Murrell v. State

421 N.E.2d 638, 1981 Ind. LEXIS 767
CourtIndiana Supreme Court
DecidedJune 17, 1981
Docket680S168
StatusPublished
Cited by30 cases

This text of 421 N.E.2d 638 (Murrell v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Indiana Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Murrell v. State, 421 N.E.2d 638, 1981 Ind. LEXIS 767 (Ind. 1981).

Opinion

DeBRULER, Justice.

Appellant Murrell was convicted of robbery while armed, class B felony, in violation of Ind.Code § 35-42-5-1. The trial was by jury and an executed sentence of twelve years was imposed. The information charged that appellant along with Robert Harrington took property from the presence of a clerk of a Village Pantry Grocery Store in Muncie, Indiana at knife point.

In the early morning hours of September 26, 1979, at about 1:40 a. m., Campbell, a Muncie city police officer, pulled abreast of a Buick automobile at a stop light at the corner of 26th and Madison Streets in Mun-cie, Indiana, in his patrol car, and observed two men inside and noticed that it bore an Indianapolis license plate having a prefix of “99”. His suspicions aroused, the officer proceeded past the car to 12th and Madison and circled back and proceeded again down Madison to the corner of 26th and Madison where he observed a man in a brown shirt in the Village Pantry Grocery Store there. The officer parked his car at a nearby filling station where he could observe the inside of the store. The man looked out of the window at the police officer and made several trips from the counter to the door and back, and finally left with a brown sack in hand. There was no car in the grocery store lot. The officers then left the area to aid in another matter.

Thirty minutes later at 2:00 a. m., Campbell received a radio report that the same Village Pantry had been robbed by two men, one wearing a brown jacket and the other a blue shirt. Muncie officer Gregory reported by radio from Monroe and 6th Streets in the city that he was stopping a car with two men meeting the description of the two bandits. Campbell drove immediately to that location, and saw police cars and a brown Buick with a license plate bearing a “99” prefix which looked like the one he had previously seen. He saw a man in a brown shirt going toward the house at 602 E. 6th Street and yelled out, “Stop that man.” He then approached and arrested him, stating that it was for intoxication as he could smell that he had been drinking alcoholic beverages.

Officer Gregory, the first to spot the two men answering the description of the robbers given in a radio report, followed the Buick in which they were driving and had approached it after it had stopped in front of 602 E. 6th Street. The driver in a blue shirt emerged first and went into the house before the officer could stop him, but the officer did manage to stop and detain the man in the brown shirt. Officer Campbell arrived at about the same moment. The man was patted down for weapons. He was Robert Harrington, codefendant of appellant.

Officers Campbell and Gregory then approached Georgia Coles, the owner of the house, who was standing on the front porch, and asked her if she would call the other man. She did so and appellant wearing a blue shirt came to the front and Officer Campbell, smelling alcohol on his breath, placed him under arrest for intoxication, and upon patting him down took a knife from him. Appellant and Harrington were then taken to the Village Pantry where the clerk identified them as the two robbers *640 and the knife as the weapon with which they had threatened her. They were then told that they were under arrest for armed robbery. The knife and testimony describing that identification were admitted at trial.

Officer Campbell returned to 602 E. 6th Street and spoke with Georgia Coles. She consented to a search of her house. In a bathroom in the northeast portion of the house, they discovered and seized a sack, envelopes, and money taken in the robbery. These items were admitted at trial.

Appellant unsuccessfully sought to suppress the knife taken from him in the personal search on the porch; the sack, envelopes, and money taken from the bathroom of the house; the oral description and the photograph of the brown sack and pizza in the car, and the evidence'of the out-of-court identification of him by the store clerk, and her in-court identification. Suppression of the physical items was sought on the basis that they were the fruits of searches and seizures made by the police in violation of the restrictions imposed upon police action of the sort by the Fourth Amendment and Art. I, § 11, of the Indiana Constitution.

The search of the person, the car, and the house and the constituent seizures occurring in this case involved intrusions of constitutional dimensions requiring justification. Searches and seizures “conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by judge or magistrate, are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment — subject only to a few specifically established and well delineated exceptions.” Katz v. United States, (1967) 389 U.S. 347, 357, 88 S.Ct. 507, 514, 19 L.Ed.2d 576. It is undisputed that the police had no warrants authorizing their conduct in this case. When such lack is shown by the accused, the burden is upon the prosecution to show that the police action fell within one of the well delineated exceptions to the warrant requirement. United States v. Jeffers, (1951) 342 U.S. 48, 72 S.Ct. 93, 96 L.Ed. 685; State v. Smithers, (1971) 256 Ind. 512, 269 N.E.2d 874.

The discovery and taking of the knife was successfully shown by the prosecutor to be justified as falling within the exception for searches incident to arrest. “When an arrest is made, it is reasonable for the arresting officer to search the person arrested in order to remove any weapons that the latter might seek to use in order to resist arrest or effect his escape.” Chimel v. California, (1969) 395 U.S. 752, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 2040, 23 L.Ed.2d 685. In the present case the arrest was lawful, as the officers immediately effecting it had probable cause to do so, in that they were aware of specific, articulable facts which would warrant a prudent man of reasonable caution in believing that appellant had participated in the robbery of the store. That the officer chose to rely upon intoxication as a basis for the arrest does not vitiate actual probable cause. Smith v. State, (1971) 256 Ind. 603, 271 N.E.2d 133. The facts cited above were known to the officers and meet the probable cause standard. A search is “incidental” to an arrest when it can be said that it “is substantially contemporaneous with the arrest and is confined to the immediate vicinity of the arrest.” Stoner v. California, (1969) 376 U.S. 483, 486, 84 S.Ct. 889, 891, 11 L.Ed.2d 856. Appellant was patted down immediately upon his arrest, and at such time the knife was discovered and seized. The “incidental to the arrest” part of the standard is also met here. The motion to suppress the knife was properly denied.

According to Ms. Coles appellant and Harrington had slept in the house eighty percent of the time during the month immediately preceding the robbery.

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Bluebook (online)
421 N.E.2d 638, 1981 Ind. LEXIS 767, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/murrell-v-state-ind-1981.