Court Opinion

ID: 9692688
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 16:00:51.00379+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:36.109840
License: Public Domain

Amestoy, C.J.,
¶ 35. concurring. When the public’s interest in the safety of its law enforcement officers is weighed against the relatively minor intrusion upon the privacy interest of a driver ordered out of a lawfully stopped vehicle, safety must prevail. Under the rule formulated by the United States Supreme Court in Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U.S. 106, 111 (1977), and endorsed by a majority of the states, a law enforcement officer may, consistent with the Fourth Amendment, *137routinely require the driver to exit a lawfully stopped motor vehicle. This rule recognizes that a police officer approaching a vehicle stopped on the highway confronts grave risks, risks that — in the Supreme Court’s judgment — outweigh any benefit to be derived from subjecting the encounter to after-the-fact judicial balancing. This is a judgment that I can readily appreciate.
¶ 36. Nevertheless, I agree with this Court’s determination that our decisions have pointed in another direction, requiring some minimal showing of necessity for removing the driver from his or her vehicle following a routine traffic stop. As today’s decision makes clear, and as I wish to emphasize, however, the threshold showing for such an exit order is relatively low. The test is simply whether a reasonably prudent officer in the circumstances would believe that removing the driver from the vehicle is necessary for the officer’s safety or the safety of others, or that criminal activity in addition to the traffic violation requires further investigation.
¶ 37. Decisions applying similar tests from other states are instructive in this regard. In Commonwealth v. Gonsalves, 711 N.E.2d 108, 112-13 (Mass. 1999), the seminal decision of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, the court emphasized that “[wjhile a mere hunch is not enough ... it does not take much for a police officer to establish a reasonable basis to justify an exit order or search based on safety concerns, and, if the basis is there, a court will uphold the order.” In Commonwealth v. Stampley, 771 N.E.2d 784, 786 (Mass. 2002), a state trooper observed the driver and passengers of a stopped vehicle exhibit unusual physical behavior, which included the driver bending forward and reaching underneath the seat. In upholding the officer’s exit order, the court explained that “[t]he justification for an exit order does not depend on the presence of an ‘immediate threat’ at the precise moment of the order, but rather on the safety concerns raised by the entire circumstances of the encounter.” Id. at 789. Nor does conduct which can reasonably be interpreted as suspicious need additional corroboration. Sufficient justification for an exit order may be based on an occupant’s bending or ducking briefly out of sight, or reaching in some direction. Id. at 788-89.
¶ 38. A court deciding whether a police officer was justified in ordering an occupant to step out of a vehicle must weigh the evidence “not in terms of library analysis by scholars, but as understood by those versed in the field of law enforcement.” United States v. Cortez, 449 U.S. 411, 418 (1981); see State v. Stone, 170 Vt. 496, 507, 756 A.2d 785, 792 (2000) (Amestoy, C.J., dissenting) (evidence that defendant hindered law *138enforcement officer must be viewed from “the predicament of an officer faced with the obligation to arrest an escapee in the remote area of a darkened parking lot”). “Routine” traffic stops appear that way only after the fact. An officer approaching a stopped vehicle on a roadside, generally alone and frequently isolated, does not at that moment know what may transpire. Accordingly, when a reasonably prudent police officer perceives facts creating a “heightened awareness of danger,” Stampley, 771 N.E.2d at 787, ample discretion must be afforded the officer to remove a vehicle’s occupants in order to better secure and control the situation. With this understanding, I concur in the judgment.