FILED

August 18, 1998

Cecil W. Crowson

Appellate Court Clerk

IN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS OF TENNESSEE

AT NASHVILLE

APRIL SESSION, 1998

STATE OF TENNESSEE, ) C.C.A. NO. 01C01-9705-CC-00188

)

Appellee, )

) MONTGOM ERY COUNTY

V. ) 

)

) HON. ROBERT W. WEDEMEYER, 

GREGORY KEITH WEAVER, ) JUDGE

)

Appellant. ) (DUI; RECKLESS DRIVING) 

FOR THE APPELLANT: FOR THE APPELLEE:

PETER M. OLSON JOHN KNOX WALKUP 

OLSON & OLSON, PLC Attorney General & Reporter

114 Franklin Street 

Clarksville, TN 37040 KAREN M. YACUZZO

Assistant Attorney General

2nd Floor, Cordell Hull Building

425 Fifth Avenue North 

Nashville, TN 37243

JOHN WESLEY CARNEY, JR.

District Attorney General 

LANCE BAKER

Assistant District Attorney General

204 Franklin Street, Suite 200

Clarksville, TN 37040

OPINION FILED ________________________

AFFIRMED 

THOMAS T. WOODALL, JUDGE
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OPINION

The Defendant, Gregory Keith Weaver, appeals as of right from his

convictions of DUI, fourth offense, reckless driving, driving on a revoked license,

second offense, violating the open container law, and violating the implied consent

law following a jury trial in the Montgom ery County Criminal Court. In this appeal,

Defendant argues that the trial court erred in denying his Motion to Suppress all

evidence obtained as a result of the investigatory stop of him immediately preceding

his arrest for DUI and the other related offenses. We affirm the judgment of the trial

court.

On October 3, 1995, the Clarksville police dispatcher notified patrol officers

that the police department had received a report of a reckless driver who was

possibly drunk. According to the report, the suspect vehicle was a red Ford Ranger

being driven by a white male with dark hair and a bad complexion. The report further

indicated that the Ranger had left the area near the Texaco station and was traveling

toward Kroger.

Shortly after the dispatcher relayed this information to the Clarksville officers,

Officer Joe Papastathis informed Officer Robert Miller that he had seen the suspect

vehicle at the reported location which was in Officer Miller’s patrol area. Officer

Miller then saw the vehicle and began to follow it in an attempt to corroborate the

report. Officer Miller observed Defendant make a “slightly wider turn than what most

cars would take if you turned.” At this point Defendant pulled into the driveway to his

home and stopped. Officer Miller pulled into Defendant’s driveway and parked the
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patrol car directly behind Defendant’s vehicle. At the time, Officer Miller was

unaware that the driveway belonged to Defendant.

At some point after Officer Miller pulled into the driveway, but before he

confronted Defendant, Officer Robert Smith radioed Officer Miller and told him that

the suspect’s vehicle had nearly hit his car when he was driving to work just a few

minutes earlier. Thereafter, Officer Miller approached Defendant’s truck, where he

smelled alcohol and saw an open bottle of whiskey in the car. Officer Miller asked

Defendant if he had been drinking, and Defendant admitted that he had, and that he

had “probably had too much.”

Prior to trial, Defendant filed a motion to suppress the evidence garnered from

the encounter with Officer Miller. The proper standard of review for suppression

issues was set forth by our supreme court in State v. Odom, 928 S.W.2d 18, 23

(Tenn. 1996):

The party prevailing in the trial court is entitled to the

strongest legitimate view of the evidence adduced at the

suppression hearing as well as all reasonable and

legitimate inferences that may be drawn from that

evidence. So long as the greater weight of the evidence

supports the trial court’s findings, those findings shall be

upheld. In other words, a trial court’s findings of fact in a

suppression hearing will be upheld unless the evidence

preponderates otherwise.

 Defendant argues in this appeal that Officer Miller lacked the reasonable

suspicion necessary to detain and question him. More specifically, he contends that

Officer Miller’s observations did not provide sufficient corroboration of the information

supplied by the anonymous call placed to the dispatcher, as is required by State v.

Pully, 863 S.W .2d 29 (Tenn. 1993). 
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We first note that we find Officer Miller’s actions to be an “investigatory stop”

according to constitutional standards. “[S]topping an automobile and detaining its

occupants constitute a ‘seizure’ within the m eaning of [the Fourth and Fourteenth

amendments of the United States Constitution], even though the purpose of the stop

is limited and the resulting detention quite brief.” Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648,

653, 99 S. Ct. 1391, 1396, 59 L. Ed. 2d 660 (1979) (citations omitted). In some

circumstances, an officer may briefly detain a suspect without probable cause in

order to investigate possible criminal activity. Brown v. Texas, 443 U.S. 47, 51, 99

S. Ct. 2637, 2641, 61 L. Ed. 2d 357 (1979). A person is seized “if, in view of all of

the circumstances surrounding the incident, a reasonable person would have

believed that he was not free to leave.” United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U.S. 544,

554, 100 S. Ct. 1870, 1877, 64 L. Ed. 2d 497 (1980). When Officer Miller pulled into

the driveway, and then approached Defendant’s parked car, a reasonable person

would have believed he was no longer free to leave.

This type of investigatory stop is constitutionally permissible only when a

police officer has a reasonable suspicion, supported by specific and articulable facts,

that a criminal offense has been or is about to be committed. See Terry v. Ohio, 392

U.S. 1, 88 S. Ct. 1868, 20 L. Ed. 2d 889 (1968). In order to determ ine the specific

and articulable facts, this Court must consider the “totality of the circum stances.”

State v. Watkins, 827 S.W.2d 293, 294 (Tenn. 1992) (citation omitted). Among the

relevant elements to be considered are “objective observations, information obtained

from other police officers or agencies, information obtained from citizens, and the

pattern of operation of certain offenders.” Id. 
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When the information relied upon is provided by an anonymous person,

heightened concerns are raised about the reliability of the information because of the

possible danger of “false reports, through police fabrication or from vindictive or

unreliable informants.” Pully, 863 S.W.2d at 31. As a result, our courts have

developed a methodology for evaluating the reliability of citizen information. For

showings of probable cause based on an informant’s tip, our supreme court has

followed the former federal two-pronged test that requires proof of the informant’s

basis of knowledge and credibility. See Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 89

S. Ct. 584, 21 L. Ed. 2d 637 (1969); Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 84 S. Ct. 1509,

12 L. Ed. 2d 723 (1964); State v. Jacumin, 778 S.W.2d 430, 436 (Tenn. 1989).

While this standard is typically used to determine probable cause, courts of this

State have held this standard is to be used as a guide in assessing the reliability of

an informant’s tip supporting an investigative detention. Pully, 863 S.W.2d at 31;

State v. Coleman, 791 S.W.2d 504, 505 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1989), perm. to appeal

denied (Tenn. 1990). We also note that reasonable suspicion requires a lower level

of proof than probable cause, allowing for citizen information that is less reliable than

that required for probable cause showings. Pully, 863 S.W.2d at 32 (citing Alabama

v. White, 496 U.S. 325, 330, 110 S. Ct. 2412, 2416, 110 L. Ed. 2d 301 (1990)). 

We must determine if there was sufficient corroboration of the information

supplied to Officer Miller by the dispatcher to support a reasonable suspicion of

illegal activity. The record indicates that the Clarksville police dispatcher received

a telephone call from an unknown citizen warning of a potential drunk driver in a red

Ford pickup truck in the area of the Texaco station and Kroger. The suspect was

described by the caller as a white male with dark hair and a bad complexion. 

Although the caller’s basis of knowledge is unclear from the record, the
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circumstances in which the information was given and the language of the caller

suggest first-hand, eyewitness knowledge. “When an informant reports an incident

at or near the time of its occurrence, a court can often assume that the report is firsthand, and hence reliable.” Pully, 863 S.W.2d at 32. The proximity in time between

the anonym ous call to the dispatcher and Officer Miller’s subsequent information is

significant in assessing the reliability of the inform ation. See id. (citations omitted).

Officer Miller received corroboration of that information from Officer Papastathis, who

radioed that he had just seen the red truck in the area described by the anonymous

caller. Thereafter, Officer Miller saw the truck and began to follow it. He then

observed Defendant make a “wider turn than most cars would take.” As Officer

Miller continued following Defendant in an attempt to corroborate the information that

had been given to him, Defendant pulled into a driveway. Officer Miller testified at

the hearing that “[Q]uite frankly, I thought maybe [Defendant] was doing this just to

avoid me being behind him, so that’s why the observation period was not that long.”

It is clear from the facts that Officer Miller was unaware that the driveway Defendant

pulled into was actually that of Defendant’s. Once Officer Miller pulled his patrol car

into Defendant’s driveway, this constituted a “stop” according to constitutional

standards. 

At some point after Officer Miller pulled into Defendant’s driveway, he received

information from a fellow officer saying that the person driving the red truck had

nearly run him off the road on his way to work at the police station just minutes

earlier. However, this information came too late, i.e., after the stop, to be considered

in determining whether or not the officer’s corroboration was sufficient. We therefore

disagree with the trial court’s finding that this last information should be considered

in the analysis. 
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However, even though the trial court erred in considering the information

relayed to Officer Miller from his fellow officer reporting that Defendant had nearly

hit him, we are nonetheless able to uphold the trial court’s finding that sufficient

corroboration existed in this case. We base this finding upon the information

provided to Officer Miller by the dispatcher, the subsequent corroboration from

Officer Papastathis, Defendant’s unusually wide turn, Officer Miller’s personal

observations, and his reasonable belief that Defendant pulled into the driveway to

avoid being pursued by police. Based on all the foregoing, we find that the

informant’s reliability and his basis for knowledge were sufficiently substantiated in

this case to establish the necessary “reasonable and articulable suspicion” required

by our state constitution. See Coleman, 791 S.W.2d at 507.

 We must also look to the reasonableness of the investigatory detention which

turns on the facts and circumstances of each particular case. See Pully, 863 S.W.2d

at 34 (citing Mendenhall, 446 U.S. at 561, 100 S. Ct. at 1881, 64 L. Ed. 2d 497

(Powell, J., concurring)). In order to judge the reasonableness of the investigatory

detention involved in the case before us, we must weigh “the gravity of the public

concern, the degree to which the seizure advances that concern, and the severity

of the intrusion into individual privacy.” Pully 863 S.W.2d at 30 (citation omitted).

The public interest served by the investigatory detention in this case was the

prevention of a drunk driving accident. Certainly the gravity of the concern over

drunk driving is significant because of its threat to the safety of any citizen on the

public roads. Also, the brief detention of Defendant for questioning was a relatively

minor intrusion into Defendant’s privacy. Thus, we find the detention of Defendant

in the case sub judice to be reasonable.
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The evidence does not preponderate against the trial court’s denial of 

Defendant’s motion to suppress the evidence gained as a result of the encounter

with Officer Miller. We accordingly affirm the judgm ent of the trial court.

____________________________________

THOMAS T. W OODALL, Judge

CONCUR:

___________________________________

GARY R. WADE, Presiding Judge

___________________________________

L. T. LAFFERTY, Special Judge