Court Opinion

ID: 9679300
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:48:01.702152+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:12.171657
License: Public Domain

HENDERSON, Justice
(concurring in result).
Although I concur in the result of this case, I cannot accept that the police tip (based on hearsay) would, in itself, constitute articulable suspicion to stop the car of appellant. An equipment violation would justify stopping the car. Here, there was an equipment violation. But, under the language of this opinion, a hearsay tip opens the door for any officer to now stop someone on the highway for no reason at all other than a hearsay tip. It is bad enough that we have cars being stopped, at random, all over South Dakota at this time for “traffic checks” (I refer not to roadside truck weigh-in stations), driver’s license checks, and equipment safety checks. This *893is being done, from one end of the state to the other, with the officers full well knowing that it is unconstitutional per Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 99 S.Ct. 1391, 59 L.Ed.2d 660 (1979), and that the vehicle safety law of this state has been repealed.1 The citizens of this state have a right to drive upon the highways without being harassed; 2 if there is a violation, such as an obvious equipment violation, or a moving violation, that is a horse of a different color. Ostensibly, we are supposed to live in a free country. This includes traveling down a highway. In Delaware v. Prouse, id., the United States Supreme Court prohibited “at random” stops. Stops can be made upon the highway, by law enforcement, but they must have a reason therefore. In State v. Anderson, 331 N.W.2d 568 (S.D.1983), we held that it had to be an articulable suspicion. I would not extend this to a hearsay tip standing by itself. There is evidence here of alcohol on the breath, an admission of drinking the night before, a taillight violation, and a crossing of a driving line. A hearsay tip might well have triggered following appellant’s car. But the equipment violation and going across the white line justified the stop. Once the stop took place, the officer could smell alcohol on appellant’s breath.
We cannot live, as citizens, in total fear of going out onto the highway and being stopped for no reason at all. If the citizenry can be stopped by armed officers in police vehicles with lights flashing, and forced to pull over onto the shoulder at the officers’ unbridled discretion, we no longer are a free people. As citizens, we should not have to tolerate a safety inspection of our vehicle when the annual mandatory safety inspection law of this state was repealed in 1979. See 1979 S.D.Sess.Laws ch. 220.3 In this case, because of the factual scenario, law enforcement has not run amok, but the language of this opinion will permit law enforcement to take another step forward in eliminating the freedom that the public are supposed to enjoy as citizens of this Republic. For, as I pointed out in State v. Anderson, 331 N.W.2d at 573 (Henderson, J., concurring in result):
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.
“As Terry v. Ohio, [392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968)], recognized, people are not shorn of all Fourth Amendment protection when they step from their homes onto the public sidewalks. Nor are they shorn of those interests when they step from the sidewalks into their automobiles. See Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143, 146, 92 S.Ct. 1921, 1923, 32 L.Ed.2d 612 (1972).” Delaware, 99 S.Ct. at 1401.
In my Sequel in State v. Maves, 358 N.W.2d 805, 812 (S.D.1984) (Henderson, J., dissenting), my last words were: “In the land of the free, where has freedom gone?” One of the places that it has been lost, as the narrative suggested, was in print in the courts of our land. Travel and privacy on the public roadways interfered with at the unbridled discretion of police *894officers or not, what shall it be in South Dakota? The United States Constitution was not only visionary but it was realistic for it provided for the separation of powers among the branches of government, establishing a system of checks and balances and an independent Judicial system to restrain any excesses of government. Language contained in this opinion can lead, if it does not invite, to an excess of government by the executive branch. Therefore, in fearing that the European Culture from whence our forefathers fled be imprinted on the South Dakota prairie, I can only join in the result of this opinion.

. The essential purpose of proscription in the Fourth Amendment is to impose a standard of reasonableness upon the exercise of discretion by government officials, including law enforcement agents, in order to safeguard privacy and security of individuals against arbitrary invasion. Delaware, 99 S.Ct. at 1392.

. Marginal contribution to roadway safety possibly resulting from a system of spot checks cannot justify subjecting every occupant of every vehicle on the roads to a seizure, limited in magnitude compared to other intrusions but nonetheless constitutionally cognizable, at the unbridled discretion of law-enforcement officials. U.S.C.A. Const. Amends. 4, 14. Delaware, 99 S.Ct. at 1392.

.I am not suggesting that laws do not exist in this state requiring safe motor vehicles, see SDCL 32-21-27. However, before stopping a vehicle for an unsafe mechanical condition, or an equipment violation, the officer must have evidence before he stops the motor vehicle. See SDCL 32-21-28.