State asks high court to rehear hunter case

Agency unsure if ‘spot checks’ lawful

Attorneys from multiple state offices are asking the Arkansas Supreme Court for a second chance to prove that the 2012 search and subsequent arrest of a duck hunter by game wardens was lawful.

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The Arkansas attorney general's office officially submitted its request Thursday for a rehearing in the case of Jimmy Pickle, who prevailed in a challenge of evidence used in his 2013 conviction for drug possession. On June 25, the state's high court agreed that the search by game wardens that led to his arrest was done without probable cause.

The ruling voided the search and sent the case back to Craighead County Circuit Court, where Pickle was originally sentenced to 60 months of probation after a negotiated guilty plea to two drug felonies.

Pickle successfully challenged his convictions in December to the Arkansas Court of Appeals, where a divided court tossed the search, finding that the routine hunting compliance field check initiated by game wardens amounted to a search and seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution.

The Arkansas Supreme Court did not address that point in its June ruling, leaving Arkansas Game and Fish Commission officials uncertain about the law.

On Thursday, attorneys from the commission also requested that the justices settle whether or not the practice of field checks, or "spot checks," by game wardens remains constitutional.

It is unclear how soon the Supreme Court -- which will convene for its first oral arguments since June on Thursday -- will decide on whether to rehear the case.

Pickle was hunting with a friend and his friend's son in November 2012 near the Cache River in Craighead County when two game wardens spotted them and spent two hours tracking the men.

After seeing no illegal or suspicious behavior, they approached the group's camp and asked for hunting licenses and inspected weapons.

Pickle told the officers that he left his license in his truck, and the game wardens called in Pickle's name to find out whether he had a valid license.

The officers, after leaving the site, ran Pickle's name through a crime database and found that Pickle was a felon and, thus, is barred from hunting with his shotgun.

Pickle was arrested in the woods, and officers found he was in possession of methamphetamine.

Pickle's case went to the Court of Appeals, where he argued that game wardens did not have greater powers than other law enforcement officers and should be subject to the same standards that bar police from arbitrarily pulling over vehicles on the road.

The Court of Appeals, in a 6-3 decision, sided with Pickle and voided the lower court decision with the majority finding that the game wardens' inspection of Pickle without cause was an illegal search or seizure.

State attorneys appealed to the Supreme Court, which -- save for Justice Paul Danielson's dissent -- ignored the question of field checks and agreed that the search of Pickle was illegal.

Instead, the Supreme Court found that game wardens exceeded their authority by running Pickle's name through a criminal database without cause, an action they deemed to be starting a criminal investigation without any reasonable suspicion.

Assistant Attorney General David Raupp argued in his petition for a rehearing that the majority of the Supreme Court erred in its ruling by relying on an analogy that equated the wardens' warrant check with an officer's detention of a motorist after a traffic stop so a drug-sniffing dog can be called in without probable cause.

"Certainly [Pickle] was not detained when the officers conducted [a warrant check] on him. As a legal matter, no liberty interest is invaded by the check itself, whenever it is conducted," Raupp wrote. "The [court's ruling] is compounded by its conclusion that the criminal record check here was a criminal investigation for which the officers needed reasonable suspicion-- the opposite is correct."

Attorneys from the state Highway Police and the Municipal League joined Raupp's office in urging the court to reconsider the case, arguing there is no expectation of privacy for the criminal information that could be found by an officer using the criminal database.

Attorneys from the Game and Fish Commission also argued that being able to run criminal background checks is in the best interest of officer safety.

Metro on 09/04/2015

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