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State v. Scholl6/30/2004
At approximately 10:30 p.m. on September 13, 2002, Sioux Falls Police Officer Brian Reinwald was on duty in his patrol car when he received a radio dispatch directing units in the area to respond to a report of a possible drunk driver on Westport Avenue. Dispatch advised that an informant called in to report seeing the driver "leaving Scarlet O'Hara's bar stumbling pretty badly and having problems getting into [his] Toyota Tacoma pickup."*fn1 The informant gave the license plate number of the vehicle which bore commercial plates from the State of Nebraska. The informant also described the vehicle as a blue Toyota pickup with a topper on it. The informant followed the vehicle from the bar onto Interstate 29 and then east on Twelfth Street and continued to update dispatch on the location of the vehicle until it turned onto Westport Avenue.
. Within three or four minutes of receiving the initial dispatch, Officer Reinwald encountered the suspect vehicle in the location where the informant said it would be and began to pursue it.*fn2 Reinwald followed the vehicle for approximately eleven blocks, confirming that the license plate number, color and vehicle type all matched the informant's description. Although Reinwald did not observe any violations of the law, erratic driving or anything else leading him to believe that the driver was impaired, he stopped the vehicle solely on the basis of the informant information. After the stop Reinwald identified Scholl as the driver and, based upon his observations of Scholl, had him perform a series of field sobriety tests. The results of the tests led to Scholl's arrest for DUI. A blood test administered shortly after the arrest yielded a result of 0.227% by weight of alcohol in the blood.
. After his indictment for DUI and prior to a court trial in magistrate court, Scholl moved to suppress all evidence obtained as a result of the stop of his vehicle on the basis that the stop violated the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and Article VI, Section 11 of the South Dakota Constitution. The motion was denied. Scholl was later convicted of DUI and sentenced to 120 days in the county jail with 100 days suspended and a fine of $650 plus costs and loss of driving privileges for one year. Scholl appealed his conviction to circuit court, again challenging the validity of the vehicle stop. The circuit court affirmed in an order entered October 21, 2003. Scholl now appeals to this Court.
ISSUE
. Did Officer Reinwald have a reasonable suspicion of a violation of law sufficient to support the stop of Scholl's vehicle?
. The requirement of a reasonable suspicion of a violation of law to support a traffic stop has been set forth as follows:
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures. Although this protection generally requires probable cause to search, "[t]he requisite level of suspicion necessary to effectuate the stop of a vehicle is not equivalent to probable cause necessary for an arrest or a search warrant." All that is required is that the police officer has "a reasonable suspicion to stop an automobile." Therefore, the factual basis needed to support a traffic stop is minimal.
While the stop may not be the product of mere whim, caprice or idol curiosity, it is enough that the stop is based upon "specific and articulable facts which taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant [the] intrusion." Under these standards, it is well established that a traffic violation, however minor, creates sufficient cause to stop the driver of a vehicle.
State v. Chavez, 2003 SD 93, 15 - 16, 668 N
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