Sunday, December 18, 2016

Court Finds Probable Cause to Support Prosecution Under Actual Possession Theory For Narcotics Found Near Where Defendant Crashed During Police Chase

State v. Barker, Minn.Ct.App., 12/12/2016.  Acting on a tip that Mr. Barker would be returning from Chicago with a load of cocaine and marijuana the cops set up surveillance for his eventual return to the state and apprehension.  On the return drive the informant notified the cops that during a pit stop he had seen Ecstasy pills and marijuana in a white plastic bag in the trunk of the car that Mr. Barker was driving.   When officers tried to stop Mr. Barker's car once he was back in Minnesota Mr. Barker fled, eventually crashing the car.  Officers recovered narcotics in the vehicle, but they also recovered narcotics in a field near where the crash occurred.

The state charged Mr. Barker with multiple counts of possession of narcotics.  The narcotics in play here are the ones the cops found in the ditch.  The state conceded that Mr. Barker did not have constructive possession of these narcotics, but insisted that he had actual possession of them.  The trial court disagreed and tossed the charges for lack of probable cause.  The state took a pretrial appeal and the court of appeals reverses.

The court says that just because an item isn't in a defendant's physical possession at the time of apprehension does not preclude prosecution for actual possession.  The court cited State v. Olhausen, 681 N.W.2d 21 (Min. 2004).  Olhausen agreed to sell an undercover officer one pound of methamphetamine.  Olhausen handed the officer the bag of what the cop believed to be meth, but then took it back and fled.  The supreme court upheld the subsequent conviction for sale and possession of the meth.  The problem is, however, that no one in Olhausen cared a whit about the method of possession.  Rather, the case turned on the absence of any forensic testing of the alleged methamphetamine and on Olhausen's role in preventing that testing.  Applying Olhausen here is thus a bit of a stretch.

Having thus extended Olhausen's holding, the court is then more than confident that there was probable cause to charge Mr. Barker with the drugs found in the ditch.  Along the way, two tidbits:  first, the court applied, without actually holding that it was necessary, the heightened two-step circumstantial evidence standard of review to a probable cause determination:
We have not previously applied this heightened circumstantial evidence test to a probable cause challenge, and we do not decide here that it must be applied in such cases. Nevertheless, we apply this test out of an abundance of caution.
Second, the court pretty strongly signals that the trial court should not instruct the jury on constructive possession  except when the court is convinced that the state cannot prove actual or physical possession. State v. Arnold, 794 N.W.2d 397, 400 (Minn.Ct.App. 2011):
[P]resumably because Arnold was not in physical possession of the drugs when apprehended, the district court instructed the jury only on constructive possession. Id. at 399, 401. On review of Arnold’s conviction, we emphasized that “[t]he purpose of the constructive-possession doctrine is to include within the possession statute those cases where the state cannot prove actual or physical possession.” Id. at 401 (quotation omitted). Although it was “clear” to us that the “evidence of physically handling the drugs prove[d] physical possession,” the jury had been instructed on constructive possession, and we reluctantly addressed the defendant’s sufficiency challenge under that doctrine. Id. at 400-01.

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