Court Opinion

ID: 9593421
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:22:22.958007+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:21.246508
License: Public Domain

Sullivan, J.
(dissenting). 1 dissent.
Defendants were charged with breaking and entering an unoccupied building with intent to commit larceny, MCL 750.110; MSA 28.305. The circuit court granted defendants’ motion to dismiss on the ground that the prearrest investigative detention was unreasonably long. I would affirm.
The trial court found that the length of detention in this case, twenty minutes, while police investigated to determine if a crime had been committed, was "unusual” and dismissed the charges. We review the court’s findings for clear error. People v Bryant, 135 Mich App 206, 210; *125353 NW2d 480 (1984). Under the circumstances, the trial court’s finding was not clearly erroneous.
The trial court focused on the length of the detention. The prosecution argues that it was reasonably necessary to pursue an investigation, relying on United States v Sharpe, 470 US 675; 105 S Ct 1568; 84 L Ed 2d 605 (1985). I would not address the length of detention, because the initial stop was not justified. The officer who stopped defendants’ car had no reasonable, articulable suspicion that defendants had committed a crime. People v Armendarez, 188 Mich App 61, 66-67; 468 NW2d 893 (1991). He stopped their car solely on the basis of a radio report that three men, possibly white, had fled on foot from the area of a possible larceny. A different officer received information from a citizen-informant and tracked the car from the area where the men were last seen. That officer, however, was not the one who stopped the car, and the officer who did stop the car had none of the information that the other officer had obtained. The officer who stopped the car neither observed the defendants acting suspiciously nor trailed their car from the scene of the first observed suspicious activity. Compare People v Estabrooks, 175 Mich App 532, 538; 438 NW2d 327 (1989). The connection here between the stop and the later-discovered crime is too attenuated to pass constitutional muster.
I also disagree with the prosecution’s contention that the court should not have dismissed the charges because- the only possible remedy was suppression of evidence. I note first that the prosecution failed to raise this objection in the trial court. Even if it is not waived, and even if the appropriate order would have been to suppress evidence, this case would have been dismissed. The *126only evidence linking these defendants to the crime flowed from the illegal stop.
I would affirm.