State v. Harling ( 2014 )

An unpublished opinion of the North Carolina Court of Appeals does not constitute
controlling legal authority. Citation is disfavored, but may be permitted in accordance
with the provisions of Rule 30(e)(3) of the North Carolina Rules of Appellate Procedure.
NO. COA13-575
NORTH CAROLINA COURT OF APPEALS
Filed: 1 April 2014
STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA
v. Mecklenburg County
No. 11 CRS 243001
BARBARA L. HARLING
Appeal by defendant from judgment entered 16 November 2012
by Judge Linwood O. Foust in Mecklenburg County Superior Court.
Heard in the Court of Appeals 19 November 2013.
Attorney General Roy Cooper, by Assistant Attorney General
Donald W. Laton, for the State.
Kimberly P. Hoppin for defendant-appellant.
BRYANT, Judge.
Where there was no violation of defendant’s rights against
unreasonable searches and seizures, the trial court did not err
in admitting into evidence cocaine seized from defendant’s
purse.
On 19 March 2012, a grand jury indicted defendant Barbara
Lee Harling on the charge of possession of a schedule II
controlled substance, cocaine. On 3 July 2012, defendant filed
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a motion to suppress all evidence “obtained as a result of the
illegal search and seizure of [] defendant.” The Honorable
Linwood O. Foust who presided over defendant’s trial commencing
14 November 2012, addressed defendant’s motion to suppress by
conducting a hearing just before the jury was empaneled.
At the suppression hearing, the State presented evidence
that shortly after midnight on 21 September 2011, Charlotte-
Mecklenburg Police Department patrol officer John Gorrod
initiated a traffic stop of defendant’s vehicle and arrested
defendant upon confirmation that she had outstanding warrants in
South Carolina. While watching a video of the stop recorded
from his patrol car, Officer Gorrod testified that following
defendant’s arrest, defendant requested that her personal
belongings from the vehicle be retrieved, specifically her purse
and cell phone. Defendant then made a second request to have
someone move her car from the roadside to an adjacent parking
lot. Inside the car, Officer Gorrod found a cell phone, a cloth
pouch, and a black leather handbag with a shoulder strap.
Defendant identified the cloth pouch as hers but the pouch was
empty. Upon searching the black leather handbag, Officer Gorrod
discovered a silver gum wrapper containing what he believed to
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be crack cocaine. The trial court denied defendant’s motion to
suppress the cocaine seized.
Defendant was tried before a jury which returned a guilty
verdict on the charge of felony possession of cocaine.
Defendant was sentenced to an active term of four to five
months. The trial court suspended this sentence and placed
defendant on supervised probation for a period of fourteen
months. Defendant appeals.
____________________________________
On appeal, defendant contends the trial court committed
plain error by denying her motion to suppress and admitting the
evidence obtained as a result of the warrantless search of her
purse. Defendant argues that after defendant identified the
cloth pouch as hers, any subsequent search was a violation of
defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights. We disagree.
Defendant acknowledges to this Court that despite making a
pre-trial motion to suppress evidence obtained as a result of a
warrantless search of a purse and obtaining a ruling denying her
motion, she failed to object to the admission of the evidence at
trial. See State v. Golphin, 352 N.C. 364, 405, 533 S.E.2d 168,
198 (2000) (“As a pretrial motion to suppress is a type of
motion in limine, [the defendant’s] pretrial motion to suppress
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is not sufficient to preserve for appeal the question of the
admissibility of his statement because he did not object at the
time the statement was offered into evidence.” (citation
omitted)). “Rulings on motions in limine are preliminary in
nature and subject to change at trial, depending on the evidence
offered, and thus an objection to an order granting or denying
the motion is insufficient to preserve for appeal the question
of the admissibility of the evidence.” State v. Tutt, 171 N.C.
App. 518, 520, 615 S.E.2d 688, 690 (2005) (citation and
quotations omitted). Accordingly, defendant requests that we
review the admission of evidence for plain error. See N.C. R.
App. P. 10(a)(4) (2013) (“In criminal cases, an issue that was
not preserved by objection noted at trial and that is not deemed
preserved by rule or law without any such action nevertheless
may be made the basis of an issue presented on appeal when the
judicial action questioned is specifically and distinctly
contended to amount to plain error.”).
[T]he plain error rule ... is always to
be applied cautiously and only in the
exceptional case where, after reviewing the
entire record, it can be said the claimed
error is a fundamental error, something so
basic, so prejudicial, so lacking in its
elements that justice cannot have been done,
or where [the error] is grave error which
amounts to a denial of a fundamental right
of the accused, or the error has resulted in
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a miscarriage of justice or in the denial to
appellant of a fair trial or where the error
is such as to seriously affect the fairness,
integrity or public reputation of judicial
proceedings or where it can be fairly said
the instructional mistake had a probable
impact on the jury’s finding that the
defendant was guilty.
State v. Lawrence, 365 N.C. 506, 516—17, 723 S.E.2d 326, 333
(2012) (citation and quotations omitted).
For error to constitute plain error, a
defendant must demonstrate that a
fundamental error occurred at trial. To show
that an error was fundamental, a defendant
must establish prejudice—that, after
examination of the entire record, the error
had a probable impact on the jury's finding
that the defendant was guilty. Moreover,
because plain error is to be applied
cautiously and only in the exceptional case,
the error will often be one that seriously
affect[s] the fairness, integrity or public
reputation of judicial proceedings[.]
Id. at 518, 723 S.E.2d at 334 (citations and quotations
omitted). Therefore, we review for plain error the court’s
admission into evidence the cocaine Officer Gorrod found in
defendant’s purse.
At the outset we note that defendant does not contest the
grounds for the traffic stop or the authority of the arresting
officer to seize her. Defendant’s argument is limited to the
search of a black leather handbag taken from her vehicle by a
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law enforcement officer following her request for her personal
belongings.
The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution
protects the right of the people to be secure in their persons
and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures. U.S.
Const. amend. IV.
Though the language in the North Carolina
Constitution (Article I, Sec. 20), providing
in substance that any search or seizure must
be “supported by evidence,” is markedly
different from that in the federal
constitution, there is no variance between
the search and seizure law of North Carolina
and the requirements of the Fourth Amendment
as interpreted by the Supreme Court of the
United States.
State v. Hendricks, 43 N.C. App. 245, 251—52, 258 S.E.2d 872,
877 (1979) (citing State v. Vestal, 278 N.C. 561, 577, 180
S.E.2d 755, 766 (1971)) (citation omitted). “The governing
premise of the Fourth Amendment is that a governmental search
and seizure of private property unaccompanied by prior judicial
approval in the form of a warrant is per se unreasonable unless
the search falls within a well-delineated exception to the
warrant requirement . . . .” State v. Cooke, 306 N.C. 132, 135,
291 S.E.2d 618, 620 (1982) (citations omitted).
Consent, however, has long been recognized
as a special situation excepted from the
warrant requirement, and a search is not
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unreasonable within the meaning of the
Fourth Amendment when lawful consent to the
search is given. For the warrantless,
consensual search to pass muster under the
Fourth Amendment, consent must be given and
the consent must be voluntary. Whether the
consent is voluntary is to be determined
from the totality of the circumstances.
State v. Smith, 346 N.C. 794, 798, 488 S.E.2d 210, 213 (1997)
(citations omitted).
At trial, Officer Gorrod testified before the jury that on
the night of 21 September 2011, he was working as a patrol
officer in the 150 block of Dalton Avenue in Charlotte when he
observed defendant’s vehicle and “ran the tag.” He then ran the
driver’s license associated with the tag, “and it came back that
she had two felony warrants from South Carolina.” The driver of
the vehicle, “a middle aged white female,” matched the
description provided in the warrants. Officer Gorrod initiated
a traffic stop and verified that the driver was the vehicle
owner and matched her identification with the person named in
the warrants. Officer Gorrod asked defendant to step out of her
car, placed her in handcuffs, and escorted her to his patrol
car.
Q. At that time did she say anything to
you or make any statements?
A. She said that she needed her belongings
and her cell phone out of the vehicle.
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And she did not want us to tow her
vehicle.
. . .
Q. At any point did you retrieve her
personal belongings from the car?
A. Yes. She asked me to grab her cell
phone and her belongings, including her
purse.
Q. When you did that, what did you do with
those things?
A. Brought them back and set it on the
hood of the vehicle, my patrol vehicle.
Q. Did the defendant tell you at any point
this was, in fact, her purse and her
belongings?
A. Yes, she did.
Q. And so what did you do with those
belongings?
A. I searched them and located the crack
cocaine in them.
Q. Officer Gorrod, if we could just
briefly back up, why did you search
these items?
A. Anything that goes to intake is my
responsibility once they're in my
custody. Anything on her person or
anything that's going inside the jail
cell that belongs to her I have to
search before it goes in there. If we
allow contraband -- drugs, guns,
knives, anything of that nature -- to
go inside, it would compromise the
facility.
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. . .
Q. Anything found on her person?
A. No, ma'am.
Q. Officer Gorrod, when you went through
her purse, were there any other items
in there?
A. There were.
. . .
Q. And the substance that you found in her
purse you referred to as crack cocaine
. . . how was that -- how did you find
that? What did it look like?
A. There was a balled-up gum wrapper,
silver gum wrapper. When I felt it, I
felt something hard inside. And I know
that drugs have been packaged and
concealed in gum wrappers, dollar
bills, pieces of paper, things of that
nature to conceal from officers. So I
opened the gum wrapper, and a white
plastic baggie was inside. It was tied
in a knot. The knot was consistent with
drug packaging, also.
. . .
Q. . . . Officer Gorrod, at any time that
night, did the defendant tell you that
that was not her purse?
A. No, ma'am.
Q. And did she make any other statements
to you that night?
A. She did confirm that it was, in fact,
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her purse on more than one occasion.
She also asked did we need a search
warrant to search her purse.
Q. And what did you say to that?
A. I told her that since she was going to
intake, all of her property that was
going with her -- I had to search
everything before it went into my
vehicle and then into the intake
facility.
As defendant was under arrest and being held in the
officer’s patrol car before she was to be transported away from
her vehicle, defendant’s request asking that the officer
retrieve her purse and other belongings before they left the
scene was voluntary. As such, and under the totality of the
circumstances present here, the officer’s intrusion into
defendant’s vehicle was excepted from the warrant requirement by
defendant’s consent, the search of her car being based upon her
request. See Smith, 346 N.C. at 798, 488 S.E.2d at 213 (“For
the warrantless, consensual search to pass muster under the
Fourth Amendment, consent must be given and the consent must be
voluntary.”). Furthermore, the law enforcement officer’s search
of defendant’s purse prior to transporting her to police booking
was also in accordance with parameters of Fourth Amendment
jurisprudence. See State v. Nesmith, 40 N.C. App. 748, 751, 253
S.E.2d 594, 596 (1979) (“The search and inspection of the
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contents of the wallet at the police station was valid as
incident to the lawful arrest. Where there is a lawful custodial
arrest, a full search of the person [and his personal effects]
is not only an exception to the warrant requirement of the
Fourth Amendment, but it is also a reasonable search under that
Amendment.” (citing United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218(1973))). Accordingly, we find no error in the trial court’s
admission of the cocaine found in defendant’s purse.
No error.
Judges McGEE and STROUD concur.
Report per Rule 30(e).