Court Opinion

ID: 9650391
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 15:34:52.22673+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:20.175709
License: Public Domain

BERGER, Justice,
Dissenting:
I join in Vice Chancellor Noble’s dissent. I am writing separately to clarify the record and respond to the majority’s “Comments on Dissent.”
The majority says that, at the suppression hearing, Officer Hake gave only one basis for the stop — the turn signal violation. The majority supports that statement by weaving together two distinct portions of Officer Hake’s testimony and adding its own conclusion:
Officer Hake testified that he “pulled out, activated my emergency equipment, and stopped the vehicle” after “there was no turn signal on when the car made a right turn onto Irish Hill Road.”21
In fact, Officer Hake never directly stated that the turn signal or the apparently fictitious tag motivated his stop. With respect to the turn signal, he testified:
A. They continued north. The vehicle approached the intersection of Irish Hill Road. There was no turn *1081signal indicator on. Made a right turn onto Irish Hill Road, you can travel eastbound.
It was at that point in time that I pulled out, activated my emergency equipment, and stopped the vehicle.22
There was no testimony that the turn signal was the reason for the stop. But if it is reasonable to conclude from this sequence of events that the turn signal was one reason for the stop, it is even more reasonable to conclude that the fictitious tag was another reason. Officer Hake testified at some length about reading the license plate while the car was still stopped in the parking lot, punching in the numbers, and getting a report that the license plate was invalid. He repeated the process as he followed the vehicle out of the parking lot. Then, he explained that he discovered his error at the station:
Q. When you were writing your report, did you recognize any error?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. What was that?
A. What I had done is I went ahead and ran the VIN at Troop 3 to the vehicle to check to see if the vehicle was stolen or not. When I ran the VIN at Troop 3, the inquiry came back that the vehicle was registered.
Q. It was at that point in time that I went ahead and checked — I had actually removed the tag from the vehicle as evidence that it was a fictitious tag. I went ahead and compared the tag to what was coming back when I ran the VIN. It was at that point in time that I realized that I must have transposed one of the numbers in the tag.23
Why would an officer remove the tag from the vehicle if he had not been preparing to press charges based on the belief that the tag was invalid? The trial court acted well within its discretion in concluding that the officer’s reasonable belief about the invalid tag was one motivation, and adequate justification, for the stop.
In sum, the record supports both the majority’s factual conclusion and the trial court’s factual conclusion. As a result, the trial court’s decision should be affirmed.

. Majority Opinion at 1080.

. Appellee’s Appendix, B-5.

. Appellee’s Appendix, B-5.