Court Opinion

ID: 9743978
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:51:30.810517+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:25:23.581683
License: Public Domain

DeBRULER, Justice,
dissenting.
The majority and the cases from other jurisdictions upon which it relies and by which it is persuaded, eschew a dispassionate statement of the applicable federal constitutional standard and are thereby drawn into federal constitutional incorrectness. When Deputy Sheriff Ruch followed this car as it took off down the road, activated his red overhead lights and pulled it off to the side of the road, a seizure implicating the protections of the fourth amendment occurred. Michigan v. Chesternut 486 U.S. 567, 108 S.Ct. 1975, 100 LEd.2d 565 (1988). In order for this sort of seizure or intrusion into privacy to be justified, the detaining officers must, from a totality of the circumstances, "have a particularized and objective basis for suspecting the particular person stopped of criminal activity." United States v. Cortez, 449 U.S. 411, 417-18, 101 S.Ct. 690, 695, 66 L.Ed.2d 621, 629 (1981). Here there was no such required basis. It is perfectly lawful to park along a roadside at 3:00 in the morning. And it was perfectly lawful for appellant to drive *232away from his spot after the sheriff's car stopped behind him. Ruch provided his reason for pulling in behind the parked car:
"Our, our curiosity is up because we want to know if anybody's in trouble or whether the vehicle's been abandoned or, or whatever."
Ruch then described what happened next:
"The vehicle went away in a, in a bit of a hurry and it threw the stones, the tires threw the stones, left marks in the, in the gravel as it took off."
Ruch then activated his red lights, pulled out, followed the car and stopped it within a quarter mile. He did so on the following basis.
"At that point I thought it was a bit suspicious, so I ..."
'No intrusion requiring justification occurred when the deputy pulled in and parked behind appellant's car, and none would have occurred if the deputy would have simply followed the car and observed it in operation as it moved off. However, the immediate activation of the red lights, the chase, and the stop of the car and its occupant required a particularized and objective basis for suspecting that the driver was engaged in criminal activity. This deputy had no such particularized suspicion, and his seizure was therefore not constitutionally justified. The trial court was therefore in error in refusing to suppress the fruits of this illegal seizure.