Court Opinion

ID: 9706455
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:43:58.248794+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:22.870653
License: Public Domain

HORNBY, Justice,
dissenting.
The motion judge did make findings on the record in explaining her ruling. She found that the most damaging evidence to support the investigatory stop was that the vehicle backed inte a, snowbank across the parking lot. She also found that it did not hit another vehicle; that the dimensions of the lot were unknown; that the lot was narrower than ordinary because of the snowbanks; and that the road conditions were unknown. She therefore granted the motion to suppress. The court apparently finds these findings inadequate for it to address the merits of the State’s appeal. Although we, with the leisure of an appellate court, might prefer more comprehensive findings, I believe it is unrealistic to expect the State’s lawyer to tell a trial judge that his or her stated findings of fact (required automatically on a suppression motion under M.R.Crim.P. 41A without the State’s or the defendant’s request) are inadequate, or to expect District Court judges, confronting the volume of cases they do without adequate secretarial assistance, to provide the detail we might prefer. Unless the findings are nonexistent, we should work with what we have. I therefore address the merits.
Upon review of the District Court’s findings, like Justice Wathen I believe that the District Court’s order of suppression should be vacated. In light of the confusion State v. Caron, 534 A.2d 978 (Me. 1987), has generated, it was undoubtedly Caron (decided only two to three months before this suppression order) that led the District Court judge to ignore the hour, the date and the driving behavior in this case, and to focus instead solely upon the parking lot incident. I agree with Justice Wathen that the facts here are stronger than those in Caron and he has made a persuasive argument why a trial judge might find an “articulable suspicion.” I file this separate dissent, however, because deciding the case on the basis that an artic-ulable suspicion had to be found and purporting to preserve Caron continues to place this Court in the improper role of factfinder. In Caron we said that a trial court could not find a reasonable basis for a stop on a deserted road, after midnight, with the car in question straddling the center line for 25 to 50 yards. Id. at 979. If, as Justice Wathen says, a trial judge must find a reasonable basis for a stop on New Year’s morning at 2:00 A.M., where the car backs into an icy snowbank in a parking lot of a bar, and drives slowly, crossing the center of an unlined road, what is left to a trial judge (whose decisions we say will be reversed only if they are clearly erroneous)? Is it only circumstances between these two sets of facts?
Caron, in my view, was wrongly decided. With the deserted road, the hour (after Friday midnight, according to the calendar), and the crossing of the center line, a police officer may have had an objectively reasonable suspicion that a driver was dozing or operating under the influence. Or he may not have. The point is, it was not for us to say as a matter of judicial notice that circumstances like that occur so frequently without cause for concern that they cannot justify a police stop. I do not believe that Caron can be salvaged by limiting it to its facts. That only invites lawyers to try to show that their case, or a part of it, is like Caron and prolong the uncertainty and needless lawyering the case has already provoked. See, e.g., State v. Pelletier, 541 A.2d 1296 (Me.1988); State v. Garrity, 548 A.2d 1889 (Me.1988); State v. Modery, 549 A.2d 741 (Me.1988); State v. Beaulieu, 550 A.2d 68 (Me.1988); State v. Lewry, 550 A.2d 64 (Me.1988); State v. Poole, 551 A.2d 108 (Me.1988); State v. Degen, 552 A.2d 2 (Me.1988). See also Sheldon, Vehicle Stops and the Maine Constitution, 3 Me.B.Jour. 182 (1988); Moss, OUI Stops: Proving That Your Suspicion Is Reasonable, 1 All Points Bull., No. 3 at 3 (1988). But see Schwartz, The State of *9Fourth Amendment Vehicle Stops in Maine after Caron: A Response to Judge Sheldon, 3 Me.B.Jour. 310 (1988).
Unlike Justice Wathen, therefore, I do not agree that the district judge is required to deny the suppression motion. Cross-examination, for example, revealed that the road curved during the police officer’s pursuit of the vehicles and it would therefore be legitimate to conclude that he saw the entire rear end of the first vehicle not because it had crossed far over the center line, but because of his line of sight on the curve. He testified on cross-examination, moreover, that given the presence of snowbanks it would be difficult for a vehicle to stay out of the center of the road in any event. The trial judge should be permitted to re-evaluate all this evidence without Caron’s distorting effect.
Accordingly, I would overrule Caron and vacate and remand for reconsideration by the District Court.