Court Opinion

ID: 9633734
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 11:58:31.400579+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:08:41.314605
License: Public Domain

MINZNER, Judge, specially concurring. I concur in the result reached by the majority with respect to both issues addressed in the opinion. I concur in all of the discussion as to the second issue. I concur in most of the discussion as to the first issue. With respect to the first issue, my only reservation about the discussion arises from the statement that “motions to suppress must set out with particularity the grounds relied on for the relief sought” as that statement is applied to this case. I am concerned that statement may be viewed as suggesting defendants’ motion to suppress was too general to preserve the arguments made on appeal with respect to the roadblock and thus that only a specific motion would have been sufficient. I view the motion as too specific and believe that defendants in effect conceded the legality of the initial stop. As indicated by the majority, the arguments made on appeal include the proper application of the guidelines contained in City of Las Cruces v. Betancourt, 105 N.M. 655, 735 P.2d 1161 (Ct.App.1987), as well as an extension of Betancourt. Betancourt provides guidance to the trial court in determining the reasonableness of a roadblock under the fourth amendment. The ultimate question is “the reasonableness of a roadblock” within the meaning of the fourth amendment. Id. at 658, 735 P.2d at 1164. I agree that appellate review would be facilitated if defendants who intend to challenge roadblocks on the basis of the application of the Betancourt guidelines were as specific as possible in oral and written submission to the trial court. Nevertheless, I believe that a general challenge to the reasonableness of a roadblock under the fourth amendment requires the trial court to consider the extent to which the state’s showing satisfies the Betancourt guidelines. Defendants’ motion to suppress was not a general challenge. Although they contended that the stop and detention were without probable cause and reasonable suspicion, their motion states “[t]he initial stop was for routine traffic reasons, i.e., license and registration check, which were verified immediately. Thus any further detention and/or seizures was [sic] in violation of Defendant’s rights.” As the majority has noted, the trial brief submitted by defendants describes the stop as lawful. In that brief defendants primarily contended that Officer Frisk detained them as a pretext to search for drugs, rather than that he stopped them as a pretext to search for drugs. Under these circumstances, the argument made to the trial judge appears to have been that Officer Frisk detained defendants for a period longer than was required to accomplish a document check. I conclude that defendants focused their attention at trial on what this court described in State v. Bolton, 111 N.M. 28, 801 P.2d 98 (Ct.App.1990), as the decision to hold for secondary inspection. As noted in Bolton, a claim that the roadblock itself was pretextual might be made on the basis of Betancourt, because the “guidelines include the reasonableness of the time, place, and duration of the roadblock, which bear on the effectiveness of the roadblock to serve its proper purpose.” 111 N.M. at 34, 801 P.2d at 104. Here, however, defendants appear to have conceded the validity of the initial stop and to have claimed only that the detention, after their documents had been checked, was pretextual. In so doing, I believe they raised questions of fact, which the trial court was entitled to resolve in favor of the state’s witnesses. See State v. Bolton. I am not yet convinced that Betancourt as this court has applied it requires the state to make a significantly different showing than that which the fourth amendment requires, and I am not prepared to say that the roadblock in this case was unreasonable as a matter of fourth amendment analysis. It is possible that the Betancourt analysis should be modified as a matter of state constitutional law in order to provide greater protection against the “potential for abuse of the authority to conduct roadblocks.” State v. Bolton, 111 N.M. at 34, 801 P.2d at 104. Here, because defendants in effect conceded the reasonableness of the roadblock and chose to focus on the reasonableness of the detention at the roadblock, we need not decide whether the state’s showing was sufficient under the fourth amendment nor whether a different result would have been required under the state constitution. To the extent defendants intended to raise on appeal the arguments made at trial, Bolton controls. To the extent the arguments made on appeal were not preserved, I agree that we ought not consider them. See SCRA 1986, 12-216. On this basis, I concur in the discussion as to issue one.