Court Opinion

ID: 9675550
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:57:13.85019+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:35.502962
License: Public Domain

McCown, J.,
dissenting.
*702From the time the police officers saw the defendant drive into the service station until the time they arrested him and searched his car they obtained no more relevant information on the issue of probable cause than they already had. If the police officers here did not have probable cause for the arrest and search when they first saw the defendant drive into the service station, they did not acquire probable cause from the defendant’s “furtive” actions in filling his gas tank and going to the restroom. To put gas in a car at a service station open for business and then walk to the restroom in broad daylight is neither stealthy, secret, surreptitious, nor furtive. Neither can such actions be said to constitute flight.
The essence of the majority holding here is that if police officers know that a suspect has been previously convicted of a crime, and they have reasonable grounds to suspect that he may also have committed another crime of the same nature, and the officers are looking for him in order to question him, then any actions by the suspect which the officers subjectively interpret as an effort to avoid or delay meeting them is sufficient to constitute probable cause for arrest and search.
Reasonable grounds for suspicion cannot be equated with probable cause so easily. Neither does a walk to the restroom transform a reasonable suspicion into probable cause for an arrest and search.
White, J., joins in this dissent.