Penn v. State

Summary

The Court affirmed Penn’s convictions, holding that the officer had reasonable and articulable suspicion to conduct an investigative stop based on the totality of the circumstances, including Penn’s apparently weighted jacket pocket, nervous surveillance of a police stop, and efforts to conceal himself. The Court also held that the officer who discovered the drugs was not the statutory seizing officer because he never took custody of them; the officer who collected, tested, tagged, and sealed the drugs was the required witness. The Court concluded that the State satisfied the statutory chain-of-custody requirements.