Opinion ID: 616288
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Existence of Reasonable Suspicion

Text: Bowman next argues that if the court agrees with him that he was seized, the Trooper did not have reasonable suspicion to do so. To justify a Fourth Amendment seizure, the officer must have a reasonable, articulable suspicion that criminal activity is afoot. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 20, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). The reasonable suspicion standard requires at least a minimal level of objective justification for making the stop. Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119, 123, 120 S.Ct. 673, 145 L.Ed.2d 570 (2000). The officer must be able to articulate more than an `inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or hunch' of criminal activity. Id. at 123-24, 120 S.Ct. 673. Here, the Trooper had a long list of observations that reasonably made him suspicious of Bowman. Among those observations were the following: the tinted car windows; the fact that the vehicle was newly registered; Bowman smelled of air freshener; Bowman and Flores were palpably nervous; Bowman's story was not credible and was inconsistent with that of Flores; the car had a lived-in look; there were three visible cell phones in the car; and Bowman had an acknowledged criminal history involving drugs. Based on the above, the Trooper would have had reasonable, articulable suspicion to seize Bowman, even if the stop could be deemed a seizure within the purview of the Fourth Amendment.