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Runcorn v. State11/24/2004
The Anchorage police arrested Dennis Ray Runcorn for driving under the influence. Immediately following this arrest, the arresting officer patted Runcorn's pockets and felt a hard cylindrical object. The officer pulled the cylindrical object from Runcorn's pocket; it proved to be a tube of ChapStick(c) lip balm. However, when the officer pulled this tube from Runcorn's pocket, a small bindle came out of the pocket with it. This bindle contained cocaine. Based on his possession of this cocaine, Runcorn was convicted of fourth-degree controlled substance misconduct.
In this appeal, Runcorn challenges the officer's authority to reach into Runcorn's pocket and remove and examine the hard cylindrical object.
Under our supreme court's decision in State v. Wagar, 79 P.3d 644 (Alaska 2003), the officer was entitled to remove the object for further inspection if the officer had "a reasonable belief ... , based on specific and articulable facts[,] together with rational inferences from those facts, that the object [might] be used as a weapon".
(In Wagar, for example, the supreme court upheld a police officer's act of removing a three-inch-long glass vial from a suspect's pocket. The court based its decision on the suspect's refusal to remove his hands from his pockets, the suspect's antagonistic body posture, and the officer's training that a hard object of that size could be used as a weapon. )
At the evidentiary hearing in Runcorn's case, the officer testified that eapons can come in any shape and size. ... ipstick containers can have knives in them nowadays. [Weapons] come in just about every kind of shape and size you can imagine. They can be concealed, or they can appear to be one object and actually be a knife or any number of things.
The officer further testified that he had, on occasion, frisked people and discovered knives concealed in lipstick cases (or, more precisely, cylindrical containers camouflaged to resemble lipstick cases).
(In the appendix to the State's brief in this appeal, the State has provided us with two advertisements, printed from the Internet, for small knives disguised in lipstick containers.)
Based on the testimony presented at the evidentiary hearing, and based on the fact that Runcorn was being taken into custody, we conclude that the Wagar test was satisfied. Thus, the superior court properly upheld the authority of the arresting officer to reach inside Runcorn's pocket and remove and examine the hard cylindrical object he felt there.
(In his brief to this Court, Runcorn notes that his arrest occurred before the supreme court decided Wagar, and he suggests that one possible issue in this appeal is whether his case should be governed by pre-Wagar law. However, Runcorn's brief offers no legal analysis of this issue. The issue is therefore waived.)
The judgment of the superior court is AFFIRMED.
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