State v. Davidson

606 S.W.2d 293, 1980 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 298
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee
DecidedJuly 3, 1980
StatusPublished
Cited by26 cases

This text of 606 S.W.2d 293 (State v. Davidson) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Davidson, 606 S.W.2d 293, 1980 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 298 (Tenn. Ct. App. 1980).

Opinion

OPINION

BYERS, Judge.

The defendant was convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to ten (10) years. He was also found to be an habitual criminal and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

The defendant says a “wad of bills” should not have been introduced because they were found as a result of a search and seizure arising from an illegal arrest, says as a result of this illegal search the police were led to a jacket worn during the robbery from which keys to a vehicle used by the robber were seized and was thus tainted, says the in court identification was .im-permissibly tainted by virtue of two out-of-court lineups said to be unduly suggestive, says a pistol should not have been introduced into evidence, attacks the sufficiency of the evidence, and says the trial court did not instruct the jury on the character of witnesses and the number of witnesses.

The judgment is affirmed.

On February 17, 1978, at approximately 2:00 a. m., three men came into Coleman’s Barbeque on Winchester Road in Shelby County and got coffee to go at a self-service counter. One of the men came to the counter ostensibly to pay for the coffee. Laura Jean Foster, the sole employee of the business at the time, was standing at the counter. When the man confronted Foster, he exhibited a pistol and demanded he be given the money from the cash register.

Foster gave the man the money and, at his direction, went into a back room. When the man left Foster called out, and Stanley William Ray, who was playing a pinball *295 machine when the robbery took place, went to her assistance. 1

Ray had seen the three men enter the business and identified the defendant as one of the three. Foster identified the defendant as being the man who held the pistol on her and took the money. Ray, also, described a car which the three men arrived in and in which they apparently left.

When the police arrived, Foster and Ray gave a description of the robbers to them. One of the robbers was particularly noticeable because he had long blond hair which had been bleached. He was described as wearing a brown jacket and being very neat. Foster said she had seen the defendant in the business on approximately three other occasions. In addition, Ray described the automobile in which he had seen the defendant and the others arrive. He said it was a dark blue Comet or Maverick with the left headlight out.

While the police were at the place of the robbery discussing the robbers’ description with Foster and Ray, Paul Dewayne Neldon came in and overheard the description of one of the robbers as having bleached blond shoulder length hair. Neldon had just come from a place called the Underground Lounge. He informed the officers he had seen a person fitting that description at the lounge.

Acting on this, officers went to the lounge and commenced a search for people matching the description of the robbers. The defendant was the only person in the lounge with shoulder length bleached blond hair. He was wearing a blue jacket. He was approached by one officer who patted him down and asked a few questions of him. The officer found nothing significant in the search and moved on. During this time, a vehicle matching the one described by Ray was found outside the lounge. Another officer received a tip from another customer 2 and returned to the lounge where he found a brown jacket on a chair at a table next to where the defendant was sitting. In the pocket of the jacket was a key which fit the vehicle.

Another frisk of the defendant by another officer revealed a wad of bills in his pocket which contained seventy-seven dollars ($77.00).

An employee of the lounge delivered a .22 calibre pistol to the officer which had been found in a trash can.

The defendant contends the money seized from him, the jacket and keys to the vehicle, driven to and from the robbery, flowed from an improper stop and frisk and from an illegal arrest. He further contends the lineup at the lounge and at the station house flowed from an illegal arrest.

The defendant claims this was plain error which this Court should notice even though no pretrial motion to suppress the evidence was made as required by Rule 12(b), T.R. Cr.P., and even though no objection was made to the introduction of the evidence, with the exception of an attack on the lineups, at trial.

This is not a situation which the court can recognize as plain error.

Motions to suppress evidence must be made prior to trial. Rule 12(b)(3), T.R. Cr.P. The failure to raise such defense or objection pretrial constitutes a waiver of the objection unless good cause for failure to raise the objection timely is shown. Rule 12(f), T.R.Cr.P. There is nothing advanced in this record to show why the motion to suppress was not made pretrial.

Had such objection been made pretrial or even during trial, the State would have been put to the task of showing “specific and articulable facts reasonably warranting the intrusion” [the stop and frisk and arrest], Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143, 92 S.Ct. 1921, 32 L.Ed.2d 612 (1972), Hughes v. State, 588 S.W.2d 296 (Tenn.1979), and that the officer’s action was justified.

*296 Although the record does not fully develop whether the officer had reasonable grounds for the intrusion and whether the State could show specific and articulable facts for the intrusion, the evidence at trial tends to show such existed. The failure of Defendant to make pretrial objections to the introduction of the evidence constitutes a waiver of any objections to this evidence. See Feagins and Jonas v. State, 596 S.W.2d 108 (Tenn.Cr.App.1979).

The defendant further contends the in-court identification of him should have been suppressed because, under the totality of the circumstances, the in-court identification was a direct result of unnecessary and unduly suggestive influence arising from the two pretrial lineups.

Rule 12, T.R.Cr.P., is applicable to this type motion also.

In discussing the underlying rationale for Rule 12, T.R.Cr.P., this Court in Feagins, supra, said:

“There are many valid reasons underlying the practice of requiring pre-trial motions. It avoids interrupting a trial in progress with auxiliary inquiries which break the continuity of the jury’s attention and it avoids inconveniencing jurors and witnesses by requiring them to stand idly while the court hears a motion to suppress. The practice prevents mistrials from the jury’s exposure to unconstitutional evidence. It is to the advantage of both the prosecution and defense to know prior to trial whether certain items will or will not be admitted into evidence.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
606 S.W.2d 293, 1980 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 298, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-davidson-tenncrimapp-1980.