Opinion ID: 171070
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Reasonable suspicion and the field sobriety tests

Text: The district court erred in denying qualified immunity to McCants on Vondrak's illegal arrest claim. On appeal, the sole issue regarding the illegal arrest claim is whether McCants had reasonable suspicionor, for qualified immunity purposes, arguable reasonable suspicionto subject Vondrak to the field sobriety tests. In Michigan Department of State Police v. Sitz, 496 U.S. 444, 450-55, 110 S.Ct. 2481, 110 L.Ed.2d 412 (1990), the Supreme Court upheld certain types of sobriety checkpoints as consistent with the Fourth Amendment. Thus, [e]ven in the absence of individualized suspicion, a brief seizure at a checkpoint may be reasonable if conducted in a neutral manner for the purpose of effectuating important governmental purposes. United States v. Galindo-Gonzales, 142 F.3d 1217, 1221 (10th Cir.1998). The situation changes, though, when a police officer subjects a driver to field sobriety tests, and in such instances, the officer must have reasonable suspicion. Wilder v. Turner, 490 F.3d 810, 815 (10th Cir.2007) (A field sobriety test is a minor intrusion on a driver only requiring a reasonable suspicion of intoxication and an easy opportunity to end a detention before it matures into an arrest. (citations and internal quotation marks omitted)); see also Sitz, 496 U.S. at 450-51, 110 S.Ct. 2481; Rogala v. Dist. of Columbia, 161 F.3d 44, 52 (D.C.Cir.1998). As we explained in Galindo-Gonzales: Requiring an individualized, reasonable suspicion as a prerequisite to expanding the scope of detentions at fixed checkpoints protects motorists and passengers from random stops involving the kind of standardless and unconstrained discretion that is the evil the Court has discerned when in previous cases it has insisted that the discretion of the official in the field be circumscribed, at least to some extent. Galindo-Gonzales, 142 F.3d at 1221 (citation, alteration, and internal quotation marks omitted). Under the reasonable suspicion standard, a police officer must have a particularized and objective basis for suspecting the particular person stopped of criminal activity. United States v. Cortez, 449 U.S. 411, 417-18, 101 S.Ct. 690, 66 L.Ed.2d 621 (1981). A reasonable suspicion analysis is based upon the totality of the circumstances, and officers [may] draw on their own experience and specialized training to make inferences from and deductions about the cumulative information available to them that might well elude an untrained person. United States v. Arvizu, 534 U.S. 266, 273, 122 S.Ct. 744, 151 L.Ed.2d 740 (2002) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). Although an officer's reliance on a mere `hunch' is insufficient to justify a stop, the likelihood of criminal activity need not rise to the level required for probable cause, and it falls considerably short of satisfying a preponderance of the evidence standard. Id. at 274, 122 S.Ct. 744 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). In the context of a § 1983 action, moreover, the officer is entitled to qualified immunity if a reasonable officer could have believed that [reasonable suspicion] existed to . . . detain the plaintiff i.e., if the officer had arguable reasonable suspicion. Cortez, 478 F.3d at 1120, 1123. Vondrak's statement that he had one beer three hours ago provided McCants with reasonable suspicion to conduct the field sobriety tests, or at the very least provided her with arguable reasonable suspicion entitling her to qualified immunity. See United States v. Slater, 411 F.3d 1003, 1004, 1006 (8th Cir.2005) (Jones's admission that he had been drinking [`a couple drinks'] earlier that evening gave Officer Perry reasonable suspicion to extend the stop while Jones completed the sobriety tests.); see also Miller v. Harget, 458 F.3d 1251, 1259 (11th Cir. 2006) ([W]hen Officer Harget smelled alcohol coming from the vehicle Mr. Miller had been driving, he had reasonable suspicion to detain Mr. Miller in order to investigate.); United States v. Neumann, 183 F.3d 753, 756 (8th Cir.1999) (The detection of alcohol on Neumann's breath provided Kayras with a reasonable suspicion to further detain Neumann and expand the scope of the investigation.); United States v. Caine, 517 F.Supp.2d 586, 589 (D.Mass. 2007) (finding reasonable suspicion where the defendant's eyes were glassy and bloodshot, and she had admitted drinking earlier that night); Griffin v. City of Clanton, 932 F.Supp. 1359, 1366 (M.D.Ala.1996) (finding reasonable suspicion where Officer Bearden smelled alcohol on Griffin's breath and Griffin admitted that he had consumed a few drinks). Admittedly, this is a close case. McCants' only factual basis for conducting the field sobriety tests was Vondrak's admission to drinking one beer several hours earlier, and the specificity of Vondrak's statement makes it less suspicious than in many of the cases cited above. Nevertheless, given that Vondrak admitted consuming alcohol, McCants had the reasonable suspicion necessary to perform the field sobriety testsor, at the very least, the arguable reasonable suspicion entitling her to qualified immunity. Our reasonable suspicion analysis is buttressed by New Mexico law, which proscribes driving while impaired to the slightest degree. See N.M. Stat. Ann. § 66-8-102(A) (It is unlawful for a person who is under the influence of intoxicating liquor to drive a vehicle within this state.); see also State v. Neal, 143 N.M. 341, 176 P.3d 330, 336-38 (2007). The New Mexico Supreme Court has explained: It was the intention of the legislature. . . to prohibit any person under the influence of intoxicating liquor, however slight, from operating an automobile on any highway in New Mexico. A person who has taken a drink of intoxicating liquor is not necessarily under its influence; but if it affects him so that, to the slightest degree, he is less able, either mentally or physically or both, to exercise the clear judgment and steady hand necessary to handle as powerful and dangerous a mechanism as a modern automobile with safety to himself and the public, he is under the influence of intoxicating liquor within the meaning of the statute. State v. Sisneros, 42 N.M. 500, 82 P.2d 274, 278 (1938) (citation and some internal quotation marks omitted); [5] see also Neal, 176 P.3d at 338 (The statute gives notice, according to the plain meaning of the word `influence,' that the Legislature intends to criminalize a condition less than intoxication, but `influenced' to any degree by alcohol, no matter how slight.). The sheer breadth of § 66-8-102(A)as compared to, for instance, the statute proscribing a person from driving with a blood-alcohol content of greater than 0.08, see § 66-8-102(C)provides support for McCants' argument that she had reasonable suspicion that Vondrak violated New Mexico law. Cf. Blackstone v. Quirino, 309 F.Supp.2d 117, 126 (D.Me.2004) (concluding that the officers had reasonable suspicion, and relying in part on the breadth of a similar statute under Maine law). McCants was entitled to qualified immunity on the illegal arrest claim, and the district court erred in concluding otherwise.