Court Opinion

ID: 9514013
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 22:43:18.933295+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:06:09.040986
License: Public Domain

*657SANDSTROM, Justice,
concurring m the result.
[¶ 48] This trial should never have been held. Steven Torkelsen’s original judgment of conviction should have been affirmed.
[¶ 49] The majority ruled that there was no reasonable suspicion to justify the stop of Torkelsen’s vehicle. Reasonable suspicion is a minimal burden easily satisfied in the record. See State v. Robertsdahl, 512 N.W.2d 427, 428 (N.D.1994) (The Fourth Amendment requires “some minimal level of objective justification” for making the stop. INS v. Delgado, 466 U.S. 210, 217, 104 S.Ct. 1758, 80 L.Ed.2d 247 (1984)). The reasonable suspicion fully explained in my dissenting opinion in State v. Torkelsen, 2006 ND 152, ¶¶ 20-37, 718 N.W.2d 22, is summarized here:
Torkelsen was seen at the crime scene shortly after an apparent homicide. He did not seem surprised by the sight of a burning body. He had a known history of violence and threatened violence. He failed to yield to approaching emergency vehicles. He was leaving the community where the crime had apparently been committed under circumstances that suggested flight. These factors taken together provided the officers with a reasonable suspicion to stop Torkelsen for questioning about an apparent homicide.
Id. at ¶ 37 (Sandstrom, J., dissenting).
[¶ 50] Dale V. Sandstrom