By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — Acting legally in a high-crime area should not have aroused police suspicion, even though officers eventually found contraband on a man parked in a store lot, the state Court of Appeals ruled today.
In a 4-2 decision, a six-judge panel of the court overturned Colten Cockrell’s drug and weapon convictions, ruling Sherwood police had no reasonable cause for suspicion when they detained Cockrell, who was legally parked outside a department store during regular business hours.
Cockrell had been sentenced in Pulaski County Circuit Court to five years’ probation for two counts of possession of a controlled substance and one count each of possession of drug paraphernalia and carrying a weapon.
The appeals court remanded the case to the circuit court for a new trial.
According to the court’s majority opinion written by Judge Larry Vaught, Cockrell was parked near the loading dock of Kohl’s department store in Sherwood at 6:12 p.m. on Jan. 25, 2008, when officer Chris Ryan Baker pulled his patrol car in front of Cockrell’s truck.
Baker turned on his bright headlights, his spotlight and his take-down lights and called for assistance. After another officer arrived, Baker approached the passenger side of the truck with his flashlight in one hand and his gun in the other.
Baker saw a baseball bat in the truck, and he asked Cockrell to step out of the vehicle. While talking to Cockrell he also saw a straw with a bandage wrapped around it and a razor blade.
The officers arrested Cockrell, then found a small plastic bag containing cocaine in his truck and 15 hydrocodone pills in his pocket.
Vaught wrote in the appeals court’s majority opinion that the encounter between the officers and Cockrell was not consensual because a reasonable person in the same circumstances would not have felt free to leave.
Baker said he became suspicious because Cockrell was in an area where 12 robberies had occurred in the past two weeks and had backed into a parking space away from other vehicles in the lot. The Court of Appeals said that was not enough to support reasonable suspicion.
“All this evidence demonstrates is that Cockrell was legally and properly parked in a business parking lot during regular business hours. … Granted Cockrell was within the 2-3 mile ‘armed robbery zone’; however, merely being present in a high-crime area does not rise to reasonable suspicion sufficient to authorize an investigatory stop,” Vaught wrote.
In a dissenting opinion, Judge Rita Gruber wrote that the recent spate of robberies in the area, combined with Baker’s experience and training as a law officer, gave him sufficient cause to be suspicious. Judge Courtney Henry joined the dissent.
