Court Opinion

ID: 9673830
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:19:10.879187+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:24.344806
License: Public Domain

WAHL, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. More than hunches, even though made in good faith, must underlie a determination to intrude upon constitutionally guaranteed rights of the private citizen, even when the citizen is in an automobile. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 22, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1880, 20 L.Ed.2d 889, 906 (1968); State v. McKinley, 305 Minn. 297, 232 N.W.2d 906 (1975). The pattern of facts and circumstances which the trial court in the instant case found constituted probable cause does not appear from the officer’s testimony likely to have moved him at the time of the incident to more *809than mere suspicion. There was no testimony that the officer suspected illegal drug use by defendant or his passenger or that the brown paper bag was believed to contain drugs. Furthermore, this is not a case where contraband or weapons were in plain sight within an automobile stopped for a traffic offense.1 Here, the officer’s attention was directed towards an ordinary brown paper shopping bag, certainly not contraband by appearance. The officer’s testimony indicates that he felt the passenger did not want him to look into the bag. However, until the officer actually searched the bag, he had no more than a suspicion that the bag contained contraband. I find this suspicion, aroused by “furtive” gestures, insufficient to support a search of the parties’ personal property.
To avoid unwarranted intrusions where certain furtive movements by automobile occupants indicate to an officer that criminal activity might be present, the rule in Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40, 88 S.Ct. 1889, 20 L.Ed.2d 917 (1968), should be strictly followed. Sibron requires that deliberately furtive actions, if indeed they are furtive, are proper factors when coupled with specific knowledge of the officer relating the suspect to the evidence of crime. 392 U.S. 66, 88 S.Ct. 1904, 20 L.Ed.2d 936. Here, furtive motions without more specific knowledge of a crime constituted insufficient cause to search defendant’s automobile. Accordingly, the seized evidence should have been suppressed.
I would reverse.

. See, e. g., State v. Shevchuk, 291 Minn. 365,191 N.W.2d 557 (1971).