Court Opinion

ID: 9701242
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 22:12:33.455641+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:21.367095
License: Public Domain

GLASSMAN, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. We have recently reemphasized that the reasonable articulable suspicion standard requires “more than mere speculation” on the part of the police officer to sustain an investigatory stop. State v. Nelson, 638 A.2d 720, 722 (Me.1994). Dean’s behavior in driving out of a dead-end street at 11:00 p.m. on a Tuesday was in no sense illegal or even inherently suspicious, and the officer’s desire to “see what [Dean] was up to” stems, at best, from a hunch.1 “A mere hunch will not justify a stop, and the officer’s reasons for stopping the vehicle must not be a mere pretext or ruse.” State v. Haskell, 645 A.2d 619, 621 (Me.1994).
The court relies on a determination that the area adjacent to the street on which Dean had been stopped was uninhabited except on weekends and that the residents of the area had asked the police to conduct extra patrols, particularly on weekends when vandalism and the other property crimes in the area had occurred. As the court notes, it is well settled that a person’s mere presence in a high-crime area does not justify an investigatory stop. What the court regards as “other articulable facts” justifying the stop, in reality, are mere speculations entertained by the officer because of Dean’s presence on a public way in an area where there had been complaints of vandalism or other damage to property. Each of the cases cited by the court to support its position involves additional facts beyond the defendant’s mere presence in a crime area, e.g., police observed unusual behavior by the defendant, intrusion onto private property, the unusual operation of a vehicle, or the vehicle’s unusual location.
The constitutional right to be free from an illegal stop should not be abridged solely on the basis of the day of the week or time of day a car is being operated on a public way. Such arbitrariness is inconsistent with the *638protections afforded by the Fourth Amendment. Haskell, 645 A.2d at 621. The facts of this case do not support the court’s determination that the officer who stopped Dean had a reasonable articulable suspicion of criminal activity by Dean. I would affirm the judgment of the. Superior Court.

. The court seeks to distinguish Nelson by noting that Nelson was sitting in a pickup truck parked in the parking lot of an occupied housing complex whereas Dean was observed driving a motor vehicle on a public way leading out of a largely uninhabited residential development site. This is inapposite because the surroundings in which the police observed Nelson were not at issue in that case, which turned on whether merely drinking a can of beer in a parked car provided a reasonably articulable suspicion that a crime had taken place. Nelson, 638 A.2d at 722. This case turns on the site of the stop.