Opinion ID: 2324370
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Gravity of the Public Concern in Addressing a Civil Speeding Infraction

Text: [¶ 10] The requirement that searches and seizures be reasonable reflects the Framers' recognition `that searches and seizures were too valuable to law enforcement to prohibit them entirely' but that `they should be slowed down.' Thomas K. Clancy, The Fourth Amendment: Its History and Interpretation § 11.1 at 466 (2008) (quoting Berger v. New York, 388 U.S. 41, 75, 87 S.Ct. 1873, 18 L.Ed.2d 1040 (1967) (Black, J., dissenting)). Accordingly, when the State points to a public concern to justify the reasonableness of a search or seizure, courts must consider the gravity of that public concern in the context of the constitutionally-protected right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. See Brown, 443 U.S. at 50-51, 99 S.Ct. 2637. [¶ 11] As noted above, the investigation of serious crimes has been deemed sufficiently important to outweigh certain interferences with the liberty interests of stopped motorists. For example, we concluded that the public concern in the investigation of a recently-committed burglary was sufficiently grave to outweigh the interference with a motorist's liberty interest when the motorist was stopped briefly at a roadblock for questioning about the burglary. State v. Gorneault, 2007 ME 49, ¶¶ 2, 9, 918 A.2d 1207, 1208, 1209. Our reasoning in Gorneault mirrored the Supreme Court's approach in Lidster, in which the public concern related to the investigation of a fatal hit-and-run accident was sufficiently grave to outweigh the interference with a motorist's liberty interest when he was stopped at a roadblock for questioning about the accident. 540 U.S. at 422, 427, 124 S.Ct. 885. Similarly, other courts have concluded that the investigation of serious crimes can be deemed sufficiently urgent and important to justify warrantless seizures of motorists in the absence of reasonable articulable suspicion, including investigations of a robbery, see Gipson v. State, 268 S.W.3d 185, 188-89 (Tex.App.2008), an armed robbery, see Baxter v. State, 274 Ark. 539, 626 S.W.2d 935, 936, 937 (1982), and the repeated discharge of a firearm, threatening personal injury, see Williamson v. United States, 607 A.2d 471, 477 (D.C.1992). [¶ 12] In contrast, the investigation of noncriminal offenses is generally not a sufficiently grave public concern to outweigh the interference with a motorist's liberty interest that occurs when the motorist is stopped without any reasonable articulable suspicion. [3] See, e.g., State v. Ryland, 241 Neb. 74, 486 N.W.2d 210, 213-14 (1992). [¶ 13] In this case, the trooper was investigating a noncriminal speeding offense. [4] In contrast with the burglary investigation considered in Gorneault or the serious crimes considered in Gipson, Baxter, and Williamson, the civil speeding infraction that led the trooper to stop La-Plante did not present a matter of grave public concern.