State v. Vicars

299 N.W.2d 421, 207 Neb. 325
CourtNebraska Supreme Court
DecidedNovember 14, 1980
Docket43223
StatusPublished
Cited by48 cases

This text of 299 N.W.2d 421 (State v. Vicars) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Nebraska Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Vicars, 299 N.W.2d 421, 207 Neb. 325 (Neb. 1980).

Opinions

Hastings, J.

The defendant, Steven C. Vicars, has appealed from the denial of a motion for new trial by the District Court for Jefferson County. The defendant was charged with violating Neb. Rev. Stat. §28-319(l)(c) (Reissue 1979), i.e., first degree sexual assault where the actor is 19 years of age or older and the victim is less than 16 years of age, and the victim has been subjected to sexual penetration. After conviction by a jury, the court sentenced [327]*327the defendant to a, period in the Nebraska Penal and Correctional Complex of not less than 5 nor more than 8 years at hard labor.

The defendant assigned the following as error: (1) The District Court erred in overruling a motion to suppress certain physical evidence obtained as a result of a search of defendant’s calf shed, pursuant to a search warrant that described his residence; (2) The refusal to allow defense counsel to impeach the credibility of the complaining witness on cross-examination; (3) The permitting of the defendant’s wife, over objection, to testify against him; (4) The receipt into evidence of two exhibits which had not been produced for defendant’s inspection pursuant to a pretrial discovery order; (5) The refusal to instruct the jury on lesser-included offenses; and (6) The refusal to instruct the jury with a cautionary instruction. We affirm the judgment of the District Court.

At the time of the offense, the defendant was 31 years of age and the victim, H, was 15 years of age. The complaining witness testified that on the night of the occurrence she had been babysitting for the defendant’s children while the defendant, his wife, and two friends went out for the evening. During the early morning hours, defendant drove H home. It was enroute to her home that, H stated, the defendant turned off the highway and drove down a gravel road and into a field, where the defendant stopped the car. H testified that the defendant then pulled her over to him, told her he needed somebody, fondled her pelvic region, and then subjected her to sexual penetration. She also testified that she was experiencing her menstrual period at the time of the assault. The defendant then drove her home in silence.

The defendant testified that he remembers very little about the happenings that night. He stated that he began drinking beer that afternoon about 3:30, and by dinner time he had consumed approximately 12 beers; he and one dinner guest consumed a quart of whiskey [328]*328during dinner; and the defendant had five or six beers at a tavern that evening and two more mixed drinks upon returning to the defendant’s home at the end of the evening. The only things that the defendant could remember from the time he and H got into his car so he could take her home to the time they reached her home, were as follows: “Well I remember goin’ down Highway 8. . . . And I remember stoppin’ in front of her house. . . . And I remember cornin’ back home or I remember bein’ back home.” He later testified: “I remember talking to her a little bit in front of her place.” The only other thing the defendant could recall was that he got sick and vomited once, but he couldn’t remember if H was with him at the time.

The victim said nothing about the incident that night when she went home, or the next day. However, the third day she did confide in a friend, and in the early morning hours that same day she ran away to her natural father in Florida. Further relevant facts will be detailed in connection with the discussion on each assignment of error.

The first assignment of error is that the District Court erred in overruling a motion to suppress certain evidence seized after a search of the defendant’s residence and outbuildings. The investigating officers were informed by the defendant’s wife that when he returned from taking the babysitter home, she had noticed stains on the front of his blue jeans. The next day she also noticed red stains on his undershorts. Mrs. Vicars testified that she washed the shorts, but hid the blue jeans. A search warrant was issued to search the residence of the defendant for bloody clothing.

The defendant lived on a farmstead on which were seven permanent structures, including a house and several sheds. The defendant rented four of those structures, including the house and three sheds. The blue jeans were found in one of the sheds which was used at various times as a rabbit hutch, a calf shed for bucket feeding young calves, and as a garage. The police [329]*329officers conducting the search initially had been informed by the defendant’s wife that the blue jeans were in the residence of the defendant. After searching the residence, the police officers again contacted the defendant’s wife, and were told she had removed them from the house and placed them in a white plastic garbage bag in a rabbit hutch in the calf shed. The police officers then searched the calf shed and seized the blue jeans. The defendant moved to suppress the blue jeans, arguing that they were outside the scope of the search warrant, and that the warrant described the residence of the defendant but not the outbuildings.

There is no doubt that the Constitution of the United States, as well as the Constitution of Nebraska, protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. In the words of the U.S. Supreme Court: “[T]he question is whether the challenged search or seizure violated the Fourth Amendment rights of a criminal defendant who seeks to exclude the evidence obtained during it. That inquiry in turn requires a determination of whether the disputed search and seizure has infringed an interest of the defendant which the Fourth Amendment was designed to protect.” Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 140, 99 S. Ct. 421, 58 L. Ed. 2d 387 (1978). The interest protected was defined by Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S. Ct. 507, 19 L. Ed. 2d 576 (1967), where the Supreme Court held that the capacity to claim the protection of the fourth amendment depends not upon a property right in the invaded place, but upon whether the person who claims the protection of the amendment has a legitimate expectation of privacy in the invaded place. 389 U.S. at 353. Therefore, the question we are faced with is whether the defendant had a legitimate expectation of privacy in the calf shed where the blue jeans were found.

The calf shed was one of four of the seven buildings on the premises which the defendant leased. The other three leased buildings were the house in which the defendant and his family lived, and two sheds used for [330]*330storage. The calf shed was located about 100 feet from the house, on the opposite side of a chain link fence which surrounded the yard. The shed was first used to raise rabbits, but was later used to house bucket calves. The defendant’s wife referred to it as the garage.

“Fourth Amendment protection extends not only to one’s home but also to one’s ‘curtilage.’ Curtilage is usually defined as a small piece of land, not necessarily enclosed, around a dwelling house and generally includes buildings used for domestic purposes in the conduct of family affairs.” State v. Render, 60 Hawaii 301, 304, 588 P.2d 447, 449 (1978).

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
299 N.W.2d 421, 207 Neb. 325, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-vicars-neb-1980.