SUPREME COURT DECISIONS
State of Kansas v. Tracy Boyd
Kansas Supreme Court - March 7, 2003

(Okay, you cannot search a woman's purse, full of crack cocaine though it may be, without a warrant; or without probable cause and exigent circumstances; or unless incident to her lawful arrest; or without her personal free and voluntary consent; or unless in the course of hot pursuit [?]; or, of course, unless your personal safety, or someone else's personal safety, clearly demands it. And, if you do search a woman's purse without one or more of those prescribed justifications, God help you! Because the Kansas Supreme Court will not.)

Officers Real and Herman, Wichita Police Department, at 1:30 a.m. one morning, were conducting a surveillance of the Wichita residence of Betty DeMarco. A week earlier, at that residence, they had arrested Betty and a male guest in possession of cocaine (Aha!). Now they observe a vehicle pull away from the front of the residence and make a turn without a signal. They stop the vehicle.

The driver of the car, pursuant to Officer Real's request, identified himself, with his driver's license, as Richard Lassiter. As the officer later testified, Lassiter appeared "a lot more nervous than most ' " so he asked Lassiter to get out of the vehicle. Lassiter explained to Officer Real that he and his female passenger were coming from Betty DeMarco's house (Aha!).

Meanwhile, Officer Herman was talking to the female passenger, Tracy Boyd. Pursuant to the officer's request, Boyd pulled her identification from her purse, handed it to the officer and replaced her purse on the floorboard in front of her seat.

By then Officer Real had asked Lassiter if he had any illegal substances on him. The driver, standing at the rear of the vehicle, replied negatively. Officer Real asked if he could search Lassiter's person. No problem and no drugs. Then the officer asked if the vehicle was the property of Lassiter. Yes. Then could he search it? Yes.

Officer Real informed Officer Herman that Lassiter had consented to the vehicle search and, accordingly, Officer Herman asked Tracy Boyd to step out of the vehicle. As Boyd complied with Officer Herman's request, she reached for her purse to take it with her, but was instructed by the officer to leave her purse where it was.

Officer Real began searching the passenger compartment around the driver's seat and, in the center console ashtray, found a crack pipe (Aha!). He saw the purse in the same area and asked Boyd if it belonged to her and if he could search it. Boyd informed Real that her purse was a personal belonging and she did not want him to search her purse (Aha!). The officer searched it anyway and found a plastic bag containing crack cocaine (Aha!).

Tracy Boyd was arrested and charged with possession of cocaine. Lassiter is actually no longer relevant to this case, except that the trial court ruled that once the crack pipe was found, officers had probable cause to search anything within Lassiter's reach. Boyd's motion to suppress her cocaine was denied, she was found guilty and sentenced to 12 months' probation. The Kansas Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction and Boyd appealed further to the Kansas Supreme Court. Here, the Kansas Big Court agrees with Boyd that her Fourth Amendment rights were violated and the cocaine from her purse should have been suppressed. They reversed Boyd's conviction and both lower court rulings.

Both the Kansas Court of Appeals and the Kansas Supreme Court, in their respective considerations of these circumstances, noted that, in Kansas, the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement in search and seizure has five exceptions: one, consent; two, hot pursuit; three, incident to lawful arrest; four, stop and frisk; and five, probable cause to search with exigent circumstances.

After that agreement the two courts didn't agree on a lot of things. The prosecution did agree that Boyd's purse could not be searched with Lassiter's consent and that it was not searched incident to arrest.

The prosecution, the district court, and the Kansas Court of Appeals believed the case was controlled by our old friend, and one of my very favorite cases, Wyoming v. Houghton, 526 U.S. 295 (1999). You remember the driver with the hypodermic syringe sticking up out of his pocket, who, with his girlfriend, gave equally stupid responses to the Wyoming trooper's questions?

Prosecution says the seizure and search of the purse was justified by probable cause created by discovery of the crack pipe in the console, not unlike the syringe in Houghton.

No, not quite, says the Kansas Supreme Court. "In Houghton, probable cause to believe that illegal drugs would be found in the vehicle existed before the officer entered it ... The question for the court is whether Boyd's attempt to take her purse with her when she got out of the vehicle, which was before the officers had probable cause to search the vehicle, separates this case from Houghton so as to indicate a different result." The Court answers its own question affirmatively as it reverses the lower courts.

"Here the officer found no drugs on Lassiter and had no probable cause to believe illegal drugs were in the car when Boyd was told by the officer to get out of the car Thus, at that point, the officer did not have probable cause to search Boyd or her purse. The officer had no right to order her to leave her purse in the car ... a subsequent search of the purse as part of a search of the vehicle violates the passenger's Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure."

(Bottom line: A couple years ago in another Supreme Court brief, Illinois v. McArthur, February 20,2001, 1 used the old English literature quotation of William Congreve, "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," to describe a situation wherein an estranged wife provided probable cause for a search against her misguided, guilty husband. This case might also be a good example of that old adage, although here we have no wife wronged by a husband, but, instead, a woman forcibly separated from her purse. And she complained bitterly about it to the police, the district court, the Kansas Court of Appeals and, finally, the Kansas Supreme Court, where she wins. By the way, for all of you from Palm Beach County, who wrote, e-mailed or called me two years ago, yeah, I'm sure it was William Congreve, not William Shakespeare. And, while I was pleased you had heard of Shakespeare, I must also point out that the latter was not the "fishing reel guy," as several of you suggested.)

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