Samuel Turner v. United States
Environmental SocialSecurity Securities Immigration
Whether the lower courts erred by upholding the arrest of Mr. Turner?
QUESTIONS PRESENTED At approximately 11:30 p.m. on 8-9-17, a dispatcher alerted Lincoln Police Department (“LPD”) Officer Christopher Monico to a possible disturbance by a named suspect near the trailer court where Petitioner Samuel Turner lived. This was the third time police had come to this area on this complaint against the named suspect. Each time, for some reason, they had decided to question Mr. Turner. As Monico drove through Mr. Turner’s trailer court looking for a suspect, Monico observed a woman standing next to a cluster of mailboxes & stopped to talk to her. The woman was Kimberlie Bridges, an acquaintance of Mr. Turner’s & the mother of his child. Officer Craig Price arrived on the scene shortly thereafter to serve as backup. While Monico & Price were talking to Bridges, they saw Mr. Turner walking up to them from some distance away. During the entire time that Mr. Turner approached, Officer Monico shined a flashlight on Mr. Turner and in his eyes. When Mr. Turner was close enough, Monico asked him about the reported disturbance. Mr. Turner asked Monico to lower the flashlight because it was in his face. As Monico did so, he saw that, after voluntarily approaching police, Mr. Turner had D somehow stopped with one foot partially on top of what looked like a bag containing a quantity of powder that had been left on the ground somehow by someone. There was no indication he . had himself dropped the bag on the ground because the officers observed him the entire time he was walking up to them. And, anyway, since he voluntarily approached police, why would he have waited until he got close to put the bag on the ground?. Mr. Turner was immediately arrested and charged with the methamphetamine found in the bag. Prior to trial, counsel for Mr. ; Turner moved for a Subpoena Duces Tecum asking for “investigative reports & materials prepared by the [LPD]” about “calls” officers made to his “home at the time of his arrest,” “calls” they made at his home over “the two days prior” to his arrest, & “calls” they made “to i ‘ , [his] trailer court or [the] immediately surrounding area.” Mr. Turner specifically alleged that the reports would provide “exculpatory evidence” because they would show that he had not been trafficking drugs & that someone else may have dropped the bag of methamphetamine. The . Subpoena Duces Tecum was denied. Mr. Turner proceeded to a jury trial, was convicted & sentence to 360 months incarceration. 1.) Whether, the lower courts erred by upholding the arrest of Mr. Turner? 2.) Whether the lower courts erred in denying and upholding the denial of the Subpoena Duces Tecum for the critically important information? 2.) Where multiple additional errors affected petitioner’s conviction and/or sentence in the courts below, should this Court exercise it’s supervisory power to vacate his conviction and sentence? ii