2024 UT App 69

THE UTAH COURT OF APPEALS

STATE OF UTAH,

Appellee

v.

SERGIO GIOVANI CORREA,

Appellant.

Opinion

No. 20220313-CA

Filed May 9, 2024

Fourth District Court, Heber Department

The Honorable Jennifer A. Mabey

No. 205500004

Wendy M. Brown, Debra M. Nelson, and Benjamin 

Miller, Attorneys for Appellant

Scott H. Sweat and McKay King,

Attorneys for Appellee

JUDGE RYAN D. TENNEY authored this Opinion, in which 

JUDGES RYAN M. HARRIS and AMY J. OLIVER concurred.

TENNEY, Judge:

¶1 Sergio Giovani Correa appeals the denial of a motion to 

suppress evidence that was obtained during an investigatory 

stop. This appeal asks us to decide whether an officer’s 

knowledge that Correa did not have a valid driver license two 

months before the stop created a reasonable suspicion that Correa 

still didn’t have a valid license and was therefore driving 

impermissibly. We hold that it did not. We accordingly reverse.
State v. Correa

20220313-CA 2 2024 UT App 69

BACKGROUND1

¶2 Late in the evening of January 30, 2020, a white truck was 

pulling onto a highway near Heber City when it passed an officer

(Officer) who was out on patrol. As the vehicles passed each other, 

the “driver looked at” Officer and then “quickly looked away.”

Officer made a U-turn and began following the truck.

¶3 While following the truck, Officer ran its license plate

through a police database. From this search, Officer learned the 

owner of the truck was a female but “that in recent history a 

Hispanic male name[d] Sergio Correa had been operating that 

vehicle without a license” and “that he’d been recently stopped 

and cited for it.” Officer later clarified that by “recent,” he meant 

“in the last two months,” and he agreed that the offense could 

have been as far back as three months. As Officer continued to 

follow the truck, he tried “to get more information from dispatch 

[and] from other officers.” During these efforts, Officer tried to 

pull up a photograph of Correa. Before he was able to pull up the 

photograph, however, the truck pulled into the parking lot of an 

apartment complex. At that moment, Officer had only been 

behind the truck “for a very short period” of “maybe two 

minutes,” and he did not yet know who the driver was.

¶4 Officer followed the truck into the parking lot and parked 

nearby. When the driver exited the truck and “started to go into 

[the] apartment complex,” Officer got out of his vehicle too, and 

he activated his overhead lights “as [he] was exiting” his vehicle. 

Officer then approached the driver on foot and engaged him in 

conversation. During that conversation, Officer learned that the 

driver was indeed Sergio Correa and that he did not have a valid 

1. “In reviewing the trial court’s ruling on a motion to suppress, 

we recite the facts in the light most favorable to the trial court’s 

findings.” State v. Fullerton, 2018 UT 49, ¶ 4 n.1, 428 P.3d 1052 

(quotation simplified). 
State v. Correa

20220313-CA 3 2024 UT App 69

driver license. During the remainder of the conversation and an 

ensuing investigation, Officer obtained evidence that Correa was 

under the influence of drugs and was also in possession of both 

drugs and drug paraphernalia.

¶5 Based on this evidence, Correa was later charged with 

three counts of possession or use of a controlled substance, one 

count of driving with a measurable controlled substance in the 

body, one count of possession of drug paraphernalia, and one 

count of driving on a denied license.

¶6 Correa subsequently filed a motion to suppress “all 

evidence collected in this case, including officer observations, 

statements by the defendant, and chemical evidence taken from 

the defendant and its laboratory analysis.” Correa argued that this 

evidence should be suppressed because he had been detained by 

Officer without reasonable suspicion, thus violating the Fourth 

Amendment.

¶7 Officer later testified at a suppression hearing. In his 

testimony, he confirmed that he had not “observe[d] any traffic 

violations, any infractions, or misdemeanors” at the time that he 

turned on his lights and approached Correa. When asked why he 

activated his lights and approached Correa, Officer responded: “I 

had an individual who matched the description of somebody who 

had been operating the vehicle in the past who did not have a 

license. He was leaving the area, [and] I wanted to make contact 

with him to determine his identity.”

¶8 At the close of the hearing, the court issued an oral ruling 

denying the motion to suppress. The court expressed its view that 

although Officer “didn’t recognize” Correa offhand, his 

“[k]nowledge that someone by the name of Mr. Correa had been 

driving that vehicle without a license fairly recently” was 

“enough to meet the minimum standard” to justify an 

investigatory stop. The court also opined that “licensing issues 

[are] often a situation where the condition . . . extends,” so “if you 
State v. Correa

20220313-CA 4 2024 UT App 69

know someone’s driving without a license . . . there is some 

likelihood that if you see them driving a vehicle, that perhaps 

they’re driving again without a license.”

¶9 Correa later pleaded guilty to two counts of possessing a 

controlled substance and one count of impaired driving, but he 

reserved the right to appeal the denial of his motion to suppress.

ISSUE AND STANDARD OF REVIEW

¶10 Correa argues that the district court erred in denying his 

motion to suppress. We “review a district court’s ruling on a 

motion to suppress for an alleged Fourth Amendment violation 

as a mixed question of law and fact.” State v. Hebeishy, 2022 UT 

App 136, ¶ 12, 522 P.3d 952. “Specifically, we review the court’s 

factual findings for clear error, and we review its legal 

conclusions, including its application of law to the facts of the 

case, for correctness.” Id.

ANALYSIS

¶11 The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution 

affirms that “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, 

houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and 

seizures, shall not be violated.” Under the Fourth Amendment, it 

“is settled law that a police officer may detain and question an 

individual when the officer has reasonable, articulable suspicion 

that the person has been, is, or is about to be engaged in criminal 

activity.” State v. Alverez, 2006 UT 61, ¶ 14, 147 P.3d 425 (quotation 

simplified); accord Kansas v. Glover, 589 U.S. 376, 380 (2020) 

(“Under this Court’s precedents, the Fourth Amendment permits 

an officer to initiate a brief investigative traffic stop when [the 

officer] has a particularized and objective basis for suspecting the 

particular person stopped of criminal activity.” (quotation 

simplified)).
State v. Correa

20220313-CA 5 2024 UT App 69

¶12 On appeal, Correa argues that Officer did not have 

reasonable suspicion that he was engaging in criminal activity 

before Officer detained him. We agree. Before explaining why, 

however, we briefly note two threshold questions that were 

briefed and argued but that we ultimately do not decide.

¶13 The first threshold question is when the seizure in this case 

occurred. Correa claims that he “was seized for purposes of the 

Fourth Amendment when [Officer] turned on his overhead 

lights.” The United States Supreme Court has recently clarified, 

however, that “a seizure by acquisition of control” involves

“either voluntary submission to a show of authority or the 

termination of freedom of movement.” Torres v. Madrid, 592 U.S.

306, 322 (2021); see also California v. Hodari D., 499 U.S. 621, 626 

(1991). Here, even if we accept Correa’s assertion that Officer 

made a “show of authority” when he turned on his lights, the 

record remains unclear as to whether Correa submitted at that 

moment or whether Correa instead only submitted when Officer 

approached him on foot and began the conversation. In any event, 

the State has not disputed Correa’s implicit agreement that he was 

at least seized by the time the conversation began. And the record 

contains no indication that Officer learned anything of 

significance in between turning on his lights and beginning the 

conversation. For purposes of our analysis, we’ll accordingly 

focus on whether Officer had reasonable suspicion at the time that 

the conversation began.2

2. Along these same lines, we note that while Correa and the State 

have both referred to the interaction at issue as a “traffic stop,” 

Officer testified that he did not “pull [Correa] over” and that 

Correa had already parked and started walking toward the 

apartment complex when Officer turned on his lights. As a result, 

this case does not involve a “traffic stop” as that term is commonly 

understood. Instead, what’s at issue is a seizure that occurred at 

some point after Correa was on foot.
State v. Correa

20220313-CA 6 2024 UT App 69

¶14 The second threshold question is whether Officer had a 

reasonable basis for suspecting that the driver he saw in the white 

truck was the same “Sergio Correa” from the prior incident that 

Officer had learned about through the records search he 

conducted while following the truck. This question matters 

because the justification for the subsequent seizure was Officer’s 

suspicion that (i) this driver was the same Sergio Correa and 

(ii) Correa still did not have a valid driver license. In the briefs and 

again at oral argument, the parties disputed whether Officer had 

enough information to suspect that this was the same person, and 

they also disputed whether ethnicity played an inappropriate role

in this suspicion. In Correa’s view, Officer engaged in 

impermissible racial profiling. In the State’s view, however, 

Officer more benignly used ethnicity as a descriptive identifier to 

facilitate comparison with a known suspect.

¶15 We need not resolve this question either. For purposes of 

our analysis, we’ll assume that Officer did have a reasonable and 

non-discriminatory basis for suspecting that the driver of this 

truck was the same Sergio Correa from the prior incident. But 

even with that assumption, we still conclude that the seizure was 

unlawful because Officer did not have a reasonable basis for 

suspecting that Correa was currently engaged in criminal 

behavior.

¶16 The justification given by the State and accepted by the 

district court was that Officer reasonably suspected that Correa 

was driving without a valid driver license. Indeed, on this front, 

the State first asserts that Officer had more than a mere suspicion. 

In its brief, the State argues that Officer “did, in fact, know the 

status” of Correa’s driver license before he detained Correa.

(Emphasis added.)

¶17 To support this argument, the State points to a moment in 

the suppression hearing in which Officer testified that “at the time 

[he] made personal contact” with Correa, he “knew the driver’s 
State v. Correa

20220313-CA 7 2024 UT App 69

license status of Sergio Correa.” But when read in context, that 

statement is less definitive than the State suggests.

¶18 At the suppression hearing, Officer said that he was able to 

follow the white truck for only “a very short period” of “maybe 

two minutes” before the vehicles pulled into the parking lot. 

Officer also testified that, during this “very short period,” he had 

the “opportunity to run his license.” In response to a clarifying 

question, however, Officer said that he ran a check on “the license 

plate on the vehicle, not [Correa’s] driver’s license.” Officer then 

testified that during the brief period in which he was following 

the truck, he tried “to get more information from dispatch [and] 

from other officers.” As part of these efforts, Officer tried to pull 

up a photograph of Sergio Correa. But by Officer’s own account, 

he was unable to successfully “pull[] up a photograph of Mr. 

Correa” before the vehicles pulled into the parking lot and the two 

men engaged in conversation on foot. Aside from the records 

search on the truck, Officer never said that he completed any other 

records search.

¶19 Consistent with the information he apparently received 

from the search on the truck (which, again, informed him of an 

incident that had occurred about two months earlier), Officer 

repeatedly described his knowledge of Correa’s license-status in 

past-tense terms. In one exchange, for example, Officer testified 

that he “knew that in the recent history a Hispanic male name[d] 

Sergio Correa had been operating that vehicle without a license; 

that he’d been recently stopped and cited for it.” (Emphases 

added.) In another exchange, Officer testified that the driver he 

saw on the road “matched the description of somebody who had 

been operating the vehicle in the past” without a license. 

(Emphasis added.) This is also similar to how Officer described 

the same events in the probable cause statement that he wrote and 

signed on the day that he arrested Correa. There, Officer said that 

as he was following the truck, he ran a “records check of the 

[truck’s] license plate” and that this records check showed that the 
State v. Correa

20220313-CA 8 2024 UT App 69

truck “had been recently operated by a male driver that did not 

have a valid license,” and he further said that he then “attempted 

to pull a [Driver’s] License picture of the recently offending 

driver.” (Emphases added.)

¶20 From all this, it seems clear enough that when Officer said 

that he “knew the driver’s license status of Sergio Correa,” what 

he was referring to was his knowledge that the previously cited 

Sergio Correa did not have a license when he was pulled over in 

that truck about two months earlier. We see no place in the record 

where Officer ever said that he had managed to obtain any 

updated knowledge about Correa’s driver license status before 

detaining him, much less where Officer explained how he 

obtained such knowledge during the very short period of time 

that was available to him. And of some note, the district court did 

not find that Officer had any updated knowledge either. To the 

contrary, after having heard the testimony at the suppression 

hearing firsthand, the court concluded that although Officer 

“didn’t recognize” the driver, Officer’s “[k]nowledge that 

someone by the name of Mr. Correa had been driving that vehicle 

without a license fairly recently” was “enough to meet the 

minimum standard” for an investigatory stop. And the court 

further reasoned that “if you know someone’s driving without a 

license, that there is some likelihood that if you see them driving 

a vehicle, that perhaps they’re driving again without a license.” 

From this, it seems that the court also thought it needed to draw 

an inferential link between Officer’s knowledge of Correa’s past

driver license status and his mere suspicion about Correa’s 

current driver license status.

¶21 We’ll accordingly view Officer’s testimony the same way 

that the district court did: that what Officer knew was that Sergio 

Correa did not have a driver license two months earlier. From 

here, however, we part ways with the district court on the 

question of whether this justified the seizure.
State v. Correa

20220313-CA 9 2024 UT App 69

¶22 The Fourth Amendment does not protect “against all 

searches and seizures, but only against unreasonable searches and 

seizures.” State v. Goddard, 2021 UT App 124, ¶ 19, 501 P.3d 1188 

(emphases in original, quotation otherwise simplified). In this 

sense, the “touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is 

reasonableness.” Id. (quotation simplified). And when assessing 

reasonableness in a Fourth Amendment inquiry, courts seek to 

“balance[] the nature and quality of the intrusion on personal 

security against the importance of the governmental interests 

alleged to justify the intrusion.” State v. Hubbard, 861 P.2d 1053, 

1054 (Utah Ct. App. 1993) (quotation simplified).

¶23 As noted, an investigatory detention is permitted if an 

“officer has reasonable, articulable suspicion that the person has 

been, is, or is about to be engaged in criminal activity.” State v. 

Alverez, 2006 UT 61, ¶ 14 (quotation simplified). And an “officer’s 

suspicion is reasonable if it is supported by specific and 

articulable facts as well as any rational inferences drawn from 

those facts.” Id.

¶24 No one disputes that, about two months earlier, Correa 

drove the truck without a license. But Correa had already been 

cited for doing so, and that past incident was now over. Also, as 

indicated above, Officer confirmed at the suppression hearing 

that he had not “observe[d] any traffic violations, any infractions, 

or misdemeanors” at the time that he turned on his lights and 

approached Correa. Given this, the question before us is whether 

Officer’s knowledge that Correa had driven without a license 

about two months earlier allowed Officer to stop Correa based on 

a suspicion that Correa might be driving without a license again.

¶25 Our decision in West Valley City v. Temblador-Topete, 2020 

UT App 64, 463 P.3d 721, is instructive. There, when an officer ran 

a records search on a vehicle, the database informed him that 

insurance registration for the vehicle was “not found.” Id. ¶¶ 2, 10

(quotation simplified). Of note, this database was updated “twice 
State v. Correa

20220313-CA 10 2024 UT App 69

a month.” Id. ¶ 5. Based on this information, the officer pulled the 

vehicle over, and during that stop, the officer discovered drugs on 

the driver. Id. ¶ 3. The driver subsequently appealed the denial of 

his motion to suppress, arguing, in part, that the information from 

the database was too “stale” to support the stop. Id. ¶ 18. We 

disagreed, concluding that “two-week-old information” was not 

too stale to support a reasonable suspicion of criminality. Id.

¶26 In doing so, we cited with approval language from a Tenth 

Circuit case holding that when 

the legal infraction at issue typically wears on for 

days or weeks or months (like, say, driving without 

a license or appropriate emissions and safety 

certifications), rather than concludes quickly (like, 

say, jaywalking or mugging), the timeliness of the 

information on which the government relies to 

effect an investigative detention recedes in 

importance compared to other factors, such as the 

type and duration of [the] offense at issue.

Id. ¶ 19 (quoting United States v. Cortez-Galaviz, 495 F.3d 1203, 1209 

(10th Cir. 2007)).

¶27 We then quoted additional language from that same case 

recognizing that “‘outer boundaries’” must “‘exist for the 

usefulness of data, even for offenses typically protracted and 

ongoing in nature.’” Id. ¶ 20 (quoting Cortez-Galaviz, 495 F.3d at 

1210). And at oral argument in this appeal, the State agreed that 

there must indeed be some temporal limitation on the continuing 

utility of information about the past license or insurance status of 

a driver. In response to a question from a member of this court, 

the State agreed that if Officer had learned that Correa did not 

have a valid license six months earlier, the State “would not stand 

here arguing that” the detention was justified.
State v. Correa

20220313-CA 11 2024 UT App 69

¶28 And this must be so. After all, the Fourth Amendment’s 

focus is on reasonableness, and courts are thus tasked with 

balancing “personal security against the importance of the 

governmental interests alleged to justify the intrusion.” Hubbard, 

861 P.2d at 1054 (quotation simplified). As we previously 

recognized in Temblador-Topete, and as we reiterate now, it simply 

couldn’t be reasonable to hold that once a citizen is cited for 

driving without insurance or a license, police now have ongoing 

and indefinite authority to seize that citizen to see if the citizen is 

committing this same offense again.

¶29 To be clear, the State isn’t asking us to hold as much.

Instead, it is simply arguing that the information at issue here 

wasn’t too stale to support this particular detention. As a result, 

we’re confronted with something of a line-drawing problem. And 

our starting place for that assessment is Temblador-Topete, where

we held that information about a driver’s insurance status that 

was two weeks old could support a detention, and where we also 

cited with approval the Tenth Circuit’s holding that “twenty-dayold” information can be relied on too. Templador-Topete, 2020 UT 

App 64, ¶ 19.

¶30 But even so, we conclude that this detention was 

unreasonable. The State’s argument in this case seems to rest on 

two alternative assumptions—first, that it’s reasonable to suspect 

that after a citizen is cited for driving without a license, the citizen 

won’t promptly try to obtain a license; or second, that even if the 

citizen does try to promptly obtain a license, the citizen might not 

be able to complete the process within two months. 

¶31 We see no reason to indulge the first assumption. It’s of 

course true that a “determination that reasonable suspicion exists 

. . . need not rule out the possibility of innocent conduct.” State v. 

Simons, 2013 UT 3, ¶ 21, 296 P.3d 721 (quotation simplified). But 

it’s also true that reasonable suspicion “requires an objectively 

reasonable belief that an individual is engaged in or is about to be 
State v. Correa

20220313-CA 12 2024 UT App 69

engaged in criminal activity.” State v. Gurule, 2013 UT 58, ¶ 32, 321 

P.3d 1039 (emphasis added, quotation otherwise simplified). And 

the “touchstone” of a Fourth Amendment analysis is “always the 

reasonableness of the seizure.” State v. Smith, 2022 UT 13, ¶ 16, 513 

P.3d 629 (quotation simplified). In the absence of some additional 

information (such as a known history of this person repeatedly 

driving without a license), we don’t think it is objectively 

reasonable for an officer to simply assume that after a citizen was 

previously cited for driving without a license, that citizen didn’t 

fix the problem and is now committing that same offense again—

much less to allow an officer to seize that citizen based solely on 

that assumption. 

¶32 On the State’s second assumption, we see no record 

support for it. The State has given us no indication that Officer 

even knew what the previous problem with Correa’s license was. 

Had Correa never taken the requisite tests and never obtained a 

license at all? Was it instead a mere payment error? Was it 

something else? And whatever the problem was, the State has also 

provided no factual support for the assertion that Correa could 

not have corrected it within two months. 

¶33 In short, we don’t think it’s reasonable to seize an 

otherwise law-abiding citizen based on nothing more than 

information that this citizen was cited for driving without a 

license two months earlier. Because the State has provided no 

other justification for the seizure at issue, we hold that it was not 

justified. We therefore reverse the district court’s denial of 

Correa’s motion to suppress.3

3. We briefly address one final potential issue. It’s settled that, 

“absent an exception to the exclusionary rule, evidence obtained 

in violation of the Fourth Amendment’s protections against 

unreasonable searches and seizures should be excluded.” State v. 

(continued...)
State v. Correa

20220313-CA 13 2024 UT App 69

CONCLUSION

¶34 Because Officer seized Correa without a reasonable 

suspicion of ongoing criminal conduct, we reverse the district 

court’s denial of Correa’s motion to suppress. We thus remand the 

case for the district court to set aside the conditional guilty plea, 

as well as for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

Anderson, 2015 UT 90, ¶ 8, 362 P.3d 1232 (quotation simplified). In 

its brief, the State suggests that Correa “has not provided the 

Court with an appropriate remedy” because, in the State’s view, 

the exclusionary rule should not be applied in instances of “racial 

profiling” like the one alleged by Correa. 

But as discussed above, we’re not reversing on the basis of 

improper racial profiling. Rather, we’re reversing because Officer 

did not have reasonable suspicion of ongoing criminal conduct. 

The State has given us no authority, and we see none, for 

declining to apply the exclusionary rule to a decision such as this 

one.