The Minnesota DWI Case Of The Week is State v. Vos (Decided November 18, 2019, Minnesota Court of Appeals, Unpublished) which stands for the proposition it is not a "seizure" if you are already stopped. Okay then.
In Vos, Officer Schleichert of the Lonsdale Police Department received a report of a suspicious vehicle parked on the side of the road at a rural intersection in Rice County. When he arrived at the location, Officer Schleichert pulled behind the parked car and activated his emergency lights.
The officer found Mr. Vos in the driver's seat and Vos was unresponsive. After having Mr. Vos submit to field sobriety tests, he was placed under arrest for DWI by the officer.
The Defendant moved to suppress all of the evidence arguing that when the officer activated his emergency lights, he was illegally seized as the officer did not have a constitutionally sufficient basis to make the seizure. The district court agreed and threw out the case but on appeal, the Minnesota Court of Appeals reversed the lower court stating:
[A] “Seizure occurs when the officer, by means of physical force or show of authority, has in some way restrained the liberty of a citizen.” State v. Harris, 590 N.W.2d 90, 98 (Minn. 1999) (quotation omitted). Whether a seizure has occurred is analyzed from the objective perspective of the person alleged to have been seized. (“Under the Minnesota Constitution, a person has been seized if in view of all the circumstances surrounding the incident, a reasonable person would have believed that he or she was [not] free to . . . terminate the encounter.” (quotation omitted).
(So far, so good. But then the Court says:)
"Therefore, the question before us is whether the activation of the officer’s emergency lights transformed the interaction into a seizure."
"The Minnesota Supreme Court addressed this very question in State v. Hanson, 504 N.W.2d 219 (Minn. 1993). There the court declined to hold that a police officer’s use of their emergency lights when parked behind an already stopped car is per se a seizure, and instead adopted a fact-specific approach. Id. at 220. The supreme court noted that “[i]t may be that in many fact situations the officer’s use of the flashing lights likely would signal to a reasonable person that the officer is attempting to seize the person for investigative purposes,” but declined to find so where “[i]t was dark out and the cars were on the shoulder of the highway far from any town.” Id. Under the circumstances of the encounter in Hanson, the supreme court determined that a reasonable person would know that the emergency lights were used to alert oncoming motorists to be careful due to the officer’s presence along the shoulder of a dark road at night. Id."
***
"While Vos urges this court to determine that in these circumstances a reasonable person in Vos’s shoes would not have felt free to leave, the supreme court already made that assessment to the contrary. It is not for us to second guess the Hanson court here."
ARRGH!
The problem with the Court of Appeals decision is twofold:
(1) In Hanson, the Defendant was stopped on the side of a HIGHWAY in Scott County, where officer and public safety would be a concern. In this case, the Defendant was stopped on a rural road in the middle of nowhere. If there is no traffic to protect, what is a defendant supposed to think when the lights come on behind their vehicle?
(2) The standard to reverse the district court's factual findings is "clearly erroneous". And it does not appear that this district court was clearly erroneous in determining the Defendant felt "seized" at the time the emergency lights were activated. Or, as stated by the Supreme Court in Hanson, "It may be that in many fact situations the officer's use of the flashing lights likely would signal to a reasonable person that the officer is attempting to seize the person for investigative purposes. In this case, however, under all the facts, the officer's conduct would not have communicated to a reasonable person in these physical circumstances that the officer was attempting to seize the person. State v. Hanson, 504 N.W.2d 219, 220 (Minn. 1993).
Moral Of The Story: Only in the Court of Appeals would a person feel free to leave when the police hit their emergency or "take-down" lights.
If you or a loved one have been charged with a Minnesota DWI, feel free to contact Minneapolis DWI Attorney, F. T. Sessoms at (612) 344-1505 for answers to all of your Minnesota DWI and DUI questions.
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