Court Opinion

ID: 9796907
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:07:55.880172+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:51:43.593159
License: Public Domain

ORME, Judge
(dissenting):
¶ 11 I respectfully disagree that the trooper had probable cause to search Defendant’s vehicle. When the trooper approached the vehicle, which was not unlawfully parked, he initiated a level one voluntary encounter between law enforcement and one or more citizens. See State v. Hansen, 2002 UT 125,-¶34, 63 P.3d 650. See also 4 Wayne R. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 9.4(a), at 420 n. 49 (4th ed.2004) (citing a multitude of federal and state cases in which courts have concluded that no Fourth Amendment seizure occurred when police officers approached a vehicle parked in a public place and questioned its occupants). Given the hour and location, to say nothing of the trooper’s expertise, the butane lighter and rolled-up dollar bill would surely give rise to a reasonable suspicion of unlawful activity, especially in conjunction with the vehicle’s occupants claiming to be so far off course from their intended route.
¶ 12 This reasonable articulable suspicion, however, does not validate an immediate warrantless search of the vehicle. See, e.g., United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798, 809, 102 S.Ct. 2157, 72 L.Ed.2d 572 (1982) (indicating that the automobile exception “applies only to searches of vehicles that are supported by probable cause”). On the contrary, the trooper’s reasonable suspicion only authorized him at that point to further detain the vehicle’s occupants and investigate the circumstances more fully in an effort to confirm or dispel his suspicions. See, e.g., Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial Dist. Ct., 542 U.S. 177, 185, 124 S.Ct. 2451, 159 L.Ed.2d 292 (2004) (acknowledging the well-settled principle “that a law enforcement officer’s reasonable suspicion that a person may be involved in criminal activity permits the officer to stop the person for a brief time and take additional steps to investigate further”); Hansen, 2002 UT 125 at ¶ 35, 63 P.3d 650 (stating that an officer may initiate a level two encounter “when specific and articulable facts and rational inferences give rise to a reasonable suspicion a person has or is committing a crime”) (internal quotations, alteration, and citation omitted).
¶ 13 I concede that the trooper’s further inquiry may well have solidified his suspicions and moved his quantum of knowledge from a mere suspicion — albeit a reasonable and articulable one — to actual probable cause to believe that illegal drugs would be found. Only then, however, would the trooper have had a legal basis on which to conduct the vehicle search. See, e.g., Ross, 456 U.S. at 809, 102 S.Ct. 2157. But as it happened, he jumped the gun and effected the search merely on a reasonable articulable suspicion. Under the jurisprudence of the Fourth Amendment, that is simply not enough.