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IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF IDAHO

Docket No. 49449

STATE OF IDAHO,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

PATRICIA LEE KILDOW,

Defendant-Respondent.

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Filed: December 1, 2022

Melanie Gagnepain, Clerk

Appeal from the District Court of the Fourth Judicial District, State of Idaho, Ada

County. Hon. Lynn G. Norton, District Judge. 

Orders granting suppression motion and motion to dismiss, reversed and case 

remanded.

Hon. Lawrence G. Wasden, Attorney General; Kenneth K. Jorgensen, Deputy 

Attorney General, Boise, for appellant. Kenneth K. Jorgensen argued.

Eric D. Fredericksen, State Appellate Public Defender; Jason C. Pintler, Deputy 

Appellate Public Defender, Boise, for respondent. Jason C. Pintler argued.

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BRAILSFORD, Judge

The State appeals from the district court’s order granting Patricia Lee Kildow’s motion to 

suppress and the court’s subsequent order dismissing the charges against Kildow. We reverse and 

remand. 

I.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

In May 2021, a 911 caller reported observing two blonde females in a red GMC parked at 

an apartment complex who were smoking methamphetamine out of a glass pipe that looked “like 

a light bulb.” During the call, the caller reported that the GMC was leaving the apartment complex; 

the caller was following it; and it pulled into a superstore parking lot. In addition to a description 

of the vehicle, its occupants and their conduct, the caller also provided his identity and that of his 
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companion, their contact information, and their location. Officer Rudan received this information 

in dispatch notes, responded to the report “immediately,” and located the GMC and its occupants 

matching the caller’s description in the superstore parking lot.1 Officer Rudan parked his patrol 

vehicle and approached the GMC. When the driver began to exit the GMC, Officer Rudan 

instructed the driver to remain in the vehicle.

After Officer Rudan identified the driver, Kildow, and the passenger, Kildow’s daughter, 

Officer Rudan requested assistance and returned to his patrol vehicle to conduct a records check 

on Kildow and the passenger. During this time, other officers arrived on the scene, including 

Officer Lloyd and Officer Albers, who is a drug-dog handler. Officer Rudan instructed Officer 

Lloyd to remove Kildow and the passenger from the GMC. Officer Lloyd testified that she 

believed she was removing the occupants from the vehicle so Officer Albers could perform a drugdog sniff and that Officer Lloyd approached the passenger-side door, asked the passenger to step 

out, and opened the door. Immediately upon opening the door, Officer Lloyd saw “a clear, plastic 

water bottle that had been modified into a bong,” which she recognized as drug paraphernalia.2 

During a subsequent search of the GMC, the officers discovered contraband, including 

methamphetamine, in Kildow’s purse.

The State charged Kildow with possession of methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia. 

At the preliminary hearing, Officers Rudan, Albers, and Lloyd testified. Thereafter, Kildow filed 

a motion to suppress the evidence discovered during the search. At an evidentiary hearing, Officer 

Lloyd testified again. In addition to this testimony, the district court also considered the 

preliminary hearing transcript; the audio of the 911 call; footage from the officers’ body cameras; 

and the incident detail report, which included the dispatch notes from the 911 call. 

Following the hearing, the district court issued a written decision granting Kildow’s 

suppression motion. The court concluded Officer Rudan detained Kildow when Officer Rudan

asked Kildow to remain in the car. Further, the court found that the 911 caller provided: (1) a 

description of the GMC, its occupants, and its location, which Officer Rudan corroborated; 

1 The 911 caller provided a license plate for the GMC and transposed the last two numbers. 

The district court found, however, that the report was reliable despite this transposition.

2 After Officer Lloyd opened the door and saw drug paraphernalia, Officer Albers’ drug dog 

conducted a sweep around the GMC, entered the vehicle, and alerted. The dog sniff, however, is 

not at issue in this case.
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(2) first-hand observations of the occupants’ conduct with “reliable details of how [the 911 caller]

could distinguish the smoking of illegal drugs from a legal substance by the description of ‘light 

bulb’ and ‘white smoke’”; and (3) the reporting parties’ “identities, contact information, and 

location.” Based on these findings, the court concluded the 911 caller’s information “had 

sufficient indicia of reliability to justify detention of the [GMC] and its occupants” and provided 

reasonable suspicion to detain the GMC’s occupants.

Despite concluding Officer Rudan lawfully detained the GMC’s occupants, the district 

court concluded the officers were not justified in ordering the occupants to exit the GMC because 

the officers were not investigating a traffic violation; the State had not shown the occupants “posed 

a risk of danger that would justify a Terry[3]frisk”; and the occupants “were only asked out of the 

vehicle so that the drug-sniffing canine could engage in a free-air sniff of the exterior of the 

vehicle.” Further, the court concluded probable cause under the automobile exception did not exist 

to justify the officers ordering the GMC’s occupants to exit the vehicle. Accordingly, the court 

held the search of the GMC was unconstitutional and granted Kildow’s suppression motion.

The State timely appeals.

II.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

The standard of review of a suppression motion is bifurcated. When a decision on a motion 

to suppress is challenged, we accept the trial court’s findings of fact that are supported by 

substantial evidence, but we freely review the application of constitutional principles to the facts 

as found. State v. Atkinson, 128 Idaho 559, 561, 916 P.2d 1284, 1286 (Ct. App. 1996). At a 

suppression hearing, the power to assess the credibility of witnesses, resolve factual conflicts, 

weigh evidence, and draw factual inferences is vested in the trial court. State v. Valdez-Molina, 

127 Idaho 102, 106, 897 P.2d 993, 997 (1995); State v. Schevers, 132 Idaho 786, 789, 979 P.2d 

659, 662 (Ct. App. 1999).

III.

ANALYSIS

The State argues the district court erred by granting Kildow’s suppression motion. 

Specifically, the State challenges the court’s conclusion that “the general rule that an officer may 

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See Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 30-31 (1968) (creating stop-and-frisk exception to Fourth 

Amendment warrant requirement).
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order a suspect from a car during the course of a detention does not apply when the officer is 

investigating a non-traffic offense.” In response, Kildow argues an officer’s authority to order a 

suspect to exit a vehicle is limited to instances in which the officer conducted a traffic stop of a 

moving vehicle.

The United States Supreme Court first articulated the rule that an officer may order a 

lawfully detained driver to exit the vehicle in Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U.S. 106, 109 (1977). 

In Mimms, the officer stopped a vehicle displaying an expired license plate. Id. at 107. Per the 

officer’s standard practice, he asked the driver to exit the car despite having “no reason to suspect 

foul play from the particular driver at the time of the stop” and not having seen anything “unusual 

or suspicious about his behavior.” Id. at 109-10. Once the driver exited the vehicle, the officer 

noticed a large bulge under the driver’s jacket, frisked the driver, discovered a loaded handgun,

and arrested him for carrying a concealed weapon without a license. Id. at 107. The Pennsylvania 

Supreme Court reversed the denial of the driver’s suppression motion, concluding the officer’s 

order to exit the vehicle was “an impermissible ‘seizure’” because he “could not point to ‘objective 

observable facts to support a suspicion that criminal activity was afoot or that the occupants of the 

vehicle posed a threat to police safety.’” Id. at 108.

On appeal, the United States Supreme Court disagreed. Id. at 108. In addressing the issue, 

the Court noted the inquiry “focus[ed] not on the intrusion resulting from the request to stop the 

vehicle or from the later ‘pat down,’ but on the incremental intrusion resulting from the request to 

get out of the car once the vehicle was lawfully stopped.” Id. at 109. The Court “recognized the 

inordinate risk confronting an officer as he approaches a person seated in an automobile.” Id. at 

110. The Court then weighed this risk against “the driver’s personal liberty occasioned not by the 

initial stop of the vehicle, which was admittedly justified, but by the order to get out of the car.” 

Id. at 111. Balancing these factors, the Court concluded the intrusion caused by asking the driver 

to exit the vehicle was de minimis. Id. The Court reasoned:

The driver is being asked to expose to view very little more of his person than is 

already exposed. The police have already lawfully decided that the driver shall be 

briefly detained; the only question is whether he shall spend that period sitting in 

the driver’s seat of his car or standing alongside it. Not only is the insistence of the 

police on the latter choice not a “serious intrusion upon the sanctity of the person,”

but it hardly rises to the level of a “petty indignity.”

Id. (quoting Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 17 (1968)).
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The United States Supreme Court extended the Mimms rule to apply to passengers in 

Maryland v. Wilson, 519 U.S. 408, 415 (1997), holding that “an officer making a traffic stop may 

order passengers to get out of the car pending the completion of the stop.” In that case, the Court 

reasoned that the risk of harm to both the police and the occupants of a stopped vehicle is 

minimized if the officers routinely exercise unquestioned command of the situation. Id. at 414. 

In State v. Irwin, 143 Idaho 102, 137 P.3d 1024 (Ct. App. 2006), this Court considered the

Mimms rule and concluded an officer may open a vehicle’s door before ordering its occupants to 

exit without violating the Fourth Amendment. In that case, the officers were patrolling after dark 

and “saw an automobile traveling in the opposite direction with its headlights off and its passenger 

door open.” Id. at 103, 137 P.3d at 1025. After the officers activated their overhead lights and 

began pursuing the vehicle, its passenger exited the moving vehicle and the officers stopped to 

ensure the passenger was uninjured. Id. Later, the officers located the vehicle lawfully parked 

with its lights and engine off and its doors and windows closed. Id. In the vehicle, “they saw 

Irwin curled up on the floor behind the front seats.” Id. The officer testified that “he wanted to 

see [Irwin’s] hands in order to ensure officer safety,” “wanted to prevent Irwin from moving the 

vehicle in an effort to elude or injure the officers,” and wanted to ensure Irwin was not injured. Id. 

As a result, the officer opened the passenger door and “ordered Irwin to come out.” Id. 

On intermediate appeal, the district court ruled the officer violated Irwin’s civil rights when 

he opened her vehicle door, and the State appealed. Id. at 104, 137 P.3d at 1026. Addressing this

ruling, this Court reversed. Id. at 106, 137 P.3d at 1028. It reasoned:

[A]n officer’s action of opening a car door before directing the occupant to exit is 

no more intrusive than a verbal command followed by the occupant’s opening the 

door. Either way, the door will be opened and the officer will see inside. The 

officer’s act here did not expose to view any more of Irwin or the interior of her 

vehicle than would have been exposed if Irwin had opened the door herself.

Id. The Court concluded that “given that the officers have clear authority to order people out of 

vehicles during a roadside stop, it is constitutionally irrelevant whether the officer or the occupant 

opens the car door to enable the occupant to exit.” Id.; see also State v. Jay, 167 Idaho 592, 598, 

473 P.3d 861, 867 (Ct. App. 2020) (concluding officer had reasonable suspicion of traffic violation 

and opening car door did not constitute unlawful search). 

In this case, the district court distinguished Irwin when granting Kildow’s suppression 

motion, concluding that “this case is not a traffic stop for any traffic violation and there was never 

any evidence presented that there was ever any concern about the welfare of any occupant of the 
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vehicle.” The State argues that “this distinction is erroneous because the rationale for the [Mimms] 

rule is a balancing of a risk to the officer against [the] degree of intrusion”; “the risk to the officer 

is not less” because of the nature of the crime being investigated; and “there is no legal basis for 

differentiating between traffic and non-traffic offenses.” Kildow responds that “it is not the nature 

of the investigation that matters”; rather, “it is whether the seizure begins with an officer 

conducting a traffic stop.”

Accordingly, at issue is whether an officer must have reasonable suspicion of a traffic 

violation versus reasonable suspicion of some other criminal activity before ordering the occupants 

of a vehicle to exit after lawfully detaining them. We hold that, if an officer has lawfully detained 

the occupants of a vehicle, the officer may order the occupants to exit the vehicle regardless of 

whether the officer detained the occupants to investigate a traffic violation or some other criminal 

activity. The dispositive inquiry is whether the officer had reasonable suspicion to lawfully detain 

the occupants in the vehicle before ordering them to exit. Kildow neither disputes that Officer 

Rudan had reasonable suspicion of criminal activity to detain Kildow and the passenger nor 

otherwise contends the officers unlawfully detained them. Because Officer Rudan lawfully 

detained the GMC’s occupants in the vehicle, the officers had the authority to order both Kildow 

and the passenger to exit the vehicle.

Contrary to Kildow’s assertions, the rationale in Mimms for allowing an officer to order 

occupants to exit a vehicle applies equally in this case. See Mimms, 434 U.S. at 110 (recognizing 

“inordinate risk confronting an officer”). As the United States Supreme Court noted, the focus on 

whether the officer’s intrusion is unconstitutional is not “on the intrusion resulting from the request 

to stop the vehicle or from the later ‘pat down.’” Id. at 109. Rather, the focus is on the intrusion 

caused by the officer’s order for the occupants to exit the vehicle. Id. Even if the reasonable 

suspicion allowing the detention does not relate to a traffic violation, the intrusion to the occupants 

of a lawfully detained vehicle remains the same: They have already been lawfully detained; they 

will be detained while standing versus sitting in the vehicle; and they are exposing only a little 

more of their person than has already been exposed. Id. at 111.

Likewise, the risks the officers encountered while investigating the report that Kildow and 

her passenger were smoking methamphetamine in the GMC are the same risks attendant to 

investigating the occupants of a vehicle stopped for a traffic violation. Nothing distinguishes the 

risks to the officer in Mimms, who was investigating an expired license plate, from the risks to the 
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officers in this case, and there is no basis to conclude the officers in this case faced some lesser 

risk. Rather, the risk remained the same that the officers could not see the occupants’ hands or 

that the occupants might reach for a weapon or move the vehicle in an effort to elude or injure the 

officers.

That “none of the officers testified that either [Kildow] or her daughter posed a danger to 

the officers or others,” as Kildow notes, is not a basis to conclude the officers could not order the 

GMC’s occupants to exit. Although the officers in Irwin had specific safety concerns, such

concerns are not necessary to support an officer’s authority to order the occupants of a lawfully 

detained vehicle to exit. The Mimms Court established the rule not in the context of specific safety 

concerns but rather in the context of the officer following a “standard practice,” having “no reason 

to suspect foul play from the particular driver at the time of the stop,” and not having seen anything 

“unusual or suspicious about his behavior.” Id. at 109-10. Moreover, Officer Lloyd testified that 

she removed the GMC’s occupants per “policy and procedure” and that “it’s a safety risk” to have 

someone in the vehicle during a drug-dog sniff. Finally, that Officer Lloyd did not ask the 

passenger to exit the vehicle until later during the detention is not a basis to conclude the order 

was unlawful. As Kildow concedes, “the authority to order the occupants to get out of a lawfully 

stopped vehicle remains throughout the duration of the lawful seizure.”

At oral argument, Kildow asserted the United States Supreme Court’s decision in 

Rodriguez v. United States, 575 U.S. 348 (2015), precludes the application of the Mimms rule to 

allow an officer to order an occupant of a lawfully detained vehicle to exit absent a traffic stop. 

Specifically, Kildow relies on the Court’s statement in Rodriguez that “highway and officer safety 

are interests different in kind from the Government’s endeavor to detect crime in general or drug 

trafficking in particular.” Id. at 357. The Idaho Supreme Court has previously discussed the 

meaning of this and related language in Rodriguez. In State v. Pylican, 167 Idaho 745, 753-54, 

477 P.3d 180, 188-89 (2020), the Court addressed whether an officer unconstitutionally prolonged 

a traffic stop by ordering the occupants of a vehicle to exit in order to conduct a drug-dog sniff. In 

that context, the Court ruled that “Rodriguez does not bar officers from ordering occupants of a 

lawfully stopped vehicle to exit in order to investigate possible crimes unrelated to a valid traffic 

stop.” Id. at 754, 477 P.3d at 189. In State v. Warren, 169 Idaho 588, 593, 499 P.3d 423, 428 

(2021), the Court considered whether Rodriguez means that “only stops related to motor vehicle 

code investigations allow for the detention of a vehicle’s passengers” and concluded that “nothing 
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in Rodriguez states that a traffic stop which gives rise to reasonable suspicion of another crime 

then transforms the subsequent investigation into a non-traffic stop with a slate of different rules.” 

See also State v. Wharton, 170 Idaho 329, 335, 510 P.3d 682, 688 (2022) (“[T]he State’s proposed 

practice of checking passengers for outstanding warrants during a traffic stop, as a matter of course, 

is a negligibly burdensome precaution for officer safety that the Fourth Amendment does not 

forbid. Accordingly, when warrant checks on passengers do occur, they do not unlawfully extend 

a stop under Rodriguez.”). Although these cases do not directly address whether a traffic stop is 

an essential component of an officer’s authority under Mimms and its progeny to order the 

occupants to exit a lawfully detained vehicle, our ruling that a traffic stop is not required is in 

accord with the Idaho Supreme Court’s narrow reading of the language in Rodriguez on which 

Kildow relies.

Because Officer Rudan lawfully detained Kildow and the passenger, Officer Lloyd had 

authority to order the passenger to exit the vehicle. That Officer Lloyd actually opened the door 

rather than the passenger is “constitutionally irrelevant.” See Irwin, 143 Idaho at 106, 137 P.3d at 

1028 (ruling whether occupant or officer opens door is constitutionally irrelevant). Officer Lloyd’s 

act exposed no more view of the GMC or its interior than the passenger would have exposed if she

had opened the door. See id. (providing rationale for allowing officer to lawfully open door). Once 

the door was open, the drug paraphernalia was in plain view and justified the subsequent search of 

the GMC. See Baldwin v. State, 145 Idaho 148, 155, 177 P.3d 362, 369 (2008) (ruling officer must 

lawfully make initial intrusion to support plain view exception).

IV.

CONCLUSION

The district court erred by granting Kildow’s suppression motion and dismissing the 

charges against her. Accordingly, we reverse the court’s orders granting suppression and 

dismissing the charges and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

Chief Judge LORELLO and Judge GRATTON CONCUR.