Opinion ID: 2228003
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Encounter with Harris at His Seat

Text: Harris next argues, and the court of appeals held, that Harris was seized when the officers approached him at his seat at the back of the bus. In support of his argument that he was seized when the police officers approached him, Harris cites State v. Cripps, 533 N.W.2d 388 (Minn.1995), where we held that the police seized an underage bar patron. In Cripps, two uniformed officers, who were visibly armed and displayed their badges, entered a bar where Cripps sat drinking a beer, approached Cripps at her table, and asked to see her identification. Id. at 389-90. The officers did not advise Cripps that she had the right to refuse to comply with the officers' request. Cripps produced false identification that showed she was of legal drinking age. Id. at 390. Upon further investigation, the officers determined that the identification Cripps produced was not her own and that she was, in fact, below the legal drinking age. Id. We held that, under the facts of that case, Cripps had been seized within the meaning of Article I, Section 10 of the Minnesota Constitution after the officers first asked her to produce identification for the purpose of showing that she was of legal age to consume alcohol. Id. at 391. We concluded that, under these circumstances, an objectively reasonable person would have believed that he or she was neither free to disregard the officer's request nor free to terminate the encounter, knowing that he or she was being asked to prove his or her innocence of the crime of underage consumption of alcohol. Id. Harris' case can be distinguished from Cripps. Cripps was never informed by the armed, uniformed officers who openly displayed their badges that she had the right to refuse to comply with their request to produce identification. Further, she was placed in a position where she was required to prove her innocence. Once approached by the police officers, Cripps had three choices  show her false identification, show her true identification, or refuse to cooperate. But this was really no choice given the circumstances  Cripps was underage and was sitting in a bar with a half-empty bottle of beer in her hand. She was engaged in conduct that, by its very nature, required proof of identification and, specifically, proof that she was of legal drinking age. Put another way, Cripps was engaged in observable conduct that carries with it some legal limitation  that is, if she were not of legal drinking age, her conduct would be illegal. In sum, Cripps had no way out of her situation in the bar. Unlike the situation in Cripps, Harris was twice advised that his compliance with Bratsch's requests to search was not required. Further, the conduct in which Harris was engaged  sitting in his seat on the bus  was not, by its very nature, illegal. Had Harris refused to comply with Bratsch's requests, Bratsch would have been required to terminate the encounter because, at that point, as we noted earlier, Bratsch did not have reasonable articulable suspicion that Harris was transporting a controlled substance. The difference in the nature of the two encounters, coupled with the different factual scenarios, particularly the fact that Harris was twice informed that his compliance with Bratsch's request was not required, leads us to conclude that Harris' reliance on Cripps is misplaced. We further note that the examples of circumstances that might indicate a seizure under the Mendenhall-Royer totality of the circumstances standard weigh against concluding that a seizure took place when the officers approached and questioned Harris at his seat on the bus. See E.D.J., 502 N.W.2d at 781-82 (citing Mendenhall, 446 U.S. at 554-55, 100 S.Ct. 1870; Royer, 460 U.S. at 501, 103 S.Ct. 1319). Based on the record, it does not appear that the officers acted in a threatening manner toward Harris. Neither Bratsch nor Pyka displayed a weapon to Harris or to any of the passengers. The officers did not touch Harris in any way when they approached him at his seat. When Bratsch questioned Harris, he used a low key, easy-going tone of voice. Under the totality of the circumstances, these factors do not support Harris' assertion that a seizure occurred when the officers approached and questioned him at his seat. We conclude that Harris was not seized when the officers approached and questioned him at his seat. Finally, contrary to the dissent's assertion, we do not ignore the physical surroundings, i.e., the bus setting. Rather, we reach our conclusion by taking into account the bus setting and all the other facts in the record. To reach its conclusion that Harris was seized when the officers approached him at his seat, the dissent characterizes the encounter as one where the police trapped Harris at the back of the bus. We do not make such a characterization because we cannot, based on the record we have before us. Harris stipulated to Bratsch's and Pyka's version of the encounter and the officers' version does not include facts by which we can conclude that Harris was trapped. Instead, the officers' version of the encounter is that they did not trap anyone on the bus and that Harris voluntarily cooperated with Bratsch's requests to search. Thus, without a more developed record, we are proscribed from creating our own characterizations of the facts of this encounter, no matter what we may personally believe those facts to be. Accordingly, we hold that Harris was not seized when the officers approached and questioned him at his seat. Further, in reaching this holding, we expressly hold open the possibility that, given different circumstances, a seizure may take place in a bus setting.