State of Arizona v. Lenny M. Box

CourtCourt of Appeals of Arizona
DecidedJuly 31, 2003
Docket2 CA-CR 2001-0491
StatusPublished

This text of State of Arizona v. Lenny M. Box (State of Arizona v. Lenny M. Box) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Arizona primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State of Arizona v. Lenny M. Box, (Ark. Ct. App. 2003).

Opinion

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS STATE OF ARIZONA DIVISION TWO

THE STATE OF ARIZONA, ) ) 2 CA-CR 2001-0491 Appellee, ) DEPARTMENT B ) v. ) OPINION ) LENNY M. BOX, ) ) Appellant. ) )

APPEAL FROM THE SUPERIOR COURT OF GILA COUNTY

Cause No. CR 01-013

Honorable Edward L. Dawson, Judge

AFFIRMED

Terry Goddard, Arizona Attorney General By Randall M. Howe and Joseph L. Parkhurst Tucson Attorneys for Appellee

W. Michael Walz Phoenix Attorney for Appellant

E S P I N O S A, Chief Judge. ¶1 After a jury trial, appellant Lenny M. Box was convicted of transporting marijuana

for sale. The trial court sentenced him to a presumptive, five-year prison term. On appeal, Box

challenges the trial court’s denial of his motion to suppress the marijuana found in the trunk of his

car after an allegedly unconstitutional search and seizure. For the following reasons, we affirm.

BACKGROUND

¶2 In reviewing a denial of a motion to suppress, we review only the evidence

submitted at the suppression hearing, State v. Blackmore, 186 Ariz. 630, 925 P.2d 1347 (1996),

and we view the facts in the light most favorable to upholding the trial court’s ruling, State v.

Sheko, 146 Ariz. 140, 704 P.2d 270 (App. 1985). The facts here are essentially uncontested.

Department of Public Safety (DPS) Officer Torres was driving north on a state highway near

Globe when he observed a Buick, driven by appellant, exceeding the speed limit. Torres’s

attention was also drawn to the Buick because an officer had stopped a car the previous day that

had been discovered to be carrying 145 pounds of marijuana, and that car had contained a key with

a Buick tag affixed to it. Torres did not stop appellant, however, because Torres was transporting

two people in his patrol car in connection with an unrelated incident, and agency regulations did

not permit him to make a civil traffic stop in that circumstance. Instead, he radioed the foregoing

information to his dispatcher with instructions to contact the Gila County Sheriff’s Office and

request that a local officer be dispatched to stop appellant for speeding.

¶3 Officer Baxley responded to the dispatch and saw Torres following appellant.

Torres confirmed with Baxley via radio that appellant’s car was the subject of the dispatch.

Baxley stopped appellant’s car and told appellant he had been stopped at the request of the DPS

officer who had seen him speeding. While speaking with appellant during the stop, Baxley noticed

2 the following things in the car. There were two small duffel bags, a blanket, and a pillow in the

back seat. There was a plastic jug of water and a plastic bag containing food wrappers and other

trash on the floorboard, and there was a cellular telephone, an open Arizona map, and a citizen’s

band (CB) radio on the front seat. Baxley, whose ten-year career in law enforcement included

specialized drug interdiction training through the “Desert Snow highway interdiction program,”

testified that, from his training and experience, he knew that “[s]ome of those items are consistent

with people trafficking in illegal drugs.” Appellant gave Baxley his Kansas driver’s license,

vehicle registration, and proof of insurance. Baxley conducted radio checks on these documents

and determined that “[e]verything was clean.” He then asked appellant to step out of the car and

issued a written warning for the speed violation.

¶4 After Baxley handed appellant the warning and returned his driver’s license and

other documents, he asked appellant where he had been coming from. Appellant said he had left

Kansas about ten days earlier and had been vacationing in Tucson. When asked whether he had

stayed at a hotel or with a friend, appellant would not say. Baxley asked about the duffel bags,

and appellant told him they contained all his clothes for his trip. Baxley asked appellant whether

he had any weapons or large amounts of money. Appellant replied that he had no weapons, that

there were ten or fifteen dollars in loose currency thrown around the front seat area that he used

for “toll bridges,” and that he carried approximately $500 on his person. Baxley asked if there

was marijuana in the car. Appellant chuckled and looked away, saying he did not drink and would

not use marijuana or drugs. Baxley asked if there was cocaine, methamphetamine, or heroin in

the car; appellant denied that there was, this time meeting the officer’s eyes. Baxley testified that

he then

3 asked for consent to search the vehicle. The reason why is some of the indicators I found in the vehicle from looking in there, and his inconsistent statements about the trip to Tucson and where he was at, I felt that he was probably trafficking in illegal drugs and requested consent to search.

Appellant declined to consent. Baxley did not smell marijuana or any suspicious odor.

¶5 Because Baxley was traveling with a trained narcotics detection dog, he then asked

appellant to step away from the car to allow the dog to sniff it. In under a minute, the dog

“alerted” on the trunk, in Baxley’s words, its way of “announcing that there is an odor of illegal

drugs coming from the trunk.” Torres, who had since deposited his passengers, returned to the

scene of the stop, and Baxley told him the dog had alerted on appellant’s car.

¶6 The officers asked appellant for a key to the trunk, but he told them he did not have

one. The officers were forced to access the trunk through the interior, which required

“remov[ing] the back seat area and open[ing] up the carpet covering that was there.” They found

several bundles wrapped in contact paper in the trunk. Baxley could smell the odor of marijuana,

and he cut open one of the bundles and saw that it was full of marijuana. After removing all the

bundles and laying them out on the car, Baxley placed appellant under arrest. The entire

encounter, from the time Baxley’s dispatcher called him to appellant’s arrest, lasted approximately

twenty-five minutes.

¶7 Appellant moved to suppress the marijuana, arguing that its discovery was the

product of an unconstitutional stop and, alternatively, the product of an unconstitutional detention

that had occurred after the purpose of the traffic stop had been completed. In reviewing the denial

of a motion to suppress evidence, we defer to the trial court’s factual determinations, but the

4 ultimate ruling is a conclusion of law we review de novo. State v. Valle, 196 Ariz. 324, 996 P.2d

125 (App. 2000).

DISCUSSION

I. Stop Authorized by A.R.S. § 28-1594

¶8 Appellant first argues, as he did below, that Baxley was not authorized to stop him

because the officer had not personally observed him speeding. In rejecting this claim, the trial

court found it was permissible for Baxley to stop and temporarily detain appellant at the request

of Torres, who had actually seen appellant speeding. The court noted that this scenario frequently

occurs in the case of an officer operating a radar gun who receives the assistance of other officers

in stopping an offender until the officer with the radar gun can proceed to the scene of the stop and

issue a citation. The court added that, “if Officer Baxley had issued a citation for a traffic offense

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