COURT OF APPEALS
DECISION
DATED AND FILED
April 16, 2009
David
R. Schanker
Clerk of Court of Appeals
|
|
NOTICE
|
|
|
This opinion is subject to
further editing. If published, the
official version will appear in the bound volume of the Official
Reports.
A party may file with the
Supreme Court a petition to review an adverse decision by the Court of
Appeals. See Wis. Stat. § 808.10 and Rule 809.62.
|
|
Appeal No.
|
|
|
STATE OF WISCONSIN
|
IN COURT OF
APPEALS
|
|
DISTRICT II
|
|
|
|
|
State of Wisconsin,
Plaintiff-Respondent,
v.
Marquian Q. Shannon,
Defendant-Appellant.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
APPEAL
from a judgment of the circuit court for Racine County: Emily
S. Mueller, Judge. Affirmed.
Before Higginbotham, P.J., Dykman and Vergeront, JJ.
¶1 PER CURIAM. Marquian Shannon appeals a
judgment convicting him of possessing cocaine with intent to deliver it. The issue on appeal is whether police
officers lawfully obtained the evidence the State used to convict Shannon when
they stopped the vehicle Shannon was driving
and searched it. We affirm.
¶2 The relevant facts are not in dispute. Two Racine
police officers in an unmarked car were observing a gas station where frequent
drug activity had reputedly occurred.
They observed Shannon park his car, go into the station, come out, move
his car a short distance, and then move it again when someone parked right next
to him. Through binoculars, an officer
then saw another person enter Shannon’s car and exchange what he believed was
money with Shannon. A minute later he observed a third person
approach Shannon’s car and apparently exchange some unidentifiable item with Shannon through the driver side window. Shannon then
drove off and the officers stopped him a few minutes later for speeding. As Shannon
pulled over to stop, the officers observed him reach down with his right
hand. The officers directed him to exit
his vehicle and then patted him down for weapons. An officer then searched the vehicle for
weapons and in the process discovered cocaine under the driver’s seat,
resulting in this prosecution.
¶3 Based on these facts, the trial court denied Shannon’s suppression motion, and a jury subsequently
found him guilty of the possession charge.
Shannon does not contest the lawfulness
of the decision to stop his vehicle. The
issue is whether the officers had reasonable suspicion to subsequently search both
his person and his vehicle for weapons.
¶4 During an investigative stop an officer may conduct a pat
down to determine whether the detained person is armed, if the officer is “able
to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational
inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion.” State v. Johnson, 2007 WI 32, ¶21,
299 Wis. 2d 675, 729 N.W.2d 182 (quoting Terry
v. Ohio, 392 U.S.
1, 21 (1968)). The test of a protective
search for weapons is objective; whether a reasonably prudent officer in the
circumstances could believe that his/her safety and that of others was at risk
because the individual may be armed and dangerous. State v. Kyles, 2004 WI 15, ¶10, 269
Wis. 2d 1,
675 N.W.2d 449.
¶5 When the person is stopped in a vehicle, the search for
weapons may extend to the passenger compartment of the person’s vehicle. State v. Moretto, 144 Wis. 2d 171, 177-78, 423
N.W.2d 841 (1988). The protective search
of the vehicle remains justified even if the detaining officers have removed
the suspect from the vehicle and have the suspect in their control, if an
officer reasonably suspects that the person “‘is dangerous and ... may gain immediate
control of weapons’ placed or hidden in the passenger compartment.” Johnson, 299 Wis.
2d 675, ¶24 (quoting Michigan v. Long, 463 U.S.
1032, 1049 (1983)). Because the facts of
Shannon’s stop are not in dispute, our review
of the reasonableness of the officer’s actions is de novo. See
Johnson,
299 Wis. 2d
675, ¶13.
¶6 The officers reasonably searched Shannon
and his vehicle. Before the stop
occurred, the officers observed Shannon parked
in an area of reputed drug activity, conducting what appeared to be
drug-related transactions. A police officer may reasonably associate
drug activity with weapons possession. See id.,
¶29. Additionally, “[d]epending upon the
totality of the circumstances in a given case, a surreptitious movement by a
suspect in a vehicle immediately after a traffic stop could be a substantial
factor in establishing that officers had reason to believe that the suspect was
dangerous and had access to weapons.” Id., ¶37. These circumstances, in combination,
justified a reasonable belief that Shannon
might be armed and dangerous. The search
was therefore lawful.
By the Court.—Judgment affirmed.
This
opinion will not be published. See Wis.
Stat. Rule 809.23(1)(b)5.