Court Opinion

ID: 9741608
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:59:05.858954+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:24.992840
License: Public Domain

PAGE, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. The court’s conclusion that Harris was not seized until the police officers found the plastic bindles in Harris’ bag is not supported by our prior decisions. We have said that “a person has been seized if in view of all the circumstances surrounding the incident, a reasonable person would have believed that he or she was neither free to disregard the police questions nor free to terminate the encounter.”1 While the “reasonable person standard is an objective standard which * * * does not vary with a particular person’s subjective state of mind,” 2 we have made it clear that we must determine “whether a reasonable person in the defendant’s shoes would have concluded that he or she was not free to leave.”3
*106The court’s analysis does not take into account whether an innocent young African-American male would feel free to refuse the police officer’s request to search his person, his luggage, or to leave the bus. The record in this case reveals that the police officers walked to the rear of the bus, stood in the middle of the aisle, and told the passengers that their purpose for boarding the bus was to look for narcotics, weapons, or large amounts of cash. Immediately after making these statements, the police officers approached Harris and asked him if he was transporting any narcotics, weapons, or large amounts of cash. The question that arises out of this encounter is whether an innocent young African-American male in Harris’ position would feel free to refuse to answer the police officer’s questions. In my experience it is not so clear that he would.4 Two police officers were standing in the middle of the bus aisle, blocking the only exit,5 with the intent to ask Harris whether he was transporting any weapons, narcotics, or large amounts of cash.6 The reality of the world is such that a person in Harris’ position would likely feel compelled to comply with the police officers’ requests.7 One need only recall the encounter between the police and Don Jackson, an African-American male and former police officer from southern California, who was pushed through a plate glass window by a police officer when he' dared to inquire why he had been stopped.8 Mr. Jackson has written that “the police have long been the greatest nemesis of blacks, irrespective of whether we are complying with the law or not.” 9 Mr. Jackson’s experience is but one of many publicized accounts of that type of encounter between African-Americans and the police.10
*107Once the police officers approached Harris for the express purpose of investigating him for specific criminal violations, I believe Harris was seized for the purposes of Article I, Section 10 of the Minnesota Constitution.11 The court concedes that the police officers did not have a probable cause12 to search either Harris’ person or his bag before they boarded the bus and the record does not reveal any facts that would have given the officers a reason to target Harris, except for the results of their illegal search, once they boarded the bus. Therefore, the plastic bin-dles and the marijuana should have been suppressed.13

. State v. Cripps, 533 N.W.2d 388, 391 (Minn.1995) (citing Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491, 497-98, 103 S.Ct. 1319, 75 L.Ed.2d 229 (1983)).

. Cripps, 533 N.W.2d at 391.

.In re E.D.J., 502 N.W.2d 779, 780 (Minn.1993). See also Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218, 226, 93 S.Ct. 2041, 36 L.Ed.2d 854 (1973) (stating that age and educational background are legitimate factors to consider in determining whether a person's consent was voluntary).

. I speak from the perspective of an African-American male who was taught by his parents that, for personal safety, when in an unplanned encounter with law enforcement officers, it is best to comply carefully and without question to the officers’ request. It is a lesson that I have taught my children and, in fact, is one that I follow to this day.

. The court appears to ignore the physical surroundings during the police officers' encounter with Harris. The police officers did not merely approach Harris in the bus depot; they trapped him in the back of a bus with no reasonable means of egress. Although the United States Supreme Court has held that a seizure does not occur per se for purposes of the Fourth Amendment merely because the encounter between a citizen and the police takes place on a bus, the Court has not foreclosed consideration of the restrictive nature of a bus in determining whether a reasonable person would feel seized. See Florida v. Bostick, 501 U.S. 429, 111 S.Ct. 2382, 115 L.Ed.2d 389 (1991).

. See E.D.J., 502 N.W.2d at 781 (listing circumstances that might indicate that a seizure had taken place).

. The police officer’s statements that "this is all consensual" should not alter this result. The statement was confusing at best and misleading at worst. In fact, a reasonable person in Harris’ position might well view such a statement as a command requiring him to comply with the police officer's requests. See Schneckloth, 412 U.S. at 226, 93 S.Ct. 2041.

. See Tracey Maclin, “Black and Blue Encounters" — Some Preliminary Thoughts about Fourth Amendment Seizures: Should Race Matter?, 26 Val. U.L.Rev. 243, 254 (1991) [hereinafter Should Race Matter? ].

. See id. (citing Don Jackson, Police Embody Racism To My People, N.Y. Times, January 23, 1989, at A25).

. In the book Race, Crime, and the Law, Harvard Law School Professor Randall Kennedy notes the problem by referencing a United States District Court judge who
carefully detailed numerous incidents which provide a virtual catalogue of the types of police mistreatment that have become deeply etched in the popular folklore of African-Americans: flagrant use by officers of the racial epithet "nigger"; resort to deadly force against suspects who could have been subdued by other means; harsher reactions to blacks than to whites engaged in the same conduct; needlessly destructive searches; unwarranted detentions; arrests for nothing more than what police perceived as insufficient deference; and purposeful infliction of public humiliation on political activists seeking to elevate the status of black Americans.
Randall Kennedy, Race, Crime, and the Law 122 (1997) (citing Council of Organization on Philadelphia Police Accountability and Responsibility v. Rizzo, 357 F.Supp. 1289 (E.D.Pa.1973)). While the Rizzo decision comes out of Philadelphia in 1973, it could just as well be documenting events from any city across the country today. See also Should Race Matter?, 26 Val.U.L.Rev. at 278 (stating that "it comes as no surprise that some black men go out of their way to be calm and extremely congenial when approached by a police officer. A black man’s *107silence in the face of police demands should not be interpreted as cooperation, however”); Andrew Hacker, Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal 51 (1992) (describing typical encounters between the police and young African-American males).

.See Cripps, 533 N.W.2d at 391 (citing State v. Kearns, 75 Haw. 558, 867 P.2d 903, 907-08 (1994)) (holding that a reasonable person would believe that he or she has been seized when an officer approaches that person for the express purpose of investigating him or her for specific criminal violations and begins to ask for information).

. See Cripps, 533 N.W.2d at 391 (citing Berge v. Comm’r of Pub. Safety, 374 N.W.2d 730, 732 (Minn.1985)) (stating that an officer must have "a particularized and objective basis for suspecting the seized person of criminal activity”).

. See E.D.J., 502 N.W.2d at 783.