LYNNWOOD — The man, who had a felony conviction for robbery, wasn’t supposed to have a gun.
But the cops didn’t have a reason to approach him when he was parked outside the Rodeo Inn in Lynnwood on July 31, 2017, judges say.
As a result, the gun they found in the man’s car should never have been submitted as evidence, Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Janice Ellis ruled later that year.
Without that crucial piece of evidence, prosecutors didn’t have an argument. The case against the 26-year-old man, who lives in Seattle, was dismissed. Prosecutors appealed the ruling.
On Monday, a panel of judges with the state Court of Appeals agreed with Ellis’ ruling. Lynnwood officers had erred multiple times during their encounter with the defendant, they wrote.
Under Washington state law, police are allowed to strike up a conversation with people without any particular reason, the judges wrote in their ruling. But, without some suspicion of wrongdoing, officers can’t put a person in a position in which they cannot leave freely, judges wrote.
The appeals court judges questioned whether Lynnwood police had sufficient reason to suspect the defendant was doing anything wrong.
Before approaching the man, the officers only knew two things, the ruling states: The area around the Rodeo Inn has a high-crime rate, and a man and woman had been parked inside a car outside for less than two minutes.
The officers reasoned that people who stay inside a vehicle are typically using drugs, according to the ruling.
However, the judges wrote, “This is a generalization that amounts to nothing more than a hunch.”
And it was a hunch that appeared to bear little fruit. When police shined their flashlights into the car, they didn’t note any drugs or drug paraphernalia, only that the man’s eyes appeared bloodshot and glassy.
The officers had taken positions on both sides of the car, and had little room to move around because of vehicles parked on either side. The man likely couldn’t leave without hitting them, judges wrote.
Moreover, the officer’s line of questioning appeared interrogative in nature, the ruling states.
They opened up the conversation by asking if the car belonged to Taylor Smith — a name they made up on the spot. It was supposed to be an icebreaker, according to a report written at the time, but the man seemed confused.
Rightfully so, judges wrote, because any reasonable person would assume he was being investigated.
Then, the officers asked for the man’s name, and if they could see his identification.
That was the “tipping point,” judges wrote; it was no longer a simple conversation.
“At that stage of the encounter, a reasonable innocent person in (the defendant’s) position would not have felt free to leave the scene, to disregard the officer’s requests, to ignore the officers, or to otherwise terminate the encounter,” they wrote.
When one of the officers spotted a black, semi-automatic Ruger handgun by the driver’s-side door shortly afterward, it was already too late.
There were no grounds to approach the man in the manner that the officers did, judges wrote, so they should not have seen the firearm in the first place.
The gun was not admissible as evidence, the judges ruled.
It was the same conclusion Judge Ellis came to about a year and a half ago.
“It is troubling to understand the justification of the officers,” she wrote in an order to suppress evidence in November 2017. “There was no basis to assume a crime was occurring.”
Zachariah Bryan: 425-339-3431; zbryan@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @zachariahtb.
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