JUSTICES SAY RIGHTS VIOLATED, TOSS DRUG CONVICTION

Drug task force detectives violated the constitutional rights of a Decatur
man convicted of manufacturing methamphetamine, the Arkansas Supreme Court
ruled Thursday in tossing out the conviction.

James Patrick Keenom's appeal of the 2001 conviction, for which he was
sentenced to 20 years in prison, contended that Benton County Circuit Judge
Tom Keith should have granted Keenom's motion to suppress evidence obtained
by the detectives.

Keenom said they violated his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable
search and seizure by authorities. The high court's 5-2 decision agreed.

Keenom was arrested the night of March 7, 2001, by two detectives working
for the 19th Judicial District Drug Task Force. The arrest was prompted
when detective David Jones observed Keenom shopping at the Wal-Mart
Supercenter in Bentonville. Jones later testified that he thought Keenom
looked suspicious because he had long hair and a beard and was pushing a
shopping cart containing various chemicals that could be used to make
methamphetamine.

Jones followed Keenom to his car in the parking lot, wrote down the car's
license plate number and using this information learned Keenom's name and
address. Jones contacted fellow detective Tony Noblin and they decided to
go to Keenom's residence to perform a "knock and talk," to see if they
could get consent from Keenom to search his home and thereby catch him in
the act of making methamphetamine.

The two detectives were accompanied by Decatur police. Keenom met the
officers outside his trailer before they could knock on the door. Jones
asked for permission to search the trailer, and Keenom refused, suggesting
they come back in 10 minutes. The officers said they couldn't do that and
continued to question Keenom.

Keenom testified that it was cold and raining and he was wearing only a
pair of jeans, but the officers refused to let him go back inside his house
and threatened to confiscate all his belongings if he tried to go inside.
After more questioning, Keenom acknowledged that he had a quarter gram of
methamphetamine inside the trailer.

Jones testified that Noblin then advised Keenom of his Miranda rights
because he had begun to implicate himself in criminal activity. Keenom
denied he was advised of these rights. Responding to a question from Jones,
Keenom said he had accepted payment from friends to allow them to make
methamphetamine in his trailer.

By this time, after 20 to 45 minutes of questioning (the accounts of
prosecution witnesses differed on the length of questioning), the
detectives arrested Keenom for conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamine,
and later denied that they ever took him into custody before that point.

Jones obtained a search warrant from a magistrate, who specified that the
search warrant couldn't be served until daybreak the next morning. The
search netted weapons, drug paraphernalia and lab materials, and Keenom was
charged with manufacturing methamphetamine and possession of both drugs and
firearms.

The Supreme Court in its Scott v. State decision this year set the standard
for determining when a "knock and talk" becomes a seizure under the Fourth
Amendment: "when a reasonable person would not feel free to leave."

The detectives' "persistence in the face of [Keenom's] efforts to terminate
the encounter and his request that the officers leave, resulted in his
being seized in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights," Justice Ray
Thornton wrote in Thursday's ruling. "Such prolonged questioning, leading
as it did to [Keenom's] unsuccessful attempts to return to the safety and
solitude of his house, would surely lead a reasonable person to believe
that he could not ignore the officers."

Justices Tom Glaze and Robert L. Brown issued separate dissenting opinions.
Glaze wrote that he would have affirmed Keith's ruling not to suppress,
because the evidence indicated that Keenom wasn't precluded from ending his
conversation with police.

Brown wrote that the police conduct was "highly questionable" but
reasonable under the Fourth Amendment because the search wasn't actually
performed until after a search warrant had been obtained.