Court Opinion

ID: 9659197
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 21:34:46.477484+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:05.015828
License: Public Domain

HENDERSON, Justice
(concurring in result).
As portrayed by the facts herein, this arrest was anything but a routine traffic stop. Although I concur in the results of this case, I do not approve of the language contained in the 1975 New York citation set forth in the majority opinion. It appears to me that the New York decision takes a more liberal approach than the United States Supreme Court in this matter of stopping cars on the highway for a “routine traffic check.” The New York decision goes beyond the Minnesota Supreme Court decision and the United States Supreme Court decision of Terry v. Ohio. Erosions of liberty do not come in giant leaps, they come in miniscule encroachments often hidden to the trained and educated mind. Like a thief in the night, language can steal a liberty deeply ingrained in the fabric of the American way of life. I am afraid of each little encroachment on the liberty of my fellow Americans on the highway. There must be a reasonable basis for stopping a vehicle on the highway and that reasonable basis must be rooted, in facts, which give rise to a specific and articulable suspicion of a violation. When a routine traffic stop is made, where is the inherent evil (gravity thereof) which is sufficient to outweigh the interest of an individual’s liberty, who is temporarily restrained? If the reasonable suspicion standard test is applied, an individual’s liberty must be balanced against the prevention of an evil. See Brown v. Texas, 443 U.S. 47, 99 S.Ct. 2637, 61 L.Ed.2d 357 (1979). Routine traffic checks are European authoritative culture. They are the advent of a police state on the highway.