Court Opinion

ID: 9785449
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 21:45:50.56852+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:24.607538
License: Public Domain

COATS, Chief Judge,
concurring.
In order to prove voluntary consent, "[tlhere must be clear and convincing evi-denee that the consent was unequivocal, specific, and intelligently given." 1 In the present case, as the majority opinion points out, Brown was stopped at 3 a.m. for an equipment violation-because her car's rear license plate was not properly illuminated. Brown's car and the trooper's car were the only cars on the road. The trooper never informed Brown why he stopped her, and he took and retained Brown's driver's license. As the majority opinion states:
When the trooper returned to Brown's car, he still refrained from telling Brown the reason for the stop. Moreover, even though the trooper had decided to let Brown off with a warning, the trooper gave Brown no indication that she was free to go (or would shortly be free to go). Instead, the trooper asked Brown to consent *635to a search of her person and her vehicle for drugs.
Because Brown remained ignorant of the reason for the stop, she did not know the basis for the trooper’s assertion of authority over her. Consequently, even if Brown had been fully conversant with search and seizure law, Brown had no way of knowing if she had the right to refuse the trooper’s request—no way of knowing if the trooper’s request to conduct a search was indeed a request or was, instead, simply a polite phrasing of a command.
Under these circumstances I would hold that the State did not show by clear and convincing evidence that Brown’s consent was “unequivocal, specific, and intelligently given.” Although I (like my colleagues) rely on article, 1 section 14 of the Alaska Constitution to conclude that the evidence in this case must be suppressed, I reach this decision by a slightly different route than my colleagues have taken.

. Gieffels v. State, 590 P.2d 55, 62 (Alaska 1979) (citing Sleziak v. State, 454 P.2d 252, 257 (Alaska 1969)).