Court Opinion

ID: 9659282
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 21:37:04.83789+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:05.742916
License: Public Domain

GILBERT, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. The majority misstates what articulable, reasonable suspicion requires and improperly discredits the police officer’s testimony and experience. The majority opinion creates confusion by accepting some of the police officer’s testimony as being valid based on his experience then disregarding other portions without offering any explanation for the distinction. Further, if State v. Barber, 308 Minn. 204, 241 N.W.2d 476 (1976) was correctly decided, stare decisis should compel this court to affirm the court of appeals. Because it is not distinguishable, the majority’s opinion effectively overrules Barber without explicitly stating so. Such a holding creates confusion for law enforcement officers rather than giving clear direction from this court as to what standard governs police behavior in Terry-stops.
As for whether the officer’s computer check would dispel any reasonable suspicion if such did exist, the majority holds no. That is significant because in State v. Pike, 551 N.W.2d 919, 922 (Minn.1996), we held that if an officer gathers facts which render his suspicion unreasonable, the Terry-stop is unconstitutional. In so holding, the court accepts as reliable the testimony of the arresting officer. The majority emphasizes that the officer testified that the computer check “did not dispel his suspicion.” (emphasis in original). Further, the majority notes the reason that it did not dispel his suspicion was that “in his *90experience many stolen vehicles often go undiscovered and unreported” for hours or even days. Again, the majority accepts as reliable the officer’s testimony with respect to “fresh stolen” vehicles.
Yet in deciding whether the officer’s observation of the broken, covered, side window would support a finding of reasonable suspicion, the majority summarily dismisses the same officer’s testimony. It refuses to give any credit to the officer’s testimony regarding his experience, which would provide support to a finding of reasonableness. The majority disregards this portion of the officer’s experience, in spite of the fact that the officer testified to having personally recovered 10-20 stolen vehicles with broken windows and 10 freshly stolen vehicles. Further, the officer testified that “the majority of cars [the police] recover have either a broken wing window or a broken window.”
In light of the reliance on the officer’s testimony and credibility with respect to the computer check, the majority’s position with respect to the officer’s experience with broken windows and stolen cars and the inferences and conclusions which can be drawn from that experience is wholly inconsistent. As the majority notes, this court has recently highlighted our deference to police officer experience and our recognition of their discretion to act on that experience. See State by Beaulieu v. City of Mounds View, 518 N.W.2d 567, 569-70 (Minn.1994). The Terry court also directed the courts to consider the officer’s experience: “in determining whether the officer acted reasonably in such circumstances, due weight must be given, not to his inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or ‘hunch,’ but to the specific reasonable inference which he is entitled to draw from the facts in light of his experience.” Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 27, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968) (emphasis added). The majority now gives this deference and consideration only lip service when it disregards the officer’s sworn testimony that in his experience a broken side window indicates the possibility that the automobile is stolen.
Further, the majority simply overstates what reasonable, articulable suspicion requires. It does not require the officer to discount “the other numerous and legitimate explanations” for the facts which create suspicion in the mind of the officer. Rather, it requires the officer to articulate specific facts, and rational inferences from those facts which taken together will justify the stop. See id. at 21, 88 S.Ct. at 880. “The officer need not be absolutely certain,” nor is he required to be, so long as it is reasonable for him to conclude that “criminal activity may be afoot.” Id. at 27, 30, 88 S.Ct. 1868 (emphasis added). Thus, it should not affect the legality of the stop that some cars with broken windows are not stolen.
In addition, contrary to the majority’s assertion, our holding in Barber, 308 Minn, at 207, 241 N.W.2d at 477, should control the outcome in this case. The facts in Barber relating to objective indicia and reasonable inferences are logically indistinguishable from this record and our reasoning in Barber is directly applicable to this case. In order to reach a contrary result, the majority reads in another reason for the holding in Barber that is not supported by a careful reading of Terry-stop cases and Barber itself. In Barber, we held that an officer had articulable, reasonable suspicion to stop an automobile when the officer observed that the automobile’s license plates were wired on by bailing wire rather than bolted on, even though that conduct was legal. The holding did not rest, as the majority suggests, on the premise that efforts to conceal one’s identity and avoid police detection are more acutely or particularly suspect than other criminal activity and therefore, justify a Terry-type stop. Instead, Barber’s holding rested on the fact that certain objective indicia can trigger in the mind of the police officer a suspicion that there is criminal activity afoot. We held that even if *91lawful activity was involved, “the facts, together with the reasonable inferences an experienced police officer could draw therefrom,” may lead to the inference that “the plates do not belong to the vehicle,” and thus, criminal activity is afoot. Id. at 477.
In deciding Barber, we had to distinguish a case decided just a year before, State v. McKinley, 305 Minn. 297, 232 N.W.2d 906 (1975), in which we held that a Terry-stop was not reasonable. In doing so, we emphasized that the officers in Barber had knowledge of a fact, the bailing wire, which raised their suspicions of ongoing criminal activity due to their experience as police officers. In contrast, in McKinley, the officers had “no specific and articulable facts” which justified their stop of the defendant. McKinley, 232 N.W.2d at 910. Instead, the officers in McKinley had observed the defendant “driving [his] automobile in a lawful manner and within the 10-miles-per hour alley speed limit prescribed by city ordinance,” and after “seizing]” him by summoning him and then putting him in the backseat of the squad car, subjected him to a license check. Id. at 908.
. This case is not like McKinley where there were no specific and articulable facts that raised the suspicions of the officer. Instead, this case is logically indistinguishable from Barber. In Barber, we noted that “[p]olice and patrol officers from then-experience learn to be on the lookout for things such as [license plates held on by bailing wire] because they may suggest criminal activity.” The same logic applies here. The police officers learned from their experience to be on the lookout for broken automobile windows because as the officer in this case testified, it may, as it had in the past for this officer, suggest criminal activity, that the car is stolen. I would affirm the court of appeals.
BLATZ, Chief Justice
(dissenting).
I join in the dissent of Justice GILBERT.
RUSSELL A. ANDERSON, Justice
(dissenting).
I join in the dissent of Justice GILBERT.