Court Opinion

ID: 9736029
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 18:40:52.486743+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:27:03.463055
License: Public Domain

Morse, J.,
dissenting. The Court affirms defendant’s conviction on a distinction that, as far as I can see, is irrelevant to the issue presented on appeal. That issue is whether a mistake *39by Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) in failing to timely reinstate defendant’s privilege to operate was significant enough to warrant a finding that defendant’s arrest was improperly obtained. On this issue, the “45-minute” information gap is irrelevant and not the basis for defendant’s claim. When confronted with its error, DMV reinstated defendant’s license to a time that happened to be 45 minutes before the stop. But the true gap, if defendant is correct, is between the time — several weeks before — when DMV was supposed to reinstate his license and the time it actually did reinstate.
Noting that the police did not make the alleged mistake, the Court reasons that the police should not be held accountable for the mistake. DMV and the police work together in a coordinated system. It is artificial to break the agencies apart when viewing the consequences to the motoring public of errors in recordkeeping. The state should not benefit from compartmentalizing its responsibility to the public into separate but obviously interdependent agencies without some rationale to support this result. From the standpoint of fairness, it makes no difference that a motorist is victimized by misfunctions in recordkeeping at DMV rather than at the Department of Public Safety.
The police “may conduct warrantless stops when ‘specific and articulable facts . . . , taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion.’ ” State v. Schmitt, 150 Vt. 503, 507, 554 A.2d 666, 668 (1988) (quoting State v. Lambert, 146 Vt. 142, 143, 499 A.2d 761, 762 (1985)). The stop may be based solely on thirdhand hearsay information. Id. To evaluate whether reasonable suspicion existed, we look at the collective knowledge of the police at the time of the stop rather than the knowledge of the individual officer making the stop. See State v. Phillips, 140 Vt. 210, 216, 436 A.2d 746, 749-50 (1981) (stating that this is the rule when evaluating probable cause and limiting its application to situations where there are “some minimal communications between officers” prior to the initial detention). This is the “fellow-officer rule” derived from Whiteley v. Warden, 401 U.S. 560, 568 (1971). However, if reasonable suspicion can be supported by imputed knowledge, the converse is also true: erroneous knowledge of the collectivity is charged to the individual, id., and there is no *40“good faith exclusion” based on the fact that the individual did not know that he or she was acting under erroneous information. People v. Jennings, 54 N.Y.2d 518, 523, 430 N.E.2d 1282, 1285, 446 N.Y.S.2d 229, 232 (1981).
The Court relies on one intermediate appellate court decision, State v. Ewoldt, 448 N.W.2d 676 (Iowa Ct. App. 1989), to hold that police should be able to rely on erroneous information supplied by DMV to establish probable cause. The other cases that the Court cites — Whiteley, Jennings, Carter v. State, 18 Md. App. 150, 305 A.2d 856 (1973); and United States v. Mackey, 387 F. Supp. 1121 (D. Nev. 1975) — do not require this result. In all the cited cases, courts excluded evidence gathered as a result of police reliance on erroneous police-generated information, but nothing in the language or reasoning of those cases restricts the rule solely to police-generated information. The real issue is the reliability of the information not who generated it.
In an age of computerized data processing, we cannot blindly assume that all information generated by “official channels” is per se reliable. See People v. Ramirez, 34 Cal. 3d 541, 552, 668 P.2d 761, 768, 194 Cal. Rptr. 454, 461 (1983) (en banc) (holding that a police officer’s good faith reliance on a recalled warrant was insufficient to establish probable cause; because police officers rely on elaborate computerized systems that catalogue and dispatch incriminating information, there is an enhanced responsibility to keep “official channels” error free). Although we treat computerized transmissions as if they came from an impeccable source, a kind of super-reliable informant, we have no information on the accuracy of DMV records. Moreover, there are no controls on the accuracy of information submitted to or generated by DMV. Allowing erroneous information to be used as the basis for stops means that DMV has no incentive to exercise care in its recordkeeping and license reinstatement functions.
In Jennings, the court found no probable cause where a police officer relied on erroneous information supplied by the National Crime information Center. It referred to this as “information in criminal justice system records . . . which, through fault of the system, has been retained in its records after it became inapplicable.” 54 N.Y.2d at 520, 430 N.E.2d at *411283,446 N.Y.S.2d at 230. This language is not narrow: it seems to say that where police rely on a “system” of information-gathering sources, and those sources err, the errors are imputed to the police. DMV is clearly within such a system.
At least one court has explicitly taken a broader view of the law enforcement “system.” Applying the fellow-officer rule, the court in State v. Fields, 785 P.2d 611, 612-13 (Colo. 1990) (en banc), imputed to an arresting officer a parole board’s error in failing to issue a parole violation warrant and suppressed evidence gathered pursuant to the arrest.
If we are concerned about the reliability of information, we need not establish a per se rule that reasonable suspicion or probable cause can never be grounded on erroneous information provided by the system. In this case, however, the record is insufficient to make a proper inquiry.
DMV reinstated defendant’s suspended license at 12:01 a.m. on September 17,1987; he was stopped for DLS at 12:46 a.m. on the same day. However, the problem is not merely a 45-minute information gap. Defendant’s driver’s license had been suspended in August 1987 for a bounced check used as payment to register his car. After defendant paid that fee, his license was not reinstated because he had not paid a reinstatement fee. Defendant testified that he had called DMV in August and was told he would not have to pay a reinstatement fee. However, by a letter dated August 20, 1987, DMV notified defendant otherwise. The trial court did not make any findings about the reported telephone conversation. After the arrest, defendant contacted DMV which then reinstated defendant’s license effective September 17, 1987. The reinstatement fee was waived apparently because the notices may have been sent to an improper address. DMV’s prompt action on September 17th suggests it acknowledged it had made an error. In any event, the court did not make findings about why defendant’s license was not reinstated, if it should have been, prior to September 17th.
I am at a loss on the present record to decide whether DMV was at fault for not reinstating defendant’s license prior to September 17th. I would therefore remand for findings on this critical issue.
I am authorized to say that Justice Dooley joins in this dissent.