Why reinvent the wheel?
Here’s how the SCOV frames it: “This case presents a simple set of facts
and a single question for review: whether a truck idling in the middle of the
night in the parking lot of an auto repair shop that had previously been
burglarized is sufficient to give police reasonable and articulable suspicion
of criminal activity.” The SCOV finds that it does not and reverses the
trial court.
(In other,
unrelated news, the SCOV does not
rule on whether a giant tractor in a police parking lot gives police a reasonable
and articulable suspicion of criminal activity.
(Apologies to Roger Pion and the Orleans County Sheriff’s Department.))
Defendant
stipulated to the facts as found by the trial court, arguing only that the
trial court erred in its application of the law when it denied her motion to
suppress.
The
Northeast Foreign Cars (NFC) lot had been burglarized seven times over the past
12 years at the time of Defendant’s arrest.
Accordingly, the lot was on a “directive patrol list”—meaning it was an
area that patrol officers should keep an eye on. Are you starting to get an idea of what
happened here?
That’s
right: a police officer was traveling by NFC and noticed a pickup truck idling
in the parking lot. The police officer thought this was suspicious, as
the shop was closed, and he knew about the previous break-ins (the officer had even
investigated thefts at the lot a year earlier). The officer pulled into a
nearby motel’s parking lot, started to turn around, and the truck pulled out of
the parking lot and headed toward the police officer. Whoops.
The
officer stopped the truck based solely on his suspicion that the driver was up
to no good at the NFC lot. Lo and
behold, the driver had been drinking.
She was charged with DUI, and moved to suppress all evidence obtained
through the traffic stop under the Fourth Amendment of the United States
Constitution and Article 11 of the Vermont Constitution.
The trial
court denied the motion, concluding that under the totality of the
circumstances, the police officer had a reasonable and articulable suspicion of
criminal activity when he stopped Defendant’s vehicle. The trial court
reasoned that the officer’s experience with and knowledge of the earlier
break-ins, the truck’s idling in the parking lot in the middle of the night,
and that the truck pulled out when the officer started turning around to
investigate, gave rise to a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. Sure, there might be a legitimate reason for
Defendant to be idling in the parking lot in the middle of the night, but it
was just as likely that she “was there for nefarious purposes.”
Accordingly,
the trial court distinguished several earlier SCOV “circumstances-failed-to-establish-a-reasonable-and-articulable-suspicion-of-criminal-activity”
decisions, concluding that the facts of this case gave “rise to a higher level
of particularity.”
Defendant
renews her arguments on appeal. The SCOV notes the standard for a
reasonable-and-articulable-suspicion stop, which may be loosely phrased as more
than a general suspicion or hunch. In
other words, there has to be reason more specific than “It just didn’t seem right.”
And
that’s where this case is going. The
SCOV finds the circumstances most-similar to a 1984 case in which an officer was
driving home and saw a car that, more or less, looked out of place. As in that case, because Defendant was not
doing anything illegal or inherently suspicious by idling in a parking lot, the
SCOV holds that the officer had no cause to stop her. The SCOV also finds two other earlier cases
similar, but if you want the full analysis, you can read the opinion. This we will say: if you’re a defense lawyer,
and you want to attack a stop, this is your new favorite case.
The SCOV
closes with a criminal-defense gem: “We recognize that police officers are
trained to be suspicious and it is their job to investigate suspicious
situations. But we must also be mindful of our right to wander where we
please, when we please, without fear of a police seizure.”
One
should note, however, that such wandering should not be with one’s vehicle
across the yellow dividing line of a highway.
That, as you may know, can provide the reasonable and articulable
suspicion of wrongdoing found lacking in this case.
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