State of Minnesota v. Larry Dusaun Gray

This opinion will be unpublished and
may not be cited except as provided by
Minn. Stat. § 480A.08, subd. 3 (2014).
STATE OF MINNESOTA
IN COURT OF APPEALS
A14-1531
State of Minnesota,
Respondent,
vs.
Larry Dusaun Gray,
Appellant.
Filed July 6, 2015
Affirmed
Larkin, Judge
Ramsey County District Court
File No. 62-CR-13-1152
Lori Swanson, Attorney General, St. Paul, Minnesota; and
John J. Choi, Ramsey County Attorney, Peter R. Marker, Assistant County Attorney,
St. Paul, Minnesota (for respondent)
Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Steven P. Russett, Assistant
Public Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)
Considered and decided by Larkin, Presiding Judge; Schellhas, Judge; and Reyes,
Judge.
UNPUBLISHED OPINION
LARKIN, Judge
Appellant challenges his conviction of third-degree controlled substance crime,
arguing that the district court erred by denying his motion to suppress cocaine that was
discovered during a pat-frisk and subsequently seized during a search incident to arrest.
Because the pat-frisk was reasonable at its inception and in its scope, and because the
search incident to arrest was valid and reasonably executed, we affirm.
FACTS
On August 16, 2012, Sergeant James LaBarre and Officer Cort Baumgart were on
patrol in St. Paul in an unmarked vehicle. Sergeant LaBarre and Officer Baumgart have
extensive experience investigating street-level drug sales. Sergeant LaBarre has
participated in over 100 drug buys. As a result of his training and experience, Sergeant
LaBarre knows about the drug trade, how drug deals are arranged, where dealers meet to
sell drugs, and where drugs are hidden to avoid detection.
A confidential reliable informant (CRI) had told Officer Baumgart that a man
named “Larry” would be driving a silver Dodge Charger with out-of-state license plates
and selling “a large amount of cocaine” in St. Paul that day. At approximately 6:00 p.m.,
Sergeant LaBarre and Officer Baumgart saw a silver Dodge Charger with Ohio license
plates near Fuller Avenue between Chatsworth and Victoria streets. They stopped the
vehicle. Appellant Larry Gray was the driver, and Lewis Sanders was the passenger.
The officers smelled marijuana coming from the vehicle. Gray denied having drugs in
the vehicle and invited the officers to search the vehicle. During the search, the officers
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found a digital scale and sandwich bags, which, based on the officers’ experiences, were
consistent with drug use and sales. Because neither Gray nor Sanders had a valid driver’s
license, the officers instructed them to leave the vehicle parked and to find another driver.
Approximately 20 minutes later, Sergeant LaBarre and Officer Baumgart were
patrolling the Midway Shopping Center area near the intersection of University and
Snelling avenues. The officers commonly patrolled that area because buyers and sellers
of narcotics frequently met there for exchanges. They saw the silver Dodge Charger
parked in a parking lot. Several people were inside the vehicle. Sanders was in the
driver’s seat. After several minutes, the group of people got out of the vehicle and
walked toward a nearby grocery store. The officers lost sight of them. Approximately 15
minutes later, a white SUV approached the Charger. Sanders exited the SUV, entered the
Charger, and drove out of the parking lot.
Sergeant LaBarre and Officer Baumgart stopped the Charger because Sanders did
not have a valid driver’s license. Sanders pulled over in a gas station on Snelling
Avenue, south of Interstate 94. During the stop, the white SUV pulled into the gas
station. Gray was inside the SUV. Sergeant LaBarre told Gray that if he saw Gray or
Sanders driving the Charger again, the vehicle would be towed.
Approximately two hours after their initial encounter with Gray and Sanders,
Sergeant LaBarre and Officer Baumgart stopped in the parking lot of a gas station near
the intersection of Snelling and Minnehaha avenues. They saw the silver Dodge Charger
parked alongside a gas pump. Gray was standing outside the vehicle with another person.
Gray was holding his hand out, with his palm facing up. Both men were looking down at
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Gray’s hand. Gray appeared to recognize the officers, mouthed something to the other
person, and moved his left hand to his left hip or backside.
Officer Baumgart believed that they had interrupted a drug deal. Sergeant
LaBarre approached Gray and ordered him to place his hands on his head for a pat-frisk.
Gray complied. The officers radioed for backup because they were concerned for their
safety. Sergeant LaBarre pat frisked the area where Gray had moved his left hand. He
felt what he described as a hard, pointy object that he immediately thought was a hard
piece of crack cocaine. The object was protruding from Gray’s buttocks. At that point,
Sergeant LaBarre placed handcuffs on Gray and turned him over to Officer Baumgart.
Officer Baumgart believed that even though Gray was handcuffed, he may have
been able to reach the object that was protruding from his buttocks. Officer Baumgart
put on a latex glove and reached into Gray’s pants to remove the object, which he
described as a “pointed, hard object” packaged in a “clear plastic baggie.” Officer
Baumgart did not have to pull down or remove Gray’s pants because they sat low on
Gray’s waist and were baggie enough to allow access. Gray attempted to make the
removal more difficult by tensing up, but Officer Baumgart successfully removed the
object. Gray immediately stated, “That’s not mine.” The object was later tested and
determined to be cocaine.
Respondent State of Minnesota charged Gray with third-degree possession of a
controlled substance. Gray moved to suppress the cocaine, arguing that he was “illegally
seized and subjected to a pat-down search” and that the officers violated his Fourth
Amendment rights when they conducted a “field strip search.” The district court denied
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Gray’s motion. Gray resolved his case in a Lothenbach proceeding, preserving the
suppression issues for appeal.1 The district court found Gray guilty of third-degree
possession and sentenced him to serve 45 months in prison. This appeal follows.
DECISION
“When reviewing pretrial orders on motions to suppress evidence, [appellate
courts] may independently review the facts and determine, as a matter of law, whether the
district court erred in suppressing—or not suppressing—the evidence.” State v. Harris,
590 N.W.2d 90, 98 (Minn. 1999). We review the district court’s findings of fact under a
clearly erroneous standard, but legal determinations are reviewed de novo. State v.
Bourke, 718 N.W.2d 922, 927 (Minn. 2006).
I.
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article I of the
Minnesota Constitution prohibit the unreasonable search and seizure of “persons, houses,
papers, and effects.” U.S. Const. amend. IV; Minn. Const. art. I, § 10. Warrantless
searches are per se unreasonable, subject to limited exceptions. State v. Othoudt, 482
N.W.2d 218, 222 (Minn. 1992) (citing Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 357, 88 S. Ct.
507, 514 (1967)). One such exception was recognized in Terry v. Ohio, which set forth
the circumstances in which police may constitutionally “stop and frisk” suspicious
1
A “Lothenbach proceeding” is a proceeding in which a defendant submits to a court
trial on stipulated facts without waiving the right to appeal pretrial issues. See State v.
Lothenbach, 296 N.W.2d 854, 857-58 (Minn. 1980) (approving this procedure). “Minn.
R. Crim. P. 26.01, subd. 4, effective April 1, 2007, implements and supersedes the
procedure authorized by [Lothenbach].” State v. Antrim, 764 N.W.2d 67, 69 (Minn. App.
2009).
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persons without a warrant. 392 U.S. 1, 10, 88 S. Ct. 1868, 1874 (1968). Under Terry,
police may “stop and frisk a person when (1) they have a reasonable, articulable
suspicion that a suspect might be engaged in criminal activity and (2) the officer
reasonably believes the suspect might be armed and dangerous.” State v. Dickerson, 481
N.W.2d 840, 843 (Minn. 1992), aff’d, 508 U.S. 366, 113 S. Ct. 2130 (1993).
“The officer need not be absolutely certain that the individual is armed; the issue is
whether a reasonably prudent man in the circumstances would be warranted in the belief
that his safety or that of others was in danger.” Terry, 392 U.S. at 27, 88 S. Ct. at 1883.
“The purpose of this limited search is not to discover evidence of crime, but to allow the
officer to pursue his investigation without fear of violence.” Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S.
143, 146, 92 S. Ct. 1921, 1923 (1972). When determining whether an officer reasonably
conducted a pat-frisk, “due weight must be given . . . to the specific reasonable inferences
which he is entitled to draw from the facts in light of his experience.” Terry, 392 U.S. at
27, 88 S. Ct. at 1883.
Gray challenges the constitutional validity of Sergeant LaBarre’s pat-frisk. Gray
argues that the district court erred by not suppressing the cocaine because Sergeant
LaBarre “(a) was searching for drugs not a weapon; (b) had no reason to believe Gray
was armed and dangerous; and (c) exceeded the scope of a lawful weapons frisk.”2 We
address each issue in turn.
2
On appeal, Gray does not argue that he was illegally seized.
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Sergeant LaBarre’s Subjective Intent
Gray argues that Sergeant LaBarre’s pat-frisk was invalid because although
Sergeant LaBarre “claimed he was concerned Gray might have a weapon, he approached
Gray and immediately searched the area he thought he had seen Gray conceal drugs.”
Gray’s focus on Sergeant LaBarre’s subjective reasons for the pat-frisk is misplaced. We
assess Sergeant LaBarre’s decision to pat-frisk Gray under an objective standard, as
instructed by the United States Supreme Court in Terry.
The scheme of the Fourth Amendment becomes meaningful
only when it is assured that at some point the conduct of those
charged with enforcing the laws can be subjected to the more
detached, neutral scrutiny of a judge who must evaluate the
reasonableness of a particular search or seizure in light of the
particular circumstances. And in making that assessment it is
imperative that the facts be judged against an objective
standard: would the facts available to the officer at the
moment of the seizure or the search warrant a man of
reasonable caution in the belief that the action taken was
appropriate?
Id. at 21-22, 88 S. Ct. at 1880 (emphasis added) (quotation omitted). We therefore do not
speculate regarding Sergeant LaBarre’s subjective reasons for the pat-frisk.
Reasonable Belief Armed and Dangerous
Gray argues that Sergeant LaBarre’s pat-frisk was invalid because there was no
reason to believe that he was armed and dangerous. An officer need not be absolutely
certain that an individual is armed before conducting a pat-frisk; instead, the issue is
whether a reasonably prudent officer in the circumstances would be justified in believing
that his safety or that of others was in danger. Id. at 27, 88 S. Ct. at 1883. We must give
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“due weight . . . to the specific reasonable inferences [that the officer] is entitled to draw
from the facts in light of his experience.” Id.
Sergeant LaBarre pat frisked Gray under the following circumstances. First, a
CRI had told Officer Baumgart that a man named Larry would be driving a silver Dodge
Charger with out-of-state license plates and selling “a large amount of cocaine” in
St. Paul that day. When Sergeant LaBarre and Officer Baumgart first encountered Gray,
he was driving a silver Dodge Charger with Ohio license plates. A consensual search of
the Charger revealed a digital scale and sandwich bags. Approximately 20 minutes later,
the officers saw the Charger in an area known for drug dealing, and Gray arrived in
another vehicle after the officers stopped the Charger. Less than two hours later, the
officers observed Gray engage in behavior that led them to believe that they had
interrupted a drug deal. Although suspicion of drug dealing alone is insufficient to
support a Terry frisk, it is a relevant circumstance. Compare State v. Ingram, 570
N.W.2d 173, 178 (Minn. App. 1997) (stating that drug dealing is not a type of crime that
automatically gives police the right to frisk for weapons), review denied (Minn. Dec. 22,
1997), with State v. Lemert, 843 N.W.2d 227, 232 (Minn. 2014) (noting the “substantial
nexus . . . between drug dealing and violence” and listing the defendant’s presence in a
vehicle with a “suspected drug dealer” as a circumstance that gave the officers a
reasonable, articulable suspicion that the defendant might have been armed and
dangerous).
Second, Gray was undeterred by his encounters with Sergeant LaBarre and Officer
Baumgart. During the initial encounter, the officers asked Gray about drugs, searched the
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Charger for drugs, found a digital scale and baggies, and told Gray and Sanders not to
drive the vehicle because neither was licensed. Thirty-five minutes later, the officers
observed Sanders driving the Charger at another location and pulled him over. During
this second encounter, the officers once again warned Gray not to drive the vehicle. Less
than two hours later, the officers saw the Charger in yet another location. Gray was
standing next to the driver’s door, beside a gas pump, engaged in what appeared to be a
drug deal. The state persuasively argues that “the sheer brazen nature” of Gray’s actions
objectively supports a suspicion that he was armed and dangerous.
Third—and significantly—Gray made a furtive gesture when he observed the
officers during the third encounter, moving his outstretched hand toward his hip or
backside. The presence of a furtive gesture heavily influences a determination of whether
a pat-frisk was lawful. See State v. Alesso, 328 N.W.2d 685, 688 (Minn. 1982) (holding
that an officer reasonably could reach into defendant’s pocket where “defendant made a
furtive movement of his hand toward the pocket, causing the officer to suspect that he
might be reaching for a weapon”); State v. Richmond, 602 N.W.2d 647, 651 (Minn. App.
1999) (holding that an officer had a reasonable suspicion to search in part because
defendant made a “furtive movement” by reaching toward his car’s passenger
compartment), review denied (Minn. Jan. 18, 2000); cf. State v. Varnado, 582 N.W.2d
886, 890 (Minn. 1998) (concluding that a weapons search was not justified where, among
other circumstances, the suspect did not make any furtive or evasive movements).
Sergeant LaBarre testified that Gray could have been hiding a gun. That suspicion was
objectively reasonable.
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Given all of the circumstances and the reasonable inferences Sergeant LaBarre
was entitled to draw from the facts in light of his experience, a reasonably prudent man in
the circumstances would have been warranted in the belief that his safety or that of others
was in danger. We therefore conclude that Sergeant LaBarre’s pat-frisk of Gray was
reasonable at its inception.
Scope of the Pat-Frisk
A pat-frisk must be “confined in scope to an intrusion reasonably designed to
discover guns, knives, clubs, or other hidden instruments for the assault of the police
officer.” Terry, 392 U.S. at 29, 88 S. Ct. at 1884. However, police may seize
nonthreatening contraband detected during a pat-frisk under the plain-view doctrine, so
long as the search “stays within the bounds marked by Terry.” Minnesota v. Dickerson,
508 U.S. 366, 373, 113 S. Ct. 2130, 2136 (1993). “Under [the plain-view] doctrine, if
police are lawfully in a position from which they view an object, if its incriminating
character is immediately apparent, and if the officers have a lawful right of access to the
object, they may seize it without a warrant.” Id. at 375, 113 S. Ct. at 2136-37. As
applied in the pat-frisk context,
[i]f a police officer lawfully pats down a suspect’s outer
clothing and feels an object whose contour or mass makes its
identity immediately apparent, there has been no invasion of
the suspect’s privacy beyond that already authorized by the
officer’s search for weapons; if the object is contraband, its
warrantless seizure would be justified by the same practical
considerations that inhere in the plain-view context.
10
Id. at 375-76, 113 S. Ct. at 2137. The incriminating character of the item seized must be
“immediately apparent,” without the need to conduct “some further search of the object.”
Id. at 375, 113 S. Ct. at 2137.
Gray contends that Sergeant LaBarre “exceeded the scope of a lawful weapons
frisk,” arguing that Sergeant LaBarre “never satisfactorily explained how he could
possibly determine by patting with an open hand that a quarter-size object wrapped in
plastic and concealed underneath a pair of shorts and underwear and between a 305-
pound man’s butt cheeks was crack cocaine without squeezing, sliding or otherwise
manipulating the object.”
Gray’s argument assumes that the cocaine was entirely concealed between his
buttocks. The record and the district court’s findings refute that assumption. Although
the district court found that Gray was “clenching a small package of drugs in between his
butt cheeks,” the court also found that Gray “was only willing or able to get the drugs
partially between his butt cheeks.” The district court described the bag of drugs as
“extending from between” Gray’s buttocks, “protruding from” his buttocks, and “sticking
out of” his buttocks. The district court found that the drugs were “not inside of [Gray’s]
anal cavity” and that the officers never “penetrate[d] [Gray’s] anal cavity or even
breach[ed] the outer limits of [his] butt cheeks.” The district court noted that Gray’s
pants were “[sitting] low on [his] waist,” “loose,” and “baggie enough to allow access.”
Thus, the record refutes Gray’s argument that Sergeant LaBarre must have somehow
manipulated the object to discern its character. Instead, the record supports the district
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court’s finding that Sergeant LaBarre “immediately thought” that the object in Gray’s
buttocks “was a hard piece of crack cocaine” when he felt it.
Because the record does not suggest that Sergeant LaBarre conducted a search
beyond the initial pat-frisk to determine that the object protruding from Gray’s buttocks
was contraband, we conclude that Sergeant LaBarre did not exceed the permissible scope
of a lawful pat-frisk.
II.
Gray also challenges Officer Baumgart’s search incident to arrest, during which
Officer Baumgart removed the cocaine from Gray’s buttocks. Gray argues that “the
district court should have suppressed the evidence because the search was not necessary
for officer protection or to preserve evidence” and because Officer Baumgart “acted
unreasonably by retrieving the cocaine . . . in a public rather than private setting.”
A police officer may search “a person’s body and the area within his or her
immediate control,” incident to a lawful arrest. State v. Robb, 605 N.W.2d 96, 100
(Minn. 2000.) “This exemption [to the warrant requirement] ensures officer safety by
allowing officers to remove any weapons the arrestee might reach and also prevents the
arrestee from tampering with or destroying evidence or contraband.” Id. “[A] search
incident to arrest is very broad in scope; it may include pockets, containers, and even the
passenger compartment of automobiles.” Varnado, 582 N.W.2d at 893.
Gray does not contest the legality of his arrest, but he suggests that Officer
Baumgart’s search incident to Gray’s arrest was invalid, noting that “[t]he rationale for
the search-incident-to-arrest exception is to ensure officer safety by removing weapons
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and to prevent the destruction of evidence” and that “[t]he right to search incident to an
arrest is not without limitation but is limited to those situations implicating the rationale
for the exception.”
Gray’s suggestion that the search incident to his arrest was invalid because it was
not necessary to remove weapons or prevent the destruction or concealment of evidence
is unavailing. The Minnesota Supreme Court recently stated that the fact that a search of
a person incident to arrest was not related to officer safety or to concerns regarding the
destruction of evidence “[did] not compel the conclusion that the search-incident-to-arrest
exception [did] not apply.” State v. Bernard, 859 N.W.2d 762, 768 (Minn. 2015). The
supreme court explained:
There is no question that the [United States Supreme]
Court has required either a concern for officer safety or a
concern over the preservation of evidence to support the
constitutionality of a warrantless search of the area where the
defendant was arrested or a search of items near the
defendant. But the Court has not applied these concerns as a
limitation on the warrantless search of the body of a person
validly arrested.
Id. at 769. The supreme court noted that the United States Supreme Court has
“characterized a warrantless search of a person as categorically reasonable under the
Fourth Amendment as a search incident to that person’s valid arrest.” Id. (citing Missouri
v. McNeely, ___ U.S. ___, ___ n.3, 133 S. Ct. 1552, 1559 n.3 (2013)). The supreme
court also noted that as recently as 2014, the United States Supreme Court reaffirmed
“that searches of a person incident to arrest . . . are reasonable regardless of the
probability in a particular arrest situation that weapons or evidence would in fact be
13
found.” Id. at 770 (citing Riley v. California, ___ U.S. ___, ___, 134 S. Ct. 2473, 2485
(2014)).
In sum, the “categorical rule” recognized by the United States Supreme Court and
our supreme court “allows a search of the person of [the] arrestee justified only by the
custodial arrest itself.” Id. Thus, Officer Baumgart’s search of Gray need not be further
justified by the rationale for the search-incident-to-arrest exception.
Gray also argues that even if Officer Baumgart’s search was a valid search
incident to arrest, Officer Baumgart unreasonably removed the cocaine from Gray’s
buttocks “in a public rather than private setting.” The Fourth Amendment prohibits
unreasonable searches. Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 558, 99 S. Ct. 1861, 1884 (1979).
The test of reasonableness under the Fourth
Amendment is not capable of precise definition or mechanical
application. In each case it requires a balancing of the need
for the particular search against the invasion of personal
rights that the search entails. Courts must consider the scope
of the particular intrusion, the manner in which it is
conducted, the justification for initiating it, and the place in
which it is conducted.
Id. at 559, 99 S. Ct. at 1884.
Gray argues that Officer Baumgart’s actions were unreasonable, relying on two
foreign decisions that apply Bell’s analytical framework. The first case is Amaechi v.
West, in which an officer arrested a woman “for a two-day old misdemeanor noise
violation” and “proceeded to search by touching and penetrating [her] genitalia and
kneading her buttocks with his ungloved hand.” 237 F.3d 356, 361 (4th Cir. 2001). The
search occurred while the woman “had on no underclothes” and was standing handcuffed
14
in the street “with her dress open and lower body exposed.” Id. The Fourth Circuit held
that the search was “highly intrusive without any apparent justification” and therefore
unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment, even though it was conducted incident to a
lawful arrest. Id. at 361-62.
The second case is United States v. Ford, in which a police officer stopped the
defendant for having a cracked windshield and the defendant stated that he smoked
marijuana earlier in the day. 232 F. Supp. 2d 625, 629-30 (E.D. Va. 2002). The officer
“conduct[ed] a full-blown body cavity search for contraband” and “engaged in a highly
invasive search by exposing the defendant’s buttocks on the side of a public highway in
broad daylight.” Id. at 630. After feeling an item through the defendant’s shorts during
an initial outer search, the officer “put on latex gloves, pulled down the defendant’s
shorts and undergarments below his buttocks, and reached in between the defendant’s
buttocks to pull the item.” Id. The federal district court concluded that the search was
unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment and suppressed the evidence of the
discovered contraband. Id. at 631.
Amaechi and Ford are readily distinguishable from this case. Here, the officers
did not remove Gray’s garments, did not expose Gray’s buttocks to the public, and did
not touch Gray’s genitalia. As to the Bell factors, the scope and manner of the search
suggests that it was reasonable. The officers did not remove or even lower Gray’s pants.
The bag of cocaine was protruding from Gray’s buttocks, and Officer Baumgart removed
the bag by grabbing the portion that was outside of Gray’s buttocks. The search was not
prolonged, except by Gray’s own actions: Gray tried to make the removal more difficult
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by tensing up, but Officer Baumgart was able to easily retrieve the drugs by briefly
putting his hand inside the back of Gray’s shorts. The search was justified because the
officers acted to retrieve contraband. Although it would have been preferable to conduct
the search in a more private location, the failure to do so does not render the search
unreasonable given all of the circumstances. We conclude that the need for the search
outweighed the invasion of Gray’s personal rights and that the search therefore was
reasonable.
In conclusion, neither Sergeant LaBarre nor Officer Baumgart violated Gray’s
constitutional right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. Thus, the district
court did not err by denying Gray’s motion to suppress. We therefore affirm Gray’s
conviction, without addressing the state’s alternative argument for affirmation.
Affirmed.
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