Defendant gets do-over on motion to suppress

By Correy E. Stephenson

The denial of a motion to suppress must be reversed where the trial court failed to make findings on the issue of whether the defendant had standing to challenge the warrantless entry by police officers into the home where he was located, the North Carolina Supreme Court has ruled.

In 2017, law enforcement officers arrived in a residential neighborhood to investigate reports of a stolen car. While observing the car, officers saw Marcel Thompson leave a nearby house and approach the car as if he planned to enter it.

When Thompson saw the officers, he turned and hurried back towards the house. Thompson knocked on the door of the house and said “it’s the police” loudly enough for the officers to hear as they followed him.

Richard Jordan opened the door to let Thompson into the home. The two officers entered the home, and one observed Jordan close a safe that was sitting on a table in the center of the room. Jordan locked the safe and put a key in his pocket. The officer also saw baggies, razor blades and white powder on the same table.

Officers asked who lived in the home. One man present said he lived there; officers later learned that the man, James Deitz, is Jordan’s uncle. Deitz consented to a search.

When the officers asked to search the safe, Jordan claimed the safe was not his, objected to the search and refused to provide them with the key. When asked if he lived in the home, Jordan stated: “I don’t have anything to do with anything that’s in here. I don’t live here. This has nothing to do with me.”

The officers later obtained a warrant to search the safe and the home. Inside the safe, the officers found a firearm, cocaine in different baggies and money. Throughout the home, the officers found baggies, syringes, razor blades and scales.

Jordan was charged with trafficking cocaine, possession of a firearm by a felon, possession of drug paraphernalia and attaining habitual felon status.

Before trial, Jordan moved to suppress the evidence, claiming that the officers unlawfully entered Deitz’s home.

At the end of the hearing, the trial court orally denied Jordan’s motion, indicating that it would enter a written order memorializing the oral ruling. But the trial court never entered a written order.

A jury later convicted Jordan, and he appealed, arguing that the trial court erred by denying his motion to suppress.

The central issue for the state’s highest court was whether Jordan had standing to challenge the officers’ search of his home, a fact-specific analysis, Justice Richard Dietz explained.

For example, Jordan told the officers that he did not live in the home and that “there is nothing here in my name.” Deitz, who identified himself as the resident of the home, consented to the search and did not tell the officers that Jordan was staying at the home or that he had any belongings there.

Nor was there any direct evidence of whether Jordan was a frequent visitor to Deitz’s home or had the sort of relationship with Deitz that could give him a reasonable expectation of privacy in the home.

Without a written order, the answer was unclear, the court said.

“We hold that the record could support the necessary findings, but there are material fact questions that must be resolved by the fact-finder before any legal conclusion can be reached,” the court wrote. “[B]ecause the trial court did not enter a written order as intended at the conclusion of the suppression hearing, the trial court did not make adequate findings of fact ‘that resolved the material conflict in the evidence.’”

Without such a finding, there could be no appellate review of the trial judge’s decision, Dietz said.

Justice Allison Riggs filed a dissenting opinion, joined by Justice Anita Earls, writing that she would affirm the Court of Appeals decision. Jordan’s familial relationship, familiarity with the home and authority over access to the safe inside “combine to establish that he was so accepted into the residence as to have a reasonable expectation of privacy independent of his purposes for being there,” Riggs said.

The state was represented by Special Deputy Attorney General Michael T. Henry; the Attorney General’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.

Neither did Chapel Hill attorney Christopher A. Brook of Patterson Harkavy, who represented Jordan.

The case is State v. Jordan, No. 124PA22.