Court Opinion

ID: 9788277
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 00:36:16.362313+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:07.066061
License: Public Domain

MATTHEWS, Justice,
with whom FABE, Chief Justice, joins, dissenting.
The court of appeals applied a legal precept derived from its decision in Jones v. State.1 The precept is that an argument, even a loud one, standing alone does not justify an investigative stop.2 Under the Alaska Constitution, investigative stops are only permitted if the officer who makes the stop has reasonable suspicion that a serious crime is imminent or has recently been committed.3 The court of appeals' principle Seems well justified. Arguments are not crimes, much less serious ones, nor, absent sights or sounds indicating physical violence, are they closely associated with past recent or imminent future crimes. Loud and heated arguments are not infrequent in our society. Sometimes they break out between strangers. More often they involve acquaintances, couples, or parents and their children. But only rarely do they degenerate into physical assaults.
This case seems particularly apt for application of the court of appeals' precept. As the court observed:
Officer Mickelson, like the officer in Jones, had no objective basis for believing that a crime had occurred or that one was imminent.... Officer Mickelson acknowledged that he had no reason to infer that this was a domestic violence situation: no violence had been reported, he had observed no violence, and he had no knowledge of the relationship of the people involved.[4]
I would add that when Officer Mickelson arrived at the place where the argument had taken place he could see that there were three adults (two women and a man) getting into the white Subaru, rather than two as had been reported. An imminent domestic *552assault was particularly unlikely to spring from such a grouping, for experience tells us that domestic assaults between adults are most frequently one-on-one events.
The ongoing case law development process of the court of appeals should, over time, give concrete meaning to Alaska's constitutional search and seizure guarantees. In my view, today's opinion needlessly interferes with this process and fails to give sufficient weight to our constitutional protections. reasons I would either dismiss the State's petition as improvidently granted or affirm the decision of the court of appeals. For these

. See Miller v. State, 145 P.3d 627, 629-30 (Alaska App.2006) (citing Jones v. State, 11 P.3d 998 (Alaska App.2000)).

. There is case law in other jurisdictions supporting this principle. See Van Patter v. State, 16 Ark.App. 83, 697 S.W.2d 919, 920-21 (1985) (holding officer violated a defendant's Fourth Amendment rights by stopping a vehicle based on a report of a "loud party disturbance"). Other cases involving arguments that had not yet escalated to physical violence have included aggravating facts supporting a conclusion that reasonable suspicion existed. See, e.g., Nelson v. State, 252 Ga.App. 454, 556 S.E.2d 527, 529-30 (2001) (holding a stop was appropriate where a police officer saw the driver and passenger of a moving car fighting in a manner suggesting that "blows were about to be struck" and causing the vehicle to "drift[ ] in its lane," creating a danger to the public); People v. Williams, 159 A.D.2d 946, 947, 552 N.Y.S.2d 793 (1990) (holding there was reasonable suspicion to support a stop where the police observed a man and woman arguing and had received a report that the man had a gun); Commonwealth v. Shine, 784 A.2d 167, 172-73 (Pa.Super.2001) (holding stop was justified where police officer arrived on the scene of "'what he perceived to be an escalating violent situation" after receiving a report that "two men were on the highway with guns").

. Coleman v. State, 553 P.2d 40, 46 (Alaska 1976).

. Miller, 145 P.3d at 630.