Court Opinion

ID: 9580967
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:10:41.760311+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:36:37.757175
License: Public Domain

Grant, J.,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. In the county court, defendant filed a motion to suppress the evidence of the test of his urine on the grounds that that evidence was obtained as the result of an unconstitutional search and seizure following an illegal arrest. The county judge granted defendant’s motion to suppress. Pursuant to Neb. Rev. Stat. § 29-2317 (Reissue 1989), the State appealed the county court’s order of suppression to the district court for Dawes County, where the county court order was reversed and the cause remanded to the county court “for further proceedings.” On remand, the county court followed the order of the reviewing district court, denied defendant’s motion for suppression without a further hearing, received the same evidence over defendant’s objection, and found defendant guilty.
Our law is settled that in the appellate review of an order suppressing evidence, “the Supreme Court will uphold a trial court’s findings of fact unless those findings are clearly wrong.” State v. Harms, 233 Neb. 882, 884, 449 N.W.2d 1, 3 (1989). I see no reason why a district court acting as an appellate court should apply any different rule in reviewing orders of suppression in a county court.
In reviewing the order of the county court suppressing the evidence, the district court did not give appropriate weight to the implicit findings supporting this order of the county court. I cannot see how the county court’s findings could be determined to be clearly wrong. Testimony of the arresting officer shows that the only evidence furnished to the officer was that an animal control officer “had contact with Mr. Bridge and that Mr. Bridge had smelled of alcohol” and that the animal control officer “was concerned that he [defendant] might be intoxicated, and after their conversation he had seen Mr. Bridge get into the driver’s side of the vehicle and drive off.” The animal control officer apparently talked to defendant and saw defendant drive off, but there is not one shred of evidence that *788the animal control officer told the arresting officer that defendant had slurred speech, that defendant staggered as he walked and entered the car, or that defendant’s driving was anything but normal.
Similarly, the arresting officer saw the car defendant was driving “turn off of [U.S. Highway] 20 onto [U.S. Highway] 385” and saw the car “[turn] off into the vet clinic.” When the officer first saw defendant, the officer was going the opposite direction and had to turn the police car around and “had to wait a little while because my car was a little forward and there was traffic and I didn’t want to cause an accident.” The officer drove into the clinic area and saw defendant walk either into or out of the clinic. The officer did not testify as to any erratic walking or driving, although he had ample opportunity to observe either or both. Apparently defendant operated his car without any problem in the traffic that concerned the arresting officer.
An arresting officer must have “ ‘a particularized and objective basis for suspecting the person stopped of criminal activity.’ ” State v. Daniels, 220 Neb. 480, 482, 370 N.W.2d 179, 181 (1985), quoted with approval in State v. Kuil, 231 Neb. 62, 434 N.W.2d 700 (1989). In the Daniels case, a police officer saw defendant’s car run a stop sign, make a wide-angle turn, and then drive erratically down a road. In the Kuil case, the officer saw Kuil fail to stop at a stop sign; drive into a dead end area; spin his truck around, kicking up dust and gravel; and then fishtail as he drove away.
As we held in State v. Ege, 227 Neb. 824, 826, 420 N.W.2d 305, 307-08 (1988), quoting from Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S. Ct. 1868, 20 L. Ed. 2d 889 (1968), “ ‘the police officer must be able to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion.’ ”
The record before us shows that the only fact the arresting officer or his informant articulated was that defendant had the odor of alcohol on his breath. The only rational inference from that fact is that defendant had had a drink or drinks. The officer and his informant had the opportunity to hear slurred speech and the opportunity to see erratic driving or walking, *789and did not testify, or refer, to any such activity.
I feel the stop by the officer was illegal. I think the district court, on the appeal from county court to district court on the suppression issue, erred in determining that the findings of the trial court (the county court) were “clearly wrong” and in reversing the county court’s order of suppression, and I further feel that the receiving of any evidence flowing from the illegal stop was error.
I would reverse and dismiss.
Caporale and Shanahan, JJ., join in this dissent.