Opinion ID: 4356115
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Alleged Violations

Text: ¶ 57. Having rejected the State’s claim of blanket immunity and established the standard for evaluating plaintiff’s constitutional tort claim, we now examine each of the alleged Article 11 violations. Plaintiff first challenges Trooper Hatch’s decision to stop his vehicle. The law on vehicle stops is well-settled. Like the Fourth Amendment, Article 11 “protect[s] citizens against unreasonable searches and seizures.” State v. Manning, 2015 VT 124, ¶ 11, 200 Vt. 423, 132 A.3d 33 716; see State v. Berard, 154 Vt. 306, 309, 576 A.2d 118, 120 (1990) (noting that Article 11 imports Fourth Amendment’s “reasonableness” standard). The temporary stop of a vehicle is a seizure subject to Article 11 protection from governmental invasions of privacy. State v. Winters, 2015 VT 116, ¶ 13, 200 Vt. 296, 131 A.2d 186. ¶ 58. Although seizures normally require that a law enforcement officer have probable cause to believe that the person being seized has engaged in criminal activity, the lesser standard of reasonable suspicion of either criminal activity or even a minor traffic violation can form the basis of a valid temporary stop. State v. Tuma, 2013 VT 70, ¶ 8, 194 Vt. 345, 79 A.3d 883 (“[E]ven a minor traffic infraction can be the basis of a traffic stop.”); see Manning, 2015 VT 124, ¶ 12 (stating that “an officer’s reasonable suspicion of a traffic violation can form the basis for a lawful stop”); State v. Lussier, 171 Vt. 19, 34, 757 A.2d 1017, 1027 (2000) (“[T]he law is well-settled that police may stop a vehicle and briefly detain its occupants to investigate a reasonable and articulable suspicion that a motor vehicle violation is taking place.”). The detention, however, “must be temporary and last no longer than necessary to effectuate the purpose of the stop,” unless “an officer gathers additional information providing reasonable suspicion that some other criminal activity is afoot,” in which case “the officer may extend the detention to investigate that activity.” Winters, 2015 VT 116, ¶ 14. ¶ 59. “The level of suspicion required for a lawful investigatory stop is considerably less than a preponderance of the evidence, but it must be more than an inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or hunch.” State v. Thompson, 175 Vt. 470, 471, 816 A.2d 550, 552 (2002) (mem.) (quotation omitted). “In determining whether an officer had reasonable suspicion to effectuate a seizure or extend an investigative detention, we look at the totality of the circumstances.” Manning, 2015 VT 124, ¶ 14. “In determining the legality of a stop, courts do not attempt to divine the arresting officer’s actual subjective motivation for making the stop; rather, they consider from an objective standpoint whether, given all of the circumstances, the officer had a reasonable and 34 articulable suspicion of wrongdoing.” Lussier, 171 Vt. at 23-24, 757 A.2d at 1020; see State v. Rutter, 2011 VT 13, ¶ 16, 189 Vt. 574, 15 A.3d 132 (mem.) (“We conclude that the protections of Article 11 do not extend to prohibiting law enforcement officers from stopping motor vehicles where there is an objectively reasonable suspicion that a motor vehicle violation has occurred, even if in a particular situation these infractions may appear ‘trivial’ or the officer’s motivation is suspect.”). ¶ 60. Here, the parties debate whether there actually was a motor vehicle infraction justifying the stop and, if there was not, whether this Court should adopt under Article 11 the U.S. Supreme Court’s holding in Heien that a stop based on a law enforcement officer’s objectively reasonable mistake of law as to whether there was a motor vehicle violation may “rise to the reasonable suspicion necessary to uphold the seizure under the Fourth Amendment.”14 Heien, ___ 14 Regarding the latter argument, plaintiff contends that adopting the Heien holding would be inconsistent with the broader protection we have established under Article 11, see State v. Pitts, 2009 VT 51, ¶ 19, 186 Vt. 71, 978 A.2d 14 (stating that this Court has construed Article 11 to provide greater protection than Fourth Amendment and has “regularly invoked this principle to place reasonable restrictions on the scope of police authority to detain and search citizens”), particularly with respect to our rejection under Article 11 of the U.S. Supreme Court’s good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule pursuant to the Fourth Amendment, see State v. Oakes, 157 Vt. 171, 172, 598 A.2d 119, 120 (1991) (declining to adopt holding in United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897 (1984)). Plaintiff asserts that this Court has rejected the balancing test that the U.S. Supreme Court applies in its Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, see State v. Savva, 159 Vt. 75, 85-86, 616 A.2d 774, 780 (1991) (stating that Article 11’s warrant requirement itself reflects “the balance reached by the constitutional drafters, a balance in which the individual’s interest in privacy outweighs the burdens imposed on law enforcement”), as exemplified by our rejection of the goodfaith exception to the exclusionary rule. See Oakes, 157 Vt. at 183, 598 A.2d at 126-27 (“We will not impose such a significant limitation upon our state exclusionary rule on the basis of the [U.S. Supreme] Court’s cost-benefit analysis in Leon.”). The State responds that the Heien standard for determining the existence of a reasonable mistake of law—whether there was an objectively reasonable interpretation of a genuinely ambiguous statute, see Heien, ___ U.S. at ___, 135 S. Ct. at 541 (Kagan, J., concurring)—is an appropriate standard for determining whether there exists reasonable suspicion for a stop under Article 11. In support of this contention, the State asserts that no clear distinction can be drawn between reasonable mistakes of law and fact and that allowing mistakes of law to justify stops will not have any repercussions distinct from those resulting from allowing reasonable mistakes of fact to justify stops. See State v. Roberts, 160 Vt. 385, 391, 393, 631 A.2d 835, 839, 840 (1993) (concluding under Article 11 and Fourth Amendment “that, if the officer had a reasonable belief that the premises had been abandoned, his entry was lawful even if the premises had not been abandoned”). Courts have noted the difficulty 35 U.S. at ___, 135 U.S. at 534; see id. at 541 (Kagan, J., concurring) (“If the statute is genuinely ambiguous, such that overturning the officer’s judgment requires hard interpretive work, then the officer has made a reasonable mistake.”);15 see also State v. Hurley, 2015 VT 46, ¶¶ 19-21, 198 Vt. 552, 117 A.3d 433 (concluding that motor vehicle operator did not violate statute at issue, but that defendant’s challenge to stop under Fourth Amendment was unavailing because statute was genuinely ambiguous and thus officer’s misapprehension of statute provided objectively reasonable basis to allow stop pursuant to holding in Heien). We need not resolve this issue because, as explained below, we conclude that any mistake of law in this case was not objectively