Court Opinion

ID: 9738120
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 19:43:09.837154+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:03.809314
License: Public Domain

DeBRULER, Justice,
dissenting.
According to the testimony of Officer Vogel, he was patrolling at 1:30 a.m. in a squad car, travelling east in a business district, when he saw a young black male walking east on the sidewalk. The officer slowed and according to his testimony, ".. we both kept looking at each other until I got on by, and it seemed strange, so I pulled off two blocks up and pulled off the side of the road and backed my car out to see where he was going and I couldn't see him any longer. The next thing I saw him was, he was coming out of Lloyd's Ice Cream lot ..". During the time required for the officer to continue on down the street, stop and look back, and then retrace the same distance, the young man had somehow and in some manner turned around and had headed in the opposite direction, and was walking down the sidewalk at a more brisk pace. The officer did not recognize him or know anything more about him. Armed only with these observations, the officer stopped him and demanded identification. In so doing, the officer intruded upon the privacy of an individual in a manner inconsistent with the requirement of reasonableness in the 4th Amendment and Article 1, See. 11 of the Indiana Constitution. The young man's behavior was not such as would lead a man of reasonable caution to believe that the police action was appropriate. Gipson v. State (1984), Ind., 459 N.E.2d 366. Consequent ly, constitutional error occurred when the items seized from the young man during the pat down there on the street, and the confession he later gave at the police station, being the product of the unlawful action and unjustified by proof that they were not "fruit of the poisonous tree", were admitted over objection at trial. Moreover, the two serewdrivers, old money bag, and automatic were irrelevant to the charged burglary, regardless of the illegality of the stop or arrest.
SHEPARD, C.J., concurs.