Lewis v. State

2017 Ark. 211, 521 S.W.3d 466, 2017 Ark. LEXIS 184
Supreme Court of Arkansas·Decided June 8, 2017·No. CR-16-413·Published·Cited by 11 cases

Opinions

JOHN DAN KEMP, Chief Justice

11 Appellant Aaron Michael Lewis1 appeals an order of the Pulaski County Circuit Court convicting him of capital murder and kidnapping and sentencing him as a habitual offender to terms of life imprisonment without parole and life, respectively. For reversal, Lewis argues that the circuit court erred in denying his motions to suppress on five separate grounds. The State filed a cross-appeal alleging that the circuit court erred in granting Lewis’s motion to suppress evidence seized pursuant to two search warrants. We affirm the circuit court’s denial of his motions to suppress, and we dismiss the cross-appeal.

I. Facts

laOn September 25, 2014, Carl Carter reported that his wife, Beverly (“Carter”), a real estate agent, was missing. He stated that Carter had planned to show a house in Scott, but when she had not returned home by 9:00 that evening, he became worried and drove to the Scott residence. There, he saw Carter’s vehicle in the driveway and discovered that she had left her purse inside the car. Officers from the Pulaski County Sheriffs Department were dispatched to the Scott residence, but they did not find Carter.

Crystal Lowery, Lewis’s wife, testified that she and Lewis had devised a scheme whereby they planned to target a victim who was married, who worked alone, and who allegedly had $100,000 from whom they would seek a ransom. Lewis and Lowery found Carter’s Facebook page online, discovered that she was a real estate agent, and believed that she was a “rich broker.” They called Carter, identified themselves as Crystal and Steve Adams, and asked Carter to show them a home in a remote location. Posing as Steve Adams, Lewis met Carter at the Scott residence while Lowery went to work. Lowery testified that Lewis later texted her a picture of Carter, who was bound with green tape in the trunk of Lewis’s car. Lowery stated that Lewis planned to take Carter to his place of employment, a concrete plant in Cabot, but that “he didn’t feel secure in leaving her there.” When Lowery came home, she learned that Lewis had locked Carter in the bedroom. Lewis explained that he had Carter’s debit-card PIN but that her purse was still at the Scott location. Lewis asked Lowery to “keep an eye on [Carter]” while he retrieved her purse. When he returned, Lewis told Lowery that “the cops were already there at the house” and that the plan had changed. According to Lowery, Lewis left with Carter, killed her, and left her body near |3the cement plant. The next morning, Lewis and Lowery purchased a shovel and buried Carter’s body in a shallow grave at the cement-plant site. Dr. Charles Kokes of the Arkansas State Crime Lab testified that Carter’s cause of death was asphyxia due to an external-airway obstruction from a duct-tape mask on her face.

Carter’s phone records indicated that she had placed a call to an unidentified cell-phone number that was returned to TextMe, Inc., a company' that assigns phone numbers and provides smartphone users with free text and voice messaging. Pursuant to an exigent-circumstances request, TextMe provided a report to the Pulaski County Sheriffs Office stating that the unidentified number on Carter’s phoné belonged to Lowery, who lived in Jacksonville.

On September 28, 2014, Lieutenant Mark Swaggerty conducted surveillance on Lowery’s home, where he observed'Lewis get into a black Ford Fusion and drive away. Both Lewis and the vehicle matched a description of a person and a car seen at the Scott residence when Carter was present. Lieutenant Swaggerty followed Lewis for approximately three miles. As Lewis drove around a curve, he lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a ditch. Lewis’s car landed on the passenger side in a concrete culvert. The lieutenant approached Lewis, who told the officer that he needed to go to the hospital. Emergency personnel arrived and examined Lewis. When Lewis was inside the ambulance, Lieutenant Swaggerty asked for his telephone number. Lewis responded with a number that was one digit off from the number that was connected to the text messages received by the victim via the TextMe app. When the lieutenant asked Lewis a second time, he gave the correct number. The lieutenant then seized Lewis’s phone. According to Swaggerty, Lewis had Lnot been taken into custody at that time. EMTs transported Lewis to the hospital, but he left the hospital during testing that day without notifying any medical staff. Police subsequently apprehended Lewis on September 29, 2014.

Officers returned to the scene of the accident, overturned the vehicle, performed an inventory search of the interior passenger area, and completed a vehicle-search report. Sergeant Shane Hastings signed the report, which indicated that the trunk had not been “opened, or inventoried.” The investigators surrendered the vehicle to a tow service, which transported the vehicle to the Pulaski County Sheriffs Office , where it was locked and secured. Officers obtained a search warrant and found numerous items, including hair fiber, in the trunk of Lewis’s car.

Police officers arrested Lewis, who gave two custodial statements. Before trial, Lewis filed four motions to suppress. First, Lewis filed a motion to suppress his custodial statements made to. officers of the Pulaski County Sheriffs Department. In his motion, he alleged that his arrest was illegal and that any. statements made to police were the fruits of an illegal arrest. Second, Lewis filed a motion to suppress the physical evidence from his vehicle, alleging that officers had illegally detained him and conducted a search and seizure of him and his property. Third, he filed a motion to suppress evidence “based on [the] overreaching use of [a] prosecutor’s subpoena power,” stating that, “[i]n the course of the investigation, prosecutor subpoenas were sent to multiple companies, including AT&T and Google.” In his motion, Lewis claimed that these subpoenas should have been suppressed because they were Issued “for the law enforcement invéstigation and not for the prosecutor’s investigation.” Finally, Lewis filed a motion to suppress a voice recording of the victim on Rhis cell phone based on the Arkansas Constitution, United States v. Patane, 542 U.S. 630, 124 S.Ct. 2620, 159 L.Ed.2d 667 (2004), and the Arkansas Rules of Criminal Procedure. The State responded-that the circuit court properly denied each of these motions to suppress.

The circuit court entered an order granting inter alia Lewis’s motion to suppress on his first statement, which he made after he invoked his right to counsel, as the product of an illegal interrogation. The circuit court admitted the voice recording on Lewis’s phone and the phone itself that the officer seized after .Lewis’s car accident. The circuit court denied Lewis’s motion to suppress his second statement, finding that he had reinitiated contact with law enforcement, and admitted certain items found in Lewis’s ear pursuant to the on-site inventory search but suppressed other items based on an over-broad warrant. The circuit court found that Lewis lacked standing to challenge the prosecutor subpoenas.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Lewis v. State, 2017 Ark. 211, 521 S.W.3d 466, 2017 Ark. LEXIS 184 (Ark. 2017).

2017 Ark. 211 (Lewis v. State) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

Related

KEENAN HUDSON v. STATE OF ARKANSAS
Supreme Court of Arkansas, 2025
Jotavion Jatar Ross v. State of Arkansas
2025 Ark. App. 204 (Court of Appeals of Arkansas, 2025)
Crystal Lowery v. State of Arkansas
2025 Ark. App. 106 (Court of Appeals of Arkansas, 2025)
Luther Dillon v. State of Arkansas
2023 Ark. 78 (Supreme Court of Arkansas, 2023)
Jeremey Lewis v. State of Arkansas
2023 Ark. 12 (Supreme Court of Arkansas, 2023)
Jeremy Lynn Barnett v. State of Arkansas
2020 Ark. 181 (Supreme Court of Arkansas, 2020)
Kauffeld v. State
2019 Ark. App. 29 (Court of Appeals of Arkansas, 2019)
Dye v. State
2018 Ark. App. 545 (Court of Appeals of Arkansas, 2018)
State v. McWilliams
2017 Ark. 307 (Supreme Court of Arkansas, 2017)
Henington v. State
2017 Ark. 211 (Supreme Court of Arkansas, 2017)