Seattle Criminal Attorney | Search and Seizure Case
Every week the Supreme Court hands down its rulings on cases heard before it. Sometimes these cases apply to criminal law, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they discuss a very nuanced part of the law, sometimes they hit on big issues. This week, the Washington State Supreme Court handed down a big ruling that will have a profound effect on the way Seattle criminal attorneys practice law in the future. And all they did was clarify something every Seattle criminal attorney and every person every stopped by the cops knows – when a cop stops you for almost any reason it is really hard to just walk away.
The decision handed down was State v. Harrington. You can read it in its entirety here. The issue before the court was something I see all the time as a Seattle drug attorney – when is a stop by the police a contact versus when is a stop a seizure of the person. This is a difficult question for courts to answer because everyone knows that when a cop stops to talk to you, no matter what the circumstances, you are not free to leave. But the analysis from a legal standpoint is more thorough than that, because the courts want to give officers a chance to make encounters with people without have to suppress anything that may come out of the conversation.
The facts of this case are not in dispute. Harrington was walking around Richmond late at night, minding his own business. A cop drove by, saw him walking, and wanted to check on him. The cop stopped his car, got out, and made contact with Harrington. At this point in time the cop was not in any way impeding Harrington from continuing to walk right by him. But Harrington stopped and agreed to talk to the cop.
While they were talking Harrington kept putting his hands in his coat. The cop told him to keep his hands out of his coat several times. While this was going on a state trooper pulled up, got out, and joined the conversation. At some point, “for officer safety” they patted Harrington down and found methamphetamine and a meth pipe on him. He was charged and convicted of possession of meth.
In Washington, people have a right to privacy in their personal affairs. This is stronger than the fourth amendment right to be free from illegal searches and seizures. This right extends to the ability to walk freely about town without being detained by the cops, though cops are allowed some latitude to engage in “social contacts” with people to satisfy any desire to check out a situation.
If the contact goes too far, however, a seizure occurs. A seizure occurs when “considering all the circumstances, an individual’s freedom of movement is restrained and the individual would not believe he or she is free to leave or decline a request to an officer’s use of force or display of authority.” It’s an objective standard – you look at the officer’s actions and decide if the standard is met. An encounter is always consensual if a reasonable person would feel free to walk away.
Several things have been recognized as likely resulting in a seizure:
(1) threatening presence of several officers;
(2) the display of a weapon;
(3) some physical touching; and
(4) use of language or tone indicating compliance may be compelled.
In this case, the court determined (after the trial court and the court of appeals determined otherwise) that the encounter did evolve into a seizure over time, and that a reasonable person would not have felt they were free to go. This makes the seizure illegal, and all evidence derived therefrom is suppressed.
Now, why is this case so juicy from a Seattle criminal attorney’s perspective? Because it finally recognizes something we’ve all known for a long time – it doesn’t take much to turn a social stop into a seizure. People simply are too scared to walk away from the cops. And for the court to take what in the past probably would have been a situation decided in favor of the state and make the correct decision is wonderful. This gives us another bullet to fire in each of our Seattle criminal cases.
Before I go I wanted to bring your attention to what I thought was the best quote of the entire opinion, one I’m sure will be quoted by Seattle criminal attorneys for years and years to come. Here it is, dealing with the eventual request to frisk for safety reasons:
Requesting to frisk is inconsistent with a mere social contact. If Reiber felt jittery about the bulges in Harrington’s pickets, he should have terminated the encounter – which Reiber initiated – and walked back to his patrol car. Instead Reiber requested a frisk.
Remember, if you are stopped by the cops, you don’t and you shouldn’t consent to anything, particularly a search of anything on you or in your car. If you start feeling jittery stand up to the cop (politely) and tell him you want to call a Seattle criminal attorney.
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