Minnesota DWI Lawyer Blogs on Minnesota DWI: This Week's Featured Minnesota DWI Case

The Minnesota DWI Case Of The Week is Zabinski v. Commissioner of Public Safety (Decided June 2, 2014, Minnesota Court of Appeals, Unpublished), which stands for the proposition that an anonymous tip is not sufficient to stop a motor vehicle if the police officer does not observe any driving misconduct.

In Zabinski, an unidentified individual called the police from the area of "Ray's Auto Body Shop" to report a tractor-trailer pulling round hay bales traveling north in the southbound lane of Highway 169.  A police officer headed to the area and observed the Defendant's tractor-trailer with round hay bales traveling south in the south-bound lane of Highway 169.  

The Defendant was pulled over by the officer and, after completing some field sobriety tests, was arrested for DWI.  The District Court upheld the validity of the stop but on appeal, the ruling was reversed.  

The Minnesota Court of Appeals noted that, "An informant is considered anonymous unless he or she provides 'sufficient identifying information'.  And in the present case, the record does not establish the caller was an employee or customer of Ray's Auto Body or if the caller was just near the area at the time of the call".  The caller did not give a name, phone number, or any identifying information.  Thus the police did not have any way to locate the caller to hold him accountable if he was knowingly providing false information.

The Court of Appeals then held: "Although an officer does not have to personally observe illegal driving, an informant must be sufficiently reliable to justify an investigatory stop on the basis of a tip alone.  Here, there is no way to determine the reliability of the caller because he or she did not provide any identifying information.  Not only is there insufficient indication of the tipster's reliability, there is also objective evident of the tipster's unreliability because the vehicle was not observed in the wrong lane."  Therefore, the stop was thrown out and all of the evidence was ordered suppressed!

F.T. Sessoms, Minnesota DWI Attorney, Minnesota DUI Lawyer, Minneapolis DWI Attorney, Minneapolis DUI Lawyer