The Minnesota DWI Case Of The Week is State v. Dodds (Decided January 18, 2022, Minnesota Court of Appeals, Unpublished) which stands for the proposition that you never want to give the police a second chance to make a first impression!
In Dodds, a Carver County Sheriff's Deputy noticed an occupied vehicle in the Domino's parking lot in Waconia. The deputy approached the vehicle and spoke with the occupants. The deputy checked Dodds’s registration and discovered that his driving privileges had been revoked. But because Dodds was in a nonmoving vehicle in a private parking lot, the deputy believed that no law had been broken.
An hour later, the deputy observed the same car roll through a stop sign. The car also crossed the center line by roughly two feet. The deputy pulled the car over and noticed the occupants attempt to conceal something within the car. After he identified Dodds (who had been driving) and his passenger, the deputy noted a strong odor of alcohol. The passenger appeared to be “extremely intoxicated” and during the conversation produced two open containers of alcohol. The deputy asked Dodds and the passenger to exit the vehicle and conducted a search for additional contraband. Dodds warned the deputy that there were approximately three grams of marijuana inside the vehicle, which the deputy eventually located. The deputy issued Dodds a citation for possession of marijuana, failure to provide insurance, and driving after revocation. The deputy then told Dodds he was released from the traffic stop and warned him to keep his voice down because they were in a residential area in the middle of the night.
The deputy returned to his squad car to take pictures of the open containers found in Dodds’s vehicle when Dodds started to yell to the deputy. The deputy again cautioned Dodds about yelling in the neighborhood. But Dodds continued to yell. The deputy reapproached Dodds and this time noticed that Dodds’s speech was slurred, his eyes were watery and glassy, and his breath smelled of alcohol, which the deputy had not noticed in the previous encounters that night. The deputy then administered field sobriety testing and eventually arrested Dodds for suspicion of driving while intoxicated (DWI).
The state charged Dodds with felony test refusal and felony DWI. Dodds filed a motion to suppress the evidence from the stop and to dismiss, in part, due to an impermissible expansion of the scope of the stop.
The District Court denied the motion to suppress and on appeal, the Court of Appeals affirmed, noting:
"Warrantless searches and seizures are generally unreasonable. State v. Othoudt, 482 N.W.2d 218, 221-22 (Minn. 1992). But police may conduct “[a] limited investigative stop ... if there is a particularized and objective basis for suspecting the person stopped of criminal activity.” State v. Wiegand, 645 N.W.2d 125, 135 (Minn. 2002). The reasonable-suspicion standard is met when a deputy observes conduct that leads the deputy to reasonably conclude that “criminal activity is afoot.” State v. Timberlake, 744 N.W.2d 390, 393 (Minn. 2008) (quotation omitted). The standard is not high, but it requires more than an unparticularized hunch. Id. When determining whether a deputy reasonably suspected criminal activity, courts consider the totality of the circumstances. State v. Martinson, 581N.W.2d 846, 852 (Minn. 1998)."
"Here, while the deputy and Dodds had multiple contacts throughout the night, we narrowly focus on whether the deputy improperly seized Dodds when he re-approached him following the written citation. After Dodds got the deputy’s attention by yelling, the deputy re-approached and noticed that Dodds’s breath smelled of alcohol. The smell of alcohol is all that is required for reasonable suspicion to suspect that Dodds had been driving while intoxicated and to justify a seizure. See Hager v. Comm ’r of Pub. Safety, 382 N.W.2d 907, 911 (Minn. App. 1986) (stating that a driver’s odor of alcohol provided reasonable suspicion of driving while impaired and a legal basis for a preliminary breath test)."
"In sum, because the deputy had reasonable suspicion to seize Dodds after smelling alcohol on his breath, the district court did not err when denying Dodds’s motion to suppress."
Moral Of The Story: Next time, take the ticket and run (quietly)!
If you or a loved one have been charged with a Minnesota DWI, feel free to contact Minneapolis DWI Lawyer, F. T. Sessoms at (612) 344-1505 for answers to all of your Minnesota DWI and DUI questions.
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