State v. Coy

200 N.W.2d 40, 294 Minn. 281, 1972 Minn. LEXIS 1401
CourtSupreme Court of Minnesota
DecidedAugust 11, 1972
Docket43137
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 200 N.W.2d 40 (State v. Coy) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Minnesota primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Coy, 200 N.W.2d 40, 294 Minn. 281, 1972 Minn. LEXIS 1401 (Mich. 1972).

Opinion

MacLaughlin, Justice.

Defendant has appealed his conviction of aggravated assault. Minn. St. 609.225. We affirm the judgment of conviction.

*283 At about 3:15 a. m. on September 20, 1970, one Sharon Lang, age 16, awakened in her bedroom in her parents’ home in St. Paul and felt an unshaven face next to hers in the bed. Sharon testified that she inquired, “Who is it?” and a man’s voice responded, “Sharon, Sharon, it’s Richard.” Sharon asked, “What are you doing here ?” and the voice replied, “ [D] on’t talk or don’t scream * * *. Otherwise I’ll stab your throat.” Sharon identified the voice as that of defendant, Richard F. Coy, the owner of a nearby service station. She smelled liquor on his breath. The man took Sharon’s wrist and placed her hand on a hard metallic object. Sharon testified that she could not see the object in the dark, and while she wasn’t sure, she thought it was a knife. She also testified that the knife which was in evidence felt like the object which her assailant had had her touch. The man then asked Sharon to remove her clothes, but she pulled away and managed to run into her parents’ bedroom where she excitedly informed them that a man was in her bedroom, that she had felt his beard, and that it was “Richard.” When her parents reached Sharon’s bedroom the man was gone, but the Langs saw grass clippings and grease and dirt stains on Sharon’s comforter and sheet. The door from the kitchen to the outside was ajar, and Mrs. Lang could detect the odor of alcohol on the arm of Sharon’s nightgown. The St. Paul police were called, and in a short time two policemen arrived. Sharon named defendant as her assailant and told the officers that he often drove a blue pickup truck.

Sharon’s boyfriend, Kerry Glenn, had worked for defendant at the station for 5 or 6 months prior to the night of the alleged assault, and Sharon had visited him perhaps 50 times during that period. Sharon testified that she had talked with defendant on more than half of those visits. Defendant acknowledged that he had spoken to her on many occasions and admitted that when girls visited the station, he often would “grab them * * * and put my arm around and kid around with them.” Sharon testified that she had never encouraged such conduct and had refused defendant’s attentions.

*284 The police, after interviewing the Langs and conducting an investigation in their home, drove to defendant’s residence in St. Paul. There, one of the officers, seeing the blue pickup truck on the street in front of the house, felt the radiator and found the engine to be still warm. The same officer then looked through the side window of the truck and observed on the seat an empty-leather sheath for a knife. The two officers proceeded to the front door of defendant’s home, knocked and were admitted by-defendant’s wife who told them that she did not know if her husband was home because she had been sleeping on the downstairs couch. The officers were given permission to look around the house, and they found defendant, apparently asleep, in a second-floor bedroom. They woke him up, informed him that he was under arrest, and advised him of his rights. They instructed him to get dressed, and defendant put on some clothing which was on a dresser near the bed.

After placing defendant in the police car, the officer who had observed the sheath in the truck went back to the vehicle, opened the door to take the sheath from the seat, shone his flashlight aripund the truck, and observed the knife itself lying under the seat. The officer took both the knife and the sheath into his possession, and they were later introduced into evidence at the trial.

At trial Kerry Glenn testified that he had seen defendant make “passes or advances” at Sharon on many occasions. He further testified that he had pointed out Sharon’s house to defendant on one occasion when they had driven by it; that defendant kept a knife in a sheath at the service station which Kerry had used on many occasions; and that the knife and sheath which had been taken from the truck and introduced into evidence were the same as those he had seen and used at the station.

Defendant testified that he had worked on a customer’s car until nearly midnight on the evening in question and then had gone out for a drink with the customer. He testified that he had cleaned up and changed clothes before going out, but the customer testified that he could not remember whether defendant *285 had in fact changed clothes. Defendant had several drinks with the customer and later the same evening had more to drink at an “after hours” bar with a friend, who then drove him home in defendant’s pickup truck. Defendant testified that he then went to bed and slept until he was awakened by the police officers. He claims that the clothes he put on when arrested were not the same clothes he had worn that night although they were lying over some furniture near his bed. His wife also testified that the clothes he put on when arrested had not been worn by defendant on the preceding work day. At the trial, in addition to the knife and sheath, the clothes that defendant wore after his arrest were admitted into evidence. One James Gag of the St. Paul Police Crime Laboratory made three spectrographic analyses of stains on Sharon’s sheet and defendant’s shirt and trousers and testified that, in his opinion, they were from the same source.

It is claimed on appeal that the taking of the sheath and knife from the pickup truck without benefit of a search warrant was an unlawful search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution; that the trial court erred in admitting the knife and clothing into evidence; that the opinion testimony of James Gag should not have been admitted; and that the evidence was insufficient to sustain the guilty verdict.

We have concluded that the warrantless taking of the sheath and knife from the pickup truck was constitutionally permissible. The United States Supreme Court in Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U. S. 42, 48, 90 S. Ct. 1975, 1979, 26 L. ed. 2d 419, 426 (1970), a case holding a warrantless search of an automobile to be valid, stated as follows:

“In terms of the circumstances justifying a warrantless search, the Court has long distinguished between an automobile and a home or office. [Citing Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S. 132, 45 S. Ct. 280, 69 L. ed. 543 (1925)] * * *
*****
*286 “Neither Carroll, supra, nor other cases in this Court require or suggest that in every conceivable circumstance the search of an auto even with probable cause may be made without the extra protection for privacy that a warrant affords. But the circumstances that furnish probable cause to search a particular auto for particular articles are most often unforeseeable; moreover, the opportunity to search is fleeting since a car is readily movable. Where this is true, as in Carroll

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
200 N.W.2d 40, 294 Minn. 281, 1972 Minn. LEXIS 1401, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-coy-minn-1972.