Court Opinion

ID: 9666564
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:19:37.597607+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:30.202678
License: Public Domain

ROSS, Judge
(dissenting)
In an unbroken chain of cases building upon Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), the United States and Minnesota Supreme Courts have held that police may intrude further on a legitimately seized vehicle occupant’s liberty interest when the officer has either a particularized concern for officer safety or, in more recent cases, when the officer is following a police practice that itself rests on generalized concerns for officer safety. Either way, officer safety is the linchpin. The majority relies on this same line of cases but concludes instead that police are always justified in ordering occupants from stopped cars even when the officer’s action rests neither on a particularized concern for officer safety nor on a general safety concern that led to the practice of removing occupants. I agree with the majority’s conclusions that Kellie Jo Krenik’s continued seizure was not justified by the initial purpose of the stop and that it also was not supported by independent probable cause. I also agree with the majority that the officers’ ordering of Kre-nik from her vehicle was justified only if this intrusion on Krenik’s liberty interest was reasonable as defined in Terry v. Ohio. But I do not agree that police were authorized to order Krenik from her car under Terry and the subsequent officer-safety line of cases that the majority relies upon because officer safety was neither a direct nor indirect motivating factor in the officers’ decision to prolong Krenik’s detention and to order her from her ear. I therefore respectfully dissent.
*187Nothing in the record indicates that the officers who ordered Krenik from her car were specifically concerned about officer safety or that their decision to remove her was based on a police practice that grew from officer-safety concerns. But the weighing of these officer-safety concerns against the occupant’s liberty interest in remaining in the vehicle was the sole, controlling rationale justifying removing persons from their cars in Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U.S. 106, 112, 98 S.Ct. 330, 333, 54 L.Ed.2d 331 (1977); Maryland v. Wilson, 519 U.S. 408, 413, 117 S.Ct. 882, 886, 137 L.Ed.2d 41, - (1997); and State v. Ortega, 770 N.W.2d 145, 152 (Minn.2009). Each of these controlling removal-from-the-car cases involved a Fourth Amendment reasonableness inquiry, expressly weighing law enforcement’s motivating safety concerns against the driver’s or passenger’s liberty interest. Because no specific or general officer-safety motivation exists here, these cases do not authorize the officers’ actions.
In Mimms, the United States Supreme Court emphasized the officer’s safety justification for removing the driver: “The State argues that this practice was adopted as a precautionary measure to afford a degree of protection to the officer and that it may be justified on that ground.” 434 U.S. at 110, 98 S.Ct. at 333. The Court weighed the mere “incremental” infringement on the driver’s liberty interest in remaining inside the stopped ear specifically against the “weighty” officer-safety purpose for removing the driver: “This inquiry must ... focus ... on the incremental intrusion resulting from the request to get out of the car once the vehicle was lawfully stopped. ... We think it too plain for argument that the State’s proffered justification—the safety of the officer—is both legitimate and weighty.” Id. at 109-10, 98 S.Ct. at 332-33. Only after it had weighed those competing interests in favor of officer safety did the Court deem the officer’s removal tactic to be reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Id.
The Supreme Court in Wilson undertook that same weighing of officer-safety concerns against personal-liberty interests:
We must therefore now decide whether the rule of Mimms applies to passengers as well as to drivers. On the public interest side of the balance, the same weighty interest in officer safety is present regardless of whether the occupant of the stopped car is a driver or passenger ....
On the personal liberty side of the balance, the case for the passengers is in one sense stronger than that for the driver.
519 U.S. at 413, 117 S.Ct. at 885-86 (footnote omitted). The Wilson Court then reasoned that the “danger to an officer from a traffic stop is likely to be greater when there are passengers in addition to the driver in the stopped car,” and that “the additional intrusion on the passenger [who is ordered from the car] is minimal.” Id. at 414-15, 117 S.Ct. at 886. Based expressly on that qualitative imbalance between officer-safety interests and liberty interests related to the passengers’ right to remain in the car, the Court held that “an officer making a traffic stop may order passengers to get out of the car pending completion of the stop.” Id. at 415, 117 S.Ct. at 886.
The Minnesota Supreme Court followed that same officer-safety-versus-liberty-interest analysis in Ortega, 770 N.W.2d at 152. The Ortega court considered whether Wilson applied to traffic stops in Minnesota in light of article I, section 10 of the Minnesota Constitution, which has been construed to afford greater personal-liberty protection than the Fourth Amendment. *188Id. It reaffirmed that, under Minnesota constitutional safeguards, “[w]e balance the government’s need to search or seize a vehicle’s occupants against the individual’s right to personal security free from arbitrary interference by law officers.” Id. (quotation omitted). It considered the recent United States Supreme Court opinion of Arizona v. Johnson, — U.S. -, 129 S.Ct. 781, 172 L.Ed.2d 694 (2009), a removal-from-car case that involved an officer’s safety concern about “permitting a dangerous person to get behind [the officer]” during a traffic stop. Id. at 152 (alteration in original) (quoting Johnson, 129 S.Ct. at 788). The Ortega court followed the reasoning and adopted the holding of Wilson. In doing so, just like the federal cases it relied upon, its justification for allowing the officers to remove an occupant from a stopped car was that the acting officer had a legitimate concern for officer safety: “[The officer] had a valid officer-safety concern in having Ortega stand away from the passenger compartment. Thus, we conclude that it was reasonable to have Ortega exit the vehicle and stand away from the passenger compartment while it was being searched.” Id.
It is clear to me that this case fundamentally differs from these officer-safety cases. The officers’ infringement on Kre-nik’s liberty interest was not based on the officer-safety concerns that were critical to the consistent reasoning and holdings in the removal-from-car stream of cases. Here, neither the facts nor the officers’ testimony suggests that an officer-safety concern was even remotely part of the decision to order Krenik from her car. Nor did the officers imply that Krenik’s removal followed a general police practice of removing passengers because of officer-safety concerns. Rather, they were motivated only by the intent to somehow assess Krenik’s “mental status.” The constitutionality of the intrusion here therefore cannot depend on the 40-year river of caselaw from Terry through Johnson expounding specifically on how the concern for officer safety justifies an officer’s decision to stop, detain, search, or move a person. I therefore disagree with the majority’s reliance on these cases.
Separate from my concern that the court’s opinion today does not address the officer-safety basis essential to the Wilson line of cases, I also disagree with the majority’s suggestion that the stop continued legitimately even after the initial justification for it ended. The majority relies on Johnson for the proposition that both the stop and the officers’ authority to order Krenik from the car continued even beyond the lawful justification for the stop because the officers did not announce that the stop was over. But the Johnson Court did not provide a per se rule that a traffic stop ends only when the officers say so. The Court said only, “Normally, [a traffic] stop ends when the police have no further need to control the scene, and inform the driver and passengers they are free to leave.” 129 S.Ct. at 788 (emphasis added). I think most traffic stops do end when the police declare them over, but others end when circumstances restrict police authority to prolong the stop or expand its nature. It simply cannot be that alleged over-intrusiveness by police during a stop is immune from a constitutional challenge by virtue of an officer’s unilateral opportunity to declare when the stop ends; otherwise, no unreasonably detained person could ever challenge the constitutionality of the duration of a traffic stop.
Even if Mimms and Wilson had declared a per se Fourth Amendment rule that police may order passengers from any stopped car as a matter of course regardless of whether that practice was based on officer-safety concerns, the rule would not apply to article I, section 10 of the Minne*189sota Constitution. As our supreme court has explained, “[i]n contrast to the laxer requirements of the United States Constitution ... we have held that Article I, Section 10 of the Minnesota Constitution requires that ‘the scope and duration of a traffic stop investigation must be limited to the justification for the stop/” State v. Burbach, 706 N.W.2d 484, 488 (Minn.2005) (quoting State v. Fort, 660 N.W.2d 415, 418 (Minn.2003)); see also State v. Flowers, 734 N.W.2d 239, 255 (Minn.2007) (requiring new justification for additional search once “the quantum of evidence needed to justify a forcible stop has dissipated”) (quotation omitted). The lawful basis for the stop here had run its full course before the officers ordered Krenik from her car because the initial purpose of the stop— Etoll’s traffic violation—was resolved and the officers had no reasonable, constitutionally valid basis to prolong and expand Krenik’s detention.
And I see no other basis justifying the added intrusion. When there is clear ground to do so, police certainly can inquire to ensure a driver’s wellbeing. It is true that one of the officers here “wanted to make sure that it was safe for [Krenik] to drive.” But this case does not mirror the line of cases that allows limited police inquiry in response to exigent circumstances to determine whether a driver needs emergency medical attention. When an officer is motivated by the objectively obvious need to render aid or assistance in a situation in which a reasonable person would believe that an emergency exists, we have recognized an exception to the warrant requirement to allow police to temporarily detain a driver to inquire into her wellbeing. See State v. Lopez, 698 N.W.2d 18, 23 (Minn.App.2005) (outlining cases). We have said in those circumstances that “the officer must be permitted to make contact with the individual and ensure that the individual does not require additional medical assistance.” Id. Here, one of the officers did inquire into whether Krenik needed medical assistance, and Krenik expressly declared that she did not. And the issue before us is not merely the inquiry into Krenik’s wellbeing, but the added intrusion of ordering her from her car, ostensibly to conduct some sort of distress evaluation. Nothing in this record supports the officers’ decision to disregard Krenik’s negative response. And even if it did, nothing suggests that removing her from her car was reasonable or necessary to facilitate the investigation into her distress.
In sum, the removal-from-the-car case-law has not established a bright-line rule that police are always free to remove occupants for any reason. In this regard I disagree with the majority. The caselaw echoes the historic requirement that a court reviewing the constitutionality of police conduct must decide whether the actual police interests outweighed the liberty interests at stake. The cases consistently hold that police who are motivated by at least a general, theoretical concern for officer safety may remove the occupants from lawfully stopped cars without any particularized safety concern about those occupants. This per se rule does not excuse the state from advancing an officer-safety concern to justify a police intrusion. Rather, it clarifies that a lesser showing is needed to remove an occupant than to engage in more intrusive police action. Because even that lesser showing was not offered here, I think precedent requires us to hold that the officers violated Krenik’s right not to be unreasonably seized under the Fourth Amendment and under article I, section 10 of the Minnesota Constitution by ordering her from her car.