{
  "id": 1712564,
  "name": "Lonnie Augusta MEADOWS v. STATE of Arkansas",
  "name_abbreviation": "Meadows v. State",
  "decision_date": "1980-06-30",
  "docket_number": "CR 80-77",
  "first_page": "380",
  "last_page": "384",
  "citations": [
    {
      "type": "official",
      "cite": "269 Ark. 380"
    },
    {
      "type": "parallel",
      "cite": "602 S.W.2d 636"
    }
  ],
  "court": {
    "name_abbreviation": "Ark.",
    "id": 8808,
    "name": "Arkansas Supreme Court"
  },
  "jurisdiction": {
    "id": 34,
    "name_long": "Arkansas",
    "name": "Ark."
  },
  "cites_to": [
    {
      "cite": "262 Ark. 659",
      "category": "reporters:state",
      "reporter": "Ark.",
      "case_ids": [
        1675952
      ],
      "weight": 2,
      "year": 1978,
      "opinion_index": 0,
      "case_paths": [
        "/ark/262/0659-01"
      ]
    }
  ],
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  "last_updated": "2023-07-14T14:52:47.346821+00:00",
  "provenance": {
    "date_added": "2019-08-29",
    "source": "Harvard",
    "batch": "2018"
  },
  "casebody": {
    "judges": [],
    "parties": [
      "Lonnie Augusta MEADOWS v. STATE of Arkansas"
    ],
    "opinions": [
      {
        "text": "George Rose Smith, Justice.\nIn this prosecution for possession of heroin with intent to deliver, the issue on appeal is the validity of a police search by which Meadows was found to be carrying drugs on his person. At a non-jury trial Meadows was found guilty and sentenced to ten years\u2019 imprisonment. We agree with his insistence that the trial court should have suppressed the evidence produced by the search.\nOn the evening of February 8, 1978, Meadows and a companion, Rosco Duncan, both black, arrived by plane at the Little Rock airport. Three state policemen, Don Sanders, Bill Bounds, and Dave Johnston, dressed in plain clothes, were watching the alighting passengers in the hope of spotting several white males who were reported to be transporting heroin. When Meadows and Duncan walked past the officers they started looking back, which aroused the officers\u2019 suspicion. Bounds motioned to Sanders to follow the two men. Sanders fell in behind them and followed them through the building at some distance. Both men kept looking back occasionally. Their pace quickened as they went through the terminal, where there were perhos 150 people. After going down an escalator the two men went to a pay telephone booth.\nAt that point Sanders approached Meadows and identified himself as a policeman. Meadows said, \u201cI knew you were a police officer.\u201d Sanders said he wondered if anything was wrong, and Meadows answered, \u201cNo.\u201d Sanders then asked for identification, and Meadows produced his driver\u2019s license. Sanders handed the license to Officer Bounds, who with Officer Johnston had arrived by then. Bounds telephoned the police communications center to check on the two men, but the computer terminal was \u201cdown.\u201d Bounds returned the driver\u2019s license to Meadows and told him he could go.\nWithin moments Bounds was called to the telephone and was told by the communications center that there was a felony warrant out for Meadows, for defrauding a secured creditor. The officers caught up with Meadows and Duncan as they were leaving the airport, arrested Meadows, and searched him, finding heroin which gave rise to this prosecution.\nOfficer Sanders testified that he did not follow Meadows because he suspected him of any specific crime, but simply because Meadows and Duncan were looking back in a suspicious manner. Officer Bounds testified that the police call such conduct \u201crubber-necking,\u201d which indicates that the suspect has spotted a police officer and is nervous. The trial judge found that there was nothing at all illegal about what Meadows and Duncan were doing; \u201cIt\u2019s obvious to the court that we\u2019ve got some paranoid cops.\u201d Nevertheless, the judge refused to suppress the evidence, on the ground that a police officer is permitted to stop anyone and ask him for identification. On that premise the judge held that the information obtained through Meadows\u2019 driver\u2019s license was not tainted under the poisonous tree doctrine, and the seized drugs were therefore admissible.\nWe disagree. The main issue is controlled by our Criminal Procedure Rule 3.1, which provides:\nA law enforcement officer lawfully present in any place 'may, in the performance of his duties, stop and detain any person who he reasonably suspects is committing, has committed, or is about to commit (1) a felony, or (2) a misdemeanor involving danger of forcible injury to persons or of appropriation of or damage to property, if such action is reasonably necessary either to obtain or verify the identification of the person or to determine the lawfulness of his conduct.\nThe rule is meant to furnish police officers with a simple, certain, understandable guide for stopping and detaining suspects. We need not determine whether the rule is more restrictive than the principles to be distilled from various Supreme Court decisions, for of course there is no constitutional objection to a rule of law that provides more protection to individual liberty than the minimum required by the Constitution of the United States.\nHere the officer\u2019s sole reason for approaching the two men \"was their conduct in looking back and in quickening their pace upon being followed. That conduct, however, could not possibly suggest that Meadows or Duncan had committed or were about to commit any particular type of felony or misdemeanor, which is necessarily what Rule 3.1 refers to. In fact, \u2022 Bounds testified that he suspected that Meadows had committed \u201ccrime,\u201d but he was unable to be more specific. We must conclude that in the circumstances the officers were not authorized by Rule 3.1 to stop the two men.\nThe State also argues that Officer Sanders\u2019s request for Meadows\u2019s identification was proper under Rule 2.2, which reads in part:\n(a) A law enforcement officer may request any person to furnish information or otherwise cooperate in the investigation or prevention of crime. The officer may request the person to respond to questions, to appear at a police station, or to comply with any other reasonable request. [Italics added.]\nWe have emphasized the word \u201cotherwise,\u201d because the insertion of that word shows beyond question that the officer\u2019s request for information must be in aid of the investigation or prevention of crime. Here there is nothing in the officers\u2019 testimony to support a belief that Officer Sanders asked Meadows for identification in the course of a criminal investigation. According to the officers\u2019 own statements, their interrogation was of the kind contemplated by Rule 3.1 rather than by Rule 2.2.\nIt is also argued that Meadows consented to the interrogation by handing over his driver\u2019s license. We have held, however, that consent to an invasion of privacy must be proved by clear and positive testimony \u2014 a burden that is not met by showing only acquiescence to a claim of lawful authority. Rodriquez v. State, 262 Ark. 659, 559 S.W. 2d 925 (1978). Nothing more has been shown in this case.\nTo sum up, if the officers\u2019 conduct in this case is proper, then any law enforcement officer may stop a citizen at any time, without reasonable grounds for suspicion, request identification, and arrest and search the citizen if his identity uncovers an outstanding felony warrant. We need not sift through the Supreme Court\u2019s decisions to find that tribunal\u2019s probable answer to the question presented by this case. Our own Rules of Criminal Procedure unmistakably require that the evidence seized in this case be suppressed.\nReversed.",
        "type": "majority",
        "author": "George Rose Smith, Justice."
      }
    ],
    "attorneys": [
      "E. Alvin Schay, State Appellate Defender, by: Ray Hartenstein, Chief Deputy Defender, for appellant.",
      "Steve Clark, Atty. Gen., by: Jack W. Dickerson, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee."
    ],
    "corrections": "",
    "head_matter": "Lonnie Augusta MEADOWS v. STATE of Arkansas\nCR 80-77\n602 S.W. 2d 636\nSupreme Court of Arkansas\nOpinion delivered June 30, 1980\nRehearing denied August 25, 1980\nE. Alvin Schay, State Appellate Defender, by: Ray Hartenstein, Chief Deputy Defender, for appellant.\nSteve Clark, Atty. Gen., by: Jack W. Dickerson, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee."
  },
  "file_name": "0380-01",
  "first_page_order": 418,
  "last_page_order": 422
}