The Minnesota DWI Case Of The Week is State v. Johnson (decided November 13, 2017, Minnesota Court of Appeals, Unpublished) which stands for the proposition that while it is good to go to school, you may not want to park in its lot, late at night when you are drunk!
In Johnson, police officer Bahl testified that she started working as an officer for the Chaska Police Department on April 11, 2016, and was still in training on June 7. She testified that at approximately 11:52 p.m. on June 7, she was traveling southbound on Minnesota Highway 41 in a marked squad car with Officer Rob Moore who was training her. She noticed a vehicle parked on school property by the stop sign for the entrance to the Chaska Elementary School with its headlights extinguished. She testified that it was late at night, school was not in session, and the vehicle should not have been there.
Officer Bahl completed a U-turn to return northbound on Highway 41 to investigate the vehicle. When she approached the entrance to the elementary school, Officer Bahl observed "[t]hat the vehicle had turned and parked [facing westbound] with all the lights off kind of crooked between where you can either go to the elementary school or come back out towards westbound Highway 41." She did not see the vehicle move. She testified that the road the vehicle was parked on only allows access to the schools, so it is not a place that vehicles would usually park. Officer Bahl noted that there were not any parking spaces near the vehicle and that there were no cars in the school's parking lot. She also noted that there was no indication that there was an event happening at the school, and that there are no nearby residences or businesses that the vehicle could have been associated with.
Officer Bahl first approached the parked vehicle in her squad car without her emergency lights activated. The vehicle's headlights then came on, and it started moving westbound toward Highway 41. Officer Bahl then activated her emergency lights, and the vehicle pulled over at the stop sign before Highway 41. The Defendant was subsequently arrested for a DWI.
The Defendant moved to suppress all of the evidence arguing the officer did not have a sufficient constitutional basis to make the initial stop of his vehicle. The District Court denied the motion to suppress and on appeal, the Minnesota Court of Appeals agreed.
The Court of Appeals noted in its opinion:
"The United States and Minnesota Constitutions prohibit unreasonable searches and seizures. U.S. Const, amend. IV; Minn. Const, art. I, § 10. However, a law enforcement officer may temporarily detain a person that he or she suspects has engaged in criminal activity if "the stop was justified at its inception by reasonable articulable suspicion, and ... the actions of the police during the stop were reasonably related to and justified by the circumstances that gave rise to the stop in the first place."
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"Here, under the totality of the circumstances, there is evidence in the record that appellant was sitting in a parked vehicle with the headlights extinguished in a high-crime area, then turned on the headlights and started to leave the area after seeing a squad car. It was not error for the district court to conclude that appellant's conduct was evasive or that it contributed to the officers' reasonable articulable suspicion to support the traffic stop."
"Furthermore, in addition to finding that appellant's behavior was evasive, the district court relied on the location of appellant's vehicle, the time of night, and Officer Moore's knowledge of criminal activity in the area. The court found that the officers testified credibly that because of the vehicle's unusual location, its extinguished headlights, the lack of light inside the vehicle, its movement from one side of the frontage road to the other, and its presence in an area that was considered to be high-crime on a summer night, they became suspicious of the vehicle. Under the totality of these circumstances, the officers had reasonable articulable suspicion to stop the vehicle even without a finding that it engaged in evasive conduct."
Moral Of The Story: A stopped vehicle is easy pickings for the police!
If you or a loved one are facing a Minnesota DWI, feel free to contact Minnesota DWI Attorney, F. T. Sessoms for answers to all of your Minnesota DWI and DUI questions.
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