Ind. Ct. App. 2008), trans. denied. An abuse of
discretion occurs when the trial court’s decision is against the logic and effect of the facts
and circumstances before it. Dixon v. State, 967 N.E.2d 1090 (Ind. Ct. App. 2012). We will
not reverse a trial court’s ruling on the admissibility of evidence absent a showing of
manifest abuse of discretion resulting in the denial of a fair trial. Johnson v. State, 831
N.E.2d 163 (Ind. Ct. App. 2005), trans. denied. In making this determination, the court on
review will consider the evidence in favor of the trial court’s ruling and unrefuted evidence
in a defendant’s favor. Sallee v. State, 777 N.E.2d 1204 (Ind. Ct. App. 2002).
I.C. § 9-19-10-3.1(a) provides in pertinent part as follows:
2
Ind. Code Ann. § 9-19-10-3.1 (West, Westlaw current through 2012 2nd Reg. Sess.).
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a vehicle may be stopped to determine compliance . . . but a vehicle, the
contents of a vehicle, the driver of a vehicle, or a passenger in a vehicle may
not be inspected, searched, or detained solely because of a violation of this
chapter.
See also Baldwin v. Reagan, 715 N.E.2d 332 (Ind. 1999) (police may initiate a traffic stop
based on noncompliance with seatbelt requirements). Although police officers are not
permitted to fish for evidence of other crimes while conducting a stop to determine seat belt
compliance, officers are not impeded from investigating beyond that necessary to determine
compliance if the circumstances warrant such activity. Baldwin v. Reagan, 715 N.E.2d 332.
“[A] brief police detention of an individual during investigation is reasonable if the officer
reasonably suspects that the individual is engaged in, or about to engage in, illegal activity.”
Id. at 337. An officer’s suspicion is reasonable if the facts known to the officer coupled with
the reasonable inferences arising from those facts would cause an ordinarily prudent person
to believe that criminal activity has or is about to occur. Baldwin v. Reagan, 715 N.E.2d 332.
The burden is on the State, however, to show that the intrusion was reasonable under the
totality of the circumstances. State v. Richardson, 927 N.E.2d 379 (Ind. 2010).
Here, Officer Gosnell testified that he initiated the stop based upon his observation
that Spinks was not wearing a seatbelt. Spinks argues that the officer’s question about the
presence of weapons in the vehicle, however, was unreasonable under the totality of the
circumstances given Spinks’s cooperative behavior after the initial stop. Indeed, Officer
Gosnell testified that he was not concerned for his safety and that he believed that Spinks was
merely reaching for his registration and not the green box in the glove compartment. Spinks
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contends that based upon this testimony the State did not meet its burden of establishing that
the intrusion was reasonable under the totality of the circumstances. We disagree.
Officer Gosnell was patrolling the bar district of downtown Indianapolis as part of an
Event Response Group for the Indiana Black Expo Summer Celebration. After making the
initial stop for the suspected seatbelt compliance violation, Officer Gosnell observed a green
box when Spinks attempted to retrieve his registration information. In the officer’s training
and experience, green boxes such as this one were used in the sale of new handguns.
Although Spinks was cooperative in doing so, he responded that there was a weapon in his
car and that he did not have a handgun license. From these facts and the inferences from
those facts, it was reasonable to suspect that criminal activity had already or was about to
occur. We believe that the State met its burden of establishing that the intrusion was
reasonable under the totality of the circumstances under the Indiana Seatbelt Enforcement
Act. The trial court’s admission of the handgun in evidence did not constitute an abuse of
discretion.
We now turn to Spinks’s argument brought under article 1, section 11 of the Indiana
Constitution. That section reads as follows:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and
effects, against unreasonable search or seizure, shall not be violated; and no
warrant shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation,
and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the person or thing to
be seized.
Under the Indiana Constitution, the legality of a governmental search turns on an evaluation
of the reasonableness of the police conduct under the totality of the circumstances. Litchfield
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v. State, 824 N.E.2d 356 (Ind. 2005). Evaluation of the totality of the circumstances requires
consideration of both the degree of intrusion into the subject’s ordinary activities and the
basis upon which the officer selected the subject of the search or seizure. Id. Although there
may be other relevant considerations which are unique due to differing circumstances, in
general, the reasonableness of a search or seizure turns on a balance of: 1) the degree of
concern, suspicion, or knowledge that a violation has occurred, 2) the degree of intrusion the
method of the search or seizure imposes on the citizen’s ordinary activities, and 3) the extent
of law enforcement needs. Id.
Turning to the case at hand, the search was reasonable under the Indiana Constitution.
There was a significant degree of concern, suspicion, or knowledge that a violation had
occurred because Officer Gosnell saw a green box, which through his training and
experience, he believed contained a gun in Spinks’s glove compartment. The degree of
intrusion on Spinks’s activities was minimal because Spinks was already stopped for a check
to see if he was in compliance with Indiana’s Seatbelt Enforcement Act. The officer had
asked for Spinks’s driver’s license and registration in order to determine if everything was in
order. The determination of whether Spinks had a valid license to carry the handgun
occurred during the same time. The extent of law enforcement needs was high given the
admission that Spinks was in possession of a weapon, at a large event in downtown
Indianapolis where the risk of harm to others was great. The trial court did not abuse its
discretion in admitting the handgun in evidence under Indiana constitutional considerations.
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2.
Spinks also challenges the trial court’s denial of his motion for a mistrial based upon
the letter signed by four of the six jurors, which was tendered to the trial court along with the
jury’s guilty verdict. The standard of review with respect to this issue is well settled and is as
follows:
Whether to grant or deny a motion for a mistrial is a decision left to the sound
discretion of the trial court, as that court is in the best position to assess the
circumstances of an error and its probable impact upon the jury. On appeal, we
will reverse only upon an abuse of that discretion. To prevail on appeal from
the denial of a motion for a mistrial, the appellant must demonstrate the
statement or conduct in question was so prejudicial and inflammatory that he
was placed in a position of grave peril to which he should not have been
subjected. The gravity of the peril is assessed by the probable persuasive
effect of the misconduct upon the jury’s decision rather than upon the degree
of impropriety of the conduct. “A mistrial is an extreme remedy that is
warranted only when less severe remedies will not satisfactorily correct the
error.”
Stokes v. State, 922 N.E.2d 758, 762-63 (Ind. Ct. App. 2010) (quoting Warren v. State, 725
N.E.2d 828, 833 (Ind. 2000)), trans. denied.
After the jury was discharged, the trial court informed the parties of the note tendered
by four of the six jurors. Spinks moved for a mistrial and the trial court denied the motion.
The trial judge explained that she interpreted the letter as stating that the jury found Spinks
guilty as charged, but asked the trial court for leniency in sentencing.
We agree with the trial court’s interpretation of the jurors’ letter. I. C. Ann. § 35-47-
2-1 (West, Westlaw current through 2012 2nd Reg. Sess.) provides that a “person shall not
carry a handgun in any vehicle or on or about the person’s body without being licensed under
this chapter to carry a handgun.” The evidence adduced at trial established that Spinks
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possessed a handgun in his vehicle and did not have a license to carry the handgun.
Although the statute does not specify a mens rea for the offense, the State charged Spinks
with knowingly or intentionally carrying a handgun without a license. The evidence is
unrefuted that Spinks knew he had a handgun in his vehicle and that he did not possess a
license to carry that handgun. Both the jury’s verdict and the jurors’s letter indicate the belief
that the State had proven that Spinks committed the offense.
Furthermore, the record reveals that the trial court honored the jurors’ request. Spinks
was sentenced to 365 days with 361 days suspended and four days of credit. Spinks has not
established that he was placed in a position of grave peril to which he should not have been
subjected. In sum, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying the motion for
mistrial.
Judgment affirmed.
NAJAM, J., and BRADFORD, J., concur.
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