Georgia Court of Appeals

DEPUTY UNLAWFULLY PROLONGED TRAFFIC STOP

On April 9, 2021, Deputy Reece, of the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office, pulled over a vehicle whose driver was not wearing his seat belt. Deputy Reece walked from his patrol car over to the car driven by Daniel Murray (“Murray”); Tasha Caldwell (“Caldwell”) was the front-seat passenger. Deputy Reece asked Murray and Caldwell for their driver’s licenses, at which point he observed that Murray’s hands were shaking “uncontrollably.” When the deputy saw that the vehicle had an out-of-state tag, he inquired about whether Murray and Caldwell were Georgia residents. In response, Murray told Deputy Reece that he and Caldwell had moved from Indiana to Georgia recently.

Deputy Reece then “asked Murray whether marijuana was legal in Indiana and whether he had ‘anything in the car.’” Next the deputy asked whether Murray would consent to a search of the vehicle, to which Murray responded, “[I]f you want to.” At this point, less than two minutes had passed since Deputy Reece initiated the traffic stop.

Deputy Reece then questioned Murray about his sunglasses, which “had depictions or drawings of marijuana on them[.]” The deputy inquired further about “when he had last ‘smoked weed,’ and whether there was a marijuana ‘roach’ in the car.” (Note: At this point, Deputy Reece had neither smelled any odor of marijuana emanating from the vehicle nor observed “any contraband in the vehicle.”) After Murray retrieved a marijuana roach from the vehicle’s front console, he passed it to the deputy, who then removed Murray from the car.

Murray also told Deputy Reece “that he was a convicted felon, that he had a firearm in his possession, and that there was a warrant for him from Indiana.” The deputy then pulled a firearm from the waistband of Murray’s pants, secured it in his patrol car, and asked Caldwell, the passenger, to exit the vehicle. All activities up to this point took place “within five minutes of the traffic stop.” At this point, Deputy Reece returned to his patrol car, called in a check of Murray’s and Caldwell’s driver’s licenses, and gave dispatch the serial number of the recovered firearm. Reece also typed information into his computer “for roughly five minutes.”

After approximately eleven minutes had elapsed since the outset of the traffic stop, Deputy Reece searched Murray’s vehicle “and recovered a firearm and Xanax pills from Caldwell’s purse.” Video from the stop showed that Deputy Reece searched the purse before dispatch provided follow-up information in response to the deputy’s inquiries regarding Murray and Caldwell.

Caldwell was arrested and subsequently indicted on two counts: possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony and violation of the Georgia Controlled Substances Act. In the trial court, Caldwell filed a motion to suppress,

arguing that Deputy Reece abandoned the purpose of the investigation and impermissibly prolonged the traffic stop, and thus the search of the vehicle and the items obtained were the result of an unlawful detention. Caldwell further argued that Deputy Reece lacked probable cause to search her purse and that Murray’s consent to a search of the vehicle did not authorize a search of her purse.

The prosecution countered “that Deputy Reece did not unlawfully prolong the traffic stop, the consent to search the vehicle extended to all of the containers in the vehicle including Caldwell’s purse, and the presence of the marijuana roach gave Deputy Reece probable cause to search the vehicle and its contents.” After a hearing on Caldwell’s motion to suppress, the trial court granted the motion, concluding that

 (1) Caldwell did not consent to the search of her purse, to which she had ‘unequivocal ownership’ independent from Murray; (2) although Murray gave Deputy Reece marijuana from inside the vehicle, ‘which may have enabled [him]’ to extend the stop as to Murray, Deputy Reece impermissibly extended the traffic stop as to Caldwell; and (3) the consent to search the vehicle was invalid because it was the product of an unlawful detention.

The prosecution filed an appeal with the Georgia Court of Appeals after the trial court denied its motion for reconsideration. On appeal, one of the State’s arguments was “that the trial court erred by determining that Caldwell’s detention was unlawful.” The Court of Appeals was not persuaded by this argument, instead finding no error in the trial court’s ruling “that Deputy Reece unlawfully prolonged Caldwell’s detention.”

Georgia Court of Appeals precedent holds that “[o]nce a valid traffic stop has been effected, the Fourth Amendment prohibits the officer from unreasonably prolonging the stop beyond the time required to fulfill the purpose of the stop without a reasonable articulable suspicion of other illegal activity.”

In Caldwell’s case, the Georgia Court of Appeals concluded that Deputy Reece

 

clearly diverted from the traffic investigation, which resulted in Caldwell’s illegal detention. . . [A]lmost immediately after initiating a traffic stop on Murray’s vehicle for Murray’s seatbelt violation and obtaining Murray’s and Caldwell’s driver’s licenses, Deputy Reece asked Murray whether marijuana was legal in Indiana, whether Murray had ‘anything in the car,’ and for consent to search the vehicle. Deputy Reece then questioned Murray about his ‘pot’ sunglasses, when he had last ‘smoked weed,’ and whether there was a marijuana ‘roach’ in the car. At this point, Deputy Reece had not even begun to write a citation for the seatbelt violation nor did he run a check of the driver’s licenses. Moreover, Deputy Reece admitted that he did not detect any odor of marijuana coming from the vehicle at any time during the encounter, and there was no testimony that Deputy Reece otherwise observed any contraband in the vehicle prior to the questioning. Thus it is clear that after initiating the traffic stop for the seatbelt violation, Deputy Reece clearly diverted from his investigation of the traffic stop and instead pursued to question Murray about marijuana, a matter entirely unrelated to the purpose of the traffic stop. Therefore, the traffic stop was prolonged beyond the time necessary to fulfill the mission of issuing a citation for the seatbelt violation.

 

For these reasons, the Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s order granting Caldwell’s motion to suppress. State v. Caldwell, No. A24A0037, 2024 WL 3271902 (Ga. Ct. App., July 2, 2024).

 

BOTH DEFENDANT’S INITIAL AND SUBSEQUENT DETENTION BY POLICE WERE ILLEGAL

Swainsboro Police Department (“Swainsboro P.D.”) and Emanuel County Sheriff’s Office personnel were dispatched in response to an anonymous telephone tip that “two white males [were] acting ‘suspicious [and] doing drugs’ near a public pavilion in Swainsboro.” The tipster said that one of the men “was wearing a green shirt and had active warrants.” Officer Purcell with the Swainsboro P.D. was the first officer to respond, at which time he “saw two men sitting on the ground under a public pavilion.” (Note: Nothing from the record of the trial court confirmed whether either man wore a green shirt.)

Officer Purcell observed that Mrozowski seemed unsteady and had slightly slurred speech, but Mrozowski “denied being under the influence of alcohol, drugs or medication.” When the officer requested ID from the two men, “Mrozowski handed him an ID card that did not belong to him and stated that he had just found it by the nearby CVS and had not yet had time to turn it into authorities.” Officer Purcell then asked for Mrozowski’s own ID, in response to which Mrozowski “tried to step to walk away like he was gonna flee.” Any idea Mrozowski might have had of fleeing was thwarted by the second officer to respond, who blocked Mrozowski’s path. After the second officer shouted, “Hey, you okay over there?” to Officer Purcell, Mrozowski tried “to walk away in a different direction.”

As Mrozowski tried, yet again, to walk off, he “kept trying to put his hands in his pockets,” prompting Officer Purcell to direct Mrozowski to remove his hands from his pockets. Purcell snatched one of Mrozowski’s arms when he ignored the officer’s instructions.  The second officer then walked up as Mrozowski struggled to yank his arm free, but Officer Purcell held firm, testifying that “based upon his police training, it was possible that Mrozowski could have had some kind of weapon in his pocket.”

When Officer Purcell then told Mrozowski that he was going to pat him down for weapons, Mrozowski told Purcell “that he did not have permission to search his pockets.” When Mrozowski tried to wrest his arm from the officer’s grip, the officers handcuffed him, “due to ‘resisting arrest and pulling away.’” While being cuffed, Mrozowski spat in the face of one of the officers.

Once Mrozowski was handcuffed, Purcell and the other officer “frisked the outside of his pockets and felt what ‘appeared to be a pipe that is commonly used to ingest drugs.’” One of the officers then removed the pipe from Mrozowski’s pants pocket. The officers informed Mrozowski that he was under arrest; Mrozowski continued to resist the officers’ attempts to walk him over to one of the patrol cars. During the struggle, “one of the officers’ body cameras was jostled off of its mount, fell to the ground and broke.” Things escalated as, when the officers and Mrozowski arrived at the jail, he threatened the officers with bodily harm and “resisted being brought into the jail by kicking and headbutting the officers.”

Mrozowski was subsequently charged with possession of a drug-related object; obstruction; terroristic threats; and interference with government property for the damage to one of the officer’s bodycams. In the trial court, Mrozowski filed a motion to suppress evidence of the pipe; his behavior pre- and post-arrest; and the broken body camera. He contended “that the State improperly escalated a first-tier encounter to a third-tier encounter without the required probable cause to do so.”

The trial court granted Mrozowski’s motion. On appeal, “[t]he State argue[d] that the trial court erred by granting the motion to suppress because the officer had a ‘reasonable articulable suspicion’ to conduct a second-tier detention and because Mrozowski ‘unlawfully resisted said search which resulted in his arrest.’”

In evaluating the trial court’s decision to grant Mrozowski’s motion to suppress, the Georgia Court of Appeals (“Court of Appeals” or “Court”) noted the “three tiers of police-citizen encounters” recognized under Georgia law: “(1) communication between police and citizens involving no coercion or detention and therefore without the compass of the Fourth Amendment, (2) brief seizures that must be supported by reasonable suspicion, and (3) full- scale arrests that must be supported by probable cause.”

Court of Appeals precedent describes a first-tier encounter as one in which the police “may approach citizens, ask for identification, ask for consent to search, and otherwise freely question the citizen without any basis or belief of criminal activity so long as the police do not detain the citizen or convey the message that the citizen may not leave.” The distinguishing factor of such an encounter is “a ‘citizen’s ability to walk away from or otherwise avoid a police officer[.]”

The Court determined that Mrozowski’s initial encounter with Officer Purcell “was a first-tier encounter in which the officer stopped him and asked for his name and identification.” Once Officer Purcell grabbed Mrozowski’s arm to prevent him from walking away and the second officer blocked his route, however, “the trial court was authorized to conclude that ‘a reasonable person would feel compelled to conclude that he or she was not free to [walk] away and to leave.’” That is: the encounter rose to the level of a second-tier detention, “which, in order to be lawful, must be supported by reasonable suspicion.”

Court of Appeals precedent holds that “[r]easonable suspicion exists when an officer has a particularized and objective basis for suspecting that a citizen is or is about to be involved in criminal activity.” In Mrozowski’s case, the Court reasoned,

 

the officers had no objective basis for suspecting that Mrozowski was engaged in criminal activity at the time of his initial detention. Although there had been an anonymous tip that there were two men in the same area doing drugs, ‘that tip had not been corroborated by independent police investigation and there is no evidence in the record which otherwise reflects the reliability’ of that tip.

Therefore, the Court explained, the anonymous tip in Mrozowski’s case “afforded no basis for [his] detention.” The Court again looked to Court of Appeals precedent:

 

A tip provided by an informant of unknown reliability will not create a reasonable suspicion of criminal reliability unless the tip is detailed enough to provide some basis for predicting future behavior of the suspect and the details not available to the general public are corroborated by observations of the police.

 

The Court of Appeals also found that Mrozowski’s “slurring his words just a little bit when he talked[,]” (according to Officer Purcell’s testimony) “did not give rise to reasonable suspicion to require detention.” The Court wrote: “There is no indication that officers saw Mrozowski engage in suspicious behavior or consumption of drugs, and the officer testified only that Mrozowski was unsteady and appeared intoxicated when spoken to. Acting unsteady and slurring words, alone, does not rise to misdemeanor public drunkenness.”

Georgia’s Public Drunkenness statute reads, in part:

A person who shall be and appear in an intoxicated condition in any public place or within the curtilage of any private residence not his own other than by invitation of the owner or lawful occupant, which condition is made manifest by boisterousness, by indecent condition or act, or by vulgar, profane, loud, or unbecoming language, is guilty of a misdemeanor.
(O.C.G.A. § 16 – 11 -41)(a)

 

The Court of Appeals found that the officers “lacked reasonable, articulable suspicion to detain Mrozowski and prevent him from leaving the scene,” and, therefore, “[T]he illegality of the detention in this case requires the suppression of any evidence obtained after the initial detention.” As a result, the Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s decision to grant Mrozowski’s motion to suppress, finding no error in the trial court’s ruling. State v. Mrozowski, No. A24A0331, 2024 WL 1984074 (Ga. Ct. App., May 6, 2024).