Opinion ID: 1961859
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Probable Cause for Search

Text: We conclude, initially, that the state police had probable cause to stop the Buick and search its interior and trunk, based on the following collective [3] information known to the police at the scene of the stop. The South Portland police dispatcher received a telephone report about a suspicious blue Buick, with a Massachusetts license number, containing three men and one woman. One of the men in the car had picked up a sawed-off shotgun and wrapped it in a blue windbreaker. The car then drove off in a direction that would have taken it toward nearby Laverdiere's. Within minutes of this telephone call, the dispatcher received a second call reporting a robbery at Laverdiere's; the escape car had headed in a southerly direction. He conveyed all this information, including the Buick's license plate number, to the state police dispatcher, who relayed it in turn to the troopers patrolling the turnpike. The troopers were told that there were four suspects and two sawed-off shotguns in the Buick. When the Buick was spotted traveling south on the turnpike not far from South Portland (and Laverdiere's), only two passengers were in sight, but their car was sagging heavily in the rear and traveling slowly. Under these circumstances, the state troopers had probable cause to stop the Buick and, upon finding only two people and no shotguns in the interior of the car, they had probable cause to go on to search the sagging trunk. The Superior Court's finding of probable cause to stop the Buick on the turnpike and search it, including its trunk, was not clearly erroneous. See State v. Carter, Me., 391 A.2d 344, 346 (1978).