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Servis v. Commonwealth7/5/1988
fficer Farmer asked the defendant to provide some identification because he "didn't feel like [the defendant] should have been in the room at all." The defendant turned around and quickly walked back through the doorway into the adjoining room where Officer Farmer would not have been able to see him. Farmer followed him into the room out of "fear for life." Farmer testified:
He disappeared in the room quickly and from the manner in which he had been acting and the information that he'd given to me,... I asked him for his identification and he turned around and went back into the room and I felt at that point because of my safety and other officers involved, I should stay right with him. I didn't know what he was going to retrieve.
When Farmer entered the room he stayed right behind the defendant. In the back right-hand corner of the room, he observed a large box of baking soda turned over onto the floor and a grocery bag containing a large dispenser of Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil. Farmer seized those items and arrested the defendant for possession of drug paraphernalia, testifying that, in his experience as a police officer, they were used for freebasing, cutting and packaging cocaine. The defendant was also arrested for giving false information to a police officer.
The defendant still had provided no identification, so he asked to go to his car to retrieve it. Farmer escorted the defendant to his car. The defendant unlocked the car and searched for some identification. He located the car registration but no identification. Farmer called another deputy to transport the defendant to the magistrate's office.
Officer Farmer then contacted the motel clerk and advised her that the man who owned the car registered to rooms 315 and 317 had been arrested. He asked if the motel would take responsibility for the car. When she said that it would not, Farmer called for a
wrecker to tow it. Pursuant to standard police procedure, Officer Farmer then conducted a cursory inventory search of the car in the motel parking lot. Inside a magazine, he found a hypodermic needle and a bottle cap containing what appeared to be drug residue. He ceased his search at that point due to the lateness of the hour and his surmise that the car contained much contraband.
Officer Farmer then proceeded to the magistrate's office where the defendant was being held. After being given his Miranda warnings, the defendant stated that there was ten thousand dollars and an ounce of cocaine in the car. He said that the drugs were for his personal use and that the money was not related to the drugs but was for his move to Alabama.
The inventory search pursuant to the impoundment of the defendant's car was conducted according to standard police procedure. It revealed 26.42 grams of cocaine and 2.02 ounces of marijuana, both packaged in bulk; several large plastic bags; five tablets; and a piece of glass, a plastic bag, and a bottle cap, each containing drug residue. No money was located. The defendant was arrested for possession of marijuana and a controlled substance with intent to distribute.
A subsequent search of the two motel rooms turned up only bottle caps containing drug residue. A few days after the arrest, a maid at the Kings Quarters Motel found $9,920 in what had been one of the defendant's rooms. The money, mostly fifty and one hundred dollar bills, was packaged with bank bands in thousand dollar increments.
The defendant testified at trial that he was en route from Silver Spring, Maryland to Mobile, Alabama to visit a friend at Southern Alabama University and to relocate there. He
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