A judge must decide whether police officers intentionally stretched out a traffic stop to search four people accused of traveling in a car illegally parked in College Hill Courts.
Christopher Walton and Delaney Heathington face charges for possessing firearms and marijuana after a roughly 40-minute inspection of their vehicle on June 23, 2015, near Poplar Street.
Christopher Walton
Delaney HeathingtonBut their defense attorneys say the officer who initially stopped them lacked the proper evidence to do so and then took advantage of Walton and Heathington by illegally searching inside.
"It's certainly unreasonable for a car to be seized for illegal parking then held for 40 minutes while the officer is investigating any crimes or past crimes they've done, calling juvenile [authorities], making cell phone calls to other members of the police, and then saying, 'at some point I conducted the search and, well, I smelled marijuana,'" defense attorney Jay Perry argued Monday.
Assistant public defender Erinn O'Leary added Chattanooga officer Kyle Moses started tailing the vehicle after he spotted it in front of a convenience store in College Hill Courts in a "no-parking" zone. But he didn't preserve video footage that showed the alleged parking violation.
"The officer doesn't know how long it was there, if it just stopped for a moment, if people got in and out - and he made no attempt to preserve the video that would have enlightened us all," O'Leary said.
Hamilton County Criminal Court Judge Don Poole said he will issue a decision before the defendants' next court date on March 28. Walton, 21, also faces murder charges in the August 2015 drive-by slaying of Jordan Clark, which is scheduled for trial April 11.
During Monday's hearing, which focused on the traffic stop, prosecutor Cameron Williams called two witnesses to prove a different side of the story.
Officer Moses and a former Chattanooga Housing Authority officer had the right to make a stop, and took longer than usual because two passengers were on the "no-trespass" list, Williams said. Furthermore, one was a known danger and had violated probation; the other had been shot in a gang-related feud the week before. Officers also exerted caution and required backup because Walton was shuffling around in the front passenger seat, authorities said.
"He goes above and beyond because this is a high-crime area," Williams said of Moses. "One individual is a known gang member, so yeah, he's going to go above and beyond to investigate. And during the course of that investigation, he realizes two of them are on the no-trespass list.
"Forty minutes for a traffic ticket would be unreasonable," the prosecutor continued. "But that's not what we're working with here."
The housing authority's no-trespass list makes it a violation to be on the grounds of three area public housing facilities. Committing a crime on the properties, or being labeled a gang member who drives violence in the area, is one of the fastest ways onto the list. In this case, Williams said, the backseat passengers had traveled through College Hill Courts when they weren't supposed to.
O'Leary and Perry countered that neither Walton nor Heathington were on the list and didn't have warrants out for their arrest. Officers also needed to believe the alleged crimes would continue, and that the offenders were too intoxicated, wouldn't show up to court, or hadn't provided authorities with enough information to identify them, O'Leary argued.
"None of these circumstances applied for you to arrest them," she said.
"That is incorrect," Moses replies. "[One of the passengers] had trespassed in College Hill Courts."
"But the offense is over," O'Leary said, referring to the fact that Moses stopped the vehicle just outside of the neighborhood. "It is a completed, terminated offense."
Piling onto that, Perry argued that neither Moses nor former CHA officer Ian Galyon could remember when they smelled marijuana coming from the car.
"Moses was mic'd the whole time," he said. "A K-9 unit isn't talked about until 30 or 40 minutes in. And, it appears most of Galyon's body is inside the vehicle [once he arrives on scene].
"He doesn't see a gun or drugs until 10 minutes later, when he looks through the window and opens the door for some reason."
Contact staff writer Zack Peterson at zpeterson@times freepress.com or 423-757-6347. Follow him on Twitter @zackpeterson918.