Court Opinion

ID: 9683900
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 13:39:53.3414+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:51.206253
License: Public Domain

John Mauzy Pittman, Chief Judge, dissenting. In a published opinion delivered on June 29, 2005, we reversed appellant’s convictions for possession of marijuana with intent to deliver and possession of drug paraphernalia because we concluded that the arresting officer lacked a reasonable suspicion to further detain appellant after issuing him a warning ticket. Although I joined in that opinion, I must agree with the State’s assertion that our decision was incorrect because we failed to properly consider the totality of the circumstances involved in the decision to extend the detention. Instead, I believe that we fell into the error, discussed by the United States Supreme Court in United States v. Arvizu, 534 U.S. 266 (2002), of evaluating and rejecting individual factors in isolation from one another rather than considering how each factor contributed to the totality of the circumstances with which the police officer was confronted. The error is evident in our statement on page six of our opinion that “nervousness alone is not a sufficient basis to detain an individual.” Quite clearly, we did not properly consider appellant’s extreme nervous agitation in light of other circumstances, particularly those concerning appellant’s statement to the officer that he was driving from Palmdale, California, to Little Rock — a distance of over 3,400 miles — for a two-day family visit. Although either appellant’s travel plans or his extreme nervousness might be viewed as innocuous in isolation, in combination they are telling. I believe that we were mistaken in holding otherwise, and I would grant the State’s petition for rehearing. Crabtree, J., joins in this dissent.