The Arkansas Supreme Court agreed that evidence obtained after a search of a felon who was duck hunting should be voided but moved away from a lower-court decision that found routine "spot checks" of hunters amount to illegal, searches without warrants.
In a split opinion Thursday, four of the seven justices agreed that Craighead County Circuit Judge Cindy Thyer erred in not suppressing evidence collected by Arkansas Game and Fish Commission officers to arrest and prosecute Jimmy Pickle after a lengthy 2012 field inspection near the Cache River.
Writing for the majority, Justice Jo Hart said there is no indication that Pickle, who was a felon in possession of a prohibited weapon, gave game wardens any reasonable "suspicion" to investigate whether he was a felon after a routine check of his weapon and license along with those of others in his hunting party.
But Justice Paul Danielson took exception to Hart's reasoning, arguing that the court's majority went "well beyond the scope" of the question on appeal.
"According to Pickle, it was a violation of his constitutional rights for the officers to approach him and his hunting party to check their licenses, weapons, or any game they may have killed," Danielson wrote. "After reading the majority opinion, I have no idea whether game wardens are allowed to conduct the routine compliance checks that I believe are necessary in order for them to carry out their official duties."
On Thursday, officials from the Game and Fish Commission issued a statement:
"We are reviewing the Arkansas Supreme Court's opinion in this case," it said. "Our in-house counsel is consulting with the Attorney General's office, which represented the State in this criminal appeal, to determine what effect the opinion has on the law and to discuss our options going forward."
Game wardens in the state have long been allowed to do "spot checks" of hunters or fishers in the field for routine paperwork and weapon and game regulations.
State hunting pamphlets even inform hunters that it is illegal to object or resist a search or inspection from game wardens.
But in December, the Arkansas Court of Appeals found that wildlife officers' roving inspections constituted searches and that, like police officers pulling over an automobile, they need to have probable cause or reasonable suspicion to do so.
Barring that, the court found, they had to be following a plan containing explicit "neutral criteria" in order to do the inspections. Otherwise the long-standing policy gave officers "unbridled discretion" to violate others' rights, a power not enjoyed by any other law enforcement officials.
State attorneys appealed the decision in January. Though the high court agreed that a search of Pickle that yielded drugs and felony information was inadmissible, justices overturned and vacated the previous appeals court's ruling without answering one of the key legal questions raised by the lower court.
Pickle was with a friend and his friend's son on a lake near the Cache River in November 2012 when they caught the attention of a pair of game officers.
Both officers said they followed Pickle's party for two hours and saw nothing illegal but approached when the group sat down for breakfast.
They examined the group's weapons and found that Pickle's gun was in compliance. Pickle, however, did not have his hunting license on him and said it was in his truck.
After an inspection that lasted 20-25 minutes and included a search of the hunters' bags, they were told to "have a safe day" and the officers left.
One of the officers subsequently radioed in Pickle's name; officials responded by confirming that Pickle's license was valid.
But afterward, following his own "personal protocol," one of the investigators also ran a check for warrants on Pickle, and discovered that Pickle was a convicted felon and thus barred from carrying a weapon.
The officer testified that he wouldn't have made the check if Pickle had been carrying his hunting license.
Pickle was arrested and charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm. They then searched Pickle and found methamphetamine as well as a drug pipe.
At trial, Pickle argued the evidence from the search should be suppressed and that the officers had no cause to confront him and his party in the first place, but after losing that argument, made a "conditional" guilty plea pending an appeal.
Instead of addressing the points raised by Pickle and addressed by the lower court, Hart's opinion looked past the practice of "spot checks" and focused on the decision to run a warrant check on Pickle after verifying that he was properly licensed.
"We need not decide where the officer's investigation of Pickle to check for compliance with state and federal regulations pertaining to the harvest of waterfowl was reasonable," Hart wrote. "Even assuming, but not deciding, that it was appropriate for the officers to conduct a search absent a reasonable, articulable suspicion, the evidence used to charge Pickle of [several crimes]... was adduced by the officers after they had completed any inquiry into Pickle's compliance with state and federal regulations."
Hart said the officer's "exploration of Pickle's criminal past and the subsequent search of his person went far beyond the scope of any administrative search conducted for the purpose of investigating Pickle's compliance with hunting laws."
The court found that the game officers had improperly started a criminal investigation after determining that Pickle was properly licensed.
Stating that he was "not entirely sure what the majority is actually holding," Danielson argued in his dissent that the search was valid.
Yes, Danielson said, police officers are barred from randomly pulling over drivers, a "highly regulated activity" like hunting, without cause.
"But, the nature of that activity lends itself to road blocks or check points," he wrote. "The activity of hunting does not lend itself to a streamlined type of compliance or safety check. There is simply not one way into the woods."
In a third opinion that supported portions of the majority ruling, Justice Courtney Goodson agreed with Danielson's dissent and wrote that game wardens have a right to conduct "brief" spot checks, saying they are only a "slight" intrusion.
Goodson wrote that she agrees with the majority's decision that wildlife officers must be subject to the same Fourth Amendment restrictions as other law enforcement when they cease acting as wildlife officers and start investigating matters that have "nothing to do with the enforcement of game and fish regulations."
But she rejected the majority's finding that the officers shouldn't have run a warrant check on Pickle.
"Such checks are not searches or seizures within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment," Goodson wrote.
Goodson was joined by special justice Terry Pool. Pool was appointed to sit in for Justice Robin Wynne who recused himself in the case.
A Section on 06/26/2015