Court Opinion

ID: 9716687
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:48:02.844819+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:47.854461
License: Public Domain

KIRSCH, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent.
The record before us fails to disclose particular and articulated facts which justify the pat down search which produced the hand-gun. Trooper Etter testified, “Before I put anybody in my car, whether they’re broke down on the side of the highway or what I pat them down for weapons for my own safety.” Record, p. 66. He acknowledged that he did not have “any specific facts” that caused him to believe Wilson was armed. Record at 69. Finally, Trooper Etter testified that while he typically does the Horizontal Gaze sobriety test inside his car, it can be done outside the car as well. Record, p. 72.
Here, we have an officer’s standard practice being used as the basis for the pat down search. By the officer’s own admission, he did not have “any specific facts” which caused him to believe he was in danger. Terry and its progeny require more than standard practices. They require a particularized and articulated belief that the individual was armed and dangerous. While the placement of an individual in a police car for transport to the county jail was held to be a sufficient basis for a pat down in Burkett v. State, 691 N.E.2d 1241 (Ind.Ct.App.1998), the basis has been held not to obtain where there is no reasonable need to place the defendant inside the police car. State v. Pease, 531 N.E.2d 1207 (Ind.Ct.App.1988). Here, Trooper Etter testified that he could have done the sobriety testing outside the police car and that it was only his typical practice to do so inside the car. Thus, as in Pease, the risk posed by a weapon concealed on the defendant inside the police car was unnecessarily created.