Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Summary affirmance

Julia Spainhour won summary affirmance of Judge Leuenberger's Shawnee County suppression order in State v. Penrod, Appeal No. 96,863 (Kan. App. Feb. 23, 2007). Here is Julia's statement of issue from her brief:
The trial court properly concluded that police officers did not hold a reasonable belief that Penrod posed a risk to their personal safety at the time they did a “pat-down” search for weapons during a traffic stop in which Penrod was a passenger detained on suspicion of a traffic offense. Since the pat-down search was unreasonable, the seizure of evidence during the search violated K.S.A. 22-2404(2) and the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures.
The COA apparently thought the record sufficiently supported this conclusion that it did not even write an opinion!

[Update: the state did not file a PR and the mandate issued on March 29, 2007]

No comments: