State v. Devlin

745 S.W.2d 850, 1988 Mo. App. LEXIS 427, 1988 WL 16161
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedMarch 1, 1988
DocketNo. 53513
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 745 S.W.2d 850 (State v. Devlin) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Missouri Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Devlin, 745 S.W.2d 850, 1988 Mo. App. LEXIS 427, 1988 WL 16161 (Mo. Ct. App. 1988).

Opinion

REINHARD, Judge.

The state appeals after the trial court granted defendant’s motion to dismiss charges of driving while intoxicated. We reverse and remand.

The motion to dismiss was based solely on the offense report of Officer Charles Boschert of the St. Louis County Police Department. In his report, Boschert stated that about 3:00 a.m. on October 15,1986, Officer Paul West of the St. Charles Police Department was returning to St. Charles from the city of Ballwin with a prisoner. [851]*851As he neared the Missouri River on U.S. Highway 40 in St. Louis County, West observed a slowly moving automobile weaving back and forth across the westbound lanes of the highway. The automobile suddenly pulled to the right shoulder of the road and stopped. West stopped his vehicle behind the automobile, approached on foot, identified himself to defendant, the driver, as a St. Charles police officer, and asked him to remove his keys from the ignition. Defendant complied and West then requested that a St. Louis County police officer respond. Officer Boschert arrived, administered field sobriety tests to defendant, and arrested him for driving while intoxicated.

In support of this motion, defendant directed the trial court’s attention to Settle v. State, 679 S.W.2d 310 (Mo.App.1984), cert. denied 472 U.S. 1007, 105 S.Ct. 2701, 86 L.Ed.2d 717 (1985). In its response to defendant’s motion, the state admitted that the power of a law enforcement officer outside his jurisdiction is limited to that of a private citizen. The state contended, however, that a private citizen can arrest another for a breach of the peace in his presence, and defendant’s conduct was a breach of the peace. The state also argued that Officer West’s conduct did not constitute an arrest. The trial court granted defendant’s motion to dismiss.

On appeal, the state contends that Officer West “was acting within the boundaries of ... a private citizen,” and, even if his actions had been improper, “there was sufficient attenuation to purge the taint of the impropriety_” Because of our conclusion that there is insufficient evidence in the record that West’s action constituted a seizure of defendant for Fourth Amendment purposes, we need not specifically rule on these issues.

In their briefs, both parties discuss Settle, 679 S.W.2d 310, and State v. Neher, 726 S.W.2d 362 (Mo.App.1987). In Settle, a Kansas City, Missouri, police officer observed the defendant meet two women on a convenience store parking lot. The defendant and the women left the parking lot in separate vehicles and the officer followed. After leaving the corporate limits of Kansas City and entering the city of Gladstone, the officer observed the defendant’s car leave the roadway onto the shoulder. Considering this to be an indication that the defendant possibly was driving under the influence, he requested assistance from Gladstone police. The officer followed the two cars into an apartment complex parking lot. Prior to the arrival of Gladstone police, the officer took identification from the two women, ran a computer check on them, and permitted them to leave. He apparently took identification from the defendant also, because he ran a computer check on him. After Gladstone police officers arrived, the defendant discarded a vial containing a controlled substance which police recovered. The defendant was arrested and charged with felony possession of a narcotic.

In Neher, Norbome, Missouri, city police officers, sitting in a marked patrol car inside the city limits, observed the defendant’s vehicle cross the center line of a highway causing another car to pull off the road. As the defendant left the city limits he forced another car off the highway. The officers followed the vehicle to observe it and requested assistance. The county sheriff informed the officers that a highway patrol trooper was en route and instructed them to stop the vehicle. The officers turned on the patrol car lights, stopped the vehicle, approached it, and noticed a heavy odor of alcohol emanating from inside. One officer identified himself as “from Norbome” and told the defendant there was a trooper en route and that he would like him to remain in the vehicle because of his erratic driving. The defendant showed the officer his driver’s license which the officer retained until the trooper arrived who observed the defendant’s condition and arrested him for driving while intoxicated.

Both opinions recognize that, with limited exception, when a law enforcement officer leaves his territorial jurisdiction, his status is transformed into that of a private citizen. Settle, 679 S.W.2d at 317; Neher, 726 S.W.2d at 363-64. A private citizen [852]*852may arrest on a showing of the commission of a felony and reasonable grounds to suspect the arrested party, to prevent an affray or breach of the peace, and for a misdemeanor if authorized by statute. Settle, 679 S.W.2d at 317-18. Regarding a private citizen’s power to arrest for a traffic offense, the court in Settle stated,

No authority can be found granting private citizens the privilege to stop and detain persons believed to have committed ordinance violations or traffic offenses, and the wisdom of recognizing such a privilege is seriously doubted. Delegating to private citizens the authority to investigate and arrest for such offense would invite more breaches of the peace than the number hoped to be prevented.

679 S.W.2d at 318.

In Settle and Neher the western district concluded the arrests were illegal because the officers had been outside their respective jurisdictions when they made the arrests. In Settle, the court reversed the conviction; in Neher, the court affirmed the conviction because it found the second arrest was “based upon the trooper’s own investigation which was, therefore, not discovered through any exploitation of the first arrest.”

Both Settle and Neher are predicated on a finding that the defendants were seized for purposes of the Fourth Amendment. In Settle, the court set forth fundamental principles regarding a seizure by law enforcement officials.

A seizure of a person occurs whenever an officer by physical force or through a show of authority imposes an involuntary restraint upon an individual’s liberty. Deprivations of individual liberty falling short of a full-scale arrest still raise Fourth Amendment concerns. Not every street encounter between police officers and private citizens, however, results in an actual or constructive restraint of liberty. The test as posed by the United States Supreme Court is whether under all of the surrounding circumstances, a reasonable person would have believed he was not free to leave. “As long as the person to whom questions are put remains free to disregard the questions and walk away, there has been no intrusion upon that person's liberty or privacy as would under the Constitution require some particularized and objective justification.”

679 S.W.2d at 316 (citations omitted).

In Settle and Neher, the court set forth the facts, as developed at the suppression hearing in Settle

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Bluebook (online)
745 S.W.2d 850, 1988 Mo. App. LEXIS 427, 1988 WL 16161, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-devlin-moctapp-1988.