Court Opinion

ID: 9563221
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:37:50.109169+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:17:46.825104
License: Public Domain

TAYLOR, Justice,
concurring.
I concur. I write separately to acknowledge the vital role of a police officer’s “reasonable suspicions.” The majority decisions in these appeals and in Wilson v. State, 874 P.2d 219 (Wyo.1994) illustrate that a seizure must only occur when an officer possesses *612articulable facts which, when combined with police experience, indicate that criminal conduct is occurring or may be about to occur.
The Fourth Amendment guarantee of freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures requires fact specific inquiry by the reviewing court. Wilson, 874 P.2d at 219-220. The focus of the court’s inquiry following a seizure for an investigative stop is the objective reasonableness of the limited seizure based upon the specific and articulable facts and reasonable inferences the police officer possessed at the time of the stop. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 27-28, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1883, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968); United States v. Werking, 915 F.2d 1404, 1407 (10th Cir.1990).
In Wilson, the police officer, acting as a community caretaker, initially had a consensual encounter with a citizen who was having trouble walking. Wilson, 874 P.2d at 220. The encounter became a seizure when the police officer ordered Wilson to “wait” for the results of a computerized identification check. Id. at 222. The police officer admitted that he acted without a reasonable suspicion of possible criminal conduct. Id. at 222. Therefore, the seizure to complete the computerized identification check resulted in an intrusion into protected Fourth Amendment rights.
In this case, unlike Wilson, the investigating officer possessed articulable facts to justify the seizure of Welch and Michener. Patrolman Dyer stopped the pickup truck after he observed a violation of Wyo.Stat. § 31-5-217(b) (1989). The patrolman’s observation gave rise to the reasonable suspicion necessary to permit a limited detention for the purposes of issuing a citation. United States v. Walker, 933 F.2d 812, 816 (10th Cir.1991), cert. denied, — U.S. —, 112 U.S. 1168, 117 L.Ed.2d 414 (1992); United States v. Guzman, 864 F.2d 1512, 1519 (10th Cir.1988). See also United States v. Ferguson, 8 F.3d 385, 391 (6th Cir.1993) (holding traffic stop is not pretextual if the officer has probable cause to believe that a traffic offense has occurred, regardless of whether this was the only basis or merely one basis for the stop).
After issuing the citation, further investigatory detention required a reasonable suspicion of possible criminal behavior. The majority of this court has correctly acknowledged that even seemingly innocent conduct can give rise to a reasonable suspicion of possible criminal behavior. Inquiring whether the conduct of Welch and Michener would create an inference of possible criminal behavior in a reasonable police officer discloses the objective validity of this detention.
During the traffic stop, Patrolman Dyer observed that the ceiling of the camper shell was sagging. The plastic liner placed in the bed of the pickup was unusually clean, as if it had been recently removed, and showed signs of having been altered. These observations suggest it was a reasonable inference that contraband could be hidden in the vehicle. However, Patrolman Dyer’s observations of the vehicle’s condition were coupled with other articulable facts, including: the nervous behavior of the driver; the unusual indifference of the supposedly sleeping passenger; and the mispronunciation of the registered owner’s name despite the evidence from the California speeding ticket that the driver used the vehicle in the past. Police experience would also indicate that the average interstate traveler does not carry a fist-sized clove of garlic in a vehicle to present an aromatic challenge to prying noses, human or canine.
A reasonable person, after observing the same facts Patrolman Dyer did, would want to make further inquiry. Patrolman Dyer did not need the vaunted drug courier profile to draw an inference that contraband might be hidden in this vehicle. Common sense was sufficient.
The investigatory stop provided a means to resolve Patrolman Dyer’s reasonable suspicions without undue delay to Welch and Mi-chener. In my opinion, this was not an unreasonable intrusion into protected Fourth Amendment rights. Therefore, I concur in the majority opinion.