State v. Vikesdal

688 So. 2d 685, 1997 WL 40870
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedJanuary 31, 1997
Docket29043-KA
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 688 So. 2d 685 (State v. Vikesdal) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Louisiana Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Vikesdal, 688 So. 2d 685, 1997 WL 40870 (La. Ct. App. 1997).

Opinion

688 So.2d 685 (1997)

STATE of Louisiana, Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
Steven Lyle VIKESDAL, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 29043-KA.

Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Second Circuit.

January 31, 1997.

*686 John Di Giulio, Baton Rouge, for Defendant-Appellant.

Richard Ieyoub, Attorney General, Don M. Burkett, District Attorney, Charles B. Adams, Assistant District Attorney, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Before MARVIN, C.J., and GASKINS and PEATROSS, JJ.

MARVIN, Chief Judge.

After entering a Crosby plea to possession of marijuana with intent to distribute after his motion to suppress was denied, Steven Vikesdal appeals to question the constitutionality of the Logansport police's seizure of more than eight pounds of marijuana from luggage Vikesdal possessed as a passenger aboard a routinely scheduled public bus traveling from Houston through Logansport. Vikesdal's destination was beyond Logansport. La.R.S. 40:966; State v. Crosby, 338 So.2d 584 (La.1976).

Without either a search warrant or probable cause to search without a warrant, Logansport police caused the bus to stop at the police station to enable them to search the luggage in possession of the passengers on the bus.

We reverse and render judgment sustaining the motion to suppress and remand.

DISCUSSION

This scheduled bus travels through Logansport, sometimes stopping there if passengers board or debark in Logansport, to a final destination that is undisclosed in this record. While the record does not disclose whether the bus was scheduled to stop in Logansport at 5:40 a.m. on the day in question, we shall assume, for discussion purposes, that it was so scheduled to stop.

When the bus drove into Logansport about 5:40 a.m. on December 13, 1994, the police chief signaled the bus driver to stop in front of the Logansport police station. The routing supervisor of the bus company (Kerrville Bus Lines) had earlier agreed to this procedure, according to the chief. Once the bus was stopped, the armed and uniformed police would then surround and enter the bus with *687 a trained dog which would "work" the bus by sniffing the luggage of the passengers on the bus. Officers outside the bus would watch for suspicious moves or contraband being discarded by passengers. The Logansport police chief explained that searches were sometimes made after Logansport police had been informed that one or more passengers might be transporting contraband aboard the bus.

The chief also explained that because the bus station is located behind the police station on a street parallel to the street on which the police station is situated, the police sometimes stop the bus in front of the police station by a pre-arranged signal for the convenience of the bus driver:

The stop for [the bus] is right behind the police station[;] we stop it there in front of the police station so it don't have to make a circle, so he can ... make his circle right through by the police station and be headed out, headed North, and if he turns in in front [sic] of the station, he has to back up and turn around and go out so it's more convenient for them for us to do it that way. (Our emphasis and brackets.)

The chief said that the bus is sometimes directed to stop "on a random basis" while at other times it is stopped when "informants call and say certain people are coming in with drugs on the bus." The chief acknowledged that the stop of Vikesdal's bus was simply a random stop.

Within a six-week period surrounding Vikesdal's arrest on December 13, 1994, such random stops and searches incriminated four other bus passengers in separate instances who were subjected to similar searches and were charged with a crime. Each of these five defendants, including Vikesdal, filed a motion to suppress. The hearings on these motions were held in the trial court on the same day, but each was separately tried. Some of the details of the police procedure were not repeated by police witnesses in every case, but the trial court apparently considered those details in separately ruling on each motion. The trial court agreed with Vikesdal's request that the record in his appeal should be supplemented with the transcript of the other cases so that the details of the procedure considered by the trial court might be included in Vikesdal's appellate record. We summarize some of the details as to how the procedure was implemented.

After the bus driver obeyed the chief's directions and stopped at the police station, the chief and the dog handler, in uniform and armed, with the trained dog, approached the bus while other uniformed and armed officers (four to five) surrounded the outside of the bus. The chief entered the bus first, explaining to the passengers his purpose and telling them to remain in their seats while the dog "worked." Passengers were asked to remove their luggage from the upper luggage rack and place it in the center aisle of the bus, otherwise the chief would do this. Passengers were also directed not to be afraid of the dog and not to move around or frighten the dog who might "bite" when "working" if alarmed.

Once these instructions were given and the luggage was on the floor, the dog was allowed to enter with his handler and "work" the bus. In one of the companion cases, Ammons, who had been seated near the rear of the bus, attempted to depart the bus while the dog was working. The chief stopped her, telling her to return to her seat for her own safety because of the dog's presence on the bus.

While "working" Vikesdal's bus under the described circumstances on the December early morning, the dog "alerted" on Vikesdal's luggage. Police opened the luggage, finding the marijuana, after Vikesdal declined the police request that he consent to the search. This resulted in the seizure of the marijuana without a warrant and in Vikesdal's arrest.

The police chief explained how passengers were detained:

Some of them get off to smoke, but ... if someone got off the bus and didn't have a ticket to get off in Logansport I would ... anybody would be suspicious why they got off the bus.
Q. Would you prevent them from leaving?
A. I probably would.... I would ask them for identification and I would ask *688 them why were they getting off there and... I would tell them what we are doing and ask them where their baggage [was] and ... why [they were] leaving [their bags on the bus].... [I]f they [still] wanted to get off the bus then I would ... check ... and make sure [they were] not a burglar or something that is fixing to ... get off the bus there and then go and rob something or kill somebody ... [in] the town ... [If they] checked ... out ... okay, ... then I would let them off the bus [without their bags]. We have had that to happen where a subject ran that had drugs on the bus.... (Our emphasis and brackets.)

WAS THERE AN UNREASONABLE SEIZURE?

La. Const. art. I, § 5 (1974) affords even a passenger on a public bus the guarantee against "unreasonable searches, seizures or invasions of privacy [of his person and effects]," a guarantee that is broader for the citizen and more restrictive on the government than is provided in the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. See and compare Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 99 S.Ct. 1391, 59 L.Ed.2d 660 (1979); State v. Church,

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Bluebook (online)
688 So. 2d 685, 1997 WL 40870, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-vikesdal-lactapp-1997.