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State v. Pierce11/16/2001
Supreme Court On Appeal from District Court of Vermont, Unit No. 1, Orange Circuit October Term, 2001 Alan W. Cook, J.
Defendant, Adam Pierce, appeals from the trial court's denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained by a state police officer when he stopped defendant's vehicle. On appeal, defendant argues that it was a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and of Chapter I, Article 11 of the Vermont Constitution for a police officer to stop defendant in his automobile and question him as a witness to another person's driving under the influence of intoxicating liquor (DUI). We affirm.
After midnight, a state police officer who had just exited from the south lane of Interstate 91 observed a Saab automobile backing down Route 113 towards the off-ramp of the north lane of the interstate. The Saab came to a stop side-by-side to defendant's Honda automobile, which was stopped at the intersection of the off-ramp and Route 113. The officer pulled his police cruiser up to the two cars, shining his headlights on both of them. He approached the Saab to question its driver and noticed that she smelled of alcohol. At this time, defendant started to drive away. The officer motioned defendant to stop and said "hold on a second, I want to talk to you." The officer approached defendant to question him about the possible DUI of the Saab driver. He determined that defendant also smelled of alcohol.
Eventually, the officer processed both drivers for suspected DUI, and, as a result of the blood alcohol test he administered, charged defendant. In district court defendant argued that he had been seized unlawfully and moved to suppress all evidence obtained in connection with his stop. The court denied his motion. We review motions to suppress de novo. State v. Graves, 170 Vt. 646, 646, 757 A.2d 462, 463 (2000) (mem.).
The district court's ruling was as follows:
The officer was confronted with a situation where, in the wee hours of the morning, he personally observed a vehicle, namely the Saab, backing the wrong way on an exit ramp. He had good reason to investigate at that point in time and find out what was going on. By the time he got to where the Saab was located, it was side-by-side with the defendant's vehicle. The defendant at that point was a witness . . . . But what they did do is they interviewed a witness at the scene of the erratic behavior after they had determined that the operator of the vehicle that was being operated in an erratic fashion had been drinking. It's routine for officers investigating an offense to ask people at the scene what they saw, what they know. And the request to speak with the defendant, conceivably about what he saw or what he knew, is a perfectly legitimate investigative function. What went wrong from the defendant's perspective is when the officer started speaking to him, he then smelled alcohol on the defendant, and that led to the chain of events resulting in the processing. But I think under the chain of events portrayed here, the officer had every right to speak with the defendant and determine what he knew, if anything, about what was going on with the operator of the Saab vehicle.
After making that ruling and in response to a specific request by defendant, the court went on to rule that the officer had not seized defendant for purposes of the Fourth Amendment.
On appeal, defendant argues that the officer's conduct constituted a seizure under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Chapter I, Article 11 of the Vermont Constitution and that seizure was unlawful because the officer did not have a reasonable and articulable suspicion that defenda
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