The Minnesota DWI Case Of The Week is State v. Jensen (Decided August 7, 2017, Minnesota Court of Appeals, Unpublished) which stands for the proposition that swearing can help justify a seizure by the police.
In Jensen, a Hopkins police officer saw a vehicle stopped in the middle of an intersection. Both doors of the vehicle were open and he observed the driver, Camille Jensen, kneeling over her friend, who was lying on the ground. As the officer approached the car, he saw Jensen helping her friend into the passenger seat. The officer saw vomit on the ground and he heard one of the people say, "Fuck, is that the cops?" The officer asked both occupants for identification and he detected indicia of intoxication coming from Ms. Jensen, including the strong odor of alcohol, slurred speech and watery eyes.
After failing field sobriety tests and a preliminary breath test, Ms. Jensen was placed under arrest and subsequently tested at .20 on the Data Master Machine at the police station. Jensen moved to suppress the evidence claiming the police had no basis to ask for identification and any subsequent observations/evidence must be suppressed.
The District Court denied the motion to suppress determining that Jensen was not improperly seized because her act of parking in the middle of an intersection was sufficient to justify an investigatory stop. The court further ruled that the car's location, coupled with Jensen's presence with a drunk friend at that time of the morning and the overheard statement of "Fuck, is that the cops?" also provided the officer with reasonable suspicion that Jensen was engaged in criminal activity.
The Minnesota Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court noting:
"Not all encounters between the police and citizens constitute seizures: Persons found under suspicious circumstances are not clothed with a right of privacy which prevents law-enforcement officers from inquiring as to their identity and actions. The essential needs of public safety permit police officers to use their faculties of observation and to act thereon within proper limits. It is not only the right but the duty of police officers to investigate suspicious behavior, both to prevent crime and to apprehend offenders."
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"But if a police officer requests identification and asks the driver to leave a vehicle, the officer must have specific and articulable facts which, together with reasonable inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant the intrusion."
In this case, "the totality of circumstances here supported a reasonable basis for Officer Cady to suspect criminal activity. When Officer Cady encountered Jensen's vehicle at 1:41 a.m., it was parked in the middle of an intersection, and both occupants had left the vehicle. The passenger was admittedly intoxicated, had vomited, and needed a ride home. One of the two vehicle occupants uttered an expression of dismay at the presence of police. From these facts, Officer Cady could reasonably suspect the following criminal activity to support his asking Jensen for identification: (1) Jensen may have violated the law by parking her car in the middle of an intersection; (2) the time of night, the choice of location to stop a vehicle, the admitted inebriation of the passenger, and the expletive-filled expression of dismay at realizing they had been noticed by police suggested that Jensen could be under the influence; and (3) the expression of dismay, alone, was suggestive of some sort of nefarious conduct. Based on the totality of these circumstances, we conclude that the district court did not err by denying Jensen's motion to suppress the evidence obtained after she was asked for identification."
Moral Of The Story: It is never a good idea to swear when the police draw near!
If you or a loved one have been arrested for a Minnesota DWI, feel free to contact Minnesota DWI Attorney, F. T. Sessoms at (612) 344-1505 for answers to all of your Minnesota DWI questions.
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