Moulton appeal denied
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HELENA — A Plains man serving five years in the Montana State Prison for a possession of dangerous drugs conviction last week appealed his case to the Montana Supreme Court.
Mose Moulton, 36, claims that officers lacked probable cause when he was pulled over in an Aug. 2011 traffic stop, and that because lesser charges that resulted from the same incident were dismissed in tribal court, charges also should have been dismissed in district court.
According to court documents, on Aug. 5, 2011, Moulton was stopped by a Flathead Tribal police officer for a broken taillight. As the officer approached the car, he saw the passenger place an object in a bag on the floorboard of the car. The officer recognized symptoms that were consistent with stimulant use in Moulton, the driver. As the officer was searching him and arresting Moulton for driving while his license was suspended, the officer found several hundred dollars in cash in Moulton’s pocket and a list of names and phone numbers. After obtaining a search warrant, tribal officers found 11 oxycodone pills and twenty plastic packages of methamphetamine. A cell phone on the front seat had several incoming messages from people seeking to purchase drugs.
Moulton originally received a deferred sentence, but eventually ended up in state prison after violating terms of probation and parole by testing positive for drugs in September 2013.
The conviction came despite the fact that Moulton’s attorneys asked that the district court hold off on ruling in the case until the proceedings concluded for misdemeanor charges concerning the broken taillight that originally resulted in the stop.
In tribal court Moulton’s attorneys successfully argued that the taillight’s outage should not have resulted in a stop.
The tribal court found that the stop did “not comport with Tribal law and that all evidence obtained in the stop must be suppressed.”
Because of the tribal court’s ruling, Moulton’s attorney’s argued that evidence also should have been suppressed in district court.
“The application for the search warrant only stated vague facts and suspicions that altogether did not amount to probable cause that, in Mr. Moulton’s truck, he was in possession of illegal drugs,” the attorneys wrote. “Because the evidence obtained from Mr. Moulton’s truck was based on an invalid search warrant, that evidence must be excluded as fruit of the poisonous tree. The Court must reverse the denial of the motion to suppress and remand for suppression of the evidence that resulted from the search warrant.”
