Robert L. Dowell v. State of Indiana (mem. dec.)

Indiana Court of Appeals·Decided December 30, 2016·No. 09A04-1601-CR-23·Published

Opinion

MEMORANDUM DECISION

Pursuant to Ind. Appellate Rule 65(D), this Memorandum Decision shall not be FILED regarded as precedent or cited before any Dec 30 2016, 6:39 am

court except for the purpose of establishing the defense of res judicata, collateral CLERK Indiana Supreme Court

estoppel, or the law of the case. Court of Appeals and Tax Court

ATTORNEY FOR APPELLANT ATTORNEYS FOR APPELLEE Mark Leeman Gregory F. Zoeller Logansport, Indiana Attorney General of Indiana J.T. Whitehead

Deputy Attorney General

Indianapolis, Indiana

IN THE

COURT OF APPEALS OF INDIANA

Robert L. Dowell, December 30, 2016 Appellant-Defendant, Court of Appeals Case No.

09A04-1601-CR-23

v. Appeal from the Cass Superior Court

State of Indiana, The Honorable Thomas C. Appellee-Plaintiff Perrone, Judge Trial Court Cause No.

09D01-1402-FB-11

Mathias, Judge.

[1] Robert Dowell (“Dowell”) was convicted after a jury trial in Cass Superior Court of three felonies and two misdemeanors for making methamphetamine

Court of Appeals of Indiana | Memorandum Decision 09A04-1601-CR-23 | December 30, 2016 Page 1 of 17 and possessing methamphetamine, marijuana, and paraphernalia. Dowell challenges the evidence against him as unlawfully seized and as insufficient to sustain his convictions.

[2] We affirm.

Facts and Procedural History [3] On the evening of February 18, 2014, Officer Flaude Dillon (“Dillon”) of the Logansport Police Department (“LPD”) was speaking with Sabrina Brewer (“Brewer”) in the lobby of the Cass County jail. Dillon had been summoned to the jail by the Cass County sheriff, to whom Brewer had earlier reported what she was then telling Dillon: Brewer had just been to a home on Wabash Avenue on the Wabash River to pick up her boyfriend’s children. As she stood on the front porch, Brewer smelled a “strong chemical odor” coming from the house. Appellant’s App. p. 116. Brewer thought it smelled like methamphetamine was being made there. Brewer did not know the exact address but described the house well enough for Dillon to identify it.

[4] Dillon relayed what Brewer told him to Sergeant Adam Morrow (“Morrow”) of the LPD. Together with every uniformed LPD officer on duty that night, up to “six or seven” officers in total, Tr. p. 60, Morrow went to the Wabash Avenue house for the stated purpose of checking on the safety and welfare of any other children who might be there. Morrow, a K-9 officer, left his dog in the car because fumes from methamphetamine production can hurt a dog’s nose. Morrow and other officers went to the front door and knocked. Standing on the Court of Appeals of Indiana | Memorandum Decision 09A04-1601-CR-23 | December 30, 2016 Page 2 of 17 front porch, Morrow, like Brewer, smelled the distinct chemical odor of methamphetamine production.

[5] Dowell opened the front door. With him was a woman, Amanda Burden (“Burden”). Morrow and the officers explained to Dowell why they were there. Dowell insisted no one else was in the house, certainly no children, and invited the officers inside so they could see for themselves. Once inside, the officers found the chemical smell to be nearly overwhelming. Headaches and nausea set in, and the officers’ eyes and noses began to burn.

[6] The officers asked Dowell about the smell. Dowell replied that it came from chemicals he used in a makeshift tattooing operation run from the house. Morrow “did [not] agree with that assessment” of the odor’s origin. Tr. p. 327. Dowell pointed to a side room near the front door as his tattoo parlor. On a table inside that room, officers saw some tattooing equipment and a blue glass pipe with black residue inside. Morrow asked Dowell for Dowell’s consent to search the house for drugs. Dowell refused and told Morrow to get a warrant. The only thing the officers would find in the house, Dowell said, was some marijuana.

[7] The officers decided to accept Dowell’s invitation to seek a search warrant. They handcuffed Dowell and Burden, put them in separate police cars, and swept the house to be sure no one else was inside. Morrow, meanwhile, left for the county courthouse to meet the prosecutor and judge on call that night.

Court of Appeals of Indiana | Memorandum Decision 09A04-1601-CR-23 | December 30, 2016 Page 3 of 17

[8] At the time, Judge Leo T. Burns (“Judge Burns”) was judge of the Cass Circuit Court and was on call that evening. Before becoming a judge, he had been an attorney who represented criminal defendants in Cass County as an appointed public defender. Dowell was one of his former clients, most recently in 2004, ten years earlier. From Dowell’s perspective, he and Attorney Burns had had an acrimonious relationship. The bases of this alleged acrimony, however, were never made quite clear. “[W]e fell out,” Dowell would later testify. Tr. pp. 83- 84. “I filed some stuff against his will[;] he was ordered . . . to relinquish the information that I requested. He basically threw a . . . fit about it[.] I mean . . . we had words back and forth[;] we weren’t at good standings.” Tr. p. 84 (sic). Dowell would also later direct voluminous correspondence to the trial court, making nonspecific, unsupported claims of Judge Burns’s bias against him. It is not clear from the record whether, on February 18, 2014, Judge Burns recognized the target of Morrow’s search warrant application as his former client.

[9] At the courthouse, Morrow described to Judge Burns what LPD officers had seen at the Wabash Avenue house. Morrow sought a warrant to search both the house and a detached garage on the same property. Judge Burns granted the request as to the house but denied it as to the garage, because “it seems like [the house] is where the probable cause is.” Appellant’s App. p. 120. The warrant authorized a search for “[e]vidence of criminal drug activity including [deleted] methamphetamine, marijuana, synthetic drugs, paraphernalia and any controlled substances, precursors, chemicals commonly used to manufacture,

Court of Appeals of Indiana | Memorandum Decision 09A04-1601-CR-23 | December 30, 2016 Page 4 of 17 weigh, package, sell or consume illegal drugs[.]” Ex. Vol., State’s Ex. 1. It was now early in the morning of February 19, 2014.

[10] Morrow returned to the Wabash Avenue house with the search warrant. There, Morrow met Senior Trooper Michael Lorona (“Lorona”), a member of the “Clandestine Lab” unit of the Indiana State Police. Tr. p. 347. Lorona had been summoned to the house by reports that a possible methamphetamine production site had been discovered there. Armed with Morrow’s warrant, Lorona and another trooper entered the house and began their search in Dowell’s tattoo parlor. In a closet in that room, Lorona found a collection of ingredients and utensils used to make methamphetamine.1 Every step of the production process was accounted for by the items in the closet, except for pseudoephedrine, a necessary ingredient at the first step, and completed methamphetamine. Investigators would later examine records of the National Precursor Log Exchange (“NPLEx”), a privately maintained database of pseudoephedrine purchases, showing Dowell purchasing pseudoephedrine in such quantities that Lorona thought indicated a nontherapeutic purpose. On and around the table where the tattooing equipment and blue glass pipe had

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