State v. Brashers

2015 Ark. 236, 463 S.W.3d 710, 2015 Ark. LEXIS 391
CourtSupreme Court of Arkansas
DecidedMay 28, 2015
DocketCR-14-934
StatusPublished
Cited by12 cases

This text of 2015 Ark. 236 (State v. Brashers) 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
State v. Brashers, 2015 Ark. 236, 463 S.W.3d 710, 2015 Ark. LEXIS 391 (Ark. 2015).

Opinions

JIM HANNAH, Chief Justice

pThe State of Arkansas appeals an order of the Independence County Circuit Court granting a motion to suppress in favor of appellee Christopher Brashers. For reversal, the State argues that the circuit court erred as a matter of law in interpreting Michigan v. Tyler, 436 U.S. 499, 98 S.Ct. 1942, 56 L.Ed.2d 486 (1978), by resolving the issue of a warrantless search using agency principles and in ruling that insurance investigators acted as agents of a law-enforcement agency. We hold that this court lacks subject-matter jurisdiction because the circuit court’s order was a mixed question of law and fact; accordingly, the correct and uniform administration of criminal law does not require this court’s review pursuant to Arkansas Rule of Appellate Procedure-Criminal 3(c) (2014). We dismiss the appeal.

On June 20, 2011, at approximately 9:00 p.m. in Batesville, a fire destroyed a commercial structure that housed three businesses. Those businesses were Pioneer Pizza, Lwhich was operated by Brashers; a dental office; and a pharmacy. According to the testimony of John Brent Gleg-horn, Batesville’s Fire Chief, and Randy Sharp, Deputy Sheriff with the Independence County Sheriffs Office, Batesville firefighters extinguished the fire, but hot spots and steam remained the following day on June 21, 2011. The structure sustained heavy damage. For public-safety reasons, firefighters and police officers secured the scene. Firefighters salvaged items and overhauled the property throughout June 22, 2011.

Officer Sharp testified that he took photographs, sketched diagrams of the three businesses, and documented his findings at the scene. On June 23, 2011, Officer Sharp met with fire investigators from insurance companies that held coverage on the three businesses. The investigators inspected each building, determined that the fire originated in the middle room of Pioneer Pizza, and removed debris and certain items, including an exhaust fan and lights, from the scene. As the investigators conducted their business, Officer Sharp photographed their findings. Officer Sharp did not obtain a search warrant, nor did he have Brashers’s consent to search his business. Officer Sharp testified that he worked the scene to learn fire-investigation techniques and to determine the origin of the fire for the fire chief. According to Officer Sharp’s testimony, the investigators found evidence of an ac-celerant on the scene.

On May 24, 2012, the State charged Brashers with one count of arson, a Class Y felony, alleging that he had caused an explosion with the purpose of destroying or otherwise damaging an occupiable structure and that the property sustained at least $100,000 in damage. Subsequently, Brashers filed a motion to suppress the evidence, seized in the warrantless Rsearch; In his motion to suppress, Brashers argued that law enforcement officers did not have probable cause to search his burned building approximately three days after the fire without a search warrant and that, pursuant to Tyler, 436 U.S. 499, 98 S.Ct. 1942, the search was invalid. Brashers alleged that Officer Sharp, as a State actor, made arrangements with third-party fire investigators to meet at the scene, directed those investigators’ activities at the scene without a warrant, investigated the scene without a warrant, supplied confidential information to the investigators, and relayed findings from one investigator to the other investigators. Brashers requested that the court grant the motion to suppress, exclude all evidence as the result of the illegal search on June 23, 2011, and exclude subsequent items seized from the scene pursuant to the fruit-of-the-poisonous-tree doctrine.

Chief Gleghorn and Officer Sharp testified at the suppression hearing held on May 30, 2014, and June 16, 2014. Officer Sharp testified that he did not apply for a search warrant to search the premises and that a deputy or firefighter maintained scene security throughout the investigation. Officer Sharp also testified that when the investigators “pulled the floor back, it was obvious there were burn patterns on the floor from [a] flammable liquid.” During the court’s voir dire, Officer Sharp stated that three private fire investigators called him on June 22, 2011, and met him at the scene the following day. Officer Sharp .testified that, when he was at the scene, he observed the investigators and took photographs of their findings. Officer Sharp testified that the investigators gathered evidence and sent it to an independent laboratory. At the conclusion of the hearing, the circuit court took the matter under advisement.

|4By letter order dated August 6, 2014, the circuit court granted Brashers’s motion to suppress the evidence obtained during the insurance-company investigation conducted on June 23, 2011. The court found that , “certain evidence and photographs” taken from the burned premises during a warrantless search constituted governmental action in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The court ruled that the facts supported a joint venture between the investigators and. the deputy and that the investigators became an aim or agent of the law-enforcement agency. The court memorialized its findings in an order entered August 29, 2014. The State timely filed its notice of appeal on September 2, 2014. From the court’s order granting the motion to suppress, the State now brings the instant interlocutory appeal.

For its first point on appeal, the State argues that the circuit court erred as a matter of law in its interpretation of Tyler, 436 U.S. 499, 98 S.Ct. 1942, by inserting the question of agency into an analysis of whether a warrant was required for entry into the fire-damaged building. The State claims that no warrant was required. For its second point on appeal, the State contends that the circuit court erred as a matter of law by ignoring the motives of the insurance investigators by ruling that they had acted as agents of the Batesville law-enforcement agency.

Before we address the merits of the State’s arguments, we must determine whether this is a proper State appeal under Rule 3(c). We have stated the rule governing State appeals as follows:

Under Rule 3, the right of appeal by the State is limited. This court has consistently held that there is a significant difference between appeals brought by criminal defendants and those brought on behalf of the State. State v. Williams, 348 Ark. 585, 75 S.W.3d 684 (2002); State v. Pruitt, 347 Ark. 355, 64 S.W.3d 255 (2002). The former is a matter of right, whereas the latter is neither a matter of right, nor derived from the Constitution, but rather is only ^granted pursuant to the confines of Rule 3. Id. We accept appeals by the State when our holding would be important to the correct and uniform administration of the criminal law. State v. Warren, 345 Ark. 508, 49 S.W.3d 103 (2001); State v. Thompson, 343 Ark. 135, 34 S.W.3d 33 (2000); State v. Stephenson, 330 Ark. 594, 955 S.W.2d 518 (1997).

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Bluebook (online)
2015 Ark. 236, 463 S.W.3d 710, 2015 Ark. LEXIS 391, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-brashers-ark-2015.