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Trumbull judge releases man from prison after appeals court reverses conviction
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Judge Andrew Logan of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court has signed an order releasing Derrick L. Eggleston of Woodview Avenue from prison a month early, after an appeals court ruled that he should not have been convicted.
The Warren-based 11th District Court of Appeals last week reversed the conviction and 12-month prison sentence of Eggleston, 28, on the grounds that a Warren police officer did not have probable cause to have a police dog sniff the car for drugs.
Judge Logan sentenced Eggleston to one year in prison last July after he was convicted at trial of possession of heroin and trafficking in heroin. He was due for release from Trumbull Correctional Institute on April 15.
The Trumbull County prosecutor asked the appeals court to reconsider its decision, but it refused, so the prosecutor’s office plans to appeal the decision to the Ohio Supreme Court, said LuWayne Annos, assistant county prosecutor.
Eggleston was charged after a traffic stop Jan. 3, 2013, for loud music.
Patrolman David Weber stopped the car Eggleston was driving and asked for license, registration and insurance but learned the car belonged to Eggleston’s girlfriend.
At one point, Eggleston reached for the glove box but “quickly pulled his hand away,” and Weber called for an officer with a police dog to assist him. The officer arrived more than 11 minutes after the traffic stop began, and the dog “passively alerted” to narcotics twice at the trunk and once on the driver’s side of the car.
During a search of the car’s interior, police found cash and heroin, but they found no drugs in the trunk.
Before the dog started to sniff, Eggleston asked Weber what right he had to have the dog sniff his car, and Weber replied, “I don’t need a reason.” Eggleston initially refused to get out of the car but eventually did when Weber threatened to bust the car window.
The opinion, written by Judge Timothy P. Cannon, said the loud-music offense was sufficient for a traffic stop but “insufficient to detain [Eggleston] in order to conduct a [police dog] sniff.”
Judge Logan’s ruling on whether to suppress evidence gathered during the traffic stop was that there was “no undue delay between the [traffic] stop and the time of the drug-dog sniff.”
But the more important question was whether the delay “was supported by a reasonable, articulable suspicion of drug activity,” the appeals court ruled.
Judge Diane Grendell dissented in the majority opinion, saying Judge Logan correctly refused to suppress evidence from the traffic stop because the officer needed more time than usual for the traffic stop because he didn’t want to be writing a citation for noise when he believed Eggleston might have a gun in the car.