Shannon C. Blankenship v. State of Indiana (mem. dec.)

MEMORANDUM DECISION
FILED
Pursuant to Ind. Appellate Rule 65(D),
Jul 25 2016, 8:45 am
this Memorandum Decision shall not be
regarded as precedent or cited before any CLERK
Indiana Supreme Court
court except for the purpose of establishing Court of Appeals
and Tax Court
the defense of res judicata, collateral
estoppel, or the law of the case.
ATTORNEY FOR APPELLANT ATTORNEYS FOR APPELLEE
Brandon E. Murphy Gregory F. Zoeller
Public Defender’s Office Attorney General of Indiana
Muncie, Indiana
Tyler G. Banks
Deputy Attorney General
Indianapolis, Indiana
IN THE
COURT OF APPEALS OF INDIANA
Shannon C. Blankenship, July 25, 2016
Appellant-Defendant, Court of Appeals Case No.
18A02-1601-CR-196
v. Appeal from the Delaware Circuit
Court
State of Indiana, The Honorable Thomas A.
Appellee-Plaintiff. Cannon, Jr., Judge
Trial Court Cause No.
18C05-1203-FD-34
Robb, Judge.
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Case Summary and Issue
[1] Following a bench trial, Shannon Blankenship was found guilty of operating a
vehicle while privileges are suspended as an habitual traffic violator (“operating
while HTV”), a Class D felony. Blankenship appeals his conviction, raising the
sole issue of whether the trial court abused its discretion in admitting evidence
he alleges was obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Concluding the
traffic stop did not violate the Fourth Amendment and therefore the trial court
did not abuse its discretion in admitting the evidence, we affirm.
Facts and Procedural History
[2] As part of an investigation he conducted in September 2011, Corporal Tony
Skinner of the Delaware County Sheriff’s Department learned that
Blankenship’s driver’s license was suspended due to Blankenship’s status as an
habitual traffic violator. On February 20, 2012, Corporal Skinner saw
Blankenship get into his car and drive away. Having reason to believe from his
earlier investigation that Blankenship was driving on a suspended license,
Corporal Skinner initiated a traffic stop. Blankenship, the sole occupant of the
car, did not provide a driver’s license, but did provide his name and date of
birth. A police dispatcher confirmed that Blankenship’s license was suspended.
[3] The State charged Blankenship with operating a vehicle while HTV. A week
before his scheduled bench trial, Blankenship filed a motion to suppress
evidence from the traffic stop, alleging the stop was premised on information
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that was insufficient to establish reasonable suspicion. Because Corporal
Skinner was the State’s lone witness, the trial court heard evidence on the date
set for bench trial for the dual purposes of ruling on the motion to suppress and,
if the motion was ultimately denied, determining Blankenship’s guilt. Corporal
Skinner testified he conducted the traffic stop because he “knew that
[Blankenship] was driving on [a] suspended license, an HTV status license.”
Transcript at 10. The trial court denied Blankenship’s motion to suppress:
[I]t would be a little bit easier if the officer had simply said,
“When I saw Mr. Blankenship come out of his house, I did
another quick license check and it was still HTV.” But, that
doesn’t really go to the crucks [sic] of the matter here and that is,
did he have reasonable suspicion based upon his prior
investigation to make the investigatory stop . . . . And, in this
case, I believe that the evidence would support that he did, that
five months is not a sufficiently long period of time to make the
information that an individual has a suspended license stale.
Even if it did, the evidence in this case would support that the
stop was only for the appropriate period of time to obtain driver’s
license information or to call . . . the name and identifying
information in to get a report which the officer testified that he
did which then gave him the probable cause to then place the
defendant under arrest. So, I think the officer’s actions in this
case were based on reasonable suspicion from a totality of the
circumstances . . . .
Id. at 27-28. The trial court then found Blankenship guilty of operating a
vehicle while HTV and sentenced him to serve three years on electronic home
detention through a direct commitment to community corrections.
Blankenship now appeals his conviction.
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Discussion and Decision
I. Standard of Review
[4] Our standard of reviewing rulings on the admissibility of evidence is the same
whether the challenge is made by a pre-trial motion to suppress or by objection
at trial: we must determine whether there is substantial evidence of probative
value to support the ruling. Woodson v. State, 960 N.E.2d 224, 226 (Ind. Ct.
App. 2012). In doing so, we do not reweigh evidence and we construe
conflicting evidence most favorably to the ruling and uncontested evidence
most favorably to the defendant. Id.
II. Validity of Stop
[5] The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution affords individuals
protection from “unreasonable searches and seizures.” 1 The Fourth
Amendment’s protections extend to brief investigatory stops of persons or
vehicles that fall short of traditional arrest. Id. at 227 (citing United States v.
Arvizu, 534 U.S. 266, 273 (2002)). However, a lower standard than probable
cause is sufficient to justify an investigatory stop: reasonable suspicion that
criminal activity may be afoot. Id. Reasonable suspicion requires there be
1
The Indiana Constitution extends similar protections. Ind. Const. art. 1, § 11. Notwithstanding the
similarities, Section 11 of the Indiana Constitution is interpreted independently from the Fourth
Amendment. Robinson v. State, 5 N.E.3d 362, 368 (Ind. 2014). Blankenship’s motion to suppress raised the
question of whether the stop violated the Indiana Constitution but his appeal does not. Any claim of error
under the Indiana Constitution is therefore forfeited. See Wertz v. State, 41 N.E.3d 276, 278 n.1 (Ind. Ct. App.
2015), trans. denied.
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“some objective manifestation that the person stopped is, or is about to be,
engaged in criminal activity.” Id. (quoting United States v. Cortez, 449 U.S. 411,
417 (1981)). When we review an investigatory stop for reasonable suspicion,
we look at the totality of the circumstances in the particular case to see whether
the officer has a “particularized and objective basis for suspecting legal
wrongdoing.” Id. (quoting Arvizu, 534 U.S. at 273) (internal quotation marks
omitted). We review trial court determinations of reasonable suspicion de
novo. State v. Bulington, 802 N.E.2d 435, 438 (Ind. 2004).
[6] Blankenship relies primarily on Armfield v. State, 918 N.E.2d 316 (Ind. 2009), to
support his argument that Corporal Skinner’s knowledge of Blankenship’s
license status five months prior to the stop was insufficient to support
reasonable suspicion that he was engaged in criminal activity by driving his
vehicle at the time of the stop.2 In Armfield, an officer on patrol ran a routine
license plate check on a 1992 GMC that indicated the driving privileges of the
registered owner of the vehicle, Thomas Armfield, had been suspended for life.
The officer verified the license plate, make, model, and color of the GMC
matched the results from the check but was unable to verify anything about the
identity of the driver as he passed the vehicle. The officer initiated a traffic stop
to identify the driver. The driver had no physical form of identification but
affirmed his name was Thomas Armfield and gave his date of birth. Armfield
2
The State agrees the Armfield analysis is the appropriate test. See State’s Brief of Appellee at 7-8.
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was charged with operating a motor vehicle after forfeiture of license for life, a
Class C felony. Armfield’s pre-trial motion to suppress was denied by the trial
court, and his in-court objection to the officer’s testimony was overruled. A
jury found him guilty as charged.
[7] Our supreme court considered the question of “whether a police officer’s
knowledge that the registered owner of a vehicle has a suspended license
constitutes reasonable suspicion to initiate an investigatory traffic stop.” Id. at
318. After considering the divergent line of Court of Appeals cases on this issue
and how state courts in other jurisdictions have addressed it, the court held “an
officer has reasonable suspicion to initiate a Terry stop when (1) the officer
knows that the registered owner of a vehicle has a suspended license and (2) the
officer is unaware of any evidence or circumstances which indicate that the
owner is not the driver of the vehicle.” Id. at 321-22. Based on the
circumstances of the stop, the court held the investigatory stop of Armfield’s
vehicle was proper because the officer had knowledge that Armfield was the
registered owner of the vehicle and that Armfield had a lifetime license
suspension and he was unaware of any evidence or circumstances indicating
Armfield was not the driver of the vehicle at the time of the stop. Id. at 322; see
also Holly v. State, 918 N.E.2d 323, 325-26 (Ind. 2009) (applying Armfield
framework to hold officer had reasonable suspicion to initiate a Terry stop when
a routine license plate check indicated the registered owner of the vehicle
traveling in front of him had a suspended license; however, the check also
returned information that the registered owner of the vehicle was a female and
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when the officer observed upon stopping the car that the driver was a male, he
had no justification for extending the stop by requesting identifying information
from the driver); Johnson v. State, 21 N.E.3d 841, 846 (Ind. Ct. App. 2014)
(holding police officer lacked reasonable suspicion to request identification from
driver of vehicle registered to a suspended driver after passenger in the car
advised she was the registered owner and officer had no reason to disbelieve
her), trans. denied.
[8] Armfield and cases following it turned on the second prong of the Armfield
framework—whether there were circumstances indicating the driver of a vehicle
was not the person whom police knew had a suspended license. Here, there
seems to be no dispute that Corporal Skinner knew Blankenship was the driver
of the vehicle, as Blankenship was personally known to him and he witnessed
Blankenship enter the car and drive away as the sole occupant. Rather, this
case concerns an issue with respect to the first prong, which Blankenship states
as “whether a police officer is required to verify that the driver of the vehicle is
suspended before there is reasonable suspicion to initiate a Terry stop.”
Defendant-Appellant’s Brief at 9. He parses the language in Armfield very
specifically and contends Corporal Skinner did not “know” when he initiated
the stop Blankenship had a suspended license, he “only knew that [Blankenship]
once had a suspended license.” Id. at 10.
[9] We acknowledge Blankenship’s concern that a law enforcement officer not be
allowed to stop a vehicle based on his prior knowledge of any type of
suspension, no matter how dated. And we agree with the trial court that it
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would have been a simple matter for Corporal Skinner to confirm that
Blankenship still had a suspended license prior to initiating the traffic stop.
Regardless, we cannot agree with Blankenship that under the facts of this case
he was required to do so. “[R]easonable suspicion . . . is dependent upon both
the content of information possessed by police and its degree of reliability.”
Washburn v. State, 868 N.E.2d 594, 601 (Ind. Ct. App. 2007), trans. denied. Both
the quantity and quality of the information—including its purported staleness—
are to be assessed in evaluating whether reasonable suspicion exists based on
the totality of the circumstances. Id. “[S]ufficient probability, not certainty, is
the touchstone of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment . . . .” Hill v.
California, 401 U.S. 797, 804 (1971).
[10] Corporal Skinner knew from an investigation just a few months prior that
Blankenship had a suspended license. Presumably, he also learned at that time
that Blankenship’s license was suspended effective November 2010 for a period
of ten years. See State’s Exhibit 1 (certified copy of Blankenship’s driving
record from the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles). The stop occurred only a
little over a year into that suspension. It is true that in the five months since
Corporal Skinner first learned of Blankenship’s license suspension, various
things could have happened to affect that status, but no evidence or
circumstances exist that would indicate Corporal Skinner had reason to believe
that had happened. Accordingly, Corporal Skinner had reasonable suspicion to
initiate an investigatory stop and the trial court did not abuse its discretion in
admitting evidence from the stop. If Corporal Skinner’s information had
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indeed been wrong due to events in the intervening five months, Blankenship
would have been on his way within a matter of minutes.
Conclusion
[11] Under the totality of these circumstances, Corporal Skinner had reasonable
suspicion that Blankenship was operating a car with a suspended license and
was therefore justified in initiating a brief traffic stop. The trial court did not
abuse its discretion in allowing evidence obtained as a result of the stop.
Blankenship’s conviction is affirmed.
[12] Affirmed.
Najam, J., and Crone, J., concur.
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