Burnett v. State

749 S.W.2d 308, 295 Ark. 401, 1988 Ark. LEXIS 235
CourtSupreme Court of Arkansas
DecidedMay 9, 1988
DocketCR 87-93
StatusPublished
Cited by22 cases

This text of 749 S.W.2d 308 (Burnett v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Arkansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Burnett v. State, 749 S.W.2d 308, 295 Ark. 401, 1988 Ark. LEXIS 235 (Ark. 1988).

Opinion

Darrell Hickman, Justice.

This is a capital felony murder case. Robert Lee Burnett was convicted of murdering Rhonda Dobson, a clerk at the Super Stop in Brinkley, Arkansas. He received the death penalty. The victim was bludgeoned and stabbed repeatedly. The crime occurred in the early morning hours of July 10,1986. We reverse the conviction because Burnett was unlawfully seized at his home in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and evidence obtained as a result of that seizure was used against him.

A police officer drove by the Super Stop just after the crime occurred. He saw a black man run from the store but was unable to identify him; he searched but couldn’t find him. Several people, who were traveling together in a truck which had stopped at the store, also witnessed the same man run from the store and jump a nearby fence. One of the people, Barbara Kuykendall, was taken to the police station, given a book of photographs, and asked if she could identify the man she saw. She testified at the pretrial suppression hearing that she could not identify the man. She said he was not included in the photographs. However, a police officer testified Mrs. Kuykendall kept coming back to one picture and commenting there was a similarity between this photograph and the man she had seen. The photograph was one of Burnett, taken a few years earlier.

On this information alone, several police officers went to Burnett’s house about 6 a.m., awakened him, and told him to come to the police station. One of the officers testified that Burnett was told Chief Storey wanted to talk to him. He was not arrested; but neither was he told he had any choice; he put on his trousers and accompanied the officers. When Burnett arrived at the station, he was promptly advised of his rights by Deputy Sheriff James Nolen. Nolen turned him over to Bill Gage, an investigator with the Arkansas State Police. Gage questioned Burnett, and Burnett denied killing anyone. However, Burnett did make a statement in which he admitted he had gone, in the early morning hours, to another store and to the Super Stop to obtain some mosquito repellant. He said he finally found the repellant at an Exxon station and returned home. This statement was made at 7:40 a.m.

About 10:30 a.m. a lineup was conducted. Barbara Kuykendall identified Burnett from the lineup. None of the participants had shirts on and two of them did not have shoes on. Burnett was not wearing shoes. There was evidence that the man running from the station did not have a shirt on, wore shorts or similar apparel, and wore no shoes.

About noon Burnett was turned over to an officer of the Arkansas State Police for a polygraph examination. The officer said he advised Burnett of his rights, conducted a polygraph examination, told Burnett he flunked the test, and he was lying about his participation in the murder. Burnett was again questioned by Officer Gage. This time a part of the interrogation was recorded. Burnett admitted he killed Rhonda Dobson. He said he had found a shotgun and a shaving kit and had gone to the store. “I took the shotgun up to the Super Stop. I went inside the Super Stop and sat the gun down just inside the door. I ask the girl who was working about the spray and she said, ‘Nigger find it yourself or get out.’ She was drinking pop or something and she threw it in my face. We got to fighting and that is the last thing I remember. I remember knocking her down.” Burnett was arrested about 3:30 p.m. by Officer Gage after making a second incriminating statement.

A pretrial suppression hearing was held to determine if the statements and the identification should be excluded because of the unlawful arrest or seizure of Burnett at his home. The trial judge ruled that the officers had “probable cause to ask the defendant to come to the station, whether he was arrested or not.” He found Burnett’s rights had been protected and the statements and identification were valid. We agree with the appellant’s argument that the trial court erred.

There is no doubt that the officers did not have probable cause to arrest Burnett for the crime when he was picked up. The only evidence they had was the information supplied by Kuykendall. She testified at the suppression hearing that Burnett was not in the photographs she was shown. An officer testified she kept “coming back” to Burnett’s picture, but she did not identify Burnett from the photograph. Later during the trial Kuykendall elaborated on her testimony and said there was indeed a picture which looked like the man she had seen running from the store, but the man she had seen had a much thinner face.

The law is clear that a person cannot be arrested in his own house without a warrant absent exigent circumstances. Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573 (1980). If such an illegal arrest is made, any evidence obtained as a result of the arrest will be suppressed. Wong Sun v. U.S., 371 U.S. 471 (1963). Also a person cannot be “seized” at his house without probable cause. Both acts are in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. See Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200 (1979). The test for whether one has been seized was announced in United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U.S. 544 (1980), which provided:

We conclude that a person has been ‘seized’ within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment only if, in view of all of the circumstances surrounding the incident, a reasonable person would have believed that he was not free to leave. Examples of circumstances that might indicate a seizure, even where the person did not attempt to leave, would be the threatening presence of several officers, the display of a weapon by an officer, some physical touching of the person of the citizen, or the use of language or tone of voice indicating that compliance with the officer’s request might be compelled.

In a case almost identical to the present case, the United States Supreme Court held there was a seizure. Dunaway v. New York, supra. A police sergeant, questioning a jail inmate about Dunaway, learned nothing that would warrant obtaining an arrest warrant. Nevertheless, he ordered other officers to “pick up” Dunaway and bring him in. Dunaway was taken into custody by three officers and, although he was not told he was under arrest, he would have been restrained if he had attempted to leave. He was given his Miranda rights, questioned and evidently made an incriminating statement. The court had little doubt that Dunaway was “seized.” The state argued the detention did not amount to an arrest and was a permissible detention under Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), because the police had a “reasonable suspicion” that Dunaway possessed “intimate knowledge about a serious and unsolved crime.” The court rejected the argument:

In contrast to the brief and narrowly circumscribed intrusions involved in those cases [Terry v. Ohio, supra, and similar decisions], the detention of petitioner was in important respects indistinguishable from a traditional arrest.

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Bluebook (online)
749 S.W.2d 308, 295 Ark. 401, 1988 Ark. LEXIS 235, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/burnett-v-state-ark-1988.