Court Opinion

ID: 9863389
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 04:16:11.403572+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:43:51.083275
License: Public Domain

MARTIN, Chief Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. As the majority recognizes, “[i]t is well-settled law that a police officer may make a brief investigative stop of a vehicle if justified by specific, articulable facts giving rise to a reasonable suspicion of illegal activity.” State v. Holmes, 109 N.C. App. 615, 619, 428 S.E.2d 277, 279 (internal quotation marks omitted), disc. review denied, 334 N.C. 166, 432 S.E.2d 367 (1993). While I agree that, in order to establish a constitutional basis for a warrantless investigatory stop, the law requires “something more than an ‘unparticularized suspicion or hunch,’ ” State v. Watkins, 337 N.C. 437, 442, 446 S.E.2d 67, 70 (1994) (quoting United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 7, 104 L. Ed. 2d 1, 10 (1989)), appeal after remand, 120 N.C. App. 804, 463 S.E.2d 802 (1995), it is also true that “[t]he only requirement is a minimal level of objective justification....” Id. (emphasis added). This is so because “[reasonable suspicion is a ‘less demanding standard than probable cause and requires a showing considerably less than preponderance of the evidence.’ ” State v. Barnard, 362 N.C. 244, 247, 658 S.E.2d 643, 645 (emphasis added) (quoting Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119, 123, 145 L. Ed. 2d 570, 576 (2000)), cert. denied, — U.S. —, 172 L. Ed. 2d 198 (2008). Thus, while “the requisite degree of suspicion [for an investigatory stop] must be high enough ‘to assure that an individual's reasonable expectation of privacy is not subject to arbitrary *660invasions solely at the unfettered discretion of officers in the field,’ ” State v. Murray, 192 N.C. App. 684, 687, 666 S.E.2d 205, 208 (2008) (quoting Brown v. Texas, 443 U.S. 47, 51, 61 L. Ed. 2d 357, 362 (1979)), and an investigatory stop of a vehicle “must be based on specific and articulable facts, as well as the rational inferences from those facts, as viewed through the eyes of a reasonable, cautious officer, guided by his experience and training,” the prevailing law requires that such facts and inferences need only establish a “minimal level of objective justification” for an investigatory stop to be constitutional. See Watkins, 337 N.C. at 441-42, 446 S.E.2d at 70. With these guiding principles in mind, I believe the trial court’s unchallenged findings of fact are sufficient to establish that it was more than an “unparticularized suspicion or hunch” that caused Officer Allman to make an investigatory stop of defendant’s vehicle. See id. at 442, 446 S.E.2d at 70 (internal quotation marks omitted).
As the majority recognizes, Officer Allman did not have any difficulty reading the information on the thirty-day tag affixed to defendant’s vehicle and testified that the temporary tag was dirty and worn. However, the officer also testified that visible dirt and wear were not the primary reasons that he stopped defendant’s vehicle. Rather, it was Officer Allman’s undisputed testimony that, because the number on defendant’s temporary tag seemed to be “much lower” than those numbers he had observed on other temporary tags during the course of his regular daily patrols, the officer “believed the tag to be fictitious.” Therefore, in light of the “less demanding standard” that need be met to establish a constitutional basis for a warrantless investigative stop, see Barnard, 362 N.C. at 247, 658 S.E.2d at 645 (internal quotation marks omitted), I am persuaded that Officer Allman’s specific concern — that the numbering on the temporary tag affixed to defendant’s vehicle was atypical and inconsistent with other temporary tags he observed during the course of his daily patrols — when “viewed through the eyes of a reasonable, cautious officer,” see Watkins, 337 N.C. at 441, 446 S.E.2d at 70, was sufficient to establish “a reasonable or founded suspicion” to justify “a limited investigative seizure” of defendant’s vehicle that would allow the officer to verify that the tag affixed to defendant’s automobile was valid. See Holmes, 109 N.C. App. at 619, 428 S.E.2d at 279 (emphasis added) (internal quotation marks omitted). For these reasons, I would conclude that the trial court did not err by denying defendant’s motion to suppress.