High court to decide if Licking County purse search was lawful
NEWARK, Ohio (WCMH) – The Ohio Supreme Court will decide whether a deputy’s search of a woman’s purse outside a Newark convenience store, and the drug charges that followed, were warranted.
In August 2021, law enforcement saw a man they suspected of drug trafficking driving around Newark in a minivan. The driver pulled into a Circle K and parked, and he and a passenger exited the vehicle.
A Licking County sheriff’s deputy pulled into the Circle K parking lot and parked behind the minivan. He had been informed by fellow law enforcement that the driver of the minivan, who was standing nearby, was driving under a suspended license.
While the officer questioned the driver, Katrina Hale exited the convenience store, grabbed something from the open window of the minivan, and attempted to re-enter the store. The officer told her she was not free to leave, made her sit on the bumper of his cruiser, and put her two bags on the cruiser hood.
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The driver said Hale was driving – something the officer already knew was not true – and then informed him a gun, belonging to Hale, was in the minivan. The deputy then searched Hale’s bags, where he found methamphetamine.
Hale was charged with multiple drug charges and one count of improperly handling a firearm in a vehicle. The trial court suppressed the evidence related to the drug charges, finding the deputy had no reason to detain Hale when investigating someone driving under a suspended license.
An appellate court, however, overruled the evidence suppression, ruling that Hale “retained her status as a passenger of the vehicle throughout the encounter.” Because law enforcement officers are entitled to detain citizens to establish control of a traffic stop, the seizure of Hale, and subsequent search of her purses, were lawful, the appellate court said.
Before the Supreme Court on Dec. 12, Craig Jaquith, representing Hale, argued the appellate court’s ruling relied on a “flawed analytic approach” that justified the seizure based on what resulted from it. Not only was Hale no longer a passenger, Jaquith said, even if she were still a passenger, the deputy had no reason to believe Hale had committed a crime.
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“He knows nothing about Ms. Hale, she’s not suspected of anything,” Jaquith said.
Kenneth Oswalt, assistant Licking County prosecutor, disputed Jaquith’s characterization that the deputy had no reason to suspect Hale of criminal activity. Regardless of whether the deputy was already aware that Hale was not driving the car, the moment the driver said she was, the deputy had the authority to detain her to investigate the claim.
The court is not tasked with determining whether the search of the purses, in and of itself, was lawful; the trial court did not broach the subject when ruling Hale’s detention was unconstitutional. While Jaquith asked the court to remand the case down to the lower court to review whether the searches were lawful, Oswalt said the high court should throw it out altogether.
“I can’t find one iota of unreasonableness in this case,” Oswalt said.
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